Esteemed filmmaker Spike Lee received a Tribute Award at the Mill Valley Film Festival this weekend. While on stage with Oakland-based actor Delroy Lindo, who starred in four of Lee’s films, Lee suddenly remembered he directed the 2004 film Sucker Free City.

As the Chronicle reports, Lee was on stage with Lindo, who most recently starred in the Ryan Coogler film Sinners, when it dawned on Lee that he’d shot a film entirely in San Francisco. Struggling to remember the film’s name, Lee asked the audience to pull up IMDB.

According to a 2005 SFGate post, Sucker Free City was directed by Lee and written by San Francisco-raised Alex Tseas, of The Watchmen fame, as a pilot for a Showtime series that never came to be. SFGate writes that the film, which highlights conflicts among white, Black, Latino and Asian street gangs in San Francisco, didn’t get picked up as a series because Lee couldn’t commit to filming more than the pilot episode.

Per SFGate, the film explores the concept of displacement through various San Francisco-specific themes, including the history of the formation of Chinatown, the Navy’s divestment from Hunters Point, and artists being pushed out of the Mission.

During Saturday’s event, Lee credited his neighbor for giving him a Super 8 film camera when he was young, which determined his fate as a filmmaker.

“I say my prayers and blessings when I go to bed every night because it could have gone this way or that way,” Lee said, per the Chronicle. “It wasn’t a straight path, and if I did not go see (my neighbor) that day, I would not be here. You would never have heard Spike Lee.”

Image: Delroy Lindo and Spike Lee attend Mill Valley Film Festival Award ceremony For Lifetime Achievement: Spike Lee at Smith Rafael Film Center on October 11, 2025 in San Rafael, California. (Photo by Miikka Skaffari/Getty Images)

• Suzie Smith, the nurse who was aboard the medical helicopter that crashed on Highway 50 in Sacramento Monday has died. Smith helped people around the world as a long-time traveling nurse before settling down in Sacramento for two decades. [CBS Sacramento]

• Six people were killed and at least 10 others were injured in a shooting in Leland, Mississippi Friday night at a gathering that followed a high school homecoming game. Additionally, two others were killed in a separate Friday night shooting on the grounds of a high school in Heidelberg, Mississippi. [ABC News]
• Perla Rosario Henriquez Ulloa, 21, of San Francisco was arrested and booked on multiple charges Thursday relating to the hit-and-run crash in Bernal Heights that killed Binod Budhathoki, a 30-year-old Nepalese immigrant, last weekend. [Chronicle]
• About 100 people on skateboards, bikes, and roller skates took part in Saturday’s city-approved hill bomb in Twin Peaks, a big contrast to the unsanctioned 2023 hill bomb that resulted in 100 arrests. [Chronicle]

• The Bay Area is expected to see rain with possible thunderstorms and lightning Monday morning, which could potentially cause minor urban overflow and small stream flooding. [KPIX]
• Oakland’s 17th Street serves as an example of how creating a walkable city without addressing the inevitable increase in cost of living leads to widespread vacancies and fractured communities. [Cities by Diana]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Hayward and Alameda County leaders have proposed a $900,000 reparations fund for residents whose land was seized during the demolition of Russell City — a historically Black and Latino community — to make way for an industrial park in the 1960s.

As Bay Area News Group reports, Russell City, once a thriving Black and Latino community on the edge of Hayward, was bulldozed in the 1960s under the guise of redevelopment. Now, nearly 60 years later, officials in Hayward and Alameda County are proposing a $900,000 redress fund for surviving residents who had their land seized and homes destroyed.

As KGO reports, Hayward officials and Alameda County Supervisors Elisa Márquez and Nate Miley have proposed that $250,000 would be allocated to the fund from the City of Hayward, $400,000 from Márquez’s office, and $250,000 from Miley’s. The funds would go to former Russell City residents whose properties were taken by eminent domain and annexed into Hayward.

Russell City was home to roughly 1,400 people, including Black, Latino, Asian, and poor white residents, before it was razed. About 700 parcels were seized. Though unincorporated and lacking city services, it was a vibrant community known for its strong local identity and blues music scene, hosting acts like Ray Charles and Dottie Ivory.

In 2021, Hayward formally apologized for its role in the destruction of the neighborhood, as reported by KQED. Alameda County followed with its own apology in 2023. That same year, the county formed a Reparations Commission to study the harms done to Russell City residents. The Russell City Reparative Justice Project — launched in 2022 — provided recommendations for how to move from apology to tangible repair.

Supervisor Márquez, who grew up in nearby Kelly Hill and first heard about Russell City from classmates at Fairview Elementary, said, “This is the result of collective and local action. This is what happens when you have people in these positions that are rooted and come from the community.”

She added, “With the background of everything going on at the federal level, it’s more important now than ever that we uplift this reality. We control our own voices, values and destiny at the local level.”

Eligibility requirements and payment processes are still being finalized. The Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on the proposal at its July 22 meeting.

Image: Russell City Art Commemoration mural, Heritage Plaza, Hayward; Downtown Hayward Improvement Association/Facebook

People are dogpiling on a new fine-dining restaurant for dogs, as San Francisco once again out-San Franciscos itself with a stunning new breed of income inequality.

