To right-wing influencers and conservative media outlets, San Francisco is a wasteland where the once-glimmering downtown mall is dead, the sidewalks are filled with homeless encampments and drug users are shooting up in the streets.
To San Franciscans and civic leaders, however, that caricature has never been accurate. And certainly not after a recent A.I. boom downtown and the redoubling of efforts to improve the quality of life.
San Francisco still has its share of down-and-out areas. And the city has not fully recovered its pre-Covid workweek energy. But local champions have insisted that much of the place remains vibrant, and that a sun-splashed walk along the Embarcadero and a Mission-style burrito can make anyone feel better about the city.
The arrival of the Super Bowl this week in the Bay Area has given San Francisco its biggest opportunity since the pandemic to change hearts and minds. And, in a polarized nation in which many Americans seem incapable of moving off deep-seated beliefs, some visitors said they had been wrong about San Francisco after actually seeing it in person.
“What we thought we were walking into here was, uh, a dump,” Pat McAfee, the ESPN host who caters to a young, male audience, said during the first national broadcast of The Pat McAfee Show from San Francisco. “It’s not at all. It was a beautiful walk this morning.”
On social media, posts about the city’s parks and sandwich shops from journalists covering the Super Bowl have often outpaced commentary about the game itself. A stretch of February sun and 70-degree weather has helped the cause, especially as the rest of the country was recovering from snowstorms.
Among the first-time visitors this week to San Francisco was Brayden Landis, 21, a sports management student at York College in Pennsylvania, who was in the Bay Area as part of a class trip.
The city had been an immediate shock to the senses, Mr. Landis said. On his first day in town, he passed out from heat exhaustion. He was struck by the city’s contrasts.
Toward the ocean, the lush expanse of Golden Gate Park greets visitors with scents of eucalyptus and morning dew. Elsewhere in the city, there are alleys where pedestrians have to avoid needles and feces.
“To me, the city was known for homelessness, fog and hippies,” he said. “But the stereotypes melted away. You see the city for what it really is, good and bad, pretty quickly. I think it’s my favorite city I’ve ever been to.”
Some local residents credited the city’s shine to a temporary deep clean and increased police presence downtown, which was typical for a major event drawing international attention. Some criticized San Francisco leaders for pushing homeless people into neighborhoods less traveled by tourists; the city had, for instance, opened a new shelter in the Mission District for homeless residents displaced by festivities, said Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the city’s Coalition on Homelessness.
The city’s approach to the Super Bowl has been emblematic of its handling of poverty in general, Ms. Friedenbach added, with a “hyper-focus” on removing the visible elements of homelessness. San Francisco’s challenges aren’t unusual for any major city, “but the media focus on our issues is certainly unique,” she said.
Local residents said the city’s politics were more complicated than right-wing media made them out to be. Voters elected a moderate Democrat, Daniel Lurie, as mayor in 2024, sending a message that they wanted a greater focus on public safety and everyday issues. Liberal activists continue trying to push the city to the left on social matters.
At the same time, tech billionaires have sounded increasingly conservative on social media and podcasts, openly complaining that San Francisco officials had not done enough to combat crime and clean up downtown.
Mr. Lurie generally received praise in his first year for focusing on small changes, showing up regularly in city neighborhoods and cheering the city on in regular Instagram posts. He has tried to steer clear of President Trump, and said little on national affairs.
He has said that the city’s approach this week was no different, and confirmed that San Francisco had opened the additional shelter site in the Mission District. Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for the mayor, said that the public works department does “scale up for big events” to keep the streets clean.
In an interview, the mayor focused on one of the things he couldn’t control: the weather. San Francisco isn’t known for being as balmy as Los Angeles in February, but the city has enjoyed sunshine and comfortable days, the kind of Chamber of Commerce weather a mayor might dream of having during a week like this one.
Mr. Lurie said that while he had heard the Charles River in Boston and parts of the Hudson River in New York were frozen, “I might even go swim in the bay today.”
In an interview, Mr. McAfee said he had noticed the optimism of San Francisco as much as the food and views.
“It seems like people are pumped with where the city is at right now, and where it’s going,” Mr. McAfee said. “What we expected is vastly different from what we’re experiencing.”
Not all media voices have been as kind. Michael Felger and Tony Massarotti, two radio hosts from Boston, still called San Francisco a “zombie apocalypse” on their show Tuesday, comparing the city to the movie “Mad Max.”
Some visitors grumbled about being snarled in San Francisco’s downtown traffic, and how they would have to travel 45 miles south to the actual site of the Super Bowl, Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
Still, other media figures, like Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, were far more charitable, showing off the city’s food scene in a weeklong video series. His fleet of Barstool content creators were also out and about, scouring the city for the best burritos, pizza and prime rib.
“Absolutely more people should be visiting,” Mr. Portnoy said in a brief interview on Thursday. He added that his favorite meal had been from House of Prime Rib, a beloved institution known for its massive portions. “Great trip and great food city,” he said.
Marsha Niblett, a 64-year-old Dallas Cowboys fan who had traveled from Oklahoma City, said she was a bit nervous about visiting the city, “expecting there’d be danger,” based on news accounts she had seen. When she arrived, she found that the city had a chaotic energy to it, but it didn’t feel much different from a typical downtown.
“Totally pleasant,” Ms. Niblett said, gesturing to the waterfront along San Francisco Bay. “I mean, look at this place.”
Eli Tan covers the technology industry for The Times from San Francisco.
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