If that Jack Spade store had actually succeeded in moving to the Mission, it’d be closing right now

While I don’t think this news factored at all in their decision to abandon plans to open a store in the old Adobe Books location, it’s still kind of funny.

After just two years on the market, Kate Spade Saturday — Kate Spade‘s lower-priced, more casual offshoot — is closing all 19 of its stores. Jack Spade, Kate Spade & Company’s 22-year-old menswear brand, is also shuttering all 12 of its stores. Stores will close gradually over the first half of 2015, and Kate Spade Saturday’s e-commerce site will remain active during that time.

[Link, Photo]

(Thanks Raun!)

34 Responses to “If that Jack Spade store had actually succeeded in moving to the Mission, it’d be closing right now”

  1. MrEricSir says:

    Good riddance, but meanwhile does anyone know what’s going on with the old Idol Vintage space next door?

  2. Yes We Can! says:

    It’s very impressive how activists stopped neighborhood gentrification by preventing them from setting up a shop.

    • JohnnyL says:

      amen. a boarded up store is SO much fucking better. YAY ACTIVISTS

      • Andy says:

        Uh, Wrong.

        That space was Adobe Books before they got booted out to make way for Jack Spade. Can’t blame that on the activists. Get your story straight.

      • Andy says:

        And pretty much everything you enjoy about San Francisco and your entire life, for that matter, exists because some activists did the work to make it possible. You ungrateful, ignorant fool. So yes YAY ACTIVISTS.

        • 24-24 says:

          Sounds like Andy has sprung a leak in his diaper again

        • YAY ACTIVISTS! says:

          I especially appreciate the local activists’ righteous contribution to the housing shortage. Will they continue their noble work by preventing housing from being built at the major transit hub of 16th and Mission? I hope so…

          • blue balls says:

            those fools will really fuck shit up with their building moratorium.

          • Andy says:

            NO ONE, repeat NO ONE, is talking about stopping the building of housing. BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING. There is a TON of market-rate housing recently built and in the pipeline for the Mission. In fact, with housing built and currently approved and in the pipeline–the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan for housing goals for the year 2020 have ALREADY been met. The Mission and the city has a glut of market-rate/luxury-priced housing. We need affordable housing. It’s common-sense.

            People don’t even actually live in very big percentage of the new market-rate/luxury condos being built. Tons of these units are sitting vacant 90% or more of the time as vacation properties or investment properties. We need affordable housing, not more market rate that only a tiny percentage of SFers can afford or use for parking their excess cash.

            And it’s not just “local activists” who are saying we have enough market-rate housing being built in the Mission. It’s basically EVERYONE who has lived in this neighborhood for more than two years. You self-righteous, ignorant, libertarian, free-marketers know nothing and care nothing about this neighborhood, this city’s history, it’s real culture, and you are willfully ignorant about how the housing economy works in SF.

          • Andy says:

            Here’s what happens to the market rate towers you so badly want built.

            http://www.newsweek.com/hidden-costs-ghost-apartments-322264#.VTFcQReS6tI.facebook

          • YAY ACTIVISTS! says:

            how do you plan to pay for all of this ‘affordable’ housing?

            while you’re trying to figure that out watch the wealthy continue to grab up all of the existing housing. you guys never learn.

          • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

            Andy: Well said.

          • whateversville says:

            @Andy — A hypothetical for you. Say the Plaza16 people get their demand that 16th and Mission turns into a 100% affordable project. They find some miraculous way to finance the same number of affordable units they’re building now–90 below market, 41 for middle-income earners. Nobody gets evicted to build the thing. Everyone wins, right?

            Why is that somehow better than doing all those things, AND building 290 apartments for rich people to live in, so they have somewhere to live instead of trying to evict you, me, and everyone else?

            And by the way:
            “It’s basically EVERYONE who has lived in this neighborhood for more than two years.”
            Seven years here. Am I allowed to have this opinion?

            “You self-righteous, ignorant,”
            Ouch.

            “libertarian, free-marketers”
            Ha. No.

            “know nothing and care nothing about this neighborhood, this city’s history”
            I do, actually. I think that the city is shitting itself by throwing a tantrum about new residents instead of finding a way to absorb those new residents. Doing nothing IS displacing people.

            “it’s real culture,”
            Enlighten us.

