Why Did Cotopaxi Leave San Francisco?
Hayes Valley is an aspirational neighborhood located in central San Francisco, the main strip of which is lined with trendy stores and restaurants. It’s also a neighborhood where, according to Davis Smith, the CEO of the outdoor-gear brand Cotopaxi, retailers have begun to lock their doors during the day for fear of being robbed in broad daylight.
Last week, Smith announced that he would be temporarily closing his company’s flagship outpost on Hayes Street, which he says has been robbed dozens of times since its opening just a year ago. In a LinkedIn post talking about the decision, Smith called San Francisco “a city of chaos.” “Many streets and parks are overrun with drugs, criminals, and homelessness, and local leadership and law enforcement enable it through inaction,” he wrote.
[Nellie Bowles: How San Francisco became a failed city]
Smith is not the first, or the only, person to raise concerns about the city’s crime rate: Earlier this summer, San Francisco voters recalled their progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, in large part over concerns about a crime wave. As my colleague Annie Lowrey reported, even amid the political fallout, the question of whether there is a crime wave at all was in fact unanswered: The available data are murky, lagging, and hard to interpret.
In a statement, the San Francisco Police Department said it was “aware of the recent incidents that have occurred on the 500 block of Hayes Street” and that its burglary unit is actively investigating. The department also encouraged victims to file police reports. “Reports also provide data which allows us to understand when, where, and to what degree retail thefts are occurring. With this data we can identify crime hotspots,” the statement reads. The department did not respond to follow-up requests for comment by the time of publication.
“I’m not an expert in crime,” Smith told me in a phone call last week.
