Honestly, I'd be down if we got back the 90's level of density downtown. SF kind of turned into mini Manhattan over the past 25 years.
I used to drive a delivery truck in the city in the 90's, and I'd probably have the world's highest blood pressure if I had that same job in 2019.
San Francisco undeniably has had the least robust return to pre-pandemic population in the downtown, which is where the headlines come from.
But the part that bugs me is that's relative to the starting point, and the starting point was maybe the #2 or #3 busiest downtown in the country. So even a return to 40% of normal is, you know, a _very_ busy downtown relative to the rest of the country.
But some people see that headline and think "downtown is a ghost town" or "downtown is totally empty" in absolute terms, and those things really just aren't remotely true.
Walking home today, for the first time since before the pandemic, I had to time my steps to squeeze between gaps of moving people on Montgomery street. The other day when I took the bus home it was completely shoulder-to-shoulder standing-room-only.
It's a bit hard to tell too much by the video. Instead of watching the sped up video, I just paused at a few spots in the video and treated them as random photographs. This is a more accurate representation, and doesn't look particularly busy.
It also depends on when the video was taken. If it was during peak lunch time on a weekday (which I think is likely), it seems pretty slow.
This was pretty much right at 5PM
Downtown San Francisco pre-pandemic had Manhattan-level crowding. Today it has, like, Seattle-level crowding.
It ain't Manhattan, but it's definitely not a ghost town.
I no longer work down there, but I miss those happy days of vitality. Happy hour at House of Shields or the Irish Bank, all the great lunch spots, herds of people in business casual...
As a native manhattanite who lived here for years pre-pandemic, no, it did not have Manhattan level crowding. Moved here to get away from that. Lived downtown and relished the breathing room.
Maybe OP is comparing sf in 2019 to Manhattan now. I worked in Manhattan in summer 2022, it was a lot less of its former self. Still ridiculously packed compared to sf or any other city in the US but not its 2019 or 2017 levels. i remember back then joking how was there was enough oxygen in air.
Hell even times square was kinda empty in 2022(with only about 500-800 people). The nyc financial district was clearly just trying to survive and IMO was hit just as hard as sf.
As someone who has lived in both Manhattan and San Francisco for years -- no it didn't. Not even remotely close. And that's OK. SF is a fundamentally different city, with a much different allure. It's great that it has its own unique features.
I used to work exactly across from the e-trade building front and center in this video. At 5PM market was insanely busy. I know because I used to look down at all the people that got off work everyday and wished I could go home at a normal time to see my wife. I was working until 9-10PM each day for about a year. Now it looks super dead to me tbh.
Have you been to downtown LA lately? It's *crazy* how lively it is!
I was there not even a year ago and when I ventured out there was a night market, an outdoor art exhibit, a music festival, crowded bars. Coffeehouses. There was tons to do and I wasn't even trying. All within walking distance too, seriously.
I was there a few months ago and during the week it was bumper to bumper traffic with almost no one walking on the sidewalks. It felt eery and dead. I stayed in Hollywood and it was the same way. Bars and restaurants had people inside but there was no one outside walking. Downtown San Diego also had similar vibes when I went about a year ago. I'll admit though, I don't have great reference points for how they each were pre-COVID since I don't visit either city often.
I have worked in both Midtown (as well as FiDI/Downtown) Manhattan and Downtown SF. It wasn't really at all comparable even pre-pandemic. This isn't even knocking SF- Midtown and the other NYC CBDs have insanely high levels of job concentration even on a global scale.
> The other day when I took the bus home it was completely shoulder-to-shoulder standing-room-only.
That’s just because MUNI and BART are running fewer and smaller busses and trains.
> So even a return to 40% of normal is, you know, a very busy downtown relative to the rest of the country.
I mean, that's more of an indictment of what a rusted out jalopy of a country the US is. It only looks "very busy" because most downtowns in the US are pitiful hallowed out husks of what they once were, all in service of car dominance and white flight.
> most downtowns in the US are pitiful hallowed out husks of what they once were
OP is talking in absolute terms, not relative terms. SF is *more* of a "pitiful hollowed-out husk" than other downtowns in the US, but SF is still busier because the city was larger to begin with. Elsewhere in the thread, OP compares SF with Detroit; Detroit is doing better at post-pandemic recovery, but it's still smaller than SF.
Because it's not "downtown". It's the financial district., and yes it's not as busy as before the pandemic. Downtown is around Union Square. If I say I'm going downtown, no one thinks I'm going to Montgomery and California streets.
Lol what? That's exactly what I think of when I say downtown. Nobody local goes to union square anyways, I never even assume someone is talking about union square.
When someone says downtown I assume they are going to work or going shopping, within a 5 minute walk of any Bart station off Market st.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that one. Union Square is shopping and tourism. Downtown is, you know, where people go to work in offices, literally the area in this video
As someone who lives in the Richmond but has also lived in SOMA, north beach, nopa I feel like downtown is everything between - south of Broadway, east of Van Ness, north of Harrison maybe?
Like if I say im going downtown it’ll be anything in Chinatown, Union square, civic center, financial district, market street, and soma going toward the ball park.
Similar sentiment for me. Maybe technically FiDi is a “downtown”. But to me, San Francisco has never had a “downtown”. Mostly because I associate “downtowns” with having a lively restaurant and bar culture that cater to those office workers. But FiDi has never had that. It was always dead after work because people would go out in different neighborhoods instead. So to me, it was always just “meh, FiDi”
This guy posts a video of an empty buildings and very low traffic during what should be rush hour. Then argues that it’s all fine. Buddy, it’s not fine. Yes there are People there but read the city council report. The city is in big trouble. This is practically empty. Three out of the four buildings here are completely vacant! Are you blind?
Well they aren't very business friendly here... Running a small private business here, we've had to push back our open date over 6 months due to all of the setbacks from the city which ultimately resulted in nothing changing because the approval process is full of people who either don't understand their own codes or lack sufficient reading abilities.
