Wednesday, May 20, 2020

San Francisco Mayor's First Step to Opening Up the City is a Disaster

San Francisco Mayor London Breed was among the first mayors in the country to order a lockdown.

It was a big-time power-freak move given that there are no published scientific studies that indicate lockdowns make any sense. Indeed, top scientists at both Stanford University, down the street from Breed, and at the top ranking medical school at the University of Pittsburgh, have argued that lockdowns do more harm than good.

Be that as it may, Breed now is doing her power-freak dance on the unwinding of the lockdown. She announced last week that she would allow retail businesses to open for curbside service.

Only someone with an advanced degree in public administration (Breed got hers, a masters degree,  from the University of San Francisco) would think that made any sense.

Away from the influence of academia, it is clear to see that retail shops actually pay very large amounts of rent for floor space because shoppers actually want to touch, feel and see new products before they buy them. For other products that they are already familiar with, they can just use Amazon. Curbside only service for high-end products is idiotic.

San Francisco retailers understand this and so they gave Breed the equivalent a huge middle finger in her face for the absurd "permission" she gave them to run curbside operations like some Tenderloin crack dealer.

They all are staying closed. This is what downtown San Francisco looked like on Tuesday, day two of Breed's curbside service plan to open up the city.







-RW



4 comments:

  1. A plumbing/heating/cooling chain store here is curbside only, even though all the other stores like it that are local are opened up, and I won’t go there anymore. And I know a lot of other people who feel the same way. And to your point that we want to touch, feel, and see what we are buying, it’s why it is called “shopping”.

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  2. I like Amazon, but a of of times what you get is either twice as big as you thought or half the size. I think of "Stonehenge" from Spinal Tap.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htulh78Q-MA

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    1. Aaargh! Youtube gave the wrong URL. Sorry.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=071cXxCNj5A

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  3. Reopening with the hogepodge of rules that add so much cost and uncertainty is difficult for both the businesses and their customers. Unless business management believes their customers are too fear mongered to return they should just reopen without following the governments rules. How many business doing this would it take to overwhelm the enforcers?

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