A famed TikTok food critic has cut short his trip to the Bay Area due to “shocking” safety concerns – as he claimed San Francisco and Oakland are filled with tents and burned-out cars.
Keith Lee, who has 15.6 million followers on TikTok, announced Thursday he would abandon the expected trip, citing unsafe conditions and inferior food choices.
“The Bay Area food tour is officially over early,” the content creator said before explaining the top three reasons behind his decision.
He added: “I really don’t think the bay is a place for tourists at the moment… the people of the bay are just focused on survival…. The amount of tents, residential structures and burned out cars we saw people living in was shocking to say the least.
“From the outside looking in, it doesn’t look like there’s been much interference from the city.”
Keith Lee, who has 15.6 million followers on TikTok, announced Thursday that he would abandon his expected trip to the Bay Area
“The Bay Area food tour is officially over prematurely,” the content creator said before explaining the top three reasons behind his decision
The food available in the Bay Area was also not up to par, Lee said, explaining that he went to six places to eat that he decided not to review because he had “nothing constructive” to say.
He said: ‘I’ve always been big on honesty, I’ve always been big on transparency, but I’ve never been big on completely tearing anyone down, and I feel like those six videos just did that.’
Lee claimed that if he could not post the videos, he would lose the money he invested during the trip.
Finally, Lee shared that he was hospitalized after having an allergic reaction to the food served to him in the Bay Area. He claimed he asked the restaurant to clean the grill after cooking shellfish, but it “blew up like a balloon” after eating his meal.
Lee had previously claimed he wasn’t worried about his trip to the Bay Area, posting a TikTok where he shared comments on social media in which people warned him about the safety there.
‘I go where I feel like I should go, I go by faith and not by sight, and I heard a lot of people call the Bay Gotham City, and the way my mind works, that’s even more reason for me to go ,” he said before the trip.
“From the outside looking in, it doesn’t look like there was much city interference,” Lee said
Lee said he was hospitalized after having an allergic reaction to the food he was served at the Bay Are
“Being born and raised in downtown Detroit…it taught me that the toughest situations produce the toughest people, so I’m still super excited to see what the Bay has to offer.”
The Bay Area has been on a downward spiral in recent years, with numerous businesses closing.
The number of robberies in Oakland involving a firearm will increase by 37 percent by 2023.
In addition, burglaries increased 24 percent and motor vehicle theft increased 45 percent – a record for Oakland.
Last month, both his business and his car were broken into in the same week.
A recent report found that 95 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed their doors since the start of the Covid pandemic – a drop of more than 50 percent from 2019.
Office vacancy rates hit a record high of 34 percent in September as shops were pushed out of the city center by increased crime and economists warned the city was entering an “urban doom loop.”
Looting specifically became a major problem for the city, while rampant theft caused the demise of San Francisco’s main shopping district – Union Square – and forced many major chains and local businesses to close their doors permanently.
Homeless encampments are also a problem for the Bay Area, and last month a federal judge temporarily banned San Francisco from clearing them
The Bay Area has been on a downward spiral in recent years, with numerous businesses closing
A recent report found that 95 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed their doors since the start of the Covid pandemic
Starbucks, Whole Foods, IKEA, Nordstrom and the Disney store have all closed some of their San Francisco locations due to the drastic increase in crime in the city.
Homeless encampments are also a major problem for the Bay Area. Last month, a federal judge temporarily banned San Francisco from clearing them, saying the city had violated its own policy by failing to provide other shelters.
The move stemmed from a lawsuit filed on behalf of homeless plaintiffs seeking to prevent San Francisco from dismantling homeless encampments until there are thousands of additional shelter beds.
In a statement, Mayor London Breed denounced the emergency order.
“Mayors can’t run cities like this,” she said. ‘We already have too few tools to deal with the mental illnesses we encounter on the streets. Now we are being told not to use another tool that will help bring people in and keep our neighborhoods safe and clean for our residents.”
Breed said many people encountered during the cleanups are “refusing services or already housed” and that some are using the encampments for “drug trafficking, human trafficking and other illegal activities.”
There are an estimated 7,800 homeless people in San Francisco.