Before last weekend’s NFC Championship game, a few outlets and commentators on social media noted how San Francisco and Detroit — the two teams playing — were representing cities that were flipping the script on their reputations.
Indeed, this wasn’t the first time the reversal of fortune had come to the attention of the media. In October of last year, The New Yorker noted that Sarah Dennis Phillips, San Francisco’s executive director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, was studying “communities that turned their stories around — formerly depressed cities like Nashville and Detroit that had shown an aptitude for ‘constructing that narrative that makes people want to come.’”
“If downtowns aren’t a place you have to be, then they have to become places you want to be,” she told the publication.
Indeed, while the 49ers may be celebrating a trip to the Super Bowl thanks to an improbable 17-point comeback, Detroit can still celebrate its newly earned nickname, “The Comeback City.” San Francisco, meanwhile, is locking up chewing gum, so it doesn’t get stolen.
You heard that right. Not some exotic chewing gum made out of an organically grown strain of mint that can only be harvested by sherpas off of a two-hectare plot in the Himalayas or whatever. Just plain ol’ Trident.
According to the San Francisco Standard, the gum is being kept under lock-and-key at the same Walgreens in the Inner Richmond area that became infamous last year for putting padlocks on its freezers due to rampant theft.
It’s July 18th 2023
This is life in @GavinNewsom California, @Walgreens having to chain & padlock freezers due to crime in Cali .. remember this when you see greasy Gavin’s name on your ballot for president #DemocratsDeliverCrime pic.twitter.com/xMqQsCnjeu
— 🍊 Hawai’i girl Proud Conservative Bio Woman 🇺🇸 (@Grama641) July 18, 2023
CNN reported last July that, after the padlocks went viral, they “were ordered down by corporate because of the negative messaging.”
However, the network added that the store was the most commonly pilfered of the 9,000 Walgreens locations in the United States and that theft was “so typical that in the 30 minutes that we were at this Walgreens, we watched three people” walk out having scored a five-finger discount.
And now, we have this:
San Francisco’s Inner Richmond Walgreens takes extreme measures to combat rising theft, locking up everything from gum to soup. https://t.co/vHVROkh73l
— The San Francisco Standard (@sfstandard) January 31, 2024
“The freezer chains have since vanished, as have the plastic screens guarding cans of soup, which were present on Friday but had gone away by Tuesday,” the Standard reported on Wednesday.
“What’s weirder still is that the gum in Perspex purgatory is priced as low as $4.29. Imprisoned toothbrush? That’ll be $1.99, please—the lowest priced item The Standard saw behind a security screen.”
The writer, Garrett Leahy, said he “hung around the Walgreens at 5280 Geary Blvd. for an hour Friday and spoke with the workers about theft and locked-up items. As I made my rounds inside the drug store, the acrylic gleam was ubiquitous. The aisle with cosmetics and shampoo is entirely locked behind plexiglass, the store’s fluorescent lights bouncing off their protective skins.”
One worker said that when the gum and other similar items were first put behind lock-and-key, they were seeing “[f]ifteen, 20 [thefts per day]. Something like that.” One thief was such a regular he was nicknamed “Santa.”
Would you ever live in San Francisco?
The workers said that thefts had gone down since security guards had been hired, but even the security guards painted a bleak picture: “They’ll take anything they can get their hands on,” a guard told Leahy.
“As a result, shoppers hoping to purchase products ranging from pet food to Pepto Bismol at the Geary Walgreens need to summon a worker to unlock them. Jars of protein powder and fiber supplements, six-pack boxes of 5-Hour Energy shots, four-pack boxes of Monster Energy drinks and boxes of Keurig coffee pods — all require a key to liberate them,” he wrote.
This is what it takes to reduce theft in California. Well, at least if the legislature does nothing. The major problem in California is that, thanks to progressives in Sacramento, a governor who visits The French Laundry considerably more often than he does neighborhoods with laundromats, and voters who think the same way and elect these idiots, theft of under $950 is treated with the same urgency and leniency as, say, public urination by law enforcement in the state of California. (And anyone who’s been in San Francisco recently knows that both offenses are 1) common and 2) ignored.)
This doesn’t lead anywhere good — but in San Francisco, which has also been hit hard by the fentanyl epidemic and other crises, it’s contributed to a situation where you now have to get toothbrushes and chewing gum from locked cases.
When Gavin Newsom invariably announces his 2028 presidential run, just think about what’s become of the city where he was once mayor in the state where he’s now the governor. If that’s what you want America to be — a nation where alleged criminals are released without bail, but Wrigley’s gets locked up — vote for him. If not, don’t.
When San Francisco is studying Detroit for tips on how to get better, I would hope the choice is clear.