You have perhaps seen that bizarre gourmet dog food delivery TV commercial with some bro seemingly straight from the cast of HBO's Silicon Valley who delights that his dog has “high quality poops.” So high-end dog food for the vested-tech-shares crowd is already a thing, and hey, I don’t begrudge any business that finds new ways to separate suckers from their money. And some Bay Area restaurants already cater to this sector of wealthy people who like to bring their dogs to dinner — Angler, the Cavalier, and the chain Lazy Dog (which has locations in Concord and San Mateo) already offer separate menus for dogs.

But the fur started flying on Monday when the Chronicle reported that a fine dining restaurant exclusively for dogs has opened on Valencia Street, with the new place called Dogue offering a “$75 tasting menu” every Sunday, for dogs. The feature included a photo of two dog friends, one wearing a bowtie, sitting on a banquette in front of two dishes of fancy food, including some very human-worthy steak tartare.

By Wednesday, the Chron reported on a social media backlash against the dog restaurant, with complaints like “This signals the collapse,” and “As if the rest of the country didn’t hate us enough already.”

Yes, that is Trump’s former FCC Commissioner and anti-Net Neutrality asshole Ajit Pai chiming in above in what (I think?) is supposed to be an unflattering historical comparison. We will pepper this post with more of the Twitter blowback against the $75 prix fixe doggie diner. (The fall-of-Rome analogy was also popular this week with VC king Marc Andreessen.)

So what in the late-stage-capitalism hell is served at a high-end dog restaurant? Per the Chronicle, menu items include a soup with “slices of braised chicken breast and infused with chaga mushrooms,” and a “chicken-skin waffle perched on a globe-shaped coconut charcoal custard served on a striking charcoal plate," and "a pastured egg yolk nestled in a stunningly green spirulina meringue ‘cloud,’ decorated with wild flower petals."

The $75 tasting menu is apparently only served on Sundays. The normal everyday offerings include “elegant pastries, like a rose-shaped cake filled with wild venison heart and a doggy petit gâteau modeled after the creations of acclaimed French pastry chef Cédric Grolet,” according to the Chronicle’s report.

“My approach is to treat this as if it was a human restaurant,” Dogue owner Rahmi Massarweh, a former chef at human-food restaurants, told the Chronicle. “For me and my wife, there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for our family, for our dogs. They give us so much. The most [sic?] I can do is make them a meal that looks good.”

The Chron’s report describes the dogs taken there as shibu inus and a Yorkshire terrier. So obviously, these are not rescue pups. And come on, $75 for food served to animals who would otherwise eat their own vomit? Yes, it’s a niche appeal, but remember that these incredibly pricey dog indulgence businesses are a highly unregulated industry, and have not been immune from accusations of abuse and mistreatment.

A $75 dog meal is certainly an “only in San Francisco” phenomenon. Let's just hope this isn't followed by an even more “only in San Francisco” crime moment — like a high-end dog restaurant being hit with a dog-napping of some multiple-thousand-dollar dog guests.

Related: All The Photos And Video From This Weekend's Dog Surfing Contest In Pacifica [SFist]

Image: Amy C. via Yelp

Mayor London Breed’s office and the SF Board of Supervisors recently announced the completion of a deal between housing developer Crescent Heights and Maximus Real Estate Partners that will lead to an affordable housing project of 330 low-income units at 1979 Mission Street.

The $42 million land sale to Crescent Heights comes with the caveat that the developer hands the land over to the city, fulfilling its affordable housing requirement for a different project — a 55-story residential tower at 10 South Van Ness Avenue.

The planned project at 1979 Mission was notably nicknamed the “Monster in the Mission” when it was first proposed in 2013, due to neighborhood objections both to its scale and its lack of affordability. Maximus Real Estate's plans to turn the current property — the site of a BART station entrance, a former Walgreens, and a Burger King that closed in 2018 — into 331 mostly market-rate homes faced significant backlash from Mission residents, and locals feared that it would just be another force driving the working-class, largely Latino population out of the neighborhood. The Plaza 16 Coalition, an activist group made of nearly 100 local groups, spent years pushing Maximus to sell the property.

In 2020, Maximus listed the property for sale and then made a deal with the city last November to sell it to Crescent Heights, on the condition that Crescent Heights would deed it to the city for affordable housing. The deal satisfies Crescent Heights' affordable housing requirement for its approved 966-unit tower at 10 South Van Ness Avenue — the former Honda Dealership that has lately been an event venue.

The Chronicle reports that the Office of Housing and Community Development is now seeking a nonprofit to build the affordable housing units.

“It’s not only a material victory but a symbolic one as well,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who helped negotiate the deal, in a statement to the Chronicle. “For better or worse, that property became the symbol of the fight against gentrification in the Mission.”

When this deal was signed off on by the Board of Supervisors in December, The Real Deal noted that the “approval marks a major victory for housing advocates in the city.”

The transaction finally closed on Friday, February 11, and now the Board will set about selecting a non-profit developer for the affordable project. The original "Monster" plan called for three separate building wrapping around the corner, with buildings facing both 16th Street and Mission Street, but Ronen is now talking about the new project going up "on top of" the BART station entrance. No designs have yet been created.

