Alex Ludlum ID’d as mastermind of ‘doom loop’ tour, resigns with attack on ‘deplorable’ streets and ‘rampant criminality’

A San Francisco commissioner has been identified as being behind the controversial “doom loop” walking tour — leading him to resign with a blistering letter blasting the progressive city’s “deplorable” conditions and “rampant criminality.”

Alex Ludlum, a member of the city’s Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure, initially advertised the since-scrapped $30 tour anonymously.

But he was identified as the organizer after refund notices listed his email address, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. 

He confirmed it Monday while resigning from his post in a letter to Mayor London Breed — while attacking the city’s “wide-ranging policies that permit an organized & malicious element to thrive in San Francisco.”

“I regret that my attempt to bring attention to the deplorable street conditions & rampant criminality in my neighborhood has been misconstrued as a mockery of suffering individuals,” Ludlum wrote in the letter obtained by the Chronicle.

“Satire is a poor way to address the grave issues we face as a city.”

While resigning, he promised to give “full support” to helping to tackle the “dire issues” his advertised tour said it would take in.

“The unchecked drug dealing is plainly the root of our current problems. … All of downtown will suffer until the markets are closed,” he wrote.

Ludlum had canceled the Aug. 26 event less than 24 hours before he was supposed to lead the tour through City Hall, Mid-Market, Union Square and Tenderloin districts.

Curious locals and tourists who signed up for the sold-out $30 tour were promised an up-close-and-personal experience of San Francisco as “the model of urban decay” with a tour of the “open-air drug markets” and vacant office spaces.

Ludlum is also the vice president at real estate investment firm SPI Holdings and co-founded the SoMa West Community Benefit District.

He was appointed to the commission by Mayor Breed in March 2022 and reappointed in November. By early Tuesday, his picture and biography had been pulled from the commission’s page.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin confirmed to local media Monday that he spoke to Ludlum who “basically said that he meant it in jest but it got out of hand.”

Breed’s spokesman Jeff Creta, however, said that “the decision to organize and publicize the tour was a mistake and deep error in judgment.”

“We are working every day to address the city’s challenges, and out focus remains on doing the work to move the city forward,” Creta said.

Since Ludlum was a no-show for Saturday’s doom loop tour, an opposition tour led by community activist Del Seymour took about 70 locals and visitors on a two-mile “positive walk.”

While it pointed to all the community services available in the area, the tour passed numerous homeless encampments and drug-addled “zombies” high on fentanyl and other drugs.

Seymour said he was disappointed by Ludlum’s “meanness” in organizing the doom loop tour.

“Why would someone foster something as ridiculous as that,” Seymour told The Post after hearing about Ludlum’s resignation.

“I do think he did some good because it brought into the spotlight that there are some positive things happening in the Tenderloin, but we still do have people here who are damaging themselves. We are not going to take this lying down.”