The result feels a little akin to stuffing the junk in the spare room, shutting the door and hoping the neighbours don’t ask for a tour of the place.
Some streets are conspicuously spic and span: Underpasses that appear usually to be home to tent encampments are spotless, while other roads gleam with a recent – and is that slightly perfumed? – pressure wash.
But a street or two back from the main drag the city’s underbelly is apparent; drug users still slump in doorways and mentally ill people still rage at the sky.
DOOM LOOP PRIMER
San Francisco’s overwhelmingly liberal bent – the city is Democrat-controlled – makes it a ready punching bag for the political right, an example of a city gone to the dogs because of its lily-livered politics.
Fox News regularly features outrage about human feces and used needles on the streets, or business owners who say they have to shut up shop because of abusive homeless people who keep urinating on the sidewalks.
And it’s not just a domestic issue.
With its huge Asian population and long history as a port city and gateway to the US, San Francisco looms large across the Pacific.
Chinese language media has taken up the cudgel, blasting the city as a “mecca of crime” and a “ghost town”.
Indeed such is the appeal of a ragging on the city that the San Francisco Chronicle this week published a tongue-in-cheek primer for visiting journalists entitled “How to write your own San Francisco doom loop story.”
SHIFT THE NARRATIVE
For city managers, APEC is a chance to shift what they say is a misunderstood narrative.
“Unfortunately the story of San Francisco (is being told by) people who may not even live here, who are taking what they see on social media,” Mayor London Breed told reporters.
“I think that some of the things that are being put out there about San Francisco are challenges that exist in other major cities.
“The fentanyl crisis in particular is impacting the entire United States, and San Francisco is … working very hard to address it.
“My hope is that people will have the opportunity to experience San Francisco for themselves and tell the whole story.”
Source: CNA
