Local advocates are taking action to prevent the cancellation of SF’s popular long-running neighborhood street festival series, Sunday Streets, due to budget cuts, urging residents to sign their petition, contact local officials, and attend a rally at City Hall Monday.

As Streetsblog SF reports, the San Francisco Department of Public Health announced earlier in January the agency’s plan to cut funding for the city’s popular Sunday Streets program after a 17-year partnership in order to reallocate the funds toward covering department deficits. Per Streestsblog, the funds were originally appropriated for Sunday Streets by the SF Board of Supervisors through the health department's Equity & Promotion program.

Per the SF Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco is a healthier and more connected city because of Sunday Streets, which launched in 2008 and often serves neighborhoods with limited access to open space community events.

Livable City, the nonprofit that runs Sunday Streets, has created an advocacy toolkit for residents interested in pushing the city to keep the program going and find ways to stabilize it. The toolkit includes an email template for contacting officials, a petition urging SF Mayor Daniel Lurie and the Board of Supervisors to restore funding, and a guide to giving public comment at the Health Commission hearing, which is taking place  at 4 pm Monday in Room 408 at City Hall, preceded by a rally on the City Hall steps at 3 pm.

Per Streetsblog, the Department of Public Health is moving to cut $17 million in funding from community-based organizations, and Livable City receives a mere 1.3% of those funds for Sunday Streets — $215,758 per year.

Per Streetsblog, Sunday Streets is a hugely popular program that continually exceeds its metrics in providing the community with outlets for physical fitness and wellness each year, while offering a platform for more than 120 city and nonprofit groups to connect with the community through direct services, educational resources, and outreach.

Image: Sunday Streets, Excelsior; throgers/Flickr

Previous Sunday Streets coverage

Developers and realtors are always going to want to rebrand a part of the city when it lacks a distinct neighborhood designation of its own. But they need to stop because it's just getting comical.

We are now five and a half years into the folly of calling Rincon Hill "The East Cut," and I still have not heard anyone say that they live in "The East Cut." It's still just SoMa, or eastern SoMa, or more vaguely "downtown."

And two years ago, we learned that the developer behind 1550 Mission, the tower that sits awkwardly at the intersection of SoMa and the Mission but it's not really either because it's along Van Ness, decided to rebrand the neighborhood as Van Mission, which exactly no one has used in conversation to this day.

Now, as the Chronicle's John King calls out, another developer working on a project that's barely a block away from "Van Mission," at 30 Van Ness, that is dubbing itself Hayes Point. The developer, Lendlease, says the goal was not to give a name to this edge area that isn't quite Hayes Valley or Civic Center, for its building at the northeast corner of Van Ness and Market. But, obviously, they want to market the building as being connected to hip and bustling Hayes Valley, as opposed to downtrodden Civic Center or mid-Market — or Van Market?

Most locals would argue that Hayes Valley doesn't really make it all the way to Van Ness, but likely ends a block west on Franklin Street — according to the Yelp page for Le Fantastique, the newish restaurant/wine bar at the foot of Franklin, it is in both Hayes Valley and Civic Center.

"We threw everything on the wall, and at the end of the day we felt a kinship to the energy of Hayes Valley," says Lendlease's executive general manager of West Coast development Arden Hearing, speaking to the Chronicle. And, he says, if people want to argue that the building isn't in Hayes Valley, "that's OK."

A block up, the residential tower known as 100 Van Ness definitely leans into photos of Hayes Valley on its website, but when you click on the "Neighborhood" tab it's careful not to define it — and a map of nearby restaurants and cultural amenities kind of covers the words "Civic Center" with a bunch of dots, where "Hayes Valley" is more readily visible.

As anyone who's read the comments section on SFist for more than a minute will know, people in this city love to call out when someone gives the wrong neighborhood designation to an address. And most everyone still makes fun of "East Cut" in the vein of "stop trying to make 'East Cut' happen."