Before development starts, Ronen says she is working on temporary uses for the BART plaza site that's become a hot spot for drug dealing, with the goal "to enliven it and make it safer."

The mayor's office touts that "Since 2018, six new affordable housing developments have opened in the Mission, including 509 homes for families and 140 homes for seniors, with another [130-unit] housing development currently under construction."

And while the city gets to build 330 new units of low-income housing here, mitigating some of the gentrification in the Mission District, Crescent Height’s luxury residential tower — with three times as many units — will be going up about five blocks away with no affordable units at all.

Related: Much-Maligned ‘Monster In the Mission’ Could Be Reanimated as 100% Affordable Housing

Top Image: A rendering of the BART plaza with the originally proposed 'Monster' project.

A tech-famous coffeeshop that was the storied birthplace of Airbnb and Stripe, The Creamery, is likely getting to move ahead with its plans to relocate to 14th and Mission streets from its former digs in SoMa. This is despite months of pushback and an environmental-impact appeal by neighborhood activists.

With at least one activist invoking The Slanted Door's arrival on Valencia Street three decades ago — considered by some to be an inflection point for Valencia's total gentrification — multiple neighborhood groups, business owners, and activists spoke out this week about why allowing The Creamery into the neighborhood was just one more nail in the coffin for the Mission as they know it. But as Mission Local reports, the Board of Supervisors was not convinced that invoking the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a common tool of anti-development activists, was not appropriate here. They voted unanimously to shut down the appeal to The Creamery's conditional use permit.

"Legacy residents are being forced out," said George Salome, the owner of nearby New Star Deli, during Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting. As Mission Local reports, Salome was one of several business owners who also sell coffee and food nearby who don't appreciate the added competition.

Ben Terrall of the Cultural Action Network said during the meeting that "this is all about displacement," and tried to draw a connection to a 2004 successful CEQA appeal concerning a big-box development in Bakersfield.

Mission District Supervisor Hillary Ronen said during the meeting, "I understand the anxiety. [But] I simply do not see how CEQA legally applies." She also said that a little competition was probably better for the neighborhood than leaving another storefront empty.

The Creamery is looking to move into a vacant ground floor space in a new building at 14th and Mission Street that was previously a vacant lot. Owner Ivor Bradley has had the keys for the place since September, but he's still caught up getting his city approvals, as the Chronicle's Heather Knight noted, in part because of this appeals process — something that Knight has been vocally advocating against in her column. She refers to this conflict as "the latest chapter in the saga that might as well be titled 'San Francisco is arguing over what now?'"

There were also concerns about The Creamery serving alcohol, but the business has reportedly sold its liquor license.

48 Hills, which has repeatedly taken on Knight in recent months, suggests that Knight is entirely in the wrong to refer to this appeal as more NIMBY nonsense.

The blog quotes Mission business owner Larisa Pedroncelli, who's a member of United to Save the Mission, calling The Creamery a "tech-centered café," and comparing it to the arrival of The Slanted Door a few block away and a few decades ago.

"I don’t think [gentrification is] what Charles Phan intended, but it was the result," Pedroncelli says.

48 Hills concedes that maybe CEQA doesn't apply, but that doesn't mean the city should have an "anti-gentrification plan" that can be invoked in these cases, to protect vulnerable businesses and residents.

Anyway, it looks like The Creamery will be moving to 14th and Mission. And Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Matt Haney still want to the Board to consider proposed legislation that would no longer allow single residents to file CEQA appeals and waste the Board's time, but would require at least fifty signatures to do so.

Top image: Kevin S./Yelp

San Francisco street artist fnnch has attracted a tsunami of online anger and criticism in recent months, and even more of that exploded when he was confronted by one of his critics in a now widely seen Instagram video.

Fnnch's honey bear stencil murals may have started out as benign and goofy, but many local artists and other commentators have lately been expressing disgust at both their ubiquity and their blandness — and at the artist's ability to get them plastered in San Franciscans' windows all over town when "he's not even from here." The window bears, as KQED explains, date back to last May when fnnch launched the family-friendly Honey Bear Hunt — conceived as a way for parents with small children to have an added pandemic activity while walking neighborhood streets.

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"It was a more urban take on what was happening in the suburbs during the early days of shelter in place: instead of putting actual teddy bears in windows for neighborhood children, people could display fnnch’s honey bear, and kids could follow his virtual map to find them," KQED's Rae Alexandra writes. "He sold 3,500 bear window displays in four days."

That ubiquity, and the fact that fnnch (a straight, cis, white male who was not born in SF) got commissions from queer organizations like the LGBT Center and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — among other nonprofits — to create honey bears for them, has led to a backlash.

Some of the backlash seems to be about the over-saturation of the image across the city. Some is about the bears' lack of artistic merit. And some is about the fact that fnnch is perceived as taking work away from other local artists, and seems to have been broadly embraced by newly arrived, privileged residents — and fnnch himself is a transplant.

