Nordstrom's style, class captured the essence of S.F. We will miss it
There’s an old saying about sinking ships. Nobody starts to worry until the water gets up to the first-class cabins. And now that’s happening in San Francisco. Nordstrom is closing its big store in the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall on Market Street because downtown had “changed dramatically” amid “rampant criminal activity.”
Nordstrom was the class act of department stores, no matter how much you might have admired Macy’s and the others or pined for the good old days, when I. Magnin was in flower.
Losing Nordstrom is a serious blow to the city. And it’s not just the first-class customers who are being affected. The cut-price Nordstrom Rack just up the street and discount Saks Off 5th are closing, too. Even Umai Savory Hot Dogs on the food court level of the Westfield mall is affected. “The city needs help. We need help,” Dat Thieu, who owns the hot dog place, told Chronicle food writers Elena Kadvany and Mario Cortez. He’s trying to get out of his lease.
Not only that, we began the merry month of May with news that federal regulators had seized First Republic Bank, an institution that was born and raised in San Francisco. First Republic was sold to JPMorgan Chase bank, the nation’s largest.
At midweek, First Republic’s branch at 44 Montgomery St., in the heart of what once was the Wall Street of the West, was still open under Chase control. But electronic signs in the windows were still flashing the old upbeat messages: WELCOME TO FIRST REPUBLIC and WE UNDERSTAND THE CHALLENGES WE FACE and displaying testimonials about how First Republic is involved in the community. It was a bit surreal, a reminder of how the band played ragtime tunes as the Titanic was sinking.
Yet, we pretended it was not really happening. The closing of Whole Foods was caused by bad business decisions, not crime. Crime is down anyway. Just look at the numbers. Downtown San Francisco is empty because of remote work, or the pandemic, or online shopping. Twitter fired nearly everybody because of Elon Musk. Bob Lee, the slain tech entrepreneur, wasn’t stabbed by some homeless wretch but by someone he knew. The National Guard and the Highway Patrol are helping stamp out the open drug dealing in the shadow of City Hall. Everything can be explained away. Remember what Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
There was another, more muted, view: This is still San Francisco, as grand as ever, an exceptional place. City loyalists keep looking in the mirror, like the Evil Queen in the fairy tale: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
I’m as guilty of this as anyone, writing nice things about beautiful places like Fort Mason and skipping over places like the graffiti scarred mess that is Mission Street between 16th and 24th streets. If shoplifting isn’t a big problem, why was there an armed guard glowering at me when I went shopping at Walgreens? I didn’t bother to ask.
I have been a great believer in the gospel according to John Steinbeck. In “Travels With Charley” he wrote, “When I was a child growing up in Salinas we called San Francisco ‘the City.’ Of course it was the only city we knew, but I still think of it as the City, and so does everyone else who has ever been associated with it.”
So I came to think of a place like the Nordstrom store as part of the essence of the city. It’s not old, like a lot of San Francisco, and it’s a branch of the Seattle-based Nordstrom. A transplant, like a lot of San Franciscans.
And I’ve come full circle with it. I covered the opening back in 1988, and now I’ll be around to see its ending.
I was taken with Nordstrom immediately. I thought it had style and class. It’s four huge floors at Westfield, 357,000 square feet, all reachable by a series of escalators, set around a circle. Or a customer can take an elevator from the street level direct to Nordstrom, skipping lesser stores. Whoosh.
When it first opened, Nordstrom had a piano player, tinkling away. It had a concierge. True urban experts knew Nordstrom had the best public bathrooms in the city. Only the Palace Hotel had better, but you had to punch in a code at the Palace.
During the holiday shopping season Nordstrom made a point of never putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. Other stores started Christmas selling at Halloween; Nordstrom had class.
I went to Nordstrom at midweek, a gray day, surprising for springtime. The store had not changed, and maybe that’s the problem. A certain style seems to have gone out of style in San Francisco. The store was nearly empty — not deserted, but there were few customers.
I ran into an older lady named Betty who was having lunch with Joe Cisper at Bazille, the top-floor restaurant at Nordstrom. Betty didn’t want her last name used, but the staff all knew her and called her by her first name like an old friend. She’s a regular; she comes for a massage at the Nordstrom spa every couple of weeks and then lunch, looking out the window at the Flood Building across the street and the cable cars. A classic San Francisco scene.
How does she feel about Nordstrom closing? “I think it’s a big loss,” she said. There are a lot of reasons, she said. “People are shopping online more and more,” she said. “And there’s the condition on the street.”
But Betty always comes back. “I really think the people here are terrific,” she said. ‘I will miss them all.”
I think San Francisco will miss Nordstrom once it closes for good this summer. No matter how many excuses and explanations you hear about the decline of San Francisco, the city we knew and admired is going away bit by bit. And it’s never coming back.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