But, will anyone start calling this intersection of Van Ness and Market The Hub — which is what Planning has taken to calling it? This is using a historic name for the area, which, as King writes, was once home to businesses called Hub Bowling and Hub Shoe Repair. And once there are tall towers standing on all four corners, thanks to extra height allowances the city granted for The Hub a few years back, maybe the name will start to stick.

Van Mission and Hayes Point, though? Probably not.

Previously: Revised Designs Revealed For 47-Story Tower at 30 Van Ness

It should come as a shock to no one that there exists no single, official, definitive map that delineates where the Inner Sunset begins and ends, or where the line is drawn between The Mission and Potrero Hill — though many of us have our own ideas. And, it turns out, depending on which department in SF City Hall you ask, you may get a different answer.

The Chronicle published one of its special projects today on this topic, noting the differences between what the Planning Department says are a neighborhood's boundaries, and what the Department of Elections says.

Depending on whose map you consult, Chinatown is either a tight 24 blocks bounded by Kearny and Powell Streets, and starting at the south from Sutter where the Dragon's Gate is located at Grant (that's Planning's map for neighborhood notifications); or it's a much larger area that includes much of Columbus Avenue and extends west all the way down Broadway to Polk Street (that's the Dept. of Elections map).

The Elections map doesn't even consider North Beach as its own neighborhood — the area closer to the water surrounding Chinatown and the Financial District is just called "N. Embarcadero."

Similarly, the Elections map erases the Castro and Duboce Triangle — they're both subsumed in a larger "Upper Market/Eureka" neighborhood. And according to the Department of Elections, there is no Hayes Valley either — you're either in Civic Center or you're in the Western Addition, no in between.

The 311 neighborhoods map gets more micro, delineating all of the above along with other smaller 'hoods like Corona Heights and Mint Hill.

As the Chronicle explains, three city departments — the Department of Public Health, the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Department, and the Planning Department — got together in 2014 to create a unified Analysis Neighborhoods Map, which has its own set of boundaries based on 2010 Census tracts. That map came about because city officials realized how many different maps were being used by different departments, which could easily throw off reporting for anything from COVID cases to housing needs if there wasn't a single map. That map looks the most like what most of us think contemporary neighborhood names and boundaries are — though there's sure to still be arguments. This map also doesn't include Dogpatch as its own thing, and as the Chronicle notes, Bayview/Hunters Point could get subdivided based on a big increase in population found in the 2020 Census.

Some residents of what they'd call NoPa might be surprised to learn that in the city's view, they either live on Lone Mountain or in Hayes Valley. But this map at least conforms mostly to what SFist knows the larger neighborhood definitions to be — and no map can be considered reliable if it doesn't call The Castro The Castro.

In any event, you'd better get this stuff straight if you're going to write anything about this city, or the people will come for you on Twitter/in the comments and tell you you don't know jack shit about anything if you're calling Mariposa and Hampshire Potrero Hill.

It's good to know that city departments can't keep it straight either.

A community benefit district downtown that encompasses what we usually call Rincon Hill and the Transbay District is spending $70,000 on marketing to get us to accept their new name for the neighborhood: The East Cut. The reasons for the rebranding aren't totally clear — and this is hardly the first time that real estate interests have tried to coin a new moniker for an evolving part of town — but all I can say is no. Nope. Stop trying to make The East Cut happen.

As the Chronicle's John King explains, the two-year-old organization began as the Greater Rincon Hill Community Benefit District (CBD), using tax assessment dollars from new property owners in the area — in buildings like One Rincon Hill and the Infinity towers — to fund sidewalk maintenance and homeless-clearing efforts. (There's a similar effort to shuffle panhandlers along and/or direct them to services by the Union Square Business Improvement District, and there are currently 13 other CBDs covering other neighborhoods around the city, all with their own priorities.) But the executive director of the Greater Rincon Hill CBD, Andrew Robinson, is using part of his $2.5 million annual budget to launch this rebranding effort, complete with a logo and a new website, saying the East Cut is "a 21st century idea of what a neighborhood should be, mixing old and new and a variety of uses."

Was the Transbay District just too... bus station-related?

