Yeah, RL venues and stores will always draw people to the cities. This should be actually a cheap, cool thing for young people like it was in New York or San Francisco in the 60s, or the 80s. It probably will be like that about 20 years from now, when it becomes "cool" to live in a city again. We were so close to an urban renaissance... the period from 2000 until covid was the best time for urban centers and downtowns since the late 19th century, before trolley lines and buses and cars moved everyone out. I thought we were centralizing and going to a walkable, car-less future. Covid did change all that, because without office workers there's no lunch crowd; with no lunch crowd there are no restaurants; with no restaurants there are no hipsters wanting to live downtown (they alone can't sustain the restaurants). Then you have the riots and the meth population and everything boarded up. We're in for 20 years before downtowns recover as a "hip" zone.

The thing is, RL venues are important, but they do exist outside of San Francisco. Increasingly, very little exists in the urban cores, and yet the prices for rent are still insane.