Don't Mourn For San Francisco— Mourn For The Next San Francisco

Aaron Peskin's Defeat With Be The City By The Bay's Death Knell

A week from Saturday, September 28, David Polonoff is having his book launch party for WannaBeat at Studio Fallout in San Francisco’s North Beach. The book, days in the life of a transplant “yearning for authenticity,” reads the invitation, “in the face of an increasingly artificial reality.” And that was in the 1970s! It’s gotten a lot worse in San Francisco in the 40-50 years since. In the note Polonoff sent me with the invitation he asked me to consider joining his “quixotic effort to revive [San Francisco’s] soul.” Too late? Or, in deference to my friend Denise Sullivan, too soon?

It was Denise who first introduced us to progressive mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin back in May, ever the optimist, writing that “our city of billionaires may be on the verge of everyday people making a comeback: President of the Board of Supervisors, Aaron Peskin, joined the race for mayor last week with the intention of shifting the narrative away from more high-rise luxury condos, downtown doom spirals and dirty and druggy streets and is focusing on a full recovery for the rest of us... Recovery is Peskin’s byword for the campaign; it's also a parallel with his personal recovery from alcoholism, which you can bet his opponents have already used as one of his shortcomings. It’s not. His experience has provided a window on to a world that few in city government are willing to be forthright about, let alone understand or deal with successfully at the street level… His opponents (billionaire Daniel Lurie, law and order candidate Mark Farrell, District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí and poorly polling incumbent London Breed) would have you believe that Peskin is incapable, but it is they, with their billions to burn on recall elections, billboards advertising false narratives about rising crime rates in an effort to elect their buddies on the board, and on and on, are meant to distract us from the fact that the city has been bought and sold by tech and developers and venture capitalists who think they know anything about public service.They don't. And they have proven they can't govern effectively or with community participation.”

Let’s not forget that as a demographic, rich people tend to be conservative— even if pro-Choice and without any problems about the LGBTQ community— and San Francisco has extremely limited space for a lot of people willing to pay more than the people before them can pay. Now it’s filled with rich people who aspire to be Elon Musk. It used to be a working class city, a union town. Today, no one in their right mind is going to call San Francisco a progressive city any longer. Politically, progressives have been steamrolled by conservatives with almost immeasurable financial advantages.

Yesterday, writing for the L.A. Times, Hannah Wiley noted that Peskin is an underdog in the once liberal city, beginning with a question:  “Has this famously liberal city moved too far right to embrace an old-school progressive like him for mayor? Peskin… has spent his political career fighting for liberal causes. He’s taken on large corporations, wringing substantial money from them to bolster community services. He’s a vocal proponent of rent control and neighborhood preservation. As a recovering alcoholic, he thinks the city’s homeless issues should be addressed through a mix of compassion, affordable housing and services, rather than a punitive approach utilizing encampment sweeps and criminal citations… Peskin entered the race as the only candidate running on a progressive agenda, putting him at odds with the rising chorus of voters and tech titans who want to see a more hard-core approach to the sprawling tent encampments and drumbeat of retail and property crimes that have eroded their sense of a safe, functional city.”

In recent decades, it hasn’t been unusual for San Francisco to elect mayors who are centrist Democrats alongside a more progressive Board of Supervisors. But the tech money flooding into the race, combined with frustrations over the city’s slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, has many voters questioning progressive policies and the wisdom of a city that governs with a bleeding heart. 

…Outrage over the progressive agenda fueled the recall of three school board members in February 2022. Four months later, voters also recalled the-Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin, a leading reform advocate whose progressive policies on sentencing and incarceration were derided by opponents as a threat to public safety. 

Last March, San Francisco made national headlines when voters approved a pair of ballot measures that Breed had championed to broaden police surveillance powers and impose drug treatment mandates for certain welfare recipients. That same night, a slate of [conservative] candidates took control of the governing body of the local Democratic Party. 

Although the five leading candidates for mayor are Democrats, all but Peskin now fall in that [conservative] camp. Breed, in particular, has tacked right on issues such as homelessness and crime over the last year. 

Peskin celebrates the distinction, saying that he joined the race to keep San Francisco a “beacon” for the artists, creatives, immigrants and LGBTQ+ pioneers who’ve shaped the city’s culture for decades, and that he fights for working-class people to ensure they can afford living in the city.

“Don’t get me wrong, I think that one of the most important things that any government does is to make people safe,” Peskin said. “But, you know, that’s all the other candidates are talking about. They’re not talking about also making it safe and welcoming.”

