The comparison is absurd. No one would live in Detroit because it’s bleak and sprawling. San Francisco is beautiful and cosmopolitan. The trajectory of Detroit is irreversible and structural, while for San Francisco it’ll be an enduring global destination for as long as it stands. Two year blips during a pandemic aren’t sufficient to mark a trend, and SF city politics have been broken for generations.

I lived in SOMA in the 1990’s, and 5th and mission was an open air drug festival too. The tender groin was foul, and civic center was a wasteland of feces, condoms, needles, and occasionally people who died overnight and hadn’t been cleaned up yet. The streets were covered in human waste even in residential areas.

When I’ve come back to SF, it is generally a lot cleaner than it was, and has gentrified. I’ve not been back post pandemic, and I can imagine it’s reverted. But it was not possible to be worse than it was when I lived there.

Yet, people loved it there and I miss it. If it weren’t for the vacuous tech culture chasing VC and exits I might be back some day.