by Wolf Richter, Wolf Street:

I’m standing in the middle of the street to take this photo. Why? Because I can.

On Tuesday, August 18, during morning rush hour, I walked through and around the Financial District of San Francisco and took photos to document the spookiness of it all. Pedestrians used to rush to work on crowded sidewalks, balling up at red lights, then stream across the intersection, and disappear into the entries of office towers as they went, and cars used to be stuck in traffic, and thick throngs of people would pour out of the Montgomery BART and Muni Metro station.

I started taking photos at Columbus Street where it ends at Montgomery Street, and then turned south into Montgomery Street and walked through the Financial District to the Montgomery Station at Market Street. Then I zigzagged back through the Financial District.

What you will see are streets and sidewalks and entrances into office towers that were eerily deserted during what used to be “rush hour,” with just a sprinkling of pedestrians, a few cars, the occasional skateboarder, some guys working on construction projects, and curiosities where you might be tempted to think, “only in San Francisco.”

With hindsight, it was the last beautiful sunny morning before the thick acrid smoke from the wildfires moved into San Francisco.

The data of how work-from-home impacts office patterns in a city like San Francisco are grim. According to Kastle Systems – which provides access systems for 3,600 buildings and 41,000 businesses in 47 states, and therefore has a large sample of how many people are entering offices during the Pandemic – office occupancy in San Francisco was still only at 13.6% of where it had been at the beginning of March, meaning it was still down by 86.4%, just above New York City:

What is staring at us now is the haunting shift brought about by work-from-home.

The Financial District is an area of office buildings. There are also shops, cafes, restaurants, and service establishments, such as bank branches and barbers, that workers go to before, during, or after work. There isn’t much else. Other parts of the City are busy, and restaurants that are open (outside seating only) are hard to get into. But this is what office life looks like….

On Columbus Street, looking at the intersection with Montgomery Street, with the Transamerica Pyramid in the background. I’m standing in the middle of the street to take this photo. Why? Because I can:

From the middle of Columbus Street — well, because I can — looking south on Montgomery Street. To the left, the sidewalk under the base of the Transamerica Pyramid:

On Montgomery, getting closer to Clay Street.

Desolate entrance to 456 Montgomery. Note the sign on the right wall. Detail in the next photo:

On the sign, note the “Retail for Lease.” The number of stores and restaurants that will likely never re-open and where landlords will need to find new tenants is astounding:

This is the office tower:

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