Add to that that he made the mistake of saying, in the video below, that he was an "immigrant" from Missouri. The video was shot as fnnch and some associates were attempting to clean up graffiti that had been painted over the trio of bears on the side of the LGBT Center at Octavia and Market.

The person holding the camera says to fnnch, "You understand that these bears have become synonymous with gentrification and displacement of the artists that come from here?"

And he replies (dumbly), "I'm an immigrant here. I came from Missouri."

The mural was subsequently re-tagged with "fuck fnnch," among other things.

As of Tuesday, a new coat of primer went up over the mural at the LGBT Center.

SFist has reached out for comment about why the center decided to paint over it — assuming it was them — but we have not yet heard back.

In the video, fnnch says, "This wall has been empty for 100 years." He says that he reached out to the Center, got approval for the mural, and he said the plan was to make the wall available to other local artists on a rotating basis after that.

The person shooting the video, who goes by DoggTown Dro on Insta, says, "You don't get why people are defacing your shit?" He then says that the person who tagged the mural originally might have been an artist who would have liked to do a proper mural that wall, and there's anger that fnnch can get his art everywhere. "How come you can but we can't?" he asks.

Expressing satisfaction that the LGBT Center mural had been removed, DoggTown Dro writes on another post, "I see Honey Bears in the White transplant's windows of homes my friends, my family, and myself used to live in, play and eat in. They're all completely gone now in lieu of what feels like a neo wave of techie yupper ass colonization in which shitty clip art bears are the national flag."

He adds, "The community informed me of the individual behind the pander Bears and the community heard the war cry. And within ONE week we as #FriscoStrong had Fnnch's shit ass bears removed indefinitely. We WILL reclaim our city. We will NOT let Gentrifiers dictate our culture."

Update: The LGBT Center has posted a statement to Facebook saying, "For clarity, fnnch approached us to donate a temporary mural on the exterior of the facility and offered to donate its maintenance throughout the year. We accepted this donation knowing that it was going to be part of a larger rotating mural project that we were launching.

"As part of the rotating mural project, the mural by fnnch has been taken down. We acknowledge the fact that fnnch has engendered a host of opinions and that some of his recent comments about being an immigrant have brought pain to many members of our community. Though believe that every artist we work with is entitled to their own opinion, the Center does not agree with fnnch's recent comments, and we have shared our concerns about the impact of his comments directly with him."

The Center adds that its next set of murals are by LGBTQ+ artists who are also members of the BIPOC community.

Fnnch has also responded in a statement to KQED, saying, "I have been creating Pride art and donating to LGBT charities as long as I’ve been creating street art," and he added that last year was the 25th anniversary of the death of an uncle from AIDS. And he said he "helped fundraise over $20k for the Center through T-shirt sales, painting donations, and my partnership with Humphrey Slocombe."

He added, with regard to this recent dustup, "I am still learning from this experience. The clearest learning so far is to collaborate with artists from the communities I hope to uplift."

Photo: Joe Kukura

The megadevelopment dubbed the “Monster in the Mission” would have been the Mission District’s largest housing project. Now that it’s developer is waving the white flag, it still could be — and possibly as an entirely affordable housing project.  

You might remember back around Halloween 2017 when a series of ads declared “I am Not a Monster” all over the 16th Street BART station, attempting to put a working-class face on a luxury condo and apartment project that had acquired the unfortunate nickname “Monster in  the Mission.” That development, which would have turned the shuttered Walgreens and Burger King spots at 16th and Mission into the towering ten-story housing complex seen above, set off a divisive seven-year battle over gentrification and overdevelopment in the Mission. That battle is now over, and may represent a landmark victory for Monster opponents and affordable housing advocates, as the San Francisco Business Times reports that the “Monster in the Mission” building has been put up for sale.

The jilted developer Maximus Real Estate Partners still has the 1979Mission.com website up describing their market-rate condo dreams for the project site, as well as their allegedly astroturfy “community” website Mission4All.org. And while we could not find the property listed on the San Francisco section of the website of its new realtor Colliers International, the Business Times reports they've seen a listing for the 58,000-square-foot project describing it as an “opportunity to entitle and construct a new, ‘large-scale’ mixed-use residential housing project.”

More intriguingly, Mission Local reports that a community group wants to buy the property and make it all affordable housing. Community advocacy group Plaza16 says in an announcement that “Plaza 16’s commitment to the community does not stop with the defeat of the Monster. The mission remains to build a 100% community-developed deeply affordable housing project at 1979 Mission St. The Coalition is convening an effort to bring together community, government, and philanthropic entities to deliver on the promise that will lead us to building the ‘Marvel in the Mission.’”

The group has at least one friend at City Hall. The district’s supervisor Hillary Ronen told the Business Times, "I think a fresh start is exactly what the 16th Street BART Plaza needs," and that "if we do this right, this project can be a model for how the city of San Francisco builds housing on top of public transit."

Whether or not that happens, Maximus Real Estate’s sale of the property does mean that the “Monster in the Mission” version of the project is definitely done and dead. These derisive development project nicknames don’t always work to stop them. The “Beast on Bryant” was temporarily stalled in 2015, but eventually beat its appeals and has broken ground. On the other hand, the site of the exceedingly well-crafted insult “Mess on South Van Ness” will be turned into an affordable housing site. It’s up to community groups to see if the 16th and Mission “Monster” trucks in that same direction.

