Rising crime, looting, and tolerance of drug-addled transients taking over the streets has led to an exodus of retail establishments from San Francisco.
Now another Democrat-controlled California city is enjoying the same exodus of retail establishments: Berkeley.
Here YouTuber Metal Leo looks at streets near Cal Berkeley University, where store after store after store are closed, boarded up or for lease.
Banks, pharmacies, cinemas, pizza chains: all closed. The only thing that seems to be open are Starbucks.
There are stores that were last Radio Shacks, which haven’t been around since 2017, which suggests Berkeley’s decline has been underway long before California’s Flu Manchu shutdowns (though obviously those didn’t help).
Is it the crime? The lawless disorder? The insanely high taxes and rent? Mortgage backed securities rules? Probably some combination of all of the above.
He doesn’t seem to come across any homeless sleeping on the streets, perhaps because Berkeley has started doing aggressive homeless camp clearances, which might have encouraged them to move over into Oakland or across the bay.
There is one amazing find: An apparently working payphone!
This video should remind you of the similar ones Louis Rossmann did of New York City before he left.
Berkeley’s last Republican mayor left office in 1971. Since then it’s been Democrats or “Berkeley Citizens Action” (social justice before it was called social justice) running the city. Jesse Arreguin, the current mayor of Berkeley, says he wants to “restore Berkeley to the forefront of progressive leadership on the environment and social justice.”
Looks like he’s succeeded.
This is your city on social justice.