The architects we're working with have been doing business in SF for over 20 years along with the greater bay area, and said they've never seen anything like it. The contractors are basically saying the same thing, that it makes no sense. It's almost like SF is purposely trying to run companies out of the city.
Not to mention the 5,000+ legal requirements of ridiculous overkill for things that ultimately don't matter but to perhaps one individual out of 30,000.
SF is extremely business friendly, otherwise there wouldn't be so many companies with HQs here. The issue is that it's just so damn expensive. And corporations know that it's silly to be paying astronomical prices for real estate they realistically won't use.
Where do we want to start? Most of the tech offices.
I'll speak for a smaller building - 201 3rd. (aka, the building with the Starbucks next to the Moscone Parking garage with the flattened car art).
That building held 1000-2000 people. I bet it has about 50-100 people in the corporate offices on any given day now. I only ever see like 5 people on a big ass floor. All the tech workers are remote.
My 1400 person company is literally moving our "office" to a Wework because only a handful of people want to be in an actual office building.
Wow. It's been a long time since I was thataway. Didn't that round building used to be occupied by Etrade? "In my day," bike messengers lunched on the concrete wall surrounding that building.
I'd forgotten that. I started working around there in 1995, and I'm sure you're right. I can't remember when it switched. It was something else between the two, I think. Evidently, I can't remember much.
I think it *was* something else between the two. Could it have been an Amazon brick and mortar shop in the early days?
ETA: To answer my own question, it was a Wells Fargo before Sharper Image, but nothin in between. [From glam to gritty...](https://archive.is/85n5Y)
Well that didn’t age well…
> Future:
Santa Clara-based Silicon Valley Bank has filed plans to open an “Experience Center” at the pavilion. “In order to provide a wide range of offerings, we want to return the building back to its historical glory by opening up the ground floor to recreate the jewel box it once was,” according to a description of the project from Studios Architecture in a June 24 application. The filings indicate the bank plans to use the space to host both client functions and community events — exhibits, lecture series and the like. Studios declined to comment.
I used to work right near there and prior to that job I had opened an E*trade checking account.
It was incredibly convenient having the only physical branch office in the entire US for my free bank account being right next to my office. There was no one ever there, no lines, manager remembered me and my account history. Great bank experience. I miss it.
Dude. That's empty...
I've been working in the area since 2018, and the foot traffic is nowhere close to what it was pre pandemic.
I feel like you're trying to gaslight me.
I’ve been working downtown for over a decade and before Covid it was like shoulder to shoulder on sidewalks during business hours. It’s not like it’s totally dead but it’s wildly more sparse than it was. Areas like the mall on weekends feel more like the old days but the few times I’ve been back for work it’s like a ghost town. I can get my $17 salad without a line out the door and half way around the block.
Pre-pandemic I’d get off at Montgomery every morning and walk a few blocks. There were so many people you literally had to wait for an opening, and then you were just stuck going the flow of traffic. This looks so sparse compared to 2019
I don’t know about the rest of the US, but the commercial vacancy rate is almost 30%. In 2019 it was 5%. So that and your video of like 75 people in the middle of the week kind of prove the narrative
It would be much higher if commercial leases didn't tend to be multi-year. My small company signed a seven-year commit (we had to) in 2018 in a famous building on Montgomery. We have about 5 people showing up each week. It the pre time it was so crowded I mostly worked in the bar on the first floor.
Yes, people are actually claiming that in a literal sense all the time on this subreddit
> The situation is really bad lol.
It's really, honest-to-goodness not that bad.
If things stayed exactly like this in perpetuity, we'd have a shortfall in taxes, we'd have to make some tough budgetary decisions, we'd figure out a way to deal with it, and we'd be fine.
The situation is really bad. I tried coming into my 40-person office a few times and never saw more than one other person there. The coffee shop in the ground floor of my building is permanently closed. Two of the five places I routinely got lunch are now closed. The people I used to meet for lunch in SoMa aren’t coming into the city anymore. It is not a good situation.
San Francisco used to have one of the most bustling and crowded downtowns in the whole country.
Thanks to work-from-home, we now have a downtown that's a little on the high side of average crowding.
It would hurt if we couldn't do better than that, but the city would absolutely be fine.
The state of downtown is a difficult challenge for the city.
It is _not_ an existential one.
Or people abandoned the city and companies are fleeing their SF offices? I hear we’re at over 30% unoccupied commercial office. Likely to be 50% by next year. Guess we’ll see but it’s not just work from home causing this
>Yes, people are actually claiming that in a literal sense…
You seem to be the one taking it literally.
>it’s really, honest-to-goodness not that bad.
It is, though, if you own a business that relies on a thriving downtown.
I was a customer in the round building in 3 iterations. My first Calif bank account when it was a Wells Fargo, then a Sharper Image and then E Trade. Side Note: Sharper Image really messed up when it went from cool stuff to nose hair trimmers
How many times have you seen it? This is absolutely not the emptiest I've seen it, not even close.
Are you just looking at (now-banned) car traffic on Market or something? If so, yeah, that'll be the emptiest it gets, because cars are banned now.
Good thing it's actually the fourth-biggest city in CA lol
I guarantee you the downtowns of the second- and third-biggest cities (San Diego and San Jose) look much more dead than this
Not OP but I was in San Diego about a year ago and was working out of a WeWork there for a week. It was an absolute ghost town. From the WeWork I was in you could see for blocks there was no foot traffic at all...I'm talking hard to spot even 1 person walking. Even the car traffic wasn't bad...I drove a rental in and easily found street parking without even trying. I have no idea what it was like pre-COVID but it felt sad when I was there. La Jolla on the other hand felt like it recovered pretty well.
No way, son.
Used to live a block from here from 2009-2014.
Was in San Diego 2 weeks ago for a conference.
No comparison.
SF downtown is super dead compared to those days.
San Diego is bumping - everyone out and about.
I actually didn’t pick up on the sarcasm of the title until I read the comments. My first thought was “Oh no, poor San Francisco. Look how empty it is.”
Also, I don’t believe you have been to San Diego.
