Is San Francisco a bellwether for the USA? The Deep South and Midwest would wince at the notion that the city which fostered the Free Speech Movement, the Black Panthers, the fight for gay liberation was in any way representative of their great country. But astrologically they are pretty much twinned, San Francisco having been founded 29 June 1776 just before the USA.
There is concern at the moment about the ‘doom loop’ San Francisco finds itself in with a crisis of homelessness, drug abuse and sensationalised crime. Drug cartels have flooded in fentanyl which has killed twice as many as Covid-19 in recent times. The raging epidemic has seen a distribution of reversal kits to libraries, entertainment venues, churches and schools.
The Bay Area is home to four of the 10 most valuable companies in the world — Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia and Meta — who co-exist with staggeringly high levels of homelessness, five times greater than the national average. There is stark racial inequality with more than 40 per cent of the homeless being black or mixed race, with the financial gulf between white and black having expanded to the largest in the country.
San Francisco has always been a boom and bust town – first with the gold rush, then silver, earthquakes in 1906 and 1989, plus the AIDS epidemic to the dotcom collapse.
San Francisco like the USA is undergoing its Pluto Return and while the obvious signs of urban decay are more stark in the Bay area, the wealth gap and racial wealth gap are widening across the nation as a whole.
San Fran has the same fervent Mercury in Cancer opposition Pluto which will at times have led it into extremes. Its ultra-progressive streak possibly comes from its uncompromising and disruptive Uranus Mars conjunction in Gemini – which is not as marked in the USA chart. San Fran also has a laid-back Sagittarius Moon.
The SF 29 June 1776 chart works well since the devastating 1906 earthquake occurred when tr Uranus in Capricorn opposition Neptune in Cancer was sitting exactly on top of its Cancer Sun. Equally the 1989 earthquake had tr Saturn Neptune in Capricorn opposition the SF Sun. The Dotcom collapse of 2000 saw tr Neptune opposition SF’s leadership North Node undermining its position – with tr Uranus conjunct and tr Saturn square the Solar Arc Sun.
What comes next? There will be a resurgent and confident push in 2025 from Solar Arc Pluto square the SF Jupiter but 2026 to 2028 will be unhappy, slipping and sliding years with SA Saturn square Neptune and tr Saturn and then tr Neptune in Aries squaring Jupiter and the Sun. It’ll take a few years for the Golden Gate City to regain its mojo after a few more hitches and glitches to be overcome.
The situation may be more extreme in San Francisco but to some extent the USA will follow suit with its Venus Jupiter in early Cancer catching the financial bubble-busting tr Neptune squares in 2025 to 2027 – after the Pluto Return subsides. Pluto deconstructs and usually agonisingly slowly starts to reconstruct on the far side, No phoenix without ashes first.