Some news from the front that is entirely expected:

From Chicago:

Ken Londe, the owner of Londo Mondo, said his store got hit around 2:30 am. He said there’s well over $25,000 worth in loss merchandise. He also said the cash drawer was stolen. pic.twitter.com/rsRI08irVk

— Madeline Kenney (@madkenney) August 10, 2020

https://twitter.com/zerosum24/status/1292772033814769664

https://twitter.com/zerosum24/status/1292772033814769664

Looters broke into a Chicago mall and are looting the place clean tonight. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/wKJZbcvpoZ

— Andy Ngô ?️‍? (@MrAndyNgo) August 10, 2020

Looting and violence.  These businesses are being hit hard.  Between the loss of revenue from the COVID lockdowns both from locals and tourists, the loss of inventory from the looting, and the destruction of the actual property, some of these businesses might not reopen.

What has been the response?

Chicago residents who live in quality condos (which I can attest to are not cheap, and therefore these are the business owners and professional-class people of Chicago) are planning on leaving the city and taking their business with them.

Next is Minneapolis:

Landscape of rubble persists as Minneapolis demands taxes in exchange for permits

In Minneapolis, on a desolate lot where Don Blyly’s bookstore stood before being destroyed in the May riots, two men finish their cigarettes and then walk through a dangerous landscape filled with slippery debris and sharp objects. The city won’t let Blyly haul away his wreckage without a permit, and he can’t get a contractor to tell him how much it will cost to rebuild the store until that happens.

The main reason for the different recoveries is simple: Minneapolis requires owners to prepay the second half of their 2020 property taxes in order to obtain a demolition permit. St. Paul does not.

“Minneapolis has not been particularly friendly toward business for some time,” said Blyly, who prepaid $8,847 in taxes last week but still hasn’t received his demolition permit. “They say they want to be helpful, but they certainly have not been.”

Cleaning up that mess is expensive. Most property owners must pay $35,000 to $100,000 to clear their sites of debris, with larger tracts — such as strip shopping centers — costing as much as $400,000, according to property owners. That doesn’t include the money those owners must pay to get their permits. On average, the owners of properties destroyed or significantly damaged owe $25,000 in taxes for the second half of 2020, which come due in October, according to a Star Tribune review of county property records.

The city requires the tax money upfront to allow for a demolition permit to clear buildings damaged or destroyed in riots that the city allowed to happen.

The result is the rubble is sitting there and business owners who don’t have the money can’t rebuild.

Next is Seattle:

Seattle business owners close shop as city moves to defund police: ‘Safety became paramount’

The push to defund the Seattle police is causing a local business owner to close his store, said Matt Raetzer, owner of Steelpologie Teas.

“It was a decision after deliberation. We’ve been there for three and a half years. That was our first store,” Raetzer told “Fox & Friends.”

Raetzer said that over the past several years the police have made “best efforts to stem the tide of growing homelessness, open-air drug use and violence.”

“Seattle City Hall seems to continue to hobble their efforts to make a change,” he said.

This is only one of hundreds of similar stories from Seattle.

Now Portland:

Portland business owner on impact of riots, coronavirus: ‘It’s terrifying’

Two months of daily and nightly protests and rioting have devastated the city of Portland, Ore., leaving many residents and businesses in a state of fear and uncertainty.

“It’s terrifying,” Gibson said about trying to keep her businesses alive – and her employees in their jobs – amid the twin disasters of the coronavirus and the rioting, which Bream described as a “one-two punch.”

Gibson told Bream that the coronavirus outbreak had already taken a 60 percent bite out of her overall sales – then two months ago the rioting and vandalism began, slowing sales by another 20 percent.

The difference can be seen by comparing the numbers in her downtown Portland restaurant versus those in outlying areas away from the unrest, she said.

“I mean, we’ve got one store that’s well over last year’s sales, it’s as if you know everybody’s just doing quite great,” she said of a store away from the violence.

The downtown location had to be temporarily closed.

“When we boarded up, it was absolutely devastating financially,” Gibson said. “We had to make a really tough decision on whether or not we wanted to just close the store and wait for everything to kind of be over.

The loss in revenue to business has been in excess of $23 million.

Last we look at New York City:

Retail chains abandon Manhattan: ‘It’s unsustainable’

The tourists are gone, the office towers surrounding it are largely empty, and the restaurant’s 1,000-seat dining room is closed. Instead, dinner is cooked and served on its patio, and the scaled-down restaurant brings in about $12,000 a day — an 85% plunge in revenue, its chief executive said.

In the heart of Manhattan, national chains including J.C. Penney, Kate Spade, Subway and Le Pain Quotidien have shuttered branches for good. Many other large brands, like Victoria’s Secret and the Gap, have their kept high-profile locations closed in Manhattan, while reopening in other states.

Of Ark Restaurants’ five Manhattan restaurants, only two have reopened, while its properties in Florida — where the virus is far worse — have expanded outdoor seating with tents and tables into their parking lots, serving almost as many guests as they had indoors.

“There’s no reason to do business in New York,” Weinstein said. “I can do the same volume in Florida in the same square feet as I would have in New York, with my expenses being much less. The idea was that branding and locations were important, but the expense of being in this city has overtaken the marketing group that says you have to be there.”

It’s not just the lockdowns in perpetuity but the crime as well, keeping the people away and the businesses closed.

Blue Cities across the country, between harsh lockdowns and permissive policing of riots, have utterly destroyed the business districts of these cities.

The business owners and professional class in these cities are picking up and leaving, and taking their businesses with them.

All that is being left behind is broken windows, boarded up and vacant storefronts, and rubble.

Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York City, are all headed the way of Detroit.  Within a few years, the cities will be gutted.  Only the poor will remain in any numbers and these cities will be the dilapidated husks of what they once were.

It seems as though turning Detroit from the nicest middle-class city in the midwest into a third-world shithole of crime and empty buildings wasn’t a fluke, it was a goal, one that is being implemented in Blue cities across this country.