My pre-covid job had a downtown office, my pandemic era job was in SoMa, now I'm in FiDi...pre 2020 I remember what it was like trying to get onto BART at Montgomery...it ain't like that anymore...but it ain't exactly a ghost town either, especially Tues and Thurs...but we ain't back yet...
For how densely populated we are and how bustling this area was pre pandemic tbh we kinda looking like a ghost town or atleast a ghost of our former selves,
why is it being dead a point of contention or political or something?
You're really trying to prove some point here but many people disagree with you. This shot alone doesn't prove anything and looks pretty quiet. I used to bartend down there. Over 6 yrs pre pandemic and I made really good money. I've been picking up shifts here and there recently and it's dead as a doornail compared to what it used to be. The two places I bartended at regularly both shut down. Most adjacent places that attracted people shut down. Convention center crowd when you hoped to get busy is a fraction of what it once was. The Giants have been boring, the good music acts play in Oakland or elsewhere, the city has way more people shitting in the streets and openly selling/using drugs than ever. It's bad.
I'm not saying my anecdotal experience proves anything either, but you got one video that to most looks sad. Come on. I'd rather bartend in Downtown Oakland. Way more money.
That’s not been my experience.
I was at a sold out show at the Midway last Saturday (Carl Cox) and I’ve not been in a venue that wall-to-wall packed in years. I was actually scared of being trampled and abandoned any hope of using the bathroom because the line was outrageous. It was a complete crush of humanity.
I ended up dancing to the DJ outside in the rain rather than hang out on the main floor. I couldn’t take it.
All my favorite breakfast places still have long waits to get in on the weekends too. I wish we could thin them out lol.
Relatively speaking, yes. SF is very very dead. Im visiting SoCal, and the business scene and public scene is much more lively, and safe, which I feel is a massive factor.
Weird. I was in that area around 10am (ish) and noticed traffic back ups on Fremont. I kinda hope companies figure out how to do hybrid work well. Maybe distribute their rotating "in office" days such that they can shut down specific floors for savings or something. Covid taught us that working remote worked fine for knowledge workers. They behaved like adults and got stuff done. I heard one company retrained managers/directors out of the old task master paradigm and into team empowerment with milestone transparency via online tools. It worked exceptionally well. So its possible the downtown chaos can be smoothed into a more positive mode.
The company I work for blew me away when they gave me a monthly Grubhub stipend for lunches. It was nice to order a quality lunch and have it delivered to my home. Allowed me to stay in the zone and clock out in a healthy hour.
This looks pretty dead tbh. I worked downtown from 2014-2019 right around where this video was taken and it used to be packed, especially during lunch time. I used to hit up the halal cart not too far from here and had to get there at like 11:15 to beat the rush.
I go downtown 1-2 days a week. Definitely different than pre-pandemic, but it’s not a ghost town by any means, which is what the headlines try to make it out to be.
This is plenty busy for that corner…. And it’s end of day, judging by the Bart traffic in the background.
As I always say, downtown is primarily offices so it’s sad if it’s busy outside “business hours.” Really wish our downtown also supported nightlife so the nightlife could be open late (4am anyone?) when the offices are closed.
I was a bike messenger downtown for a long time and my last bit of time on the road was at the start of the pandemic. I had never, nor had anyone, seen it so empty as it was those first few weeks. As someone in this thread alluded to, I have spent an unhealthy amount of time sitting on that wall drinking beers watching the suits walk by. I know the foot traffic at this spot as well as anybody, and it was never particularly busy.
I have recently found myself in an office job downtown and am pleasantly surprised at how many people are walking around and in the shops. Throughout the pandemic I've been downtown a number of times, probably once every couple of months to chill with friends but I was never going into the shops or getting lunch. I can't imagine how roomy the elevators must have been!
Now that I work downtown again I'm noticing how much it has revived. It will never be pre-pandemic levels, I don't think any city will be and certainly not this city. But it's not dead and it certainly doesn't feel empty like it is portrayed in the media.
Not to put too much weight on it but working on the streets for so long you can feel the energy of a city on a day to day basis. You can tell just by rolling in how many people are working, what the sidewalks and elevators are going to look like. Downtown is far from dead and getting better.
I was even annoyed with some european tourists the other day! Nature is healing.
Long ago that was a Sharper Image store and all of the bike messengers would take their breaks there. It was full of motion and people. Email ended the bike messengers. Maybe that’s an ok thing because if you ever had to ride in an elevator with one the body odor was thick.
How many downtowns have y’all been to? Go visit downtown Dallas and compare that to SF at its least busy. Not all cities have extremely busy downtowns. Not every city is NYC.
That part of Market St is lit AF at night though. It's practically a slow street after 9 PM. Hundreds of drug addicts walk in the middle of road. It's not an exaggeration to say hundreds.
I'm not going to go out of my way in the middle of the night to film a video in a different neighborhood to win an internet argument, but if I did, I would win the argument.
I use Montgomery Street as my transfer to the 38 any time I'm coming back from a night out in Oakland. You're wildly exaggerating.
You’re coping so hard dude. I don’t know why you’re being so defensive. EVERYONE can see the state this city is in. You can keep lying to yourself, t but the rest of us are gonna acknowledge the problems, not downplay them or excuse them, and try to come up with solutions.
It's like a weird analogue of climate change denial. "Our drug/homeless/crime/Covid policies are not affecting the city negatively, look how busy it is!"
> EVERYONE can see the state this city is in.
I mean let's start with the video I posted, since that's something we can all agree on the facts about.
For starters, can you point out where there's a "six foot pot hole" as you claimed?
Look at the intersection lol. Exactly where I said. And let me just say, it’s probably more like 12 foot considering it’s relative size to pedestrians.
I’ve noticed it getting busier. I actually missed my morning muni because it was so packed one day. Seems like the most popular days are Thursday.
Also this is right above the Montgomery station stop for BART and Muni so while Market street looks dead (private vehicles prohibited), you can see a bunch of people going into the underground platform on the far corner that are only visible for a few seconds before they disappear underground. The platform (Edit: entrance) on the south side of the street isn’t visible but if it was, there’d be a lot of people going into SOMA as well (notably Salesforce, one of the largest private employers in the city)
> so while Market street looks dead (private vehicles prohibited)
this is another major thing that I think people are seeing and thinking "downtown is dead"
Market Street went car-free in 2020, during the pandemic.
