John Chachas, the owner of San Francisco’s high-end luxury retailer Gump’s, published a letter in the San Francisco Chronicle voicing the frustration of many over the city’s lack of enforcement of laws. That lack has turned the district where Gump’s department store is located into a hellhole of drugs, rampant crime, and death.
It’s so bad that, after 165 years of operations there, Chachas is threatening to close the store:
Gump’s has been a San Francisco icon for more than 165 years.
Today, as we prepare for our 166th holiday season at 250 Post Street, we fear this may be our last because of the profound erosion of this city’s current conditions.
He places the blame squarely on local and state Democrats, whom he claims has installed a “tyranny of the minority”:
San Francisco now suffers from a “tyranny of the minority” — behavior and actions of the few that jeopardize the livelihood of the many.
That tyranny now “allows the homeless to occupy our sidewalks, to openly distribute and use illegal drugs, to harass the public, and to defile the city’s streets.”
That has caused San Francisco to become “unlivable for its residents, unsafe for our employees, and unwelcoming to visitors.”
He calls out the Democrats whose policies have run the city into the ground to reverse course:
Gump’s implores the Governor, the Mayor, and the City Supervisors to take immediate actions, including cleaning the city streets, removing homeless encampments, enforcement of city and state ordinances, and returning San Francisco to its rightful place as one of America’s shining beacons of urban society.
Although the Democrats Chachas challenged have remained conspicuously silent, others have praised him for speaking out: “No one’s told me, ‘Oh my, how uncaring you are toward the homeless.’ Instead, I received multiple responses saying ‘Truth to power,’ ‘You’re saying exactly what everybody believes.’”
One of his former customers wrote, “I love your store. I love your products. [But] I’ll buy something online. I don’t want to step foot into that city.”
Gump’s is just the latest to threaten to leave the once-lovely and safe city. Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Office Depot, CB2, and Nordstrom’s have already departed, along with nearly 40 other retailers.
In June, Westfield, the shopping-mall operator, announced it was giving up trying to run its San Francisco mall profitably, while Park Hotels and Resorts, the investment firm that owns Hilton San Francisco and Parc 55 hotels, is leaving the city.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, which is housed in downtown San Francisco, announced that “in light of the conditions at [our building] we recommend employees … maximize the use of telework [at home] for the foreseeable future.” The name of the building? The Nancy Pelosi Federal Building.
Major crime — including robberies, car thefts, and murders — has increased by double digits, partly due to the city’s policy of not prosecuting criminals. Shoplifters raid stores without fear of arrest.
And the homeless population has virtually exploded, to an estimated 38,000 people, up 35 percent since 2019.
A rare Republican in California’s swamp of Democrats, Representative Kevin Kiley, issued a warning to the rest of the country:
If California offers a preview of where our country is headed, San Francisco offers an even starker warning. This is where failed policies, radical politics, and public corruption are in their most advanced state — [from which] residents are most rapidly fleeing.
