It's well known that San Francisco is a urban disaster area, what with malls moving out, hotels shutting doors, conventions moving to other cities, thieves looting retailers with impunity, little shops fleeing, and entire districts full of homeless drug addicts looking like Dante's seventh circle of Hell.
But has anyone asked what's going on at Fisherman's Wharf, the city's most famous tourist destination?
Sure, it's known as a tourist trap. But everyone likes to try its famous Italian and seafood restaurants at least once.
Now it's a ghost town:
Fisherman’s wharf destroyed … go woke go broke
— Make L.A. Great Again ???????? (@lalovestrump) May 27, 2025
So sad what “progressives” have done to cities pic.twitter.com/PcLKFK7XC1
What a sad place, everything boarded up, all the famous seafood restaurants -- Alioto's, Tarantino's -- gone. They aren't coming back.
These are the restaurants on what is sometimes called Pier 40, the true location of Fisherman's Wharf. When I lived in that city 30 years ago, it was getting pretty scruffy with all its tourist trappings. There also was a hellhole public housing project near the cable car turnaround that was a source of ongoing violent crime. Whose bright idea was it to put that kind of place there, where all the tourists could be victims? I wondered.
But there were establishments there and people went to them. Now there's just empty space and artifacts from the past, blowing around.
About 20 years ago, the area was officially expanded to include Pier 39, an area of newer shops and tourist knick-knacks, and the area as far as Ghiradelli Square and much of North Point as part of tourist scenery. The official website of the expanded area assures tourists that it's "a safe place to visit," with lots of cops in the vicinity who can respond to "health events" which I suppose, means, getting your head smashed in by an illegal and seeing your blood all over the pavement. But of course, the website cautions, that it's "in the heart of a big city," which it's not -- it's at the edge of what had been a tony, ritzy, historic area, still with million-dollar houses with views of the Golden Gate -- and leftist city policy just happens to allow criminals to do what they like. Too bad if you get mugged.
That broader area of Fisherman's Wharf is clearly troubled, too.
This is what happened at our business on Fisherman’s Wharf pic.twitter.com/Q1p9bzHhHy
— Annette Traverso (@amcrab123) May 27, 2025
Naturally, the illegals are there, along with their cartel sponsors:
Funny how these illegal hot dog vendors get around -- in Los Angeles, in San Diego, and now San Francisco, all paying their cartel debts for their smuggled trip into the U.S.
There's plenty of desolation in that area around.
The City’s hopping! All the way from the Warriors Arena to In & Out at Fisherman’s Wharf. But we need to collect and send home the fentanyl zombies still forcing families to cross the street to avoid (these are all @ the Wharf) Its not what a global City subjects its guests to. pic.twitter.com/lrqNUl72UG
— MissionLoco (@MissionLoco) April 12, 2025
And it won't be long before these businesses meet the same fate as the Wharf itself. It is, after all, the same government.
It's just amazing that the city allows even an area famous for its tourists to become as hellish as its other parts. That's blue-city rule for you, though, and why San Francisco can no longer have nice things. What a pity.