There is some history with the name, as the website explains: Once upon a time in 1869, the original Rincon Hill was bisected by what was called the "Second Street Cut," creating the thoroughfare we know today that made it easier for wagons and buggies and streetcars to get from downtown to the docks at what we now sometimes call South Beach, down around AT&T Park.

But now, Robinson and his ilk want to rename the approximately 25-block area encompassing Rincon Hill, Rincon Point, three blocks of the Embarcadero, and the entire Transbay District from Jessie Street down to the Bay Bridge approach as The East Cut, and they've already got their "community guides" (i.e. the guys who shuffle the homeless along) wearing logo jackets that say this. See the labeled map here, and below.

King points out there have been many failed efforts to rename neighborhoods and parts of neighborhoods in the past — anyone remember when the area near Dolores Park tried to be called the Trans-Mission? Or how about DivCo? Or SoCha? But on the flip side, SoMa has only been SoMa since the '80s, and that's stuck.

As one area resident, Lauri Mashoian, tells the Chronicle, "I don’t know why they want to rebrand Rincon Hill, which is real and historic and accurate... If you have to explain something, maybe it’s not right."

Next time you hear anyone say they live in the East Cut, just laugh at them and berate them. That may work to kill this thing.

Related: How Cow Hollow And Dogpatch Got Their Names, And More Fun Neighborhood Facts

This brief video by Videopixie's Libby Cooper shows some animated dog breeds representing each of eleven neighborhoods. It should be noted that pitbulls make it on here twice (for The Mission and the Haight), and while a standard poodle might have been the go-to for Pacific Heights, they go with the Afghan hound instead, and the toy poodle (in glasses and Google sweatshirt) represents SoMa. I only wish the Financial District had made the cut, with a Weimaraner in a Brooks Brothers suit.

Also, there's a making-of article about the animation.

The breeds and their 'hoods:

• The American Staffordshire Terrier as the Mission
• The Golden Retriever as the Marina
• The Cairn Terrier as the Tenderloin
• The English Bulldogs as Bernal Heights
• The Afghan Hound as PAC Heights
• The Toy Poodle as SOMA
• The Alaskan Malamute as the Presidio
• The Shiba Inu as Potrero Hill
• The Chocolate Lab as Noe Valley
• The Staffordshire Bull Terrier puppies as the Haight
• The French Bulldog as the Castro (with spiked leather collar, natch)

Click to enlarge

This new map of the city by local funny guy Dan Steiner popped up on Curbed yesterday, and much like similar maps that have come before, it's an amusing and semi-offensive look at various landmarks and neighborhood stereotypes. The bonuses here are markers for the "worst Trader Joe's" (Masonic) and the "2nd worst Trader Joe's" (Stonestown) and the "best Safeway" (Diamond Heights, naturally).

Also, the Castro is just "Rainbow blowjobs" now, the Russian 'hood of the Outer Richmond is just "Commie gymnast figure skaters." But Goat Hill Pizza is the "Best Pizza"? I beg to differ.

Enjoy.

See also this judgmental map of New York City, which of course needs to distinguish between the filthy rich, the mega rich, the incredibly rich, and the quite rich of Manhattan.

ADDENDUM
Commenter That Stuff chimes in with this withering response. "I'm tired of these allegedly amusing maps that don't honestly depict what the city is really about. I decided I'd have a crack at a map of San Francisco that I see around me every day. Here you go."

[Curbed]
[JudgmentalMaps]

It's official: The Mission is over.

In an effort to lure techies who don't want to work in downtown San Francisco or get inside a private bus and head down to Mountain View, Google has plans to either buy or rent space smack dab in the Mission, techie ground zero. The company plans to obtain a 35,000 square foot former printworks at 285 Alabama. The mammoth tech giant wants someplace "cool" for their team.

"When Google is buying companies, they don’t want to work in the big corporate building in San Francisco or Mountain View,” a person in the neighborhood told Financial Times. "So they are acquiring something cool in the Mission where engineers want to work."

