Recently, the San Francisco “doom loop” narrative has moved to the forefront of conversations about the city, with mass closures of retail stores and perpetually empty office buildings fueling the speculation that the city is in a downward spiral.
At the heart of this theory is the city’s troubled core. Downtown San Francisco’s economic resurgence trails virtually every other North American city’s, owing to the pandemic’s shift to work-from-home models and a fleeing tech sector. However, it’s not all empty streets and tumbleweeds in the shadows of the city’s skyscrapers—there are still plenty of people going about their days, albeit fewer than before.
So The Standard hit the streets interviewing people in the neighborhood to discover why they were there that day and what they thought of the area as a whole. Watch the video above to hear what they had to say.