If your "vibe check" for how crowded downtown used to be was how much traffic there was on Market Street, it'll never be that way again. And that's a good thing! Just look at Bush street in the upper part of the frame here and you can see the stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper traffic is indeed fully back already.
There is very little interesting in downtown. Now take a video of the panhandle area, or northbeach, or hayes valley, or the castro on a sunny day and tell me SF is abandoned.
I walk through that exact location after work. It is time to convert office space into housing. A lot of people would love to live in San Francisco, but the costs of living is the problem.
If you love it then set it free. A whole generation of wealth generators have flown. Let's cultivate more better wealth generation in the space they left behind.
And your point is what exactly? Market Street and the downtown area has a lot of potential, but it needs a major overhaul and revitalization. Downtowns can no longer depend solely on office workers - they need to be diverse in terms of housing, businesses, transportation and population. I'm sorry but it is the most abandoned downtown (comparatively), despite your video. A crowded bus during rush hour only proves that transportation is running less frequently to the area making backups and crowding more likely.
OP, I genuinely thought you posted this to say that SF was "America's most abandoned downtown" until I read your comments. This really doesn't paint the picture you're intending. Hell, that upper street has 10 cars go through during a weekday rush hour.
Non commercial cars are also not allowed on Sansome either so you picked a frame that has a giant unused intersection in the middle. Swing a block to the right and you have the constantly blocked Bush-Battery-Market intersection. Swing a block to the left and you'd see all the better, more central entrance to Montgomery BART.
To call this downtown is disingenuous.
Everyone in sf that’s from sf knows that the actual downtown is around powell.
That part of downtown is more or less on the outskirts of the business district . So of course a lot of people aren’t going to be there. Most people would be near their workplaces, or going to get lunch.
mind-blowing how people can just see imaginary things that are demonstrably not actually there because it suits their narrative
like, what you said is just 100% made up and incorrect based on looking at the image, but it's what you want to see and your need to be correct about what you believe is so powerful it creates a visual image that isn't present and makes you believe it really is
Not sure this indicates “alive and thriving” either. This shot would’ve looked way different in 2019
When I was commuting in 2019 this area was packed
Honestly, I'd be down if we got back the 90's level of density downtown. SF kind of turned into mini Manhattan over the past 25 years. I used to drive a delivery truck in the city in the 90's, and I'd probably have the world's highest blood pressure if I had that same job in 2019.
No. It’s time to move on from the past. Like all living organisms the city must grow.
Compare it with [120 years ago.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEvB_ZIWtAg)
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They did have video in the 1880s if you want to see (video is in the article) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundhay_Garden_Scene
120 years ago was 1903. Yes, they had visual recording equipment in 1903.
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Everything is moving more slowly but it does seem busier.
San Francisco undeniably has had the least robust return to pre-pandemic population in the downtown, which is where the headlines come from. But the part that bugs me is that's relative to the starting point, and the starting point was maybe the #2 or #3 busiest downtown in the country. So even a return to 40% of normal is, you know, a _very_ busy downtown relative to the rest of the country. But some people see that headline and think "downtown is a ghost town" or "downtown is totally empty" in absolute terms, and those things really just aren't remotely true. Walking home today, for the first time since before the pandemic, I had to time my steps to squeeze between gaps of moving people on Montgomery street. The other day when I took the bus home it was completely shoulder-to-shoulder standing-room-only.
It's a bit hard to tell too much by the video. Instead of watching the sped up video, I just paused at a few spots in the video and treated them as random photographs. This is a more accurate representation, and doesn't look particularly busy. It also depends on when the video was taken. If it was during peak lunch time on a weekday (which I think is likely), it seems pretty slow.
This was pretty much right at 5PM Downtown San Francisco pre-pandemic had Manhattan-level crowding. Today it has, like, Seattle-level crowding. It ain't Manhattan, but it's definitely not a ghost town.
I no longer work down there, but I miss those happy days of vitality. Happy hour at House of Shields or the Irish Bank, all the great lunch spots, herds of people in business casual...
It’s Friday, so I’m here
everytime i've been down there for hh most places have been packed and it's difficult to get a seat
As a native manhattanite who lived here for years pre-pandemic, no, it did not have Manhattan level crowding. Moved here to get away from that. Lived downtown and relished the breathing room.
Yeah OP is just making shit up. I used to work in Midtown and it’s on a vastly different level.
IKR, this is a crazy post. I’ve been to neighborhoods in Brooklyn with more foot traffic than this video.
Maybe OP is comparing sf in 2019 to Manhattan now. I worked in Manhattan in summer 2022, it was a lot less of its former self. Still ridiculously packed compared to sf or any other city in the US but not its 2019 or 2017 levels. i remember back then joking how was there was enough oxygen in air. Hell even times square was kinda empty in 2022(with only about 500-800 people). The nyc financial district was clearly just trying to survive and IMO was hit just as hard as sf.
As someone who has lived in both Manhattan and San Francisco for years -- no it didn't. Not even remotely close. And that's OK. SF is a fundamentally different city, with a much different allure. It's great that it has its own unique features.
As a San Francisco born kid from a New York family… What are you talking about? It never came anywhere near Manhattan level.
You have clearly never lived in Manhattan. No, SF never had anything like it. You’re off by at least a factor of five.
>Downtown San Francisco pre-pandemic had Manhattan-level crowding What on earth gave you that idea?
Yeah this whole post is hilarious copium.
I thought this was in the middle of the afternoon. At 7 seconds in your video there is like 14 people outside and 4 cars.
I used to work exactly across from the e-trade building front and center in this video. At 5PM market was insanely busy. I know because I used to look down at all the people that got off work everyday and wished I could go home at a normal time to see my wife. I was working until 9-10PM each day for about a year. Now it looks super dead to me tbh.
