The recent history of San Francisco’s failures as a city can be told in the number of grocery stores that have closed for reasons beyond their control in the past few years. In 2022 I wrote about a grocery store that was closed because of a rat infestation. This rather disgusting problem wasn’t the result of any failure on the store’s part. It was caused by “the birdseed lady” a local resident who had taken to dumping pounds of birdseed on the sidewalk and streets in the area, allegedly to feed the pigeons.
Birdseed lady didn’t realize (or care) that rats can also eat birdseed. In fact she repeatedly dumped food outside empty shops where there was no one to clean up the mess, ensuring the rats would take up residence. This went on for years and the city did nothing because you can’t stop people in SF from acting crazy, you just have to get used to it.
In…
