Our 4th of July week was spent traveling California, including the Sierras, the coastline, and San Francisco. We were thrilled to see a livelier San Francisco, especially the Financial District. Below, we show the visits trends for different San Francisco districts, filtered for visits exceeding 30 minutes and the time of day set to the districts’ characteristics (for example, most tourists are off the streets of the Financial District by 7:00 PM). Our data indicates that North Beach and Golden Gate Park visits are up year-over-year in June (below), and the Financial District was up for last week as well.
Golden Gate Park has also seen an increase in visits compared to 2019 (below), which demonstrates ongoing normalization and healing as the park is an easy pitch for most families, both tourists and locals. We expect the word to get out to friends & family and on social media that San Francisco is still a gorgeous city and a fun and pleasant place to visit. That word-of-mouth and TikTok/Instagram will hopefully lead to a better summer/fall tourist season for the city. Given the heat domes and all the newly minted all-time hottest records, “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco” quote (misattributed to Mark Twain) must sound compelling to most these recent weeks.
Speaking of Golden Gate Park and picnics, we were shocked at the amount of picnicking taking place in the park on the 4th of July. This 4th seemed all about getting together with friends and family at the park, or in the backyard. We see this in three ways: (1) an acceleration in grocery store visits for the week versus the prior year-over-year trend by about 250 basis points; (2) Total Wine & More and other BevAlc retail chains experienced a roughly +500-basis-point acceleration in year-over-year trends; and (3) our Nightlife Index shows flattish visits year-over-year (yes, the 4th of July tradition is parades, picnics, and parks; however, it's also far cheaper than going out to eat and on the town). For consumers, 2024 is still about spending, but in a thriftier way. Industry visits to restaurants per Placer were down slightly vs. up +2% in June (helped by the latest wave of restaurant "value wars").
Last week was also a scorcher in California with many record hot days; we saw 112 degrees on our car’s temperature reading when we entered San Jose in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, the hot weather has also brought forest fires, including a large one in the Los Padres National Forest, north of Santa Barbara and in its wine region. One of the primary towns of the region is Los Olivos and feeding out of the town is the Zaca Station Road which takes one to great wineries like Firestone, Fess Parker, Cambria, and many more. However, up from the Zaca Station Road now is also the Lake Fire in Los Padres which we show on the Google Map below. Unfortunately, the fire started just as the busy 4th of July weekend was to happen for these wineries and the region.
As the table of indexed visits below shows, the fire is a large blow to weekend traffic for Los Olivos and deadly for the wineries.
