SAN FRANCISCO — The sharp stench of days-old urine mixed with filth and feces has become an all too familiar smell in the Golden Gate City. 

So is the sight of zombielike adults, weaving on and off the sidewalks and onto the street, too blitzed on mind-bending substances and booze to realize they are just seconds away from being hit by a car. Loud horns being honked by irritated drivers send momentary shocks to the system, but just seconds later, their glassy-eyed confusion, drooling, and gibberish return. 

Then there’s fentanyl, the cheap street drug that doesn’t discriminate. 

It’s 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. Even a tiny quantity can kill. The fentanyl addicts are easy to spot in San Francisco, where an average of two die per day on the synthetic opioid. These men and women either have needles sticking out of their arms or are bent over on the sidewalk, stuck in a strung-out stupor for hours, barely looking alive. 

The Tenderloin district, where a lot of the open-air drug use is visible, has been notoriously dicey for years. Addicts and the homeless typically congregate there, setting up temporary homes under ripped tarps or sleeping wherever they can. Nonprofit organizations have started handing out Narcan, the overdose-reversal medication, on the streets.

The city’s failure to come up with an adequate response to its drug overdose crisis has forced some residents like Nuala Bishari to step up.

“I just saved someone’s life on San Francisco’s streets,” Bishari wrote in an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. “I wish I didn’t have to.” The city has been suffering for a long time, and its list of problems has continued to grow. 

Conversations on pragmatic solutions for San Francisco’s many problems have turned bitter, especially in an election year. Politicians jockeying for votes offer up grand plans to “fix” America’s 14th most populous city. More often than not, those plans tend to fizzle out right after the ballots are counted. 

On Capp Street in the city’s Mission District, women are beaten, bought, and sold sexually for drugs and cash each night. 

In the tourist-heavy Union Square, homelessness, lawlessness, and ineffective policies from San Francisco’s progressive leaders continue to cause harm. Businesses, large and small, that have threatened to leave for years if conditions didn’t improve are starting to make good on their word. The effects of the pandemic and San Francisco’s inability to bounce back as quickly as other cities have turned the once-thriving Bay Area into an unmitigated disaster and yet another California cautionary tale.

It is difficult to sugarcoat what’s happening in San Francisco. What’s even harder to understand is the city’s response to it.

One sunny Saturday in mid-March, more than 40,000 people filed through Union Square to get a glimpse of the 80,000 yellow, orange, and red tulips on display. 

Thousands of people lined up for hours, shovels and bags in hand, to dig up eight tulips each until the flowers ran out. By midday, the line had snaked around the 2.6-acre public plaza twice. The massive space and surrounding area has historically been home to one of the largest collections of department stores, luxury boutiques, gift shops, art galleries, and restaurants in America.

The free event was sponsored by the city and the Consulate General of the Netherlands to usher in spring.

Because the crowd was so dense and the barricade surrounding the tulips so high, many people went across the street to Macy’s, a 400,000-square-foot flagship store that spans nearly an entire block, for a better look. Inside, people pressed their faces up to the window of the fourth-floor Starbucks to watch the colorful scene unfold.

But for Macy’s employees, it was bittersweet. A week earlier, they found out on the nightly news that the store, which had been operating for more than seven decades, was closing and that they’d be out of a job.

“I have worked here for 40 years and finally took a week off,” explained Joann, a worker who asked the Washington Examiner not to reveal her last name out of fear of retaliation. “I was home watching the news, and they said [Macy’s] was closing down and laying everyone off. It was the first time I had heard about it. I’m 60. What am I supposed to do? I can’t afford to retire. I only know how to sell jewelry and watches. That’s it.”

Joann said the juxtaposition of people carrying around free flowers from the city and snapping selfies was almost too much to bear.

“I want to be happy, but it’s tough today,” she said. “I am trying to stay away from the windows.”

