San Francisco Is Not Dying. It Is Doing What San Francisco Has Always Done: Coming Back
San Francisco Is Not Dying. It Is Doing What San Francisco Has Always Done: Coming Back
- by David Eugene Perry
The day before we return to California, I awoke in Helsinki, Finland to a ridiculously negative article about San Francisco in a major Norwegian newspaper: same geographic neighborhood if you will.
One source for the article said San Francisco has “cancer.” Hours earlier on X, the same source was trumpeting the opening of a brand-new restaurant in San Francisco, saying: “Opening night of the new Tiramisu (a dessert I loathe but a restaurant I love)! Remember Belden Alley, with its seen and be seen cafes, bars, restaurants? Well it’s back. Viva la San Francisco!”
So – which is it: “cancer” or “Tiramisu”?
The article’s headline screams “San Francisco: The World Cup City That is Dying.” You’d think The City was on the precipice of a hell from which only Ryan Gosling and an alien could save us.
My first day in San Francisco was October 1, 1986. For most of those 40 years, I have worked on behalf of hospitality, tourism, cultural and small business clients. I am a member of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and know well my city’s challenges. I also know well a “hit piece” when I see one.
Here again is a foreign newspaper with journalists parachuted in to take a shot at San Francisco as if an obviously serious drug problem and several bad blocks of San Francisco define arguably the most beautiful city in the United States and one of the top tourist destinations in the world. The article is not only grossly unfair, it’s categorically inaccurate. Let’s look at the facts.
VG’s story warns tourists that San Francisco’s World Cup preparations are “overshadowed” by drugs, gang violence and homelessness, especially in the Mission and Tenderloin, and describes the city as filled with “living dead.” It cites the city’s office-vacancy problem, population loss and street-level drug crisis as proof of a city in collapse. Those issues are real. But the article mistakes an urban challenge shared by MANY cities for a civic obituary.
A dying city does not forecast 24.2 million visitors in 2026. A dying city does not project $9.9 billion in visitor spending, surpassing its pre-pandemic 2019 record. A dying city does not support nearly 64,000 tourism-related jobs, generate $655 million in tax revenue, and see its convention pipeline grow to 38 Moscone Center events expected to generate 674,000 hotel room nights. That is not death. That is recovery.
Even The San Francisco Standard, often a harsh critic of city leadership, recently examined the city’s comeback in 19 charts and found a more complicated, more honest story: tourism improving, hotel occupancy periodically exceeding 2019 levels, Moscone bookings increasing, and major events such as the Super Bowl and World Cup expected to boost visits and hotel demand. It also noted that San Francisco ranked No. 2 on Sixt’s list of trending destinations for 2026.
The same pattern is visible in transit. Muni logged more than 14.9 million passenger trips in March 2026, its highest post-pandemic level, reaching 85 percent of pre-pandemic ridership and up 8 percent from March 2025. Weekday ridership averaged 529,000 daily trips, and Axios tied the rail rebound to downtown’s post-pandemic recovery, including commuters, nightlife and office leasing.
And yes, even office demand — the favorite metric of doom-loop pundits — is showing signs of life. The VTS Office Demand Index rose 13 percent in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the prior year, with New York and San Francisco helping drive the increase, fueled in part by AI-sector job growth.
The Bay Area Council Economic Institute puts it plainly: San Francisco has experienced one of the slowest pandemic recoveries, and that has fed “doom loop” narratives. But the Bay Area is also reinventing itself again as economic momentum shifts. That is the part VG largely misses. San Francisco is not a postcard. It is not a theme park. It is a living city, which means it has problems, politics, contradictions, pain, resilience, money, creativity, beauty, outrage and reinvention — often all on the same block.
Even Fisherman’s Wharf, a favorite target of lazy “San Francisco is over” commentary, is receiving a $10 million revitalization investment, one of the most significant in the area’s history. The Wharf still attracts about 12 million visitors annually, remains home to the city’s commercial fishing industry, and is slated for public-space improvements, lighting, infrastructure upgrades, and new restaurant activity.
This is not to minimize the crisis in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, parts of SoMa, or the open-air drug markets that have devastated too many lives and businesses. San Francisco must do better. It must be cleaner, safer, more compassionate, more accountable and more competent. Those of us who love and labor on behalf of the city do not deny its problems. We fight for its future precisely because we know what is at stake.
But journalism that Ubers into the worst blocks of any American city and declares the whole place dead is not analysis. It is disaster tourism.
It is also misleading to frame San Francisco as “the World Cup city” in the way VG does. The Bay Area’s 2026 World Cup matches will be played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara — roughly 45 miles from San Francisco — while San Francisco will, of course, be a major hotel, dining, tourism and cultural base for visitors. That distinction matters. So does the fact that visitors who come for the World Cup will not be spending their time wandering the most troubled blocks of the Tenderloin after dark with camera equipment. They will be eating in North Beach, walking the Embarcadero, visiting the Ferry Building, riding cable cars, exploring Golden Gate Park, taking ferries across the Bay, and rediscovering neighborhoods like Belden Alley — where, yes, people are once again going out, being seen, and saying “Viva la San Francisco.”
San Francisco is not dead. It is wounded in places, expensive in most places, maddening in many places, and still breathtaking in almost all places. It remains a global city of food, culture, technology, architecture, activism, tourism, hospitality, small business, neighborhoods, reinvention and impossible views.
A city that can survive earthquakes, fires, pandemics, tech booms, tech busts, bad mayors, worse headlines and a century of people predicting its demise can survive a nasty headline.
San Francisco is not dying. San Francisco is doing what San Francisco has always done. San Francisco is coming back. There’s a reason our symbol is the mythical phoenix and our motto is “The City that knows how.”
David Eugene Perry has been watching The City’s ups-and-downs since 1986. His firm, David Perry & Associates, Inc has worked with z8 mayoral administrations and represented such clients as George Lucas and the running of the Olympic Torch.
