Amid San Francisco’s Woes, Elon Musk Plays Critic

Since becoming one of San Francisco’s highest-profile employers, Twitter owner Elon Musk has had a lot to say about the state of things in the City by the Bay. 

The billionaire has described it as “post-apocalyptic,” claimed many Twitter employees “feel unsafe” coming to work in the city’s downtown and suggested “you could literally film a Walking Dead episode in downtown SF.”

Using his platform to reach more than 144 million followers on Twitter, Musk is giving voice to a certain set of technorati frustrated with the condition of the city, where his newly acquired social-media company is based, while also angering some locals. 

He has raised the specter of Twitter leaving town altogether, saying in May at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit that it was uncertain if the company’s headquarters would remain in Golden Gate City.  

His critiques heighten the pressure local officials are facing as they contend with a downtown struggling to recover from the pandemic and troubled by crime, open-air drug use and homelessness. 

City leaders say critics are unfairly portraying San Francisco as unsafe, citing statistics that show a violent crime rate lower than many large cities.

“I don’t think cheap shots on San Francisco by Elon Musk—or any of his fellow billionaires—is helpful to the city,” said Dean Preston, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors. 

“These tech billionaires are not offering any assistance or solutions that could help people who are struggling in San Francisco. It’s easy to tweet and not as easy to do the hard work to address a lot of the problems of the city,” he said.

Musk has long used his role as a celebrity business leader—he also runs car company Tesla and rocket maker SpaceX—to publicly push back against U.S. government officials who oppose him while hewing to more measured words in parts of the world where authoritarianism reins. With San Francisco, however, his commentary is more visceral. 

A battle to stave off blight is playing out on Musk’s doorsteps. Twitter’s headquarters on Market Street abut the gritty Tenderloin neighborhood, a legacy of the decision made years ago when Twitter received city tax breaks aimed at helping revitalize the area.  

The pandemic hit the neighborhood hard. Gov. Gavin Newsom has deployed the California National Guard to help fight the fentanyl crisis gripping the city, including the Tenderloin, and this week announced he was doubling the number of California Highway Patrol there.

Compounding the issue is a pullback in businesses from the area, partly because of concerns over crime and falling foot traffic as some offices remain empty with workers continuing to work remotely. 

Before taking over Twitter in late October, Musk had largely decamped to Texas, where he took up residence in 2020 after battling with Bay Area officials over pandemic-related shutdowns that kept Tesla’s factory in Fremont closed for a stretch. 

Now, Musk is seeing San Francisco’s problems firsthand as he drives its streets testing Tesla vehicles. 

“I’ve been doing that quite a lot because Twitter is headquartered there,” he said during a CNBC interview in May. It “is a very difficult place to drive, it’s got bus lanes, one-way streets…a quite challenging homeless situation,” he said.  

Musk’s recent criticisms have come amid high-profile crimes, such as a mass shooting that injured nine people last month. “A friend of mine experienced a shooting last night outside his apartment in SF and a bullet went through his wall,” Musk wrote June 10. “Second time it’s happened.”

After the high-profile killing of tech executive Bob Lee in April, Musk took to Twitter. “Many people I know have been severely assaulted,” he tweeted. “Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.”

But when an arrest was later made that suggested the death was connected to the area’s high-end party scene fueled by cocaine and other drugs—and not a random street crime as some had speculated—District Attorney Brooke Jenkins took aim at Musk’s criticism. 

“Reckless and irresponsible statements like those contained in Mr. Musk’s tweet—that assumed incorrect circumstances about Mr. Lee’s death—served to mislead the world in their perceptions of San Francisco,” Jenkins told reporters. 

As he took control of Twitter, Musk riled up the city’s residents, especially as hundreds of area employees left the company following a flurry of layoffs and cost-cutting measures. Musk has said the reductions were needed to avoid bankruptcy amid a dramatic pullback in advertising revenue.

During those early months under Musk, a media report that Twitter was converting conference rooms into spaces for workers to sleep prompted a probe by the city into potential building-code violations. In an apparent response, Musk criticized Mayor London Breed in a tweet that included a link to an article about a baby who overdosed on fentanyl accidentally ingested at a San Francisco playground. 

“So city of SF attacks companies providing beds for tired employees instead of making sure kids are safe from fentanyl. Where are your priorities @LondonBreed!?” he tweeted in December. 

That month, Musk was booed during an appearance on stage at a Dave Chappelle comedy show at the Chase Center, according to videos posted on social media. 

“Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter),” Musk responded in a tweet he later deleted. “It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists.”

His lawyer in January asked a federal judge in San Francisco overseeing a lawsuit against Musk to relocate the trial to Texas, arguing the entrepreneur couldn’t get a fair hearing because of negative local media attention around him. The judge rejected the request, and Musk ultimately swayed the jury in his favor.

Amid his public barbs about San Francisco, others see an opening to woo away the billionaire.

“It’s TIME to move @twitter headquarters to Miami,” Francis Suarez, the Republican mayor of the Florida city tweeted in December as Musk complained about the San Francisco mayor. “It’s not about politics, it’s about the soul of our country.”

Write to Tim Higgins at [email protected]