At a meeting last Wednesday of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association (the People's Front of Haight Ashbury), the owner of the property, Mark Brennan, announced that Whole Foods wasn't going to move into the spot as the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (the Haight Ashburian People's Front) said no to the whole thing. Rumor has it they put the squeeze on an unknown political type who put the stop to it all. How? Whole Foods could have moved in if Cala left in all the shopping market fixtures there. Because of pressure from HANC, Cala sold all the fixtures so instead of there being an abandoned shopping market, now apparently it's just an abandoned building.

Now, you might be wondering why as apparently most people were kind of psyched on the idea. Whole Foods is, after all, a bit more upscale than the notoriously downscale Cala, it sells organic food which fits into the whole Haight vibe, and it will put something in a spot that in it's current guise fits a little too much in with the whole run-down drugged out mise en scene that is the end of Haight. Also of note is that Whole Foods somehow magically increases property values and increased property values means property owners get rich(er). It is the hope of some people in the hood to actually get a bit more gentrified as for whatever reason, having to constantly walk around and sometimes over 17 year old gutter punks selling buds and doses and endlessly singing "All Along the Watchtower" is not appealing to them.