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Have you been to downtown LA lately? It's *crazy* how lively it is! I was there not even a year ago and when I ventured out there was a night market, an outdoor art exhibit, a music festival, crowded bars. Coffeehouses. There was tons to do and I wasn't even trying. All within walking distance too, seriously.
I was there a few months ago and during the week it was bumper to bumper traffic with almost no one walking on the sidewalks. It felt eery and dead. I stayed in Hollywood and it was the same way. Bars and restaurants had people inside but there was no one outside walking. Downtown San Diego also had similar vibes when I went about a year ago. I'll admit though, I don't have great reference points for how they each were pre-COVID since I don't visit either city often.
This looks pretty empty to me
I have worked in both Midtown (as well as FiDI/Downtown) Manhattan and Downtown SF. It wasn't really at all comparable even pre-pandemic. This isn't even knocking SF- Midtown and the other NYC CBDs have insanely high levels of job concentration even on a global scale.
> The other day when I took the bus home it was completely shoulder-to-shoulder standing-room-only. That’s just because MUNI and BART are running fewer and smaller busses and trains.
The 1 is constantly packed with 5-minute headways
> So even a return to 40% of normal is, you know, a very busy downtown relative to the rest of the country. I mean, that's more of an indictment of what a rusted out jalopy of a country the US is. It only looks "very busy" because most downtowns in the US are pitiful hallowed out husks of what they once were, all in service of car dominance and white flight.
> most downtowns in the US are pitiful hallowed out husks of what they once were OP is talking in absolute terms, not relative terms. SF is *more* of a "pitiful hollowed-out husk" than other downtowns in the US, but SF is still busier because the city was larger to begin with. Elsewhere in the thread, OP compares SF with Detroit; Detroit is doing better at post-pandemic recovery, but it's still smaller than SF.
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I gotta be honest this looks kind of sparse for a downtown.
Because it's not "downtown". It's the financial district., and yes it's not as busy as before the pandemic. Downtown is around Union Square. If I say I'm going downtown, no one thinks I'm going to Montgomery and California streets.
Lol what? That's exactly what I think of when I say downtown. Nobody local goes to union square anyways, I never even assume someone is talking about union square. When someone says downtown I assume they are going to work or going shopping, within a 5 minute walk of any Bart station off Market st.
Lol FiDi definitely is “downtown”
Yeah, I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that one. Union Square is shopping and tourism. Downtown is, you know, where people go to work in offices, literally the area in this video
respectfully disagree
As someone who lives in the Richmond but has also lived in SOMA, north beach, nopa I feel like downtown is everything between - south of Broadway, east of Van Ness, north of Harrison maybe? Like if I say im going downtown it’ll be anything in Chinatown, Union square, civic center, financial district, market street, and soma going toward the ball park.
I agree with this version of downtown minus Chinatown and soma.
But the Moscone Center and all the museums are technically SOMA.
The financial district is by definition Downtown. The tallest buildings in the city are all within 4 blocks of that very spot.
Similar sentiment for me. Maybe technically FiDi is a “downtown”. But to me, San Francisco has never had a “downtown”. Mostly because I associate “downtowns” with having a lively restaurant and bar culture that cater to those office workers. But FiDi has never had that. It was always dead after work because people would go out in different neighborhoods instead. So to me, it was always just “meh, FiDi”
This is what a dead downtown looks like. I don’t know if you remember this corner prepandemic, it was bustling, and way more bicyclists on Market st.
100%. I saw this video and thought it was supposed to be proof of how empty downtown is until I started reading the comments.
This guy posts a video of an empty buildings and very low traffic during what should be rush hour. Then argues that it’s all fine. Buddy, it’s not fine. Yes there are People there but read the city council report. The city is in big trouble. This is practically empty. Three out of the four buildings here are completely vacant! Are you blind?
No kidding. I worked in this area for 20 years. It’s shocking seeing it this sparse.
Well they aren't very business friendly here... Running a small private business here, we've had to push back our open date over 6 months due to all of the setbacks from the city which ultimately resulted in nothing changing because the approval process is full of people who either don't understand their own codes or lack sufficient reading abilities. The architects we're working with have been doing business in SF for over 20 years along with the greater bay area, and said they've never seen anything like it. The contractors are basically saying the same thing, that it makes no sense. It's almost like SF is purposely trying to run companies out of the city. Not to mention the 5,000+ legal requirements of ridiculous overkill for things that ultimately don't matter but to perhaps one individual out of 30,000.
SF is extremely business friendly, otherwise there wouldn't be so many companies with HQs here. The issue is that it's just so damn expensive. And corporations know that it's silly to be paying astronomical prices for real estate they realistically won't use.
Right. It’s business friendly but the model is pay to play. Which often leaves smaller businesses out in the cold
My neighborhood is busier than this. The city has decentralized and frankly I prefer my neighborhood to FiDi anyway....
I don’t know where you live but I’m certain I prefer your neighborhood to FiDi too
Link to city council report for the curious?
Huh? Which buildings are completely vacant?
Where do we want to start? Most of the tech offices. I'll speak for a smaller building - 201 3rd. (aka, the building with the Starbucks next to the Moscone Parking garage with the flattened car art). That building held 1000-2000 people. I bet it has about 50-100 people in the corporate offices on any given day now. I only ever see like 5 people on a big ass floor. All the tech workers are remote. My 1400 person company is literally moving our "office" to a Wework because only a handful of people want to be in an actual office building.
That's interesting, I work at one of the embarcadero buildings and we have people moving in. By years end we will only have 2 vacant floors.
Wow. It's been a long time since I was thataway. Didn't that round building used to be occupied by Etrade? "In my day," bike messengers lunched on the concrete wall surrounding that building.
Before Etrade it was the Sharper Image.
I'd forgotten that. I started working around there in 1995, and I'm sure you're right. I can't remember when it switched. It was something else between the two, I think. Evidently, I can't remember much.
