Ben Wang owns a fashion shop In a fancy episode of San Francisco which just got hit by a second massive robbery. This time, the thieves made off with around $300,000 in costumes and merchandise.
Dare Fashion in San Francisco is a mainstay of the San Francisco goth and Steampunk scene, catering mainly to ethnic and plus-sized scene women who often have difficulty finding corsets and other fitted garments that match their body shapes.
But Wang will not be cowed. He has been in business in San Francisco for seventeen years, and he believes in what he calls the dream of San Francisco: a city which serves as a haven for progressive political and social experimentation. He’s not ready to give up on it yet. The city, he said has gotten “ahead of our skis” on experiments that didn’t work, but instead of learning from the mistakes, San Francisco doubled down. One such experiment was the passage of Proposition 47, which downgraded a number of crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, including the laws around theft, which is broadly seen as a big culprit in the explosion of property crime in the Golden State.
While Wang emphasized that he is not an expert on policy, nor a politician, and doesn’t have specific ideas for the city leaders, he did say that he believes it is definitely time for his home city to “rethink things.” The surge in property crime, homelessness, and open-air drug abuse in recent years, the proliferation of human waste on the streets—problems he calls unhygenic and disgusting—are all things about his city that could stand to see improvement so that more people like him aren’t forced to close their businesses.
But Wang isn’t ready to give up quite yet. In response to the most recent robbery, he has set up a GoFundMe page to help him make up the losses so he can keep the shop open.
