The other DrC grew up in the Bay Area, and remembers getting dressed in go-to-church clothes to shop in San Francisco with her similarly dressed-up mother. We're talking hat, gloves, and shined shoes dressed up.
I was a college undergraduate nearby in those years, and had much the same feeling about SF. In both cases that's first person history.
In those long-ago days more often than not people anywhere in northern California meant San Francisco if they said "the City." Columnist Herb Caen made a good living gossiping about its society and times for the Chronicle, playing the role of fawning gigolo to the City's dowager.
The City as-it-was felt more or less "eternal." It was not. Bad management can destroy nearly anything and has come perilously close to destroying SF.
The latest news, Nordstrom's is closing its two stores in San Francisco. Not long ago, we learned Whole Foods was doing the same to a nearly new store there. Writing about all of this decline, the New York Post reports:
The Westfield Mall’s Nordstrom will be closed by the end of August and the Nordstrom Rack on Market Street’s final day will be July 1, the San Francisco Business Journal reported.
There have been numerous instances of businesses struggling to deal with the high crime in the west coast city.
Twenty retailers have shut down stores in San Francisco’s Union Square since 2020, the San Francisco Standard reported.
None of this needed to happen; it occurred because bad policies were promoted and followed. It is only a slight exaggeration to say the City is committing suicide; SF's voters have proven to be its it’s mortal, if unwitting, enemies.