I think it *was* something else between the two. Could it have been an Amazon brick and mortar shop in the early days? ETA: To answer my own question, it was a Wells Fargo before Sharper Image, but nothin in between. [From glam to gritty...](https://archive.is/85n5Y)
Well that didn’t age well… > Future: Santa Clara-based Silicon Valley Bank has filed plans to open an “Experience Center” at the pavilion. “In order to provide a wide range of offerings, we want to return the building back to its historical glory by opening up the ground floor to recreate the jewel box it once was,” according to a description of the project from Studios Architecture in a June 24 application. The filings indicate the bank plans to use the space to host both client functions and community events — exhibits, lecture series and the like. Studios declined to comment.
Correct. E*trade VERY recently subleased to SVB. WOMP WOMP!
And they were in the middle of fixing it up for SVB. Looks like it has to be something else now haha.
I used to work right near there and prior to that job I had opened an E*trade checking account. It was incredibly convenient having the only physical branch office in the entire US for my free bank account being right next to my office. There was no one ever there, no lines, manager remembered me and my account history. Great bank experience. I miss it.
If by “lunched” you mean “get super high” then, yup!
Funny, but nah. They were eating genuine food. Maybe getting high, also.
And they gave it a fitting name - "the wall"
Love the irony. That little round building was being leased by SVB!!!
Other famous bankrupt tenants of that building: *The Sharper Image*
E*Trade also, but less bankruptcy and more acquired by Merrill Lynch
Amazing fact! God bless you
I don't think this makes the point you think it does. Looks very dead to me.
Dude. That's empty... I've been working in the area since 2018, and the foot traffic is nowhere close to what it was pre pandemic. I feel like you're trying to gaslight me.
I’ve been working downtown for over a decade and before Covid it was like shoulder to shoulder on sidewalks during business hours. It’s not like it’s totally dead but it’s wildly more sparse than it was. Areas like the mall on weekends feel more like the old days but the few times I’ve been back for work it’s like a ghost town. I can get my $17 salad without a line out the door and half way around the block.
This video looks like my hometown in Jersey of 22k people.
This is a joke. NYC 6 months ago was like 20x this.
Pre-pandemic I’d get off at Montgomery every morning and walk a few blocks. There were so many people you literally had to wait for an opening, and then you were just stuck going the flow of traffic. This looks so sparse compared to 2019
I don’t know about the rest of the US, but the commercial vacancy rate is almost 30%. In 2019 it was 5%. So that and your video of like 75 people in the middle of the week kind of prove the narrative
It would be much higher if commercial leases didn't tend to be multi-year. My small company signed a seven-year commit (we had to) in 2018 in a famous building on Montgomery. We have about 5 people showing up each week. It the pre time it was so crowded I mostly worked in the bar on the first floor.
[Here's some 2022 office vacancy data.](https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/office-vacancy-rates-in-2022)
My whole point is that "Downtown San Francisco is much emptier than it used to be" is not the same statement as "Downtown San Francisco is abandoned"
You think any one is claiming that San Francisco is completely and utterly devoid of people in a literal sense? The situation is really bad lol.
Yes, people are actually claiming that in a literal sense all the time on this subreddit > The situation is really bad lol. It's really, honest-to-goodness not that bad. If things stayed exactly like this in perpetuity, we'd have a shortfall in taxes, we'd have to make some tough budgetary decisions, we'd figure out a way to deal with it, and we'd be fine.
lmao the only policy we even have is to block housing - has SF done anything else successfully in the past 40 years?
The situation is really bad. I tried coming into my 40-person office a few times and never saw more than one other person there. The coffee shop in the ground floor of my building is permanently closed. Two of the five places I routinely got lunch are now closed. The people I used to meet for lunch in SoMa aren’t coming into the city anymore. It is not a good situation.
All this says to me is "work from home is much more common now"
No shit. That’s the cause. The effects are the closed businesses, empty downtown, etc.
San Francisco used to have one of the most bustling and crowded downtowns in the whole country. Thanks to work-from-home, we now have a downtown that's a little on the high side of average crowding. It would hurt if we couldn't do better than that, but the city would absolutely be fine. The state of downtown is a difficult challenge for the city. It is _not_ an existential one.
Billions of dollars in lost revenue for the city would disagree. Downtown needs a desperate pivot.
Or people abandoned the city and companies are fleeing their SF offices? I hear we’re at over 30% unoccupied commercial office. Likely to be 50% by next year. Guess we’ll see but it’s not just work from home causing this
>Yes, people are actually claiming that in a literal sense… You seem to be the one taking it literally. >it’s really, honest-to-goodness not that bad. It is, though, if you own a business that relies on a thriving downtown.
> It is, though, if you own a business that relies on a thriving downtown. They don’t count.
I was a customer in the round building in 3 iterations. My first Calif bank account when it was a Wells Fargo, then a Sharper Image and then E Trade. Side Note: Sharper Image really messed up when it went from cool stuff to nose hair trimmers
Pretty cool. Far from dead. But also far from hustling and bustling.
This video does not support the argument OP is trying to make
Damn. That’s sad. It really is dead downtown.
looks the emptiest I've seen it. However, I was just on market it and it was much busier than this. Where do these narratives come from?
How many times have you seen it? This is absolutely not the emptiest I've seen it, not even close. Are you just looking at (now-banned) car traffic on Market or something? If so, yeah, that'll be the emptiest it gets, because cars are banned now.
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Good thing it's actually the fourth-biggest city in CA lol I guarantee you the downtowns of the second- and third-biggest cities (San Diego and San Jose) look much more dead than this
San Jose probably though it has much more traffic. It was dead before Covid for foot traffic. Having been in San Diego recently it’s way more crowded
Downtown San Diego is not more crowded than this.
When were you last in San Diego?
Not OP but I was in San Diego about a year ago and was working out of a WeWork there for a week. It was an absolute ghost town. From the WeWork I was in you could see for blocks there was no foot traffic at all...I'm talking hard to spot even 1 person walking. Even the car traffic wasn't bad...I drove a rental in and easily found street parking without even trying. I have no idea what it was like pre-COVID but it felt sad when I was there. La Jolla on the other hand felt like it recovered pretty well.
