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However as Twitter has advanced below proprietor Elon Musk — most lately into one thing referred to as “X” — its relationship with San Francisco has turn into more and more fraught.
Since Musk took possession final October, the corporate previously generally known as Twitter has been sued for failing to pay tens of millions in hire and investigated for illegally changing places of work into bunk rooms after Musk mentioned he was sleeping on a sofa on the seventh flooring. Amid an exodus of tech workers from the town, Twitter has shed greater than 80 p.c of its workforce — primarily hollowing out its headquarters.
The latest indignity got here Monday, when the corporate introduced in a crane to pluck the Twitter brand off the constructing’s facade, disrupting two lanes of visitors at a busy intersection and prompting a 911 name.
In the meantime, Musk has hardly been a gracious neighbor. In viral tweets, he has derided San Francisco as a “derelict zombie apocalypse” and erroneously attributed the homicide of a tech government on a downtown road to rampant “violent crime in SF.”
“Even when attackers are caught, they’re typically launched instantly,” Musk griped after the April homicide, for which an acquaintance of the useless man now faces trial. San Francisco District Legal professional Brooke Jenkins blasted Musk’s feedback as “reckless” and spreading “misinformation.”
“There are enterprise leaders within the metropolis who need to have interaction in options, and the mayor needs to work with them,” mentioned Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D). “However to have one one who has a megaphone who creates all this tumult, it creates this notion of chaos.”
Twitter and Musk didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The world’s richest man has lengthy been recognized for his brash, shoot-from-the hip fashion. Musk has had many different run-ins with authorities officers, together with as chief government of electrical car producer Tesla, which has come below scrutiny from federal regulators as new applied sciences equivalent to “Full Self-Driving” are examined on public roads.
Within the early days of the pandemic, Musk publicly defied native officers by reopening his Tesla manufacturing facility within the Bay Space. He later unleashed an expletive-laden tirade on a quarterly earnings name, calling California’s strict quarantine insurance policies “fascist,” and made good on a risk to maneuver Tesla’s headquarters to Texas.
“California was the land of alternative,” Musk advised the conservative satirical website Babylon Bee. “Now it has turn into and is turning into extra so the land of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation and scorn.”
Since buying Twitter for $44 billion final fall, Musk has made main adjustments — decreasing the workforce, growing the variety of subscription providers and appointing a brand new chief government. His current resolution to vary the positioning’s title to X has generated further controversy, spurring bewilderment amongst customers whereas elevating questions on model administration and copyright (rival Meta holds a registered trademark for “X” in relation to on-line social networking providers).
It’s a far cry from the times when Twitter founder Jack Dorsey ran the corporate with Zen-like calm. Keen to maintain Dorsey’s agency from shifting south to Silicon Valley, the place taxes had been decrease and different main tech corporations had been organising store, San Francisco officers provided in 2011 to waive the town’s 1.5 p.c payroll tax for companies that moved to the Mid-Market neighborhood, then scuffling with excessive vacancies and visual homelessness.
The Twitter tax break was designed to carry new jobs and retail to the world in addition to cut back crime. Twitter was seen as an anchor tenant. However whereas the tax break spurred a growth in tech corporations within the space, outcomes had been combined when the tax break sundown after eight years in 2019.
Town’s funds had doubled and the unemployment price had fallen from 9 p.c to 2.6 p.c. However Twitter and different beneficiaries of the tax break had been blamed for lots of the woes plaguing the town in the present day, together with sky-high rents and gentrification.
In the meantime, guarantees by the businesses to assist their low-income neighbors in trade for decrease taxes have completed little to enhance the town’s vexing homelessness disaster. The neighborhood — only a few blocks from Metropolis Corridor — nonetheless struggles with vacant workplace area and empty storefronts.
To some, Musk’s obvious disdain for the town looks like salt within the wound.
“There’s by no means been any actual … accountability taken for coverage selections that will have contributed to in the present day’s road situations,” mentioned Sara Shortt, a longtime native activist who works with the town’s homeless and opposed the tax break on the time. “Years later, it’s solely insult to damage to have this ultrarich egomaniac land right here, bad-mouth us and steamroll over us.”
As San Francisco struggles to rebound from the pandemic — working to retain and appeal to corporations and lure employees again downtown — metropolis leaders are treading a fantastic line with Musk.
“I need to be supportive of (Twitter),” mentioned Matt Dorsey, who serves on the Board of Supervisors and whose district contains the corporate’s headquarters. “If they’re bringing individuals to work, and using individuals, I would like them in my district. I don’t need to be a metropolis that’s operating individuals out of city.”
However Musk’s antics, his disregard for guidelines and his gloom-and-doom tweets are irritating. Cretan mentioned the mayor has been assembly with enterprise leaders to speak about how the town can work with them to remain within the metropolis. For instance, he mentioned, Breed lately met with executives at Visa who mentioned they had been dedicated to San Francisco and expressed curiosity in being extra concerned in its future.
“These are the conversations we need to be having with enterprise leaders,” Cretan mentioned.
On Monday, the commotion over removing of the Twitter brand was resolved comparatively swiftly. Based on an announcement from police and experiences on social media, police acquired a name round 1 p.m. relating to a “attainable unpermitted road closure.” Twitter’s crane left by midafternoon, leaving the emblem removing haphazardly unfinished. The blue hen that has loomed over the Mid-Market neighborhood for the previous decade stays, alongside the “er” and the define of the now-missing “@twitt.”
On Tuesday, Patrick Hannan, a spokesperson for the town’s Division of Constructing Inspection, mentioned no allow is required to take away letters or symbols from the signal. However, he mentioned, any letters or symbols supposed to interchange them “would require a allow to make sure consistency with the historic nature of the constructing and to make sure the brand new additions are safely connected to the signal.”
By shut of day Tuesday, nevertheless, no permits had been filed.
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