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Comment by skmurphy | Hacker News Reader

Valley Fair in San Jose, which is also owned by Westfield, reports revenues at pre-pandemic levels. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/03/21/san-jose-westfield-va...

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This should give all those SF apologists something to think about. There are always excuses for the deteriorating conditions. Either it’s not as bad as everyone claims to be. Or it’s bad, but pandemic is to blame. If either of those things were true, why would SF lag so much when San Jose didn’t? Unless the city was mishandling everything.

I am no SF apologist but if you read through the article:

"Over the past three years, Westfield has sold a number of properties, including the Westfield Brandon in Tampa, the Westfield North County in San Diego and the Westfield Santa Anita in Arcadia."

SF leadership is problematic but it's not clearcut to me that Westfield closure is just an SF city problem.

San Diego was never an international city, neither are the others.

People useeto fly in here from all over the world to visit the city, see a concert, or do some business followed by a bit of shopping. Those tourists are largely gone and conventions are increasingly moving elsewhere because of concerns over safety and property crime.

More to the point, San Franciscomore so than any other city is a stand in for the US for most of APAC because that's were most of the Asians are and where most international flights from Asia most often terminate. When San Francisco becomes a joke, democratic governance itself becomes a joke.

Sometimes you need a living example to set the boundaries on extremes. SF went extreme in a certain way that was becoming more popular, and likely the tide will come in now.

My sense is that surviving and thriving malls in urban areas today are really destination experiences for dining. Valley Fair has extremely high-quality dining options which brings the foot traffic that props up the whole enterprise. The SF Westfield never felt like they cracked that. It's only been open since '88 so it was sort of a latecomer to the mall era and got stuck in the department store, shopping-as-destination model. It required a detour down from Union Square's shopping district and didn't have much to do inside besides shopping, so I'm surprised it hung on this long.

Valley Fair and Santana Row across the street are pretty much always busy.

Sometimes it's surprising to me because both, and especially VF since they expanded again recently, are much higher end and I would think not as affordable to the average family but maybe I'm wrong.

It’s a great place to pick up a new LV purse then wait 3 hours for some udon and top it off with a $70 pizza

Spot on. Quite the, um.... experience.

The udon is great for what it is but not worth that kind of wait; however, you may be interested to know Marugame recently opened a location up the street in Cupertino and so far at least it hasn't been nearly as busy, at least on weekdays.

This may be a vast misinterpretation on my part, but I read the comment as a way to point out the absurdity, not highlight the quality of any of the three. I think a 3-hour wait is exaggerated, but I agree this quality of udon is definitely not something you should have to wait this long for. Not sure what $70 pizza refers to, but it's very believable you might pay that amount for a pizza. All after buying a new LV purse.

Heh, that's fair. I read it as being something OP would be interested in getting if not for the hassle.

FWIW here in the southbay it's already pretty easy to blow $30-40 on an average, not even amazing, large pizza.

I wonder what anyone coming from other parts of the world thinks when they just arrive. How long does it take until they accept as normal this cost of living with respect to received mediocrity? Don't forget to tip that 20%! Other quality-of-life concerns aside like good weather, good tech opportunities abound, etc., from a food-pricing POV, it must seem like a bad deal to an outsider just coming in, or maybe they already know what they're signing up for when they decide to move and it's no big deal.

And it's not like the waiters make significantly more. No, the majority of costs is the friggin' rent of the establishment.

The $70 pizzas are at Eataly

The lines at marugamu and nagi are insane!

So is the wait time at Din Tai Fung!

There aren't many places for people to just walk around and browse with air conditioning. Many malls are 80% outdoor parking lot

That particular mall is also probably the nicest one around the area. Actually decent dining options (not just food court food), some public space to hangout / people watch etc and a good selection of high end and lower end brands.

I'm not a big mall person, and I hate shopping for clothing, but I do find malls in many Asian countries pretty interesting. Bangkok comes to mind, with food stalls, indoor "markets", floors of dining options available.

It's also a much better mall tbh

In a nicer, significantly safer area.

> which is also owned by Westfield

I thought westfield were selling all their US malls

Yes, presumably no one wanted this one.

https://www.foxla.com/news/all-westfield-malls-in-us-to-be-s...

They are but it's currently owned by Westfield and in theory subject to the same management strategies as SF mall.

Selling vs giving up.

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