Peskin has targeted Breed from the start of his campaign, arguing that her leadership is incoherent and dismissing her recent crackdown on homelessness as a cynical political ploy. 

“She actually embraced the Fox News narrative about San Francisco, rather than standing up and defending this city and embracing and strengthening our policies of compassion and of getting things done,” he told The Times. 

Breed has countered that compassion has its limits, and that the city needs to take a tougher stance with homeless people who have refused shelter or won’t seek treatment for drug addiction. 

During a July mayoral debate hosted by the local firefighters union, Breed said her decision to get tough on the homelessness crisis may not be popular but was necessary to propel San Francisco forward. 

“We have had to move from a compassionate city to a city of accountability,” she said.

Peskin said he is focused on leading San Francisco beyond the “doom loop” narrative that has dogged the city nationally for much of the last four years and into its recovery era. 

If elected mayor, he’s promised to prioritize low-income housing and expand rent control. On homelessness, he wants to open more treatment facilities and expand shelter capacity, rather than continue the encampment sweeps that Breed has pushed over the last two months.

…Local polls show him trailing Breed, Farrell and Lurie in the city’s ranked-choice voting system. All three have made tough positions on property crime, fentanyl dealing and homelessness a centerpiece of their campaigns. 

Whereas Breed, Farrell and Lurie are getting financial support from tech executives and wealthy business owners, Peskin touts his campaign as a grassroots effort fueled by working-class people. His endorsements include left-leaning LGBTQ+ and tenant rights organizations, labor unions and progressive politicians including former Mayor Art Agnos, former Supervisor Jane Kim and former state Sen. Mark Leno. 

“Aaron Peskin was built for public service,” Agnos said. “What we have today are tech multibillionaires. Tech multibillionaires who live like monarchs, and now we are seeing they’re trying to rule San Francisco like they were monarchs.”

“I think San Francisco has always led on the social issues,” said Kim, who unsuccessfully ran against Breed in 2018. “Where we struggle and fight as progressives has been on the economic agenda, and who benefits economically in this city. Is it the ultra-wealthy and the billionaires, or is it our working class and our low-income workers? And that’s the fight that Aaron is leading on.” 

Along with staunch supporters, Peskin has accumulated fierce critics during his years in office— particularly around housing. 

Peskin represents some of the city’s most historic neighborhoods, including North Beach, Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf and downtown’s Financial District. He often distinguishes himself as someone who sticks up for neighborhood identity— what some consider a dog whistle for “NIMBYism,” a colloquial term for opposition to large multifamily housing projects or other unwelcome development. He has resisted efforts to amend zoning rules for certain neighborhoods to allow for denser housing.

…State Sen. Scott Wiener [a local corporate whore], who has authored some of the state’s strongest housing production laws, has criticized Peskin’s devotion to the “existing broken housing structure.” 

Wiener, who has endorsed Breed, complimented Peskin as skilled and “incredibly smart.” But he also warned that Peskin’s brand of progressivism would set San Francisco back. 

“San Franciscans are quite progressive. But there is a strain among some people— I think it’s a minority, but some people— where they equate progressivism to having no change,” Wiener said. “A city that isn’t changing is a city that is dying.”

…“I’ve always thought the root of progressive is progress,” Peskin said, “and progress is actually getting things done.”

San Francisco is still undeniably attracting people, but the city's allure has changed dramatically over the years. Instead of the artists, dreamers, creative types and non-conformists who once flocked to its vibrant neighborhoods, it's now pulling in a different crowd— corporate professionals, venture capitalists, materialistic tech workers… human robots. These are the kinds of people who fit seamlessly into the tech-driven machine that the city has happily allowed itself to become, seeking wealth, but lacking the rebellious creativity that used to define it.

Where bohemians and free thinkers once shaped the culture, San Francisco's streets are now filled with those who aspire to be lbloodsucking scumbag like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen rather than the next Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin or Harvey Milk. The city's soul— rooted in radical ideas, artistic freedom and a working-class backbone— has been supplanted by an environment where wealth accumulation and profoundly anti-human values take center stage. While the skyline continues to grow, the city's spirit has become more homogeneous and far removed from the place that once attracted the weird and wonderful.

Polonoff’s fight to reclaim San Francisco’s soul might seem quixotic, but it’s not just about reviving a lost culture— it’s about resisting a future where every corner of the city is indistinguishable from the next, dominated by wealth and tech, with little room left for the kind of artistic, eccentric and revolutionary thinking that once made San Francisco a beacon for outsiders. It’s only a matter of time before it’ll become a dried out husk, left to rot, the billionaires and would be billionaires having deserted it for the next location to prey on and suck dry.