This past Saturday, San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall was shot in broad daylight in downtown San Francisco.
Pearsall was at an autograph signing event earlier in the day and decided to explore the Union Square area of town, quite possibly for the first time, since the 49ers facility is about 45 miles south of San Francisco, in Santa Clara.
This is the part of town I walked through a few months ago in one of my podcast videos showing the blight and major evacuation by name-brand retailers in the last few years. Check out this video when you have a chance to see all the vacancies in what was once the crown jewel of West Coast retail shopping.
Pearsall was approached by a 17 year-old thug from Tracy, California, a town about an hour, with no traffic, east of San Francisco. The kid had a gun, and Pearsall wore a Rolex. Kid wanted Rolex, pulled a gun, and by all accounts, Pearsall said something like “No F-Ing Way, @Hole” and then a struggle over the gun ensued.
Shots fired and both guys got shot. Pearsall was lucky as all hell – the bullet went through his chest and out his back with no vital organs hit, didn’t need surgery and was out of the hospital the following day.
San Francisco Police Department responded quickly, as they have an outpost 2 blocks away (also detailed in my video) and caught the thug and both went to the hospital.
San Francisco Mayor, London Breed and police chief, Bill Scott did a quick, damage control press conference, stating how they take gun violence seriously, complimenting the quick response of the SFPD and that the perpetrator is in custody. Damage control are the key words here. It was Labor Day Weekend, a time of year when San Francisco is typically flooded with tourists from every corner of planet earth, except they didn’t show up this year. Or last year, or the the year before, and after this incident, not next summer either.
If a professional athlete, that looks the he could kick some ass can get robbed in the middle of the afternoon, it could also happen to a random family from Sydney or Tokyo. Or at least that’s what I’d be thinking if I was that random family. Maybe now the Sydney family flies to Tokyo and the Tokyo family flies south to Sydney for holiday instead of dealing with the filth, drugs and crime that infests downtown San Francisco and its bordering neighborhoods.
Seriously, what is the attraction now to visit San Francisco? It’s expensive, dirty, smelly, they traffic is bad, public transportation is decent of you know where to go and at what time of day, retail is dead and a lot of well-known restaurants are closing or have been forced out of business by city or state imposed fees, taxes and pay hikes. Ok, seeing and maybe walking across the Golden Gate Bridge is a bucket-list item, and maybe a ferry ride to Alcatraz. I’m just trying to think of what else? Lots of cities have a Chinatown or a ballpark or good seafood, right?
Madam mayor, is trying to show how tough she is on crime and the homeless issues that have lingered for generations now. She’s the same mayor that wanted to defund the police and migrate hundreds of millions of dollars to the so-called black-part-of-town – Bayview-Hunters Point – in the aftermath of George Floyd, to appease the woke voters. She’s also the mayor that wanted to spend $6 million to purchase a Tenderdloin building to serve as a “shooting gallery” where drug addicts can go and inject themselves “safely” with drugs purchased on the street just outside its doors.
And while City Hall is correct that San Francisco’s homicide rate and number of firearm-related crimes is significantly less that other woke liberal-led cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, the Pearsall shooting came at exactly the wrong time for Breed and her campaign.
San Francisco is a place where the average fixer-upper dump-of-a-home sells for in excess of $1 million, where parts of town are not impacted one bit by what happens downtown, and voters are idealists versus the reality of what happens elsewhere in town – unless or until they get their window busted, car broken into or worse – physically assaulted, as one mother pushing her baby in a stroller a few months back in upscale Noe Valley.
If you’re planning to visit San Francisco, find someone who’s from The City before you trek on over, someone who grew up here to help with the navigation and planning, as a two block deviation can be the difference between seeing some dude getting a fix vs walking into Tiffany’s.