Related: Wiener’s Controversial SB-50 Housing Bill Dies for Third Consecutive Year [SFist]

Image: 1979Mission.com

The half-life of Lucky 13 has been extended by bits, again and again, since 2015. It is now extended longer as the developer adds another building parcel, plus the adjacent parking lot, for a far more ambitious project.

It’s been nearly five years since the original plan to demolish Lucky 13 for condos got San Francisco bar-hoppers’ black fur flying. But the place has seemingly had nine lives ⁠— discretionary reviews tripped that project up in 2017, so the building owner put the property on the market a few months later. A new ownership outfit called Keystone Group bought it up quickly for about $2.5 million less than the asking price, according to the Bay Area Reporter, and submitted plans to build an eight-story complex with 33 dwelling units. That was more than a year ago, and we haven’t heard much since.

Now we’ve heard more. Hoodline reports that Keystone Group has submitted new plans to replace Lucky 13, and the plans are a hell of a lot more ambitious. They’ve nearly tripled the number of units to 90, added another story so it’s a nine-story project, and they now hope to demolish the three-level house next door to include it as part of a new Market Street housing behemoth. Previous plans to build over Lucky 13’s adjacent parking lot remain in place with the new plan.  

Hoodline has a copy of the Pre-Application Meeting Notice form sent to neighbors, and the fact that is a pre-application meeting means it’s still going to be a long time until the Planning Department or Department of Building Inspections issue any permits. But a pre-application meeting is public, so you can show up for it at 2134 Market Street (the white house next to Lucky 13) on Tuesday, December 17, at 6 p.m. to squawk about it.

And people will squawk. The neighborhood still has a bad taste in mouth, because the new development just five doors down at Church and Market has been turned into corporate rentals instead of housing. Moreover, that corporate rental building is also owned by former Lucky 13 owner Brian Spiers, so it’s not hard to imagine the same happening to a redeveloped Lucky 13 site.

“We already have three condo buildings on one block. Many units seem empty, and there’s very little business in the retail spaces," neighbor (and Sister of Perpetual Indulgence) Christine Costello told Hoodline. "I’ve known 34 friends who were displaced by illegal evictions. No one I know could afford to live in any of these units."

Again, this new development is starting from scratch with Planning and DBI, so you probably have at least another year of pool, punk rock, and popcorn at Lucky 13. But of all the plans to replace the bar, this one would certainly change the neighborhood the most.

Related: Lucky 13 Murals Mysteriously Painted Over As Bar Faces Fears Of Demolition [SFist]

Image: rick via Flickr

The development boom has lowered the boom on the late, great Lexington Club, displaced the iconic Doc’s Clock, and taken the lives of many beloved longtime Valencia Corridor restaurants and bars because of “whacked out” rent and proliferation of condos. But one particular watering hole and music venue has been reliably able to delay its own displacement, and has done so again. The Elbo Room will remain open at its current location until January 2019, Mission Local reports, having signed an additional one-year lease on top of the current extension that allowed the bar to stay put until 2018.

“We are excited. It means everybody still has jobs,” Elbo Room co-owner Matt Shapiro told Mission Local before a Monday night staff meeting announcing the news. The Elbo Room was originally slated to get kicked out its 647 Valencia Street location in November 2015, but has won one reprieve after another as the development of a proposed condominium remains embroiled in red tape.

Here we see the unpleasantness proposed for the Elbo Room’s current location, held up in Discretionary Review with the Planning Department as neighbors object to blocked views and other environmental impacts. Those delays have nicely enabled the Elbo to grease yet another year at Valencia Street and Sycamore Street as building owners Dennis and Susan Ring continue to wrangle for building permits — and it should be noted that the condo project is slated to include a home for them as they plan for their own retirement. "Dennis and Susan are still working towards their condo project, however, as far as we know, they have yet to acquire the building permit," Shapiro told Hoodline.

"They decided to offer us another year, since that will be mutually beneficial to both parties,” he added.

Mission Local also points out that Elbo Room had nearly signed on to move to the El Valenciano location at Valencia Street and 22nd Street, which is up for grabs. But the aforementioned “whacked out” rent undid that deal. "We got pretty far with it actually But the further we went with it, the more outrageously expensive it became," Shapiro told Hoodline. "This lease extension could not have come at a better time."

Nonetheless, it’s just an extension and a delay of the inevitable move. While the Elbo Room does have legacy business status, it falls just short of the 30-year status that can help keep a business in its original location. (One more extension would do the trick!) That 647 Valencia Street location does have historical and alcoholical significance, as it was previously the pioneering lesbian bar Amelia’s in the 1980s, and during the 70s was occupied by gay bars named The Gaslight and Gay 90s.