Macy’s opened in San Francisco in 1947. Its building, located on the south side of Union Square, is a city landmark. News of its closing marks one of the biggest retail closures the city has ever seen and follows a string of other high-profile exits, including the loss of nearby Nordstrom last year. The mall’s owners surrendered it to their lender in the fall and cited a lack of enforcement against criminal activity as a motivating factor for Nordstrom’s departure.

Macy’s did not cite a specific reason for calling it quits at the Union Square location but said a change in the retail landscape forced the company to change its strategy. Customers and a dozen employees whom the Washington Examiner spoke to believe crime and the lack of enforcement are to blame.

“It happens every day,” said Macy’s employee Steve, who works in the men’s section. He estimated that shoplifters take at least four blazers, 10 wallets, and 20 briefs daily.

Anne, another employee who works at one of the upscale makeup counters, told the Washington Examiner that even though she thought “there was no way they’d ever shut us down,” it “might be for the best.”

Anne, like Steve, said shoplifters and organized retail theft “gangs” walk out with thousands of dollars in unpaid merchandise daily. “It used to scare me when it happened, but now, I see it several times a day,” she said. “I don’t flinch anymore. I barely look up.”

San Francisco resident Thomas Maloney joked, “I thought payment was optional at this Macy’s.”

Maloney said he has watched over the years as crime has gotten worse and enforcement has become more lax. “My wife and [daughter] came for the tulip festival,” he said. “We wouldn’t be here on a normal day. There’s crime, there’s drugs, there’s people sleeping on the sidewalk two blocks away with needles in their arms. Who wants to deal with that? You can’t even walk to your car. Then you get the mayor saying, ‘Oh, it’s not so bad.’ Yes, it is.”

The Washington Examiner went to five stores in three hours in downtown San Francisco. All of them had shoplifters who successfully got away with hundreds of dollars in merchandise. At one store on Market Street, a man in a wheelchair had an open bag of clothes with tags on them. He was told by private security to stop. He looked back and laughed as he wheeled himself out the door and onto the street.

These brazen acts of petty theft and shoplifting have not only become dangerous but an all-too-common consequence of Proposition 47, a referendum passed in 2014 that critics claim effectively gives shoplifters and addicts the green light to commit crimes as long as what they steal is less than $950 in value. The decision to downgrade theft of property valued below the arbitrary figure from felony to misdemeanor, together with selective enforcement that focuses on more serious crimes, has turned San Francisco into a free-for-all and has residents seeing red. 

A few blocks away from Union Square at Bel Clift Market on Geary Street, one of the managers at the family-run store said he’s taken matters into his own hands when it comes to theft, nodding to a bat behind the counter. 

“We have to protect ourselves because we know the city won’t,” he said. “The police are mad at the mayor and won’t do anything. Everyone is busy playing politics. We have to protect ourselves, and [the homeless and addicts] know not to come in here. We will defend ourselves.”

Hilga Judge, who works at a nearby hotel, said residents often feel like political pawns. She added that while she has many doubts about Democratic Mayor London Breed, it’s Breed’s willingness to join a GOP-led campaign to roll back parts of Proposition 47 that has piqued her interest. 

Last month, Breed publicly threw her weight behind the proposal that would increase jail time for fentanyl dealers as well as jail time for repeat shoplifters and organized retail crime. Breed also admitted that the unintended consequences of Proposition 47 have created a mess. 

“Our goal is not to keep people locked up,” she said. “But when there are no real consequences in this city — that’s a real problem.”

Despite the tough talk on crime, a new poll showed the California mayor is at serious risk of losing her competitive reelection race and that a majority of San Francisco voters hold a negative view of her, while her closest competitor, Mark Farrell, would have the most support in the first round of ranked choice voting. 

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Judge worries what’s next for the city, and for her family, if something isn’t done to reverse the damage.

“I don’t know how much longer we can hold on,” Judge said. “My husband drives here to pick me up from work because it’s unsafe. I used to take the bus. You would feel maybe it’s not OK in certain parts of the city, but it seems like there are so many places like that now. I work a few blocks from one of the busiest places tourists come and I feel unsafe. That’s horrible. It makes us so mad. If this continues, we will move and the criminals and the homeless can stay.”