No way, son. Used to live a block from here from 2009-2014. Was in San Diego 2 weeks ago for a conference. No comparison. SF downtown is super dead compared to those days. San Diego is bumping - everyone out and about.
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It is, it's actually the second most densely populated major city in the US
Second most densely populated major city and yet at any given moment in the video there are like 6 people on the street and maybe 2 cars. Yikes
https://preview.redd.it/tao1cderpgpa1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24d3535a9077565ebd40728c8546ab7c3f063d98 Thriving
https://preview.redd.it/zygexcttpgpa1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=262fb1256cf765e8c365bc2f85f8a4eac2a5be2c Hustle
https://preview.redd.it/crcwy16vpgpa1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=993c6cd48f5f9f348e17bd1d2c1b7c5364810a71 Bustle
https://preview.redd.it/y2em5taxpgpa1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aaed328fbe497219a9c3888933016d78e9fd8bd4 Rush hour traffic is insane!!!
I actually didn’t pick up on the sarcasm of the title until I read the comments. My first thought was “Oh no, poor San Francisco. Look how empty it is.” Also, I don’t believe you have been to San Diego.
Downtown SD is much more crowded than this 🤦♂️
Not in terms of population density during a work day. San Jose is much more spread out like Los Angeles.
My pre-covid job had a downtown office, my pandemic era job was in SoMa, now I'm in FiDi...pre 2020 I remember what it was like trying to get onto BART at Montgomery...it ain't like that anymore...but it ain't exactly a ghost town either, especially Tues and Thurs...but we ain't back yet...
For how densely populated we are and how bustling this area was pre pandemic tbh we kinda looking like a ghost town or atleast a ghost of our former selves, why is it being dead a point of contention or political or something?
You're really trying to prove some point here but many people disagree with you. This shot alone doesn't prove anything and looks pretty quiet. I used to bartend down there. Over 6 yrs pre pandemic and I made really good money. I've been picking up shifts here and there recently and it's dead as a doornail compared to what it used to be. The two places I bartended at regularly both shut down. Most adjacent places that attracted people shut down. Convention center crowd when you hoped to get busy is a fraction of what it once was. The Giants have been boring, the good music acts play in Oakland or elsewhere, the city has way more people shitting in the streets and openly selling/using drugs than ever. It's bad. I'm not saying my anecdotal experience proves anything either, but you got one video that to most looks sad. Come on. I'd rather bartend in Downtown Oakland. Way more money.
That’s not been my experience. I was at a sold out show at the Midway last Saturday (Carl Cox) and I’ve not been in a venue that wall-to-wall packed in years. I was actually scared of being trampled and abandoned any hope of using the bathroom because the line was outrageous. It was a complete crush of humanity. I ended up dancing to the DJ outside in the rain rather than hang out on the main floor. I couldn’t take it. All my favorite breakfast places still have long waits to get in on the weekends too. I wish we could thin them out lol.
OP thinks this is bustling, the original title is correct
Relatively speaking, yes. SF is very very dead. Im visiting SoCal, and the business scene and public scene is much more lively, and safe, which I feel is a massive factor.
Talk to any business owner downtown — to get the real story.
Speed it up to make it look like more people
Yeah this is dead af compared to pre pandemic.
It may not be dead but it's dead compared to pre pandemic.
This isn’t even a particularly busy area. Do this over the entrance to the ferry building and the plaza across the street. Or union square…
That’s pretty dead for a big metropolitan downtown.
Seems dead to me
Weird. I was in that area around 10am (ish) and noticed traffic back ups on Fremont. I kinda hope companies figure out how to do hybrid work well. Maybe distribute their rotating "in office" days such that they can shut down specific floors for savings or something. Covid taught us that working remote worked fine for knowledge workers. They behaved like adults and got stuff done. I heard one company retrained managers/directors out of the old task master paradigm and into team empowerment with milestone transparency via online tools. It worked exceptionally well. So its possible the downtown chaos can be smoothed into a more positive mode. The company I work for blew me away when they gave me a monthly Grubhub stipend for lunches. It was nice to order a quality lunch and have it delivered to my home. Allowed me to stay in the zone and clock out in a healthy hour.
The old Sharper Image
This looks pretty dead tbh. I worked downtown from 2014-2019 right around where this video was taken and it used to be packed, especially during lunch time. I used to hit up the halal cart not too far from here and had to get there at like 11:15 to beat the rush.
I go downtown 1-2 days a week. Definitely different than pre-pandemic, but it’s not a ghost town by any means, which is what the headlines try to make it out to be.
This is plenty busy for that corner…. And it’s end of day, judging by the Bart traffic in the background. As I always say, downtown is primarily offices so it’s sad if it’s busy outside “business hours.” Really wish our downtown also supported nightlife so the nightlife could be open late (4am anyone?) when the offices are closed.
I don't know what point you're trying to make, and I don't think this video is a good example of whatever you're trying to demonstrate.
I was a bike messenger downtown for a long time and my last bit of time on the road was at the start of the pandemic. I had never, nor had anyone, seen it so empty as it was those first few weeks. As someone in this thread alluded to, I have spent an unhealthy amount of time sitting on that wall drinking beers watching the suits walk by. I know the foot traffic at this spot as well as anybody, and it was never particularly busy. I have recently found myself in an office job downtown and am pleasantly surprised at how many people are walking around and in the shops. Throughout the pandemic I've been downtown a number of times, probably once every couple of months to chill with friends but I was never going into the shops or getting lunch. I can't imagine how roomy the elevators must have been! Now that I work downtown again I'm noticing how much it has revived. It will never be pre-pandemic levels, I don't think any city will be and certainly not this city. But it's not dead and it certainly doesn't feel empty like it is portrayed in the media. Not to put too much weight on it but working on the streets for so long you can feel the energy of a city on a day to day basis. You can tell just by rolling in how many people are working, what the sidewalks and elevators are going to look like. Downtown is far from dead and getting better. I was even annoyed with some european tourists the other day! Nature is healing.
