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Neighborhood groups perpetuate the myth by claiming victory on each and every occasion when a chain store abandons a project. Local newspapers report those "victories" as the rule, rather than the rare exceptions they are.
In the spring of 1995, for example, after months of protest by angry neighbors, Blockbuster Video deep-sixed plans to open a store at Ninth and Irving in the Inner Sunset. Neighborhood groups took the lion's share of the credit, and the daily papers agreed. A closer look at Blockbuster's permit application, however, reveals that the video chain abandoned its plans after city bureaucrats discovered the company had lied about the size of its proposed store on its application. Although the protests may have set a tone, it was the lie that enraged the city and made it clear to Blockbuster that its plans would never be approved.
Actually, whether the Blockbuster store was stopped by neighborhood activism or corporate stupidity is irrelevant. For every aborted Blockbuster, there are a dozen thriving Noah's Bagels, Peet's Coffees, and Ben & Jerry's in San Francisco. (Just one example: Noah's, which already has 11 locations in the city, has applied to open another 1,900-square-foot store with outdoor seating adjacent to the Safeway at Church and Duboce; World Wrapps hopes to open a third location next door.)
In fact, neighborhood groups have little influence over whether or not chain stores open in their neighborhoods. Two proposals before the Planning Commission earlier this year would have required all new businesses to notify neighborhood residents of the proposed plans. But the proposals were rejected after business groups complained.
Even longtime activists like Noe Valley land-use attorney Claire Pilcher admit that neighborhood groups have little power.
"It's a joke. Every time there's a conditional-use hearing for a new business, we go down there and fight it," says Pilcher, who founded the Friends of Noe Valley. "You just get tired of doing it. And nobody will come with you, and it's not good enough with two or three people. We don't have a prayer."
To admit that the anti-chain belief is myth is to face up to what the city, its neighborhoods, and its residents have become. San Franciscans tolerate high rents, bad traffic, and nonexistent parking because they believe that is the cost of living in a special, "different" place.
But the sad fact of the matter is that San Francisco is losing its unique character. The city that has always prided itself on being different is looking more and more like every other large city in America. Its residents are behaving more and more like people in every other large city in America.
And the myth of chain hatred is one of the reasons that fundamental shift in character has been able to occur with relatively little public debate. San Francisco has been "chained," almost sub rosa, at least in part because San Franciscans believe -- quite falsely -- that some law or regulation or bureaucrat or activist is out there preventing it from happening, or at least regulating its ultimate scope.
San Francisco is not just in transition; it is undergoing a massive transformation. South of Market, once an array of seedy warehouses, is teeming with construction, so-called live-work spaces, new restaurants, just-as-new multimedia businesses, and the multibillion-dollar mixed-use development known as Mission Bay. Union Square, one of the most desirable retail locations in the world, has become a veritable outdoor shopping mall, surrounded by virtually every big name-brand, from Eddie Bauer to Nike. And with monthly commercial rents as high as $30 per square foot around Union Square, businesses are staking claims on the next frontier, the city's cherished neighborhoods.
Yet San Franciscans insist on believing their city remains small and folksy, a cozy patchwork of unique neighborhoods with family-run businesses that date back several generations, where everybody knows your name. That city is gone.
Economics has spurred the transformation to a new San Francisco, where newcomers arrive by the thousands each year, drawn at least as much by well-paying jobs as by any appreciation for S.F. or the characteristics that make this city special. State demographers report that San Francisco is growing faster than any other Bay Area county: In 1996 alone, the city's population increased by 18,300 to 778,100.
Retaining or restoring livability in a city amid the throes of full economic boom -- which is exactly where San Francisco sits at present -- is a complicated task. The vast economic pressures focused on the Bay Area will not be lessened by ostrich behavior. Man-the-barricades, all-together-now rhetoric will not repeal the law of supply and demand or the sections of the U.S. Constitution that protect private property and interstate commerce.
Maintaining the myth of San Francisco's chain-store hatred disserves everyone in the city, from radical left anti-business activists to the board of directors of the San Francisco Partnership.
The myth allows residents of this city to continue deluding themselves. The myth allows San Franciscans -- pro- and slow- and anti-development alike -- to fail to adopt the governmental policies and the cultural attitudes that might manage this burgeoning transformation, maximizing its economic benefits and minimizing its soulless tendencies.
To deny that San Francisco is different than it was 10 years ago is unrealistic and unhealthy. The belief in mythical protections for the city's neighborhoods keeps San Franciscans from contemplating the future shape and feel of their city, and the realistic ways that shape and texture can be achieved.
Believing that national and international economic forces are being stopped at the borders of San Francisco by largely impotent forces of the progressive left has allowed San Franciscans to abdicate responsibility for the city they profess to love. And by the time anyone wakes up and smells the Starbucks, that myth of chain hatred may be all that is left of what once was San Francisco.