Related: Local Nightclub Owners Make Noise At City Hall Over Shutdown Threats From New Condos

One thing that San Francisco is most known for is its timeless and gorgeous historic architecture. The Victorian/Edwardian aesthetic that pervades our fair city, with its bay windows, decorative cornices, and detailed appliqués is what seduced many of us to move to the Bay Area, and what inspires so many tourists to still snap pictures of "Painted Ladies." But future generations will no doubt hate us for the boxy and Esprit-colored condominium detritus with which the most recent tech boom blighted our cityscape — if any of these ticky-tacky atrocities even last a generation, that is, given how little interest developers seem to have in spending money on good architects. I've picked out a few of the current most hideous condo complexes, but rest assured there are even uglier ones in the Planning Commission pipeline.

NOTE: This list only includes condominiums. Many of you rightfully despise structures like NEMA and 38 Dolores, but these are luxury apartment complexes, not condos. This list contains only condominiums, though mixed-use condos are also included. Also, these opinions reflect those only of the author of this article.

Linea
No matter how good a mood I’m in, this compositionally unsettling Safeway Heights condo automatically renders me hopeless and depressed. An aggressive and angular attempt at Modernism, the big glass collection of cubes makes no attempt at harmony. And those cantilevers announce to the neighborhood that they can’t wait to fall on you.
8 Buchanan Street, between Sanchez Street and Noe Street

The Vida, and the newly painted New Mission sign. Photo: Thomas Hawk

VIDA
It looks like the earthquake already hit at The Joker’s hideout known as VIDA, whose form was dubbed “Gangnam style, swagger style” by the Planning Commission’s Kathrin Moore. These disorganized zigzag boxes are detailed with a red and yellow color scheme that seems like a rich white designer’s attempt to convey a Latino feel in homage to those being displaced. This may explain why vandals just can’t resist the place with their “Die slow, rich f**ks” graffiti.
2558 Mission, between 21st Street and 22nd Street

Photo: Allan Ferguson

Millennium Tower
How can we not include the infamously sinking Millennium Tower, whose unsold units and endless lawsuits will make it the butt of jokes for years to come. But let us also rag on its boring, fortress-like proportions that only a Cylon would love to call home. It’s hilarious to think that back in 2012, this sinking stinker made Worth magazine’s World’s Top 10 Residences list.
310 Mission Street, between Beale Street and Fremont Street

Image: Google Street View

Fontana Towers
We direct much of our fire here at the new generation of condos, but these two abominations have been ruining San Francisco views for 55 years. There is somehow no 1960s fun in these monoliths from the 1960s, and not a single interesting material anywhere on the facade. But it’s more the beauty they block than their own inherent ugliness that makes the Fontana Towers reliably among the most reliably irritating eyesores on the skyline — and this development just about single-handedly launched a generation of protesters screaming "No Wall on the Waterfront," by the way.
1000 North Point Street, between Polk Street and Van Ness Street

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Icon SF
Hey, I’m all for combining different materials to get a nice exterior effect. But this awkward, colorblock monstrosity at Noe Street and 16th Street is a mashup of three different incompatible design ideas that just don’t speak the same architectural language. Adding to the total lack of focus, we have jutty, Tetris-like elements that make the facade more busy and not at all cute.
2299 Market Street, between 16th Street and 17th Street

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

2002 Third Street
There’s plenty of Stanlingrad chic to hate upon out at Mission Bay, but this grain silo concept is particularly bleak. Yes, I’m aware this work was designed by Stanley Saitowitz, who has done remarkable work all over town. But the bunker mentality of these structures just isn’t pleasant, and feels like in this case Saitowitz got conned by a particularly aggressive aluminum siding salesman.
2002 Third Street, between Mariposa Street and 18th Street

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

298 Portola
I’m forever enchanted with the kitschy, old-school motor lodge aesthetic of houses in the Twin Peaks neighborhood. But here we have this completely out-of-scale 80s McMansion that spreads a county jail vibe across an entire huge block of Portola Street. Puke-green bars cover the ground floor windows with ugly asterisks to further add to the overall unwelcomingess.
298 Portola Street, between Clipper Street and Burnett Avenue

Image: Toasty Ken via Flickr

Arterra
What in the Hello Fresh is going on with the Atari 2600 graphics that adorn of the exterior of this Mission Bay collection of slabs? There is all manner of fug going up near the 4th Street and King Street Caltrain station and the ballpark these days, but the inconsistently arranged shower of little orange lasers makes this structure really stand out. Further, it comes across as three differently sized and shaped buildings that were crunched together and just can't find their proper harmony.
300 Berry Street, between 5th Street and the 280

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

The Century
Visually uninviting and inhumane, The Century makes Market street a lot less pleasant with drab gray paneling and ground-level reflective glass. Those balconies appear too small to be usable, and this building will age even less well than most of the unremovable architectural horrors on Market Street. Because peep those drainhole circles near the parapet, they’ll only get uglier over time as water stains accumulate.
2200 Market, between Sanchez Street and Noe Street

Image: The Palms San Francisco via Facebook

The Palms
Completely overwhelming and incongruous with its surroundings, The Palms is sort of a Walmart attempt at an Art Deco scheme. I’ve seen airport hotels that were more inspired than this, and it hulks over the neighborhood in a way that’s pretentiously out of scale. Just to drive home its ethic of excess, The Palms once offered a studio with 116 parking spaces.
555 4th Street, between Bryant Street and Brannan Street

Related: Polarizing SF Federal Building Marks 10 Years Since Completion

Jessica Faraday and Preston "I work for Adidas" Page did not receive a warm welcome from some new neighbors.

