A Stabbing in Scenic San Francisco*
When a tech darling gets knifed, literally, unfounded accusations fly. And yet...
Someone once said, probably someone’s mother, that nothing good happens after 1 in the morning. Having been a bouncer I find I tend to agree. Years of watching evenings unfold and the hopeful promise of good times giving way to a collective realization that you either are a dreg, or are among the dregs, has many Hail Mary’ing various attempts to salvage time that would have been better spent at home.
This is what goes through my head when I first read that 43-year-old Cash App founder Bob Lee was stabbed to death in early April in San Francisco. At 2:35 a.m. police officers responded to calls of a man having been stabbed. Lee later died at an area hospital from what police felt comfortable in saying was a homicide.
Lee, for his part, after having created Cash App, a money transfer service up there with Venmo and PayPal, had also been chief technology officer of Block, formerly known as Square, and as of late, the chief product officer at Mobile Coin. Moving from San Francisco to Miami around the time of the death of his mother Lee, separated from his wife and the father of two, had returned to San Francisco for a visit. A visit that ended with three stab wounds, two in the chest, and the third right in his heart.
Professional shithead Elon Musk, in responding to a Tweet from professional fighter Jake Shields (full disclosure: a known associate of mine) shifted the narrative to a favorite and familiar stalking horse: San Francisco’s out of control crime rate. Because, you know: liberals.
Despite all of the anti-tech bro hubbub kicked around by the caste of artists now-priced out of San Francisco a few years earlier when neighborhoods were invaded by Google buses, the response to what was felt to be random street crime was relatively muted. For about 30 seconds.
After 30 seconds? Professional shithead Elon Musk, in responding to a Tweet from professional fighter Jake Shields (full disclosure: a known associate of mine) shifted the narrative to a favorite and familiar stalking horse: San Francisco’s out of control crime rate. Because, you know: liberals.
Musk wasn’t alone. A few other tech types veered off of the sorrow narrative and right into discussions about the collapse of the city where Tony Bennett once left his heart. The piles of human excrement, blocks and blocks of tents and tent cities, for the fortunate unhoused. Sidewalks for the less fortunate. Drug excess. Robbery. Rape. Crime unbridled.
Blame was shaken specifically on to Prop 36 which, it was felt, revolving door’d drug offenders back on the streets instead of jail where they might get cleaned up. But in general on liberal politics and politicians who have run the city for decades. Into the ground the claims ran.
The thing is…they’re not totally wrong.
But to go macro for 30 more seconds there are reasons why this is an incomplete explanation. Firstly, 30 percent of the unhoused live in California as of last year, a six-percent increase when compared to the rest of the U.S. Policies, like Prop 36, make it “easier” to be homeless here, but so does the weather. San Francisco has also seen an increase in its homeless population but Los Angeles has seen the biggest increase. And now California, which had a projected $97.5 billion budget surplus last year now, according to Governor Gavin Newsom, who has presidential aspirations, now faces a $25 billion deficit.
So things are unlikely to get better in the city where one-bedroom apartments pre-COVID were costing $4500 a month.
Momeni used a kitchen knife to stab Lee. Momeni did not resist arrest when he was finally arrested at his tony apartment in Emeryville. All of these people had homes, jobs, and the silence surrounding the story’s turn was…deafening.
All of which have very little to do with the price of tea in China as my great grandmother used to say. Which is to say…I was having a Columbo moment.
That is, the Bob Lee story never smelled right to me. Homeless people prefer, in general, the company of other homeless people. One of the worst reported after effects of homelessness have been issues connected to humans suddenly feeling “invisible”. But you are actually seen in a community of peers. And the homeless peerage collects in places close to support services, be they institutions or collections of people who are known to give.
Lee was found in a relatively deserted neighborhood of expensive high rises. At 2:35 in the morning. Homeless people like to sleep too. Lee was also not robbed. Which would, presumably, have been the reason for his stabbing were a homeless person have been found to be guilty.
No. He was stabbed three times, not robbed, and died, alone.
Within 72 hours other story elements started to trickle out as the police reconstructed his evening and the reconstruction focused largely on the man who was later arrested for the crime, Nima Momeni, a 38-year-old owner of information technology consulting company Expand IT.
Momeni and Lee had been socializing for the better part of the day before getting into an argument over Momeni’s sister. An argument that was somewhat tangentially connected to drugs. Momeni used a kitchen knife to stab Lee. Momeni did not resist arrest when he was finally arrested at his tony apartment in Emeryville.
All of these people had homes, jobs, and the silence surrounding the story’s turn was…deafening.
“I think San Francisco’s homeless deserve an apology,” said sports financial columnist John Nash. And right, though he may be, this has not been forthcoming. While it also took the media a beat to pivot to the fact that Momeni was Persian/Iranian, this hasn’t gathered much steam either.
In the end, though, how much steam can be gathered for what feels very much like Romeo and Juliet family business? It’s a tragedy, all around, no matter how you cut it and how you cut it, shorn of the simplistic shuck about the poor and indigent, should mostly focus on kids, like Lee’s, who will never see their father again. Like all of the kids who had fathers, whatever their names were, taken away in the shadow of San Francisco’s increasing murder rate over the past half decade.
Because, as some sage observer noted in a different time, place and under different circumstances, all lives matter.
Right? [This is a trick question and you will be graded on a curve so think…carefully.]
Popeye looks totally chill. Sweet pup!
I hate that Bob Lee's kids will have to grow up without their father, even part-time. I hate that the right blames every single crime in a Democratically-controlled city on politics. I hate the never-ending drumbeat of hideously exaggerated hyperbole that accompanies every headline crime.
I would love to get along better with my fellow humans, but many of them just don't want to let me. Think it's my face?
;)
Eugene, your narrative reminds me of the fact that we discussed once the story in the press about the cook who was cranking his music too loud after his shift at a upscale, mission restaurant, and got into a fatal altercation with the trained fighter, who came down to ask him to turn down.