The new building, which could house up to 200 employees, is also zoned for manufacturing. VC Post reports:

Hardware firms could utilize the site for gadget and device development since the building which was constructed in the 1920s is zoned for manufacturing. With the leasing of the space, Google could be thinking of acquiring more startups focused on making hardware as it grows from web search and dips its hand into other markets like wearable technology, robotics and the Internet of Things...Google purchased "smart home" devices maker Nest Labs in a $3.2 billion deal. It also acquired San Francisco-based Bot and Dolly, a San Francisco-based firm that gives robotics for filmmakers. Its newest purchase is that of Israeli-based SlickLogin, a startup that develops security technology.

Google already has office space in SoMa and downtown San Francisco. So this is nothing new. It's just another sign of the tech industry's impressive and speedy growth in Baghdad by the Bay. Financial Times goes on to point out that the company also plans to buy space in South Park "to house its Google Ventures team, which has become one of Silicon Valley’s most active early-stage investors."

In the end, this all makes more than enough sense. The Mission, as many of you know, has gone from a once-thriving artistic and Latino community to an Edison bulb-lit artisan food court where budding gastronomes wait in line for food. (It's a now a thing to do on weekends, wait in line for shit.) Rents are out of control, and the attitude is at an all time level of wretchedness. You can almost taste the twee in the air as you cross 18th and Valencia.

UPDATE: SocketSite, of the Elbo Room brouhaha, says that Google has neither signed a lease nor bought the building. "In fact, the building at 298 Alabama is currently undergoing renovations with plans to subdivide the space for multiple tenants. And while numerous parties have expressed interest, not a single lease has been signed nor negotiated, not by Google nor by any of their acquisitions."

Financial Times blunder or Google PR handiwork? Stay tuned.

Home to lesbian bar Wild Side West, eye-popping vistas, chicken pot pie purveyor Liberty Cafe, quaint moments, cement stairs, and a calf muscle-building incline (i.e., Cortland Avenue), Bernal Heights* has been named the hottest neighborhood of 2013. Or so says Redfin.com. Is this a good thing? Perhaps. Bernal Heights** has, more or less, remained unscathed when compared to its sister, the Mission, but that could soon change if this bubble doesn't burst.

According to Redfin, the rankings were based on "places that are trending among the millions of homebuyers searching on Redfin.com leading into the new year and Bernal Heights' North Slope came in as the no. 1 hottest neighborhood of 2014." Top notch rated schools, short commutes, and affordable prices were also factors.

The list is as follows:

#1 Bernal Heights North Slope (San Francisco, CA)
#2 Eagle Rock (Los Angeles, CA)
#3 Morningside-Lenox Park (Atlanta, GA)
#4 Upper Chevy Chase (Washington, D.C.)
#5 Desert Shores (Las Vegas, NV
#6 Barrington Oaks (Austin, TX)
#7 Phinney Ridge (Seattle, WA
#8 Concordia (Portland, OR)
#9 City Park (Denver, CO)
#10 Humboldt Park (Chicago, IL)

To find out more about this city within a city on a hill, we talked to proud Bernal Heights native Melanine Brooks, who has lived on three different Bernal spots during her lifetime, to tell us more. As for the neighborhood's breakdown and all of its many sides, she explains, "The North Side goes down into Precita Park, and ends on Cesar Chavez. The West Side goes down into the Mission. The south side is, I believe, around St Mary's Park, and goes down to Alemeny. And the East Side dips down to Bayshore."

As for the comparatively untouched feel to the hood, Brooks tells SFist, "Parts of the hill were unpaved up until the 2000s. When I would walk to friends' houses on other parts of the hill, we had to walk down a dirt road. It's still crazy like that in some spots. And if you try to drive using GPS, it wants to direct your car down a flight of stairs built into the side of the hill."

As for other notable residents? So far, we're hearing word that crooner Jonathan Richman, Dan the Automator, and Terry Zwigoff live there. So does the bikini jogger. Noted blogs Burrito Justice and Bernalwood are also headquartered in Bernal.

Also, for those who want a deeper history of Cortland, check out the Bernal History Project's history of Cortland Avenue, brimming with old photos from back in the day.

