San Francisco

For all the persistent rhetoric from California’s leaders about this state being on the cutting edge of social and racial justice, the reality on the ground is far grimmer.  read more »

From the beginning, California promised much. While yet barely a name on the map, it entered American awareness as a symbol of renewal. It was a final frontier: of geography and of expectation.
—Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream: 1850–1915  read more »

COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing strategies have led to a huge increase in the number of people working at home (working remotely). According to Gallup, by mid-April, 62% of US employees were working at home. Further, Gallup found that about half of the remote workers preferred to continue working from home, with another quarter interested in remote working out of pandemic fears.  read more »

Whatever the medical benefits achieved from the prolonged coronavirus lockdown, California’s small business community will be suffering severe symptoms, likely for decades to come. The state’s small entrepreneurs, particularly in poorer areas, face major readjustments and perhaps obliteration, a situation further complicated for some by damage stemming from the protests over the killing of George Floyd.  read more »

California has, at least to date, escaped the worst effects of Covid-19.  read more »

A reader forwarded me an analysis of COVID-19 cases analyzed by the population density of California’s counties. The analysis had the concept right — if an infection is spread person to person, as in the case of COVID-19, then population density is likely to be an important “seeding” factor. That is there is virtually universal agreement that we need to practice social distancing of 6 feet or two meters to minimize the spread.  read more »

I just listened to a YouTube conversation where Jack Spirko and Curtis Stone discussed the “lock down” and “martial law” that’s been imposed on San Francisco in response to the Covid-19 situation. (Translation: jackbooted Socialist thugs have bludgeoned all the sheeple into submission robbing them of their personal liberty.)  read more »

A week ago, I posted Early Observations on the Pandemic and Population Density, which suggested that the more worrying experience with the COVID-19 virus in the New York City metropolitan area could result from more intense person-to-person contacts:  read more »

In a March 26 article, The New York Times headlined: "Even before coronavirus, America's population was growing at slowest rate since 1919." Experts suggested that, with the coronavirus and falling immigration rates, the country could see a population decline next year.

Lurking behind this overall assessment was even bigger news for Californians. Improbably, the much smaller Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield metropolitan areas are now growing faster than the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, as well as the San Diego metropolitan area.  read more »

A couple of weeks ago I was visiting friends and the conversation turned to the ever more visible dilemmas in the neighborhood. We focused on two specific problems: the continuing expansion of the homeless population, and the record number of vacant storefronts.  read more »