SAN FRANCISCO — For more than 40 years, Jim Siegel has been doing what he loves on Haight Street in San Francisco. Distractions, a legacy business, is one of the famed neighborhood’s oldest shops. Sunday was his last day in business.
“It’s bittersweet, I love the Haight Ashbury with all my heart. I opened up this business not to make money but to bring the Haight Ashbury back. It had very much been in a state of decline in the early 1970s,” Siegel said.
In the display window of Distractions, the clothing and costume shop he opened in 1982, there’s a 1976 photo of Siegel standing outside White Rabbit, his first store on Haight Street.
Siegel says the store was thriving up until the pandemic hit. Burning Man always led to a huge boost in sales, averaging around $200,000 every August.
This year, he brought in less than half of that: $90,000.
“The city’s been in a little bit…
