Imagine that
I just love this. All these right wingers have been fed a bunch of propaganda and they are stunned when they find out that liberals aren’t actually living in Mad Max Thunderdome:
To right-wing influencers and conservative media outlets, San Francisco is a wasteland where the once-glimmering downtown mall is dead, the sidewalks are filled with homeless encampments and drug users are shooting up in the streets. To San Franciscans and civic leaders, however, that caricature has never been accurate. And certainly not after a recent A.I. boom downtown and the redoubling of efforts to improve the quality of life.
San Francisco still has its share of down-and-out areas. And the city has not fully recovered its pre-Covid workweek energy. But local champions have insisted that much of the place remains vibrant, and that a sun-splashed walk along the Embarcadero and a Mission-style burrito can make anyone feel better about the city.
The arrival of the Super Bowl this week in the Bay Area has given San Francisco its biggest opportunity since the pandemic to change hearts and minds. And, in a polarized nation in which many Americans seem incapable of moving off deep-seated beliefs, some visitors said they had been wrong about San Francisco after actually seeing it in person.
“What we thought we were walking into here was, uh, a dump,” Pat McAfee, the ESPN host who caters to a young, male audience, said during the first national broadcast of The Pat McAfee Show from San Francisco. “It’s not at all. It was a beautiful walk this morning.”
On social media, posts about the city’s parks and sandwich shops from journalists covering the Super Bowl have often outpaced commentary about the game itself. A stretch of February sun and 70-degree weather has helped the cause, especially as the rest of the country was recovering from snowstorms.
Among the first-time visitors this week to San Francisco was Brayden Landis, 21, a sports management student at York College in Pennsylvania, who was in the Bay Area as part of a class trip. The city had been an immediate shock to the senses, Mr. Landis said. On his first day in town, he passed out from heat exhaustion. He was struck by the city’s contrasts.
Toward the ocean, the lush expanse of Golden Gate Park greets visitors with scents of eucalyptus and morning dew. Elsewhere in the city, there are alleys where pedestrians have to avoid needles and feces. “To me, the city was known for homelessness, fog and hippies,” he said. “But the stereotypes melted away. You see the city for what it really is, good and bad, pretty quickly. I think it’s my favorite city I’ve ever been to.”
Could it possibly be that the right wing media is lying?