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I keep saying that SF's permitting issues and shifting demographics means it's going to lose out to other nearby cities for the fun Asian stuff that draws in crowds and retail and food spending.
Stonestown is thriving, it has a large no of Asian restaurants and shops focusing on the community near SFSU and Sunset. That's probably the most successful 'mall' in the city right now. All the others are dead.
Daly City has this thing that's coming up and Emeryville is going to have a giant Korean one as well soon.
I'd rather go to Millbrae and Daly City and Oakland for something like say, boba, than anywhere in SF. I truly think that SF is going to lose the wave of 'trendy' Asian growth
No major Asian chain is able to open in SF, which makes it hard to open any chain, but in keeping out Red Lobster they also keep out Din Tai Fung and Hai Di Lao and Chicha and everything else I care about. Emeryville / Cupertino / Berkeley have way more in that regard, again due to demographics (and probably permitting)
Jollibee tried to open.. and could not. It's dire. If Jollibee can't open, it's exceptionally difficult for small BIPOC business to do anything in SF proper, with way fewer resources.
SF's city permitting is SO BAD that it gives people breakdowns
People (city workers, and permit 'expediters') are very invested in keeping it bad because there's a ton of corruption in the permitting
https://missionlocal.org/2021/02/san-francisco-dbi-paper-accela/
In case you don’t get how bad it is:
“SF’s permitting process for any business is, you need to rent and pay full rent on a commercial space, and then keep paying it for the 1-3 years or undetermined amount of time you need to apply for the 1000 permits you need, no one knows which ones exactly but they’ll tell you when you’ve done 999 you need 1 more they made up and you need to again keep paying full commercial rent for the next month or year or two”
@skinnylatte My favorite barista of all time tried to open a coffeeshop in SF and ended up blowing a bunch of money over more than a year with nothing to show for it because of permitting issues.
The doors opened in, instead of out, which made the fire code occupancy limit too low for a viable business, but he couldn't modify the doors to open out, because, he was told, the City wouldn't approve a sidewalk encroachment permit on that street, although no one would tell him why not. Kafka.
@scott @skinnylatte Yeah ask @jwz about the permitting structure sometime
@skinnylatte A local restaurant chain in Cambridge, MA made a whole large mural of their 2.5 year journey to install a custom-made oven: https://fishmcgill.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/cloverCentral_day-scaled.jpeg
Hilarious. That's what owning a business is like, especially at first.
@itamarst @skinnylatte I adore Clover for this :D
@itamarst
To be a tiny bit fair, the gas companies around here (MA) have literally blown up houses due to mishandling adjacent high pressure gas lines - so Cambridge isn't necessarily wrong to be a bit twitchy about it
@skinnylatte
@itamarst@hachyderm.io @skinnylatte@hachyderm.io i imagine this is what the main character of the trial went through