San Fran­cis­co hands out tulips as major retail­ers flee icon­ic Union Square loca­tion

SAN FRANCISCO — On a sun­ny Sat­ur­day in March, more than 40,000 peo­ple filed through San Francisco’s Union Square to get a glimpse of the 80,000 yel­low, orange, and red tulips on dis­play.
The flower gar­den offi­cial­ly opened at 1 p.m. but that didn’t stop peo­ple from get­ting in line hours ear­li­er, shov­els and bags in hand. The rule was that they could dig up eight tulips to keep until the flow­ers ran out.

San Francisco’s Tulip Day on Sat­ur­day, March 9, 2024 (Barni­ni Chakraborty/Washington Exam­in­er)

By mid­day, the line had snaked around Union Square, a 2.6‑acre pub­lic plaza in down­town San Fran­cis­co, twice. The mas­sive space and sur­round­ing area has his­tor­i­cal­ly been home to one of the largest col­lec­tions of departm …