A Death *in* San Francisco Becomes the Death *of* San Francisco w/Joe Eskenazi

Journos

Sometimes a story isn't a story at all. It's a ball that interested players use to score points in whatever game they're playing — politics, cred, likes, lols.

In this episode, we're talking about one such story.

In San Francisco, a man named Bob Lee, a tech luminary, was murdered in the early morning hours of April 4. He'd been stabbed and left for dead. It was game on for commentators in the world of tech and elsewhere, like perpetual gamer Elon Musk, who used the opportunity to criticize the city's approach to violent crime.

A few days ago, the SF journalism outlet Mission Local broke a huge story: Police arrested the alleged murderer ... and he's a tech entrepreneur who knew Lee. Other major outlets like The New York Times and Washington Post followed up on Mission Local's scoop — even if they didn't credit the site for breaking the story in the first place.

There's still a lot of story swirling around: Who is the alleged killer, Nima Momeni? How did he know Lee? How did it lead to murder? And of course, this being San Francisco, the story still gets bounced around in the blame game of crime, homelessness, and drug addiction.

Lotta bouncing.

Today, we're talking to Brandon's longtime friend and former colleague from SF Weekly, Joe Eskenazi. Joe broke the story of the arrest. He's a lifelong Bay Area journalist who many call the best reporter in San Francisco.

We have him on to talk about the case and the ways it got spun to serve certain agendas. We also talk about those very real and lasting problems the city faces, why it's so hard for the city to deal with them, and how SF is still, in many ways, worthy of the title Joe bestowed on it way back in 2009 with his story, "The Worse-Run Big City in the U.S."

That story is still well worth a read if you want to understand how good intentions, money, and a lack of accountability lead to, as has become shorthand, shit and needles in the streets.

As for the Lee case, as Joe says in our discussion, "This isn't about tech, and this isn't about San Francisco. It's about something else."

In this episode, we try to dodge the balls and figure out what the game really is.

NOTES

Here's video of the city's press conference announcing Momeni's arrest. We play a clip of SF Police Chief Bob Scott talking human nature in the episode.