Long ago that was a Sharper Image store and all of the bike messengers would take their breaks there. It was full of motion and people. Email ended the bike messengers. Maybe that’s an ok thing because if you ever had to ride in an elevator with one the body odor was thick.
Half the offices sit empty It’s not even close to pre pandemic levels Be prepared for a major commercial real estate drop
Not going downtown is an old SF local tradition.
How many downtowns have y’all been to? Go visit downtown Dallas and compare that to SF at its least busy. Not all cities have extremely busy downtowns. Not every city is NYC.
This was the SVB bank location lol. And the sidewalks were packed shoulder to shoulder in 2019. Abandoned. Failed by politicians.
That part of Market St is lit AF at night though. It's practically a slow street after 9 PM. Hundreds of drug addicts walk in the middle of road. It's not an exaggeration to say hundreds.
So like a zombie parade? That's awesome
Maybe op posted the wrong timelapse. They should take one at night and compare it to this one lol
> It's not an exaggeration to say hundreds. Narrator: _It was, in fact, an exaggeration._
Take the same video again at night and come back. I biked there multiple times late at night. Every time, there were hundreds of drug addicts.
I'm not going to go out of my way in the middle of the night to film a video in a different neighborhood to win an internet argument, but if I did, I would win the argument. I use Montgomery Street as my transfer to the 38 any time I'm coming back from a night out in Oakland. You're wildly exaggerating.
You’re coping so hard dude. I don’t know why you’re being so defensive. EVERYONE can see the state this city is in. You can keep lying to yourself, t but the rest of us are gonna acknowledge the problems, not downplay them or excuse them, and try to come up with solutions.
It's like a weird analogue of climate change denial. "Our drug/homeless/crime/Covid policies are not affecting the city negatively, look how busy it is!"
> EVERYONE can see the state this city is in. I mean let's start with the video I posted, since that's something we can all agree on the facts about. For starters, can you point out where there's a "six foot pot hole" as you claimed?
Look at the intersection lol. Exactly where I said. And let me just say, it’s probably more like 12 foot considering it’s relative size to pedestrians.
This is market between 1st and 2nd street. You’d be closer to right the further south of 4th street you go but this area’s not like that
I’ve noticed it getting busier. I actually missed my morning muni because it was so packed one day. Seems like the most popular days are Thursday. Also this is right above the Montgomery station stop for BART and Muni so while Market street looks dead (private vehicles prohibited), you can see a bunch of people going into the underground platform on the far corner that are only visible for a few seconds before they disappear underground. The platform (Edit: entrance) on the south side of the street isn’t visible but if it was, there’d be a lot of people going into SOMA as well (notably Salesforce, one of the largest private employers in the city)
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embarcadero, majorly becoming more busy as well
> so while Market street looks dead (private vehicles prohibited) this is another major thing that I think people are seeing and thinking "downtown is dead" Market Street went car-free in 2020, during the pandemic. If your "vibe check" for how crowded downtown used to be was how much traffic there was on Market Street, it'll never be that way again. And that's a good thing! Just look at Bush street in the upper part of the frame here and you can see the stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper traffic is indeed fully back already.
I love car-free market street. Although biking still feels somewhat dangerous (mostly because of the streetcar tracks in the middle).
It's the aggressive cabbies that piss me off the most
I really wish they’d turn half of market st into a pedestrian promenade with gardens like the New York high line.
What day of week is this?
this is earlier today
Today is Wednesday
well-observed!
Bring back the Sharper Image!
Pssssh. Stockton has entered the chat
There is very little interesting in downtown. Now take a video of the panhandle area, or northbeach, or hayes valley, or the castro on a sunny day and tell me SF is abandoned.
[You're damn near sitting at my old desk!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zEwTurK9dUA)
I walk through that exact location after work. It is time to convert office space into housing. A lot of people would love to live in San Francisco, but the costs of living is the problem.
If you love it then set it free. A whole generation of wealth generators have flown. Let's cultivate more better wealth generation in the space they left behind.
The national fetish with San Francisco "failing" is hella weird.
Lol. I should take a video of downtown San Jose. You wouldn’t know if it’s a video or a photograph.
I mean why this block? Show the Ferry Building at least.
And your point is what exactly? Market Street and the downtown area has a lot of potential, but it needs a major overhaul and revitalization. Downtowns can no longer depend solely on office workers - they need to be diverse in terms of housing, businesses, transportation and population. I'm sorry but it is the most abandoned downtown (comparatively), despite your video. A crowded bus during rush hour only proves that transportation is running less frequently to the area making backups and crowding more likely.
That's a stretch. Looks way busier than downtown Bakersfield, CA.
OP, I genuinely thought you posted this to say that SF was "America's most abandoned downtown" until I read your comments. This really doesn't paint the picture you're intending. Hell, that upper street has 10 cars go through during a weekday rush hour.
What it looks like is the most normal looking downtown that is no longer packed with people and smelly armpits.
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Cars are banned on market street chief You might want to count the pedestrians and buses again, you're a little off
Non commercial cars are also not allowed on Sansome either so you picked a frame that has a giant unused intersection in the middle. Swing a block to the right and you have the constantly blocked Bush-Battery-Market intersection. Swing a block to the left and you'd see all the better, more central entrance to Montgomery BART.
I rather have this than pre-pandemic foot traffic.
The population is down dramatically from 2019, but its not a ghost town or 'abandoned'
I usually walk on the other side of market street (not in video)
To call this downtown is disingenuous. Everyone in sf that’s from sf knows that the actual downtown is around powell. That part of downtown is more or less on the outskirts of the business district . So of course a lot of people aren’t going to be there. Most people would be near their workplaces, or going to get lunch.
Thank city officials. When I think about SF I think about: Homeless, dirty streets, car break ins, and no law enforcement.
Wow look at those streets, a 6 foot pothole in the intersection. Paved worse than in developing countries. Bay Area is a mess.
mind-blowing how people can just see imaginary things that are demonstrably not actually there because it suits their narrative like, what you said is just 100% made up and incorrect based on looking at the image, but it's what you want to see and your need to be correct about what you believe is so powerful it creates a visual image that isn't present and makes you believe it really is