            “and you are willfully ignorant about how the housing economy works in SF.”
            San Francisco is a city where people protest modest housing developments that are entirely within the zoning code for being too large, too tall, and not having enough parking spaces. After long enough, we end up in the situation we’re in now, where we’ve built 1 apartment for every 10 new residents in the last five years, and prices are fucking insane. Instead of recognizing a crisis and being kind-hearted people, willing to tolerate a building with six stories instead of four if it means more places for their neighbors to live, residents continue to object to every single construction project with the same tired bullshit about shadows, parking, and ‘neighborhood character’, while all the actual character of their neighborhood–y’know, their neighbors–moves to Oakland.

            Is that how it works, or did I miss something?

          • Leary says:

            “NO ONE, repeat NO ONE, is talking about stopping the building of housing.”

            Except for the people that are talking about stopping the building of housing, you mean? What do you think Campos is talking about when he proposes a moratorium on new market rate construction in the Mission, exactly?

          • Leary says:

            “how do you plan to pay for all of this ‘affordable’ housing? ”

            EXACTLY.

            Until you have an actual answer to this – and yelling “TAX TECH!” is not, by itself, an answer – your claims that you “just want affordable housing built instead” are completely meaningless. Almost all the only BMR housing being built in the Mission these days is a byproduct of the market-rate housing you hate so much.

            PRESENT A REAL, WORKABLE PLAN.

      • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

        Yep, it is better than a chainstore. Agreed.

  3. Truth says:

    That empty boarded up retail space has really saved the neighborhood

    • Andy says:

      It wouldn’t be an empty storefront if they hadn’t gotten hella greedy and booted out the beloved Adobe Books to replace them with a shitty corporate retail store.

      • Truth says:

        Adobe is great, but everyone involved knew that space couldn’t last forever. They don’t make any money, they barely even keep the books . . . spaces like it have been popping up and shutting down all over the city for many years before heroic blog commentators started gentrifying the mission in the name of putting an end to gentrification. Adobe still exists on 24th st and if Jack Spade hadn’t put a bid on that retail space, someone else would have.

        • Andy says:

          Dude, you ain’t makin’ a lick of sense.

          Adobe was paying their rent. Every month. On Time. Every year.

          Then the landlord wanted to raise the rent. That sucked. But Adobe and a ton of folks from the community pulled together, raised a bunch of money, and reorganized into a collective and found a way to the pay the higher rent. Then the landlord was like, “oh shit,” and then hell raised the rent AGAIN, so that Adobe would have to leave for Jack Spade.

          Then Jack Spade was stopped by the community and the place sat empty. AND NO ONE ELSE BID ON THAT PLACE for a very long time and it sits empty.

          You say, “if Jack Spade hadn’t put a bid on that retail space, someone else would have.” ?? Well than why hasn’t someone else done that since? Like I said, you ain’t making sense.

          Abobe would still be there and there would be no empty storefront if they hadn’t got pushed out for the sake of a shitty billion-dollar corporate retailer, who incidentally would have closed their store this week regardless, leaving-you guess it–an empty storefront.

          Again, it it weren’t for Jack Spade plotting with a greedy landlord, Adobe would still be there, serving the community and making our neighborhood a better fucking place.

          • jd says:

            Those are some pretty solid points. Well put.

          • Truth says:

            You’re logic hinges on the fallacy that 16th and Guerrero is an unpopular and inexpensive place to open a business. That rent would have been raised regardless, just like it has been raised on every business on that block (ask around).

            No one will touch it with a 10-foot pole now, not because they don’t want to pay the rent but because of the clusterfuck that happened with Jack Spade. Your misdirected tantrums have worked rather well and now people are terrified to take over that lease. You’ve got what you fought so hard for: an indefinitely empty storefront to maintain the ‘character’ of this neighborhood that you probably moved to less than 10 years go and where you probably won’t stick around for another 10.

      • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

        Hear, Hear.

  4. Wheresmejumper says:

    The old VCMA hung itself. The self-important megalomaniacs running the association went too far and it was clear their objections were reeking of cronyism. By the time they figured out it was the landlords that had the ultimate power they had already screwed the pooch. In the end, they created a neighborhood so exclusive they couldn’t even afford to operate in it.

  5. pastido says:

    Proves that the decision to keep them out was right.

  6. chitrana says:

    This is hilarious!

  7. chitrana says:

    Maybe they will reopen another 12 stores as “Joe Spade” and try to subvert limits on chain stores.

  8. Mission josh says:

    JAke spade hexed itself.

  9. Emory says:

    Oh the irony. I hope I kept my t-shirt, it’ll be more ironic and silly than the first time I wore it.
    http://www.missionmission.org/2013/10/02/another-perspective-on-the-jack-spade-issue/