reconquesta business fails. LOLS.
Popular San Francisco restaurant Gracias Madre closes blaming 'nearly impossible' business conditions in the Doom Loop city
- Manager Joseph Donohue says he 'doesn't blame' customers for abandoning them
- Says diners spent their meals worrying their cars would be broken into
- Joins an exodus that has seen retailers including Nordstrom, Whole Foods and Office Depot shut their door
The San Francisco 'doom loop' has claimed its latest victim after the doors shut on a pioneering vegan restaurant in the city's crime-ridden Mission district.
Gracias Madre boasts clients including the Duchess of Sussex, Natalie Portman and Liam Hemsworth at its branch in West Hollywood.
But it shares its neighborhood in the Golden Gate city with an open-air drugs market and hundreds of homeless people.
'The condition of life in San Francisco has deteriorated and made running a small business nearly impossible,' a note left for customers on the door read.
'We've got regular clients and customers that kept on saying it just seems too dangerous to come down here at night,' manager Joseph Donohue told CBS, 'and I don't blame them.'
Nordstrom became the latest big name to join the exodus this week when it shuts the doors on its flagship store in the city's Westfield Centre.
It joined dozens of others who have pulled the plug including Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Old Navy, AmazonGo, Saks Off Fifth, and Office Depot.
Meanwhile, remaining stores such as Target have been reduced to locking up their entire stock behind glass to deter shoplifters.
Gracias Madre opened in 2009 serving 'traditional Mexican cuisine, made from scratch using local, organic, plant-based ingredients,' according to its website.
But it a large building next door has been derelict for the past 10 years in a city where a third of office space is now empty.
Ninety-five retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the COVID pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent.
And out of 203 retailers open in 2019 in the city's Union Square area, just 107 are still operating, a drop of 47 percent in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.
'Our mission was always to honor the mothers who give so much to serve, care for and live in hope for their families, especially those of Mexico,' it said in the note left for customers.
'It has been an honor to work on behalf of their generosity and sacrifice all these years.'
Donohue blamed the 'economy' and 'the state of the Mission' for its closure.
'It's just a little shady in the area, the streets are not cleaned on a regular basis,' he told SFGate.
'It's almost as if it's like a forgotten side of the city.
'This area would be great if the city would pay attention to what they're doing.'
He said people found it a struggle to park nearby and 'a little bit too dangerous' to visit the restaurant after dark.
'Because there weren't any places to park your car and if you did park your car you didn't know if it was going to get broken into or not.
'So a lot of customers did say that they wouldn't come at night,' he added.
Over in her Lower Haight district, restaurant owner Zahra Saleh has closed her business temporarily saying she feels 'violated' after seeing too many break-ins and shoplifting incidents in her area.
'My Lower Haight is sinking in a sea of lawlessness,' the Café International owner wrote.
'And the ship captains and politicians are bickering among each other, blaming each other while small businesses suffer.'
The city's land use commissioner Alex Ludlum resigned this week with a scathing letter to Democratic Mayor London Breed after he was slammed for advertising a 'Doom and Squalor' tourist walk around the city's blighted neighborhoods.
'I regret that my attempt to bring attention to the deplorable street conditions and rampant criminality in my neighborhood has been misconstrued as a mockery of suffering individuals,' he wrote in his resignation letter.
'As long as the open-air drug markets continue their daily operations, we will continue to witness the misery of suffering addicts, the withdrawal of pedestrians and office-workers, the ongoing closures of small businesses, and the stagnation of our rich cultural life.'
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