A leader with a San Francisco city commission has been forced to resign after he was identified as the man behind a proposed “Downtown Doom Loop Walking Tour,” which he ended up canceling over the weekend, according to Bay Area media reports.
Alex Ludlum, 35, a real estate professional who was also the vice president of San Francisco’s Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure, was connected to the canceled event through refund notices that listed a person with his email address as the organizer, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Aaron Peskin, president of the city’s board of supervisors, told the paper that Ludlum texted him about the tour on Sunday, and later told him that the tour was meant to be a satire.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed appointed Ludlum to the investment and infrastructure commission last year, according to the Chronicle. A spokesman for the mayor called the decision to offer the doom-loop tour a “mistake and a deep error in judgment.”
Attempts by National Review to reach Ludlum on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
The tour, offered on Eventbrite for $30 and slated for 11 a.m. on Saturday, August 26, received national attention for promising to give tourists and residents an up-close look at the worst the city of San Francisco has to offer: open-air drug markets, abandoned tech offices, deserted storefronts. “You’ve read the headlines, you’ve seen the Tweets, now get close and personal to the Doom and Squalor of downtown San Francisco,” a description of the event read.
The tour guide — described as an “expert” and a “SF native, political junkie, & opinionated loudmouth” — was going to help people to understand “the policy choices that made America’s wealthiest city the nation’s innovative leader of housing crisis, addiction crisis, mental-health crisis, & unrepentant crime crisis.” The guide was described as an “urban policy professional, card-carrying City Commissioner overseeing a municipal department with an annual budget of over $500m, and co-founder of San Francisco’s largest neighborhood association.”
The tour organizer, listed only as “SF Anonymous Insider,” told customers he was cancelling the event because media attention made it impossible for him to remain anonymous.
Ludlum was outed as the possible man behind the tour over the weekend.
The investment and infrastructure commission’s website describes Ludlum as a “real estate professional with a focus on in-fill residential development in the San Francisco Bay Area,” a “co-founder of the SoMa West Community Benefit District,” and a San Francisco native. The Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure is responsible for development in several San Francisco neighborhoods.
While the doom loop tour was canceled on Saturday, an “anti-doom loop” counter-tour went on as planned. Community activist Del Seymour led about 70 people on a two-mile walk through several neighborhoods, according to the New York Post.
But while the protest tour was meant to show positive aspects of the city, participants saw plenty of shuttered stores, homeless tent encampments, people dealing drugs and smoking fentanyl openly, the Post reported. A homeless man yelled at some in the group.
“The stench of urine mixed with human and animal feces was at times overwhelming as Seymour quickly walked the group past the notorious corner of Hyde and Turk streets, where drug deals run rampant, especially ‘once the sun goes down,’” a local told the Post.