KRON 4 reports (via Portland's KOIN) that the California-based pair moved to Portland, Oregon four months ago. They woke up this Sunday to find their home and their car (really, really) vandalized.

Spray-painted across the couple's new and adorable house were the words "Get California out of Portland" and "Move back." The pair's car was also keyed and covered in spray paint.

The day before, the couple was backing out of their driveway when another driver began yelling, "Go back to California!"

Faraday and Page assume the over-the-top vandalism stems from the road-rage incident. Apparently the pair had just finished revamping and re-painting their new home. It's not clear how anyone knew the couple had moved from California, but a peek at a website for their upcoming wedding at a monastery in Mexico might offer some answers.

This incident calls to mind a guerrilla sticker campaign from two years ago when someone, or some group, was stickering Portland real estate agent signs with the message "No Californians."

In defense of Faraday and Page (and their many, many hats and tattoos), Portland is pretty hipster-heavy already. The Oregon city is no stranger to man-buns and precious selfies. It's not like two more blond people in leather jackets and Navajo rings aren't totally going to fit right in.

While surprised someone would "go this far," Faraday and Page don't plan to give in to the vandal's demands.

"Portland is fantastic. You can't argue with this place," said Page.

CLEARLY YOU CAN, PRESTON.

Related: New Angry Mission Graffiti Targets All Yuppies and Hipsters

Remember when we caught wind of a proposed TV series a full two years ago called 94110, via a casting call for actors to play "six leading technology executives living, learning, and loving together in San Francisco's Mission District"? And then there were these absurd character descriptions and brief snippets of monologues for use in auditions, and then two months later a video surfaced proving that this was all the work of Oakland-based prankster / performance artist Scott Vermeire? Well, two years on, the "pilot" has gone online, conveniently close to April Fool's Day, and Capp Street Crap picked up on the big reveal. Don't worry, though: The possibility of there being an Episode 2 is slim to none.

It is, pretty clearly, meant to be a parody of a possible web series about living in the Mission — the laugh track should be the first tip-off — as told by an artist who wants to poke fun at the absurdity of techie culture and also make a comment about gentrification — you can't miss the non-sequitor shots of the fire raging at 22nd and Mission in January 2015 and the cut directly to the luxury condos that were under construction next door, now open as Vida.

There's also a ham-fisted metaphor about a "cyber baby" living with his head in a literal box, wearing a diaper, whose every need is being dictated and catered to by two tech executives, one of whom says, "We know the [things] you like best, and we'll pick [those] for you, so you don't have to decide or think anymore! And won't that be a relief?"

Oh, and at the 20-minute mark, Carlos Santana shows up, or an actor playing Carlos Santana.

I'll say that 94110 has a charmingly offbeat quality to it, kind of like the equally asinine, low-production-quality work of The Cockettes, except without the drugs and drag. But unless you imagine seeing this in a darkened gallery of a museum where you're able to get up and leave after a couple of minutes, you're probably just going to write this off as unwatchable — because it kinda is! Big laughs are not so much to be had, but maybe you'll find a chuckle or two?

Maybe the funniest part about it is that the overlaid graphics, goofy jump cuts, and overall style of the video remind me a lot of the '90s, calling to mind the tensions over the first wave of gentrification in the Mission ca. 1998, when locals were using the term "dot-commers" in place of "techies" to express their disdain.

But see for yourself, and wonder, as we are doing over here at SFist, why this took two years to pull together. And do note: There are no credits.

Previously: Is That '94110' Series Just An Elaborate Prank?

A much reviled figure in the worlds of adult entertainment and HIV/AIDS healthcare in California, Michael Weinstein of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), is now catching plenty of heat in his home city over the foundation's questionable financial backing of a local ballot measure to halt development in the city. His reason? It could have something to do with high-rise projects near AHF's downtown headquarters the he doesn't like, but his stated reason has to do with gentrification's impacts on people with HIV/AIDS, and he's using San Francisco as an example to make his point.

Measure S — a ballot prop being voted on in a March 7 local election and which Governor Jerry Brown, the LA Times, and our sister site LAist have all been vociferously against — purports to be about fixing a corrupt planning system, but would effectively shut down a variety of development projects by putting a two-year moratorium on all projects that require General Plan amendments, zoning changes, or extra height allowances. Speaking to what many in LA see as a legitimate problem, it also puts a permanent end to General Plan amendments for any property less than 15 acres, forcing the city instead to initiate a new General Plan process.

Justifying the $4.6 million bankrolling of Measure S, Weinstein tells the LA Times that it fits perfectly into AHF's "social justice battles against governments that fail to serve the people." Further, he says, "We have witnessed how San Francisco, where AHF has clinics for testing and treatment, has become a rich ghetto. Low-income people by the tens of thousands have been displaced and diversity is harder and harder to find. The same thing is unfolding in Los Angeles."