If you haven't had the chance to get to Bernal, get out of your neighborhood (sound advice for many reasons), jump on the 24, and take it all in. Until then, check out these images of the country's allegedly hottest hood. Enjoy. And congratulations, Bernal. May the fame not go straight to your head and may impending Ellis Act evictions be few and far between.

* According to Redfin, this only includes the North Slope.
** This should also include parts of the controversial La Lengua neighborhood. Fore more on that, check out Burrito Justice.

Sure, making up neighborhood names is great. (Especially if you're a realtor.) But can you correctly identify 37 different, commonly accepted neighborhood locations on a map while a ticking stopwatch taunts you from the top of your browser window? Sure you can.

Start off easy with only 20 neighborhoods to choose from, then go for all 37 which includes the ever-frustrating Diamond Heights. When you've finally got the knack for San Francisco, do the inevitable and move on to Oakland. Which has an astounding 131 neighborhoods. Who knew?

[Click-That-Hood]

From Alamo Square to Yerba Buena:
Stop with the posturing about the inferiority of other neighborhoods. Don't define yourself or others by a zip code. Leave your comfort zone. Be yourself. Try it. You'll like it. We promise.

All previous Etiquette Week posts.

We knew it was only a matter of time before some Internet slideshow finally saw the outer fringe of the Bay Area for what it's worth. Although Walnut Creek has yet to achieve any sort of recognition aside from that one mention on Parks and Recreation, the town of Livermore — California's other other wine country — has been recognized as the fifth Hottest Neighborhood in America for 2013.

In this particular listicle, Business Insider borrowed data from Seattle real estate listing site Redfin.com, which surveyed their network of real estate agents for neighborhoods they deemed "hot" and then ranked said neighborhoods based how quickly the available properties are selling, their price-per-square-foot averages and other real estate terms only realtors care about. So already, we're raising some eyebrows at this one. But eight of the top ten neighborhoods are in California, so who cares, right? Deal with it, middle America. (Deal with it and then click through 11 pages of slideshow photos and accompanying quotes.) Also, Redfin only lists properties in 17 metro areas across the country. So: Utah-sized grain of salt here.

Now that the bias is out there, Livermore real estate agent Sonal Basu says the Tri-Valley has become more desirable because low inventory is pushing potential homebuyers out to "the uncharted Livermore areas" on the edge of the BART map. Also: "There are lots of great events that take place near or in very walk friendly downtown." Please, tell us more about these hot Livermore events.

The real estate geniuses also ranked "Willow Glen, San Francisco" (which is actually in San Jose) as the sixth hottest neighborhood in 2013 thanks to its "central location" and "historic feel." Meanwhile, down in the Mission (which Business Insider seems to think is a peninsula town) the second-hippest neighborhood in the country is merely the ninth hottest real estate-wise, because "people are getting priced out of Noe Valley and the Castro."

Rounding out the other eight California neighborhoods on the top 10 are desirable Los Angeles spots: Highland Park (#1), Faircrest Heights (#3), Eagle Rock (#4) and Glassell Park (#7). Mira Mesa in San Diego came in at #2, while Chicago's Logan Square and Seattle's North Maple Leaf districts are the only two non-California neighborhoods that made the list. Apparently nobody wants to live in New York anymore.

[BusinessInsider]
[Redfin]

The Bold Italic makes the bold move today of giving us a mildly amusing listicle that cycles through all of the neighborhoods in San Francisco where a newcomer might find themselves looking for an apartment, and provides a quick, thoroughly graphically designed primer of all the various stereotypes to be discovered therein. Recycling old jokes? Sure, but everyone loves a listicle!

Anyhow, nothing much to see here for anyone who's lived in the city more than a year. Lesbians in Bernal Heights? Check. Fog in the Sunset? Check. We do like the "main attractions" listed for the Presidio, however. "No, seriously, there's a bowling alley. Trees. So many trees. Streets that will not register on any GPS ever. Not even in the future. Never."

Maybe they should just go back to making up micro-hoods, though. Valencia Bottoms, anyone?

[Bold Italic]

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