SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — San Francisco is working tirelessly to restore its image. Take a look at the massive Instagram posts by current Mayor Daniel Lurie. Next month’s Super Bowl is expected to draw 500,000 people to the region, many of them for City by the Bay events, but leaders hope to combat the perception that San Francisco is a “failed” city. It’s been tried before.

We all know that the Super Bowl is held in Santa Clara, but most of the parties and events are held in San Francisco.

By attracting worldwide attention, San Francisco is branding itself as a “comeback city.”

To change hearts and minds, San Francisco will continue to use the cleanup strategies employed during APEC and Dreamforce.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had this reaction in 2023.

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“Everything is perfect, spicy, clean, nice. I mean, I was walking down Howard Street and I thought, what did they do, pour fresh cement? Everything is so good you can eat it on the sidewalk. It’s incredible,” Benioff said.

“One of the things that we’re deploying during APEC and that we plan to do during Super Bowl 60 is the use of an emergency operations center, which means a coordinated place where people come from all over the city and coordinate all the different operational responses that are necessary to keep the city clean, safe and successful,” said Adrian Besheri, director of the Office of Emergency Management.

The city is expected to make visible efforts to clean up troubled areas like the Tenderloin, just a few blocks from Moscone Center, the main hub for Super Bowl 60.

We asked longtime Tenderloin resident Lawrence Thomas for his thoughts.

“Oh, for one thing, I’ll clean up all the feces that’s everywhere you look around here,” Thomas said.

But to be fair to the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, most people would say the cleaning team does a better job than expected.

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For them, it’s like a game of whack-a-mole.

“You can come out one day and say it looks great, and by the afternoon it’s not so great. People always say, ‘How does it look?’ but it’s not consistent,” said Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.

During the last Super Bowl, in 2016, San Francisco was criticized for forcing homeless people to leave areas hosting fan events in an attempt to improve the city’s image.

After the Super Bowl, they all came back, a lot of people bickered, and nothing got better.

“We are not going to make anyone disappear. Every day we work with people in need on the streets and try to connect them to available resources,” Besheli promised.

But like the man we found passed out on the sidewalk, there are many who refuse any help because they have the right to say no.

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Just a few minutes earlier, a security guard and an Urban Alchemy representative had made sure he didn’t nod off before paramedics arrived.

Resident Lawrence Thomas said it was time to tell the world it wasn’t as bad as he had seen it before.

“I think you need to come and find out for yourself, because everything is not necessarily worse because it’s coming from someone else, from their perspective. Especially for someone who’s never been here a day in their life and doesn’t know what it’s like to live here, you know what I’m saying?” Thomas asked.

How do we know if San Francisco’s image has improved?

The answer suddenly occurred to me. In front of me was the recent JPMorgan Health Conference, which attracted attendees from all over the country and indeed the world.

“I’m from Colombia,” said Maria Josefina Pulido of Laboratorios Bejarano in Colombia.

More information: Venture company rents bus to hold private meeting during crowded JPMorgan conference in SF

“What do you know about San Francisco?” ABC7 News reporter Leanne Melendez asked.

“I know this is a very well-known city for startups, but like the problem you have, it’s also well-known for fentanyl,” Josefina Pulido said.

“I’ve seen good times and bad times. I’m not going to flip a switch and make it good again. I think the key is consistency. Look now, it’s clean. Right now, I’ve been here a month ago, two months ago, and obviously we’re cleaning the city for a conference. Why not keep it clean?” Sampled CEO John Delisanti said.

“How do you deal with in-store theft? How do you deal with homelessness? There are things that have been tried before that haven’t worked, so I think we’re trying new things,” added Michael Pine of Pine Health Strategies.

That’s why Mayor Lurie recently told the people in his State of the Union address: “It’s time to step on the gas. Our recovery is underway. Our job now is to make it durable for everyone.”

The bigger challenge is to do so consistently.

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