SF cafe was vandalized. Here’s why the owner isn’t crying ‘doom loop.’

When Andytown Coffee Roasters co-owner Lauren Crabbe arrived at her Outer Richmond cafe Wednesday to find the glass front door smashed, she could have taken to social media and written a screed about the death of San Francisco. But instead, she took a more humorous approach.

“New to-go window!” she posted in an Instagram video showing a cup of coffee being handed to someone through the shattered hole. 

It’s a joke, of course, but it’s also a reaction born out of frustration. This is the fourth time Andytown, which has five locations in San Francisco, has had a window smashed at one of its cafes this year. 

“It sucks every time, right?” Crabbe told SFGATE. “And then the one yesterday, maybe I was just in a weird mood, but at that point, it was just like, this is ridiculous. You know, you just get to a point where you can’t help but laugh because if you don’t laugh, you’re going to cry.”

Each vandalized window has cost Andytown between $900 and $7,000 to replace, she said, and usually, it’s not worth filing a claim with insurance “either because the deductible is too high or it’ll raise your rates.” Crabbe also said that Andytown has applied for the city’s Storefront Vandalism Relief Grant but hasn’t heard back yet. 

Businesses getting their glass doors smashed isn’t exactly unusual in San Francisco in recent years, but Crabbe’s response to the incident is. “SF Doom Loop comments will be deleted,” she wrote in the caption for the Instagram post, referring to the trendy turn of phrase about San Francisco’s supposed death spiral. 

“Dude, I can’t with the doom loop,” she said. “… I didn’t want to trigger a doom loop conversation because … it’s an important conversation that needs to be happening, but I don’t think that social media is the place to have it, with a bunch of anonymous people who could be from wherever trying to blame all of San Francisco’s problems on whatever they think is the good scapegoat at the moment.”

Crabbe has had to delete only three comments so far, she said. Some Instagram users have even chimed in to thank her for not participating in the doom loop narrative.

“I think that for the majority of people who live here, I mean I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but, you know, we love it here, and I don’t like it when people are s—t talking my city,” she added. 

All jokes aside, the Andytown cafe inside the Outer Richmond Ocean Plant building will indeed have its front door replaced. 

“We’re going to keep doing what we do in the city that we love,” Crabbe said. “I’m not here to pretend like I know the answers to San Francisco’s problems, but I’m also not here to serve as a forum for people to complain.”