For $30 a pop, a San Francisco trek advertised on Eventbrite as the “doom loop” tour promised to allow attendees to get “close and personal” to the “squalor” of the city’s downtown. The walking tour planned to take people through the “open-air drug markets, the abandoned tech offices, the outposts of the non-profit industrial complex and the deserted department stores”, according to an event description. The guide, who declined to reveal their identity, would be a “card-carrying City Commissioner overseeing a municipal department with an annual budget over $500m”.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tour attracted controversy. Then over the weekend, it collapsed. Not even 24 hours before it was scheduled to go ahead, the anonymous organizer canceled the event claiming the media scrutiny had become too great. Now, the San Francisco city commissioner who was revealed to have been behind it has stepped down.
In a letter to the city’s mayor, Alex Ludlum, a real estate professional who served on San Francisco’s commission on community investment and infrastructure, argued the proposed $30 tour was intended as satire and his motivations were misunderstood. “I regret that my attempt to bring attention to the deplorable street conditions & rampant criminality in my neighborhood has been misconstrued as a mockery of suffering individuals,” Ludlum wrote in a letter reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle.
San Francisco’s challenges have become increasingly stark in the pandemic years. The city has one of the most hollowed-out downtowns in North America, along with a homelessness emergency, a drug crisis and high-profile retail thefts. But residents and officials say the city is often unfairly maligned, particularly by rightwing media and politicians.
The event was cancelled before it was supposed to start on Saturday after attracting media attention. Ludlum, who at the time had not publicly named himself as the tour’s organizer, said that the “substantial” news coverage would make it impossible for him to remain anonymous. But Ludlum’s identity was revealed when his email address was listed as the event organizer on refund notices, the Chronicle reported on Saturday.
Despite the cancellation, dozens of people showed up outside San Francisco ready for the “doom loop” tour, most of whom eventually gave up and left, the San Francisco Standard reported.
By Monday afternoon, Ludlum announced he would resign. Ludlum, who was appointed to the commission last year, served as the vice-chair and works as the vice-president of acquisitions at the real estate firm SPI Holdings, according to his biography on the city’s page.
Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for London Breed, the mayor of the city, told media: “The decision to organize and publicize the tour was a mistake and a deep error in judgment. We are working every day to address the city’s challenges and our focus remains on doing the work to move this city forward.”
On Saturday, the same day as the “doom loop” tour was scheduled, the non-profit Code Tenderloin organized a walking tour aimed at celebrating the neighborhood.
“I think some of them may have been coming for the doom tour and didn’t get the cancellation and they just came with us, which is good,” Del Seymour, the tour’s guide, told the Chronicle. “Maybe we have changed their minds. Maybe by coming out on this tour, they didn’t see what they expected to see.”
