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Comment by RC_ITR | Hacker News Reader

The question you should be asking is if this is actually a shoplifting problem vs. a massive decline in SF’s willingness to shop in person.

I sure don’t know anyone who talked about going to the downtown Nordstrom to buy anything. And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears.

This is an important question because while a scapegoat feels nice (they always do - look at the glee people are inserting into their comments here), if this is a preview of what all urban centers look like in 25 years, we better start thinking up answers now rather than later.

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to add - the scapegoat here is also particularly useful to take attention away from consumer changes that would effect to operate expensive retail properties.

Not saying it is one or the other, just that nordstrom would be particularly motivated to shift blame because of what the alternative says about their broader business model. So maybe not taking them at their word.

That being said, i'll note that I'm SHOCKED how normalized shoplifting has become not just among 'the criminal element' but among my social set which is decidedly not your typical criminals. Stealing, especially from self checkouts, is increasingly openly discussed in my experience - and generally framed as 'its them paying me for doing their job of checking me out' or 'countering inflation/corporate greed'. Whether I agree with the morality of it or not and juts note that it is increasingly normalized. More broadly, I struggle with feeling sorry for corporations when the public lives under a never ending stream of abuse from corporate policies and control (c.f., everything being a subscription).

>And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears.

It sure seems like a strange coincidence that all the downtown shutdowns happened around the same time that hundreds of thousands of people weren't forced into the area 5x a week by their job and the city lost over 50k in population, likely high earning workers who could now work remote elsewhere.

I think retail locations ebb and flow and it's hard to parse through other factors. I suppose I'm a data point by keeping my location and Nordstrom as a constant over time with neighborhood as a variable.

25 years ago, it was particularly fun to go shopping at Union Square/Market Street, including Nordstrom. Then that devolved into going to Nordstrom at Stanford Shopping Center. Now I prefer to go to Nordstrom Rack in East Palo Alto. In the early 90s, I was afraid to drive through the town due to drug battles.

On the other hand, I still go to Hayes and Haight Streets in SF to shop, even if these urban neighborhoods can be "scruffy."

Maybe I like shopping areas that are interesting but not overly threatening.

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