For those who find the continuing decline of San Francisco morbidly fascinating, a new kind of entertainment is now available.
It’s a walking tour called the “Downtown Doom Loop.”
The guide sarcastically says it’s an educational tour designed to let the viewer observe the chosen policies that made America’s wealthiest city the country’s leader in housing, addiction, mental health, and crime crises.
There is little evidence to suggest this will be a regular service, but all seats for the first expedition on Saturday, August 26, have sold out.
You “will not find any better expert,” the travel website boasts. It says your guide is an authority on urban policy who is also a fully vested City Commissioner and oversees a city department with an annual budget of over $500 million. In addition, he helped establish the most significant community organization in the Bay Area. He has likely spent many hours on either side of the government dais, shouting across the room.
Starting at City Hall, the tour goes through Mid-Market, the Tenderloin, and finally, Union Square. The tour checks out the deserted malls, open-air drug markets, NGOs, and IT companies that have since closed their doors.
Federal authorities have advised hundreds of Health and Human Services workers to work remotely for the foreseeable future due to the deteriorating situation in San Francisco. This is so they may avoid Seventh Street, home to one of the city’s most blatant open-air drug marketplaces and the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building.
The tour guide seems motivated less by financial gain than by a desire to voice his discontent with current policies. He states that he would donate the proceeds from the tour to “a non-profit group that does not purposefully injure its community” since the tour “is the result of his mental health condition.”
