California Bleeding: Walgreens Closes Five More San Francisco Stores, Citing The City's Policy of Tolerated Thieving as the Reason

The pharmacy chain had already closed 17 locations -- in San Francisco alone.

Walgreens is closing five more San Francisco locations as drug stores from the Bay Area to the Big Apple are besieged by rampant shoplifting and lax enforcement.

San Fran shoplifters have been emboldened by a referendum that lowered the penalty for stealing goods worth less than $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor, cops and prosecutors have said.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed the latest closures to SFGate.

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"Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average. During this time to help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment."

Meanwhile, San Francisco's downtown is a "ghost town" as office workers move out.

The South of Market neighborhood is home to the headquarters of a slew of prominent tech companies including Uber, Dropbox, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Yelp, and Salesforce.

As much as 90% of the city’s workforce is now working from home, ABC7 News reported. Before the pandemic, San Francisco had the highest building occupancy rate in the U.S., but most of its skyscrapers have now emptied out, the outlet reported.

About 27% of office space in San Francisco is now available, according to a report by CBRE, a commercial real estate firm, compared to 19% of available office space in Manhattan. Meanwhile, San Francisco apartment rents, while starting to rise again, dropped more steeply than anywhere else in the country over the pandemic, while the cost of living remains high at 44% more than New York City, The Economist reported.

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Several tech giants have announced they are moving their headquarters out of California permanently, fleeing the high taxes, expensive real estate, and stringent government regulation of Silicon Valley.

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As workers, especially tech workers, migrate out of San Francisco, the city's downtown restaurants and other vendors are left wondering whether business will ever go back to normal.

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Meanwhile, bars and restaurants are still subject indefinitely to an indoor mask mandate in San Francisco. While the city's current mask mandate will be lifted for other businesses like gyms, churches, and offices, on October 15, the order does not apply to bars and restaurants.

Not only are workers deserting San Francisco, so are schoolchildren.

And the city is upset by that... because the loss of 3500 schoolchildren will result in the loss of $35 million in school funding.

And that is the only reason.

- San Francisco school board officials are discussing a new report showing an enrollment drop of 3,500 students in the last two years.

The drop could mean a loss of state funding to the tune of $35 million.

SFUSD Superintendent Vince Matthews says the district needs to adjust to a "new normal," according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Former San Francisco mayor turned California governor Gavin Newsom is determined to accelerate California's decline. A new California law mandates that large retailers have "gender neutral" aisles.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a woke law on Saturday forcing stores to have 'gender neutral' sections where traditional blue and pink toys and toothbrushes are banned.

Large department stores must now display products like toys and toothbrushes in gender-neutral ways - a win for LGBT advocates who say the pink and blue hues of traditional marketing methods pressure children to conform to gender stereotypes.

The new law, however, does not completely outlaw traditional boys and girls sections at department stores. Instead it says large stores must also have a gender neutral section to display 'a reasonable selection' of items 'regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys'.

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Low said he was inspired by the 10-year-old girl daughter of one of his staffers who asked her mom why certain items in the store were 'off limits' to her because she was a girl.

Right. Woke 10-Year-Olds are now supposedly writing our legislation.

Simultaneously, California is banning all gas-powered lawnmowers.

California will soon ban the sale of new gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers after Governor Gavin Newsom signed off on the new law - also on Saturday.

The move is aimed at curbing emissions from a category of small engines on pace to produce more pollution each year than passenger vehicles.

The gas-powered equipment to be banned uses small off-road engines, a broad category that includes generators, lawn equipment, pressure washers, chainsaws, weed trimmers and even golf carts.

Under the new law these machines must be zero-emissions, meaning they'll have to be battery-powered or plug-in.

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The state budget, approved earlier this year, includes $30million to pay for this effort and help professional landscapers and gardeners make the transition from gas-powered equipment.

But an anonymous industry representative has told the Times that the budget is 'woefully inadequate' for the nearly 50,000 small businesses that will be affected by the new law.

posted by Ace at 03:05 PM

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