And AHF, which as a nonprofit is not legally allowed to make "substantial" outlays of cash, time, or effort in order to influence legislation, is a force to be reckoned with due to its enormous wealth. The 30-year-old organization has an annual budget somewhere around $250 million (or something like $1.3 billion annually including affiliated entities), but in addition to operating pharmacies, non-profit thrift stores, and health clinics in 15 states, Weinstein has spearheaded recent ballot initiatives in California like 2016's Prop 60 (requiring condoms on all porn shoots), and Prop 61 (requiring drug companies to use the same pricing for all state-funded entities that they use with VA), neither of which passed.

As with those previous initiative efforts, critics are calling out Weinstein for having disingenuous motives. The condom measure, while on the surface worded as being about worker protection, seemed to stem from Weinstein's own prudishness around bareback sex and the era of PrEP — he's been a vocal opponent of the latter, calling it a "party drug" and irresponsibly suggesting that it wasn't effective in preventing HIV infections, despite science to the contrary. Also, it should be noted that the foundation has partnered with the LifeStyles condom company for World's AIDS Day campaigns, a partnership that goes back years. Note the LifeStyles shoutout in this press photo of Weinstein protesting about condoms at Larry Flynt's Hustler magazine headquarters back in 2004, 12 years before Prop 60.

In the case of Measure S, the LA Times speaks to a developer's rep who claims to have been threatened by Weinstein with this very referendum if a pair of 30-story towers his firm had planned next to AHF's offices weren't shrunk down to 12 stories so that his office view wasn't obstructed. Public affairs consultant Steve Afriat, who was working on behalf of developer Crescent Heights, says that despite city support for the 731-unit residential project, Weinstein pushed back squarely in a 2015 meeting. "He said if we lowered it to 12 stories, he would no longer oppose the project. If we didn’t, he threatened to sue and do a referendum," Afriat claims. Weinstein denies part of this account, but says he did tell Afriat that lowering the towers to 12 stories would be more "acceptable."

It is odd, regardless, for a healthcare foundation born out of the AIDS crisis to now have its hands in so many real estate development fights. The LAT notes that the group also filed a lawsuit against a 15-story office building also near their downtown headquarters. And here in SF, AHF tried to sue the city in 2014 when it was refused the ability to consolidate two of its pharmacies and relocate to bigger space in the Castro, due to formula retail restrictions.

Oh, but right, this all about helping people with HIV and preventing HIV infections, and not about someone with deep pockets who likes to get in legal wars and get his way.

Below, a video from the No on S campaign.

Previously: AIDS Healthcare Foundation Suing City Over Castro Pharmacy Snub

A cafe with designs to open for "tea, coffee, and snacks" in a Mission Street storefront near 24th Street that's been empty since 2015 is now in the crosshairs of at least one local activist because it could propel the “Valencia-nation” of the corridor. Last fall, Mission Local learned of the plan for a 20-person occupancy business at 2761 Mission Street, previously home to Sapphire Photo which closed in 2015, to be called Tea Art cafe. The business owner, identified as Terry Chan, did not respond to that publication's request for comment.

This week, Socketsite reported that activists had filed a request for Discretionary Review vis-a-vis the project, which would require a conversion of the space from retail to restaurant. From that request:

The “Valencia-nation” of Mission St is currently occurring with negative displacement impacts on the Latino and working-class communities, the elderly, and children. Projects such as this one that convert retail to restaurant would contribute to this negative outcome.

This project will create displacement and gentrification impacts in the Latino Cultural District and is not a “necessary” or “desirable” project for the existing community. This project is in conflict with Priority Policy 1 of the General Plan in that it eliminates neighborhood-serving retail use and replaces it with restaurant use.

There are currently six active restaurant proposals for Mission Street alone right now, and this stable, working-class Latino corridor is on the tipping point of flipping to being a “destination site” for tourists and upscale workers. Once retail use is converted to restaurant use it rarely ever changes back. This is destabilizing to working-class communities. This project would contribute to displacement not only on Mission St but in the entire Mission neighborhood.

Mission Local caught up with Rick Hall, an activist behind the opposition.“All parties should be aware at this point that the Mission community does not wish to see any more restaurant conversions on Mission Street,” he told Mission Local, who characterize Hall as a "frequent opponent of new developments in the Mission." Previously, he's taken issue with development projects like 184 units ofhousing proposed for 1500 15th Street and 157 units proposed for South Van Ness and 26th Street.

Hall identifies himself as part of a group of organizations called United to Save the Mission who have organized against other area retail-to-restaurant conversions. After meeting with some business, such as a proposed falafel shop, they've dropped their opposition. Mission Local adds that "It’s unclear how widespread their support is and whether they can prevent any one business from going forward," and Hall admits he "doesn't know exactly how" to ensure that local businesses open to serve the existing neighborhood. "Throwing a little noise onto the issue like we’re doing with challenging the retail to restaurant conversions may help with that process," he says.

Tommy Woo, the contractor on the Tea Art project, disagrees. “Some people complain about everything,” he tells Mission Local. “You have to utilize [the space], otherwise it’s a waste of space.” Good point.

Related: Former Fancy Soda Shop Once Again A Late-Night Gambling Den