Alex Ludlum, a member of San Francisco’s Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure, resigned this week after he was revealed to have organized a “doom loop” tour of drugs, crime, and homelessness in the city.
The “doom loop” tour, which was sold out in advance, planned to highlight the city’s malaise as a form of criticism — and it apparently attracted those who were interested in seeing the city’s decline up close. But it was canceled before it began, and Ludlum’s role was revealed in emails that were surfaced about the aborted dystopian visit.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
Plans for the $30 tour drew public interest, media attention and community backlash this month when the event page appeared online. The tour, which purportedly sold out, was supposed to show attendees the “urban decay” in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market and Union Square areas, putting a spotlight on San Francisco’s open-air drug markets and abundant empty offices as well as “the outposts of the nonprofit industrial complex and the deserted department stores,” according to its now-defunct online event page.
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Academics have warned of a potential “doom loop” in San Francisco and other cities like New York fueled by remote work leading to diminished real estate values and falling tax revenue, triggering cuts in city services and out-migration. Meanwhile, San Francisco’s image on the national stage has taken a significant beating. A recent Gallup poll found that 48% of Americans perceive the city as being unsafe, up from 30% in 2006. Breed is battling to cast the city in a positive light after increasingly bad national headlines and ahead of an important international summit in November that will bring President Biden and other world leaders to the city’s struggling downtown.
Ludlum, a 35-year-old involved in real estate in the city, wrote a resignation letter in which he implored Mayor London Breed to act to stop the open-air drug markets and other policies that have led to the city’s rapid decay.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.