The notorious skateboard hill-bomb event that used to happen on Dolores Street next to Dolores Park, and which last year became a smaller, city-sanctioned event on Twin Peaks, inspired a new version at another location this past weekend.

In case you missed it, and you likely did if you don't live near Telegraph Hill, a number of skateboarders hill-bombed Montgomery Street on Sunday afternoon. It's not clear why it was randomly scheduled in mid-April, when a reimagined version of the Dolores Hill Bomb just happened in October on Twin Peaks.

The only online evidence we see in the way of an event announcement is this flyer, which says that On Everything I Love was presenting the Frisco Hill Bomb on Sunday, April 12, at 2 pm. Participants were told to gather at Montgomery and Vallejo streets. "Bring boards, and your people," the flyer says. "Respect the ride. Respect the city."

As ABC 7 reports, unlike the unsanctioned hill-bomb events of yesteryear, which usually happened in early July — and which led to some nasty interactions with police in recent years — this year's event "drew more police officers than participants." And the organizers said they "hope for better cooperation with city officials in the future."

Unlike the October event, which was ostensibly permitted, this Frisco Hill Bomb was not sanctioned by the city.

One of the organizers, Deonta Harper, told ABC 7, "Want everybody to come out and enjoy themselves. Whether you fall, slide out, or ride down the hill and make it, you're gonna have the thrill of being together as a community."

The Dolores Hill Bomb used to just happen, in the chaotic way of some grassroots events, without any public announcement, but a police crackdown began in 2017, which was marked by tense confrontations. And further efforts by police came after a well known skater was seriously injured in 2019, and a fixed-gear cyclist died while bombing down the hill in 2020, which led to the city installing those plastic dots on the roadway.

The SFPD put on riot gear and got very aggressive at the 2023 Hill Bomb, arresting 81 minors and angering many of their parents.

The event still tried to stay underground, and following a police presence thwarting the use of Dolores Street, an unsanctioned hill bomb went ahead in 2024 one block over, on Church Street.

It's unclear whether the organizers of last fall's sanctioned version on Twin Peaks intend to repeat that effort.

Photo by Shawn Henry

• Local filmmaker Mario Riveira released a short, investigative documentary on ongoing ICE operations taking place in San Francisco, utilizing raw footage, eyewitness accounts, and interviews with immigrants, their families, and local officials. [YouTube]

• An investigation into former high school principal Jonathan M. Fey, 54, at Pleasanton Unified School District in Alameda County found evidence that he attempted to solicit sex from a current and former student using an online app, which resulted in his resignation. [EdSource]
• Halloween Reel Round-Up: Revelers filled the Castro Night Market early Friday evening then later paraded up and down Valencia Street in the Mission; both were preceded by a “Gay Halloween Ice Protest” in front of the immigration court on Montgomery Street Friday afternoon.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

After years of general chaos and injuries, and now being "forced into cooperating with police," SF's skaters are going to be having a fully permitted and organized "hill bomb" event this weekend on Twin Peaks.

You may have noticed, especially if you live near Dolores Park, that there was no skateboarding hootenanny in July known as the Dolores Hill Bomb.

This comes after last year's Hill Bomb was met with a police blockade on Dolores Street, to which the assembled skaters just responded by moving one block over and bombing the Church Street hill instead. And that followed the disastrous 2023 event, when SFPD officers showed up in riot gear and arrested 81 minors and 32 adults — with parents later railing at police for how the teenagers were treated while in custody.

All that police activity came as a result of the rogue event resulting in multiple injuries — including a death in 2020 — and occasional skirmishes with police as the crowd became increasingly hostile to the crackdowns.

Now, as the Chronicle reports, organizer Ciaran Trevino has sold out and caved to authority, under duress. And this year's event, dubbed the Twin Peaks Peaceful Hill-Bomb for Palestine, comes complete with a permit, a "safety briefing," and 25 safety "spotters" who'll be stationed along the route.

It all starts at 2 pm Saturday, October 11, at the Christmas Tree Point parking lot on Twin Peaks. Participants will then make their way down onto Upper Market via "bicycles, skateboards, skates, and other wheeled devices, with a "final run" at Market and Noe streets. There will then be a rally at Noe and Beaver streets, with speakers and "solidarity messages.

More than 40 Bay Area organizations are reportedly attached to the event, including CODEPINK, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Haiti Action Committee.

As Trevino tells the Chronicle, "I was sort of forced into cooperating with police... So I decided I’m going to co-opt the police — all these state resources — to facilitate our inherently anti-capitalist anarchist-tilt event."

And, as Ryen Motzek, a partner at the Mission's DLX Skateshop, tells the paper, the event should be inherently less chaotic because the route is "not straight downhill or super crazy." And, he adds, "It doesn’t run right through a residential area with a lot of houses. People won’t be just back-and-forth bombing with lots of beer spilling on the ground."

We shall see!

The popular skatepark at UN Plaza is getting upgraded and expanded in early February, with several new beginner-friendly, skate-able features being added, and Converse is hosting a skateboarding event in the park on February 15.

The 13,000-square-foot UN Plaza skatepark, opened a little over a year ago in November 2023, is about to get an upgrade with an additional 2,100 square feet of of skateable surface added. As SF Recreations and Parks announced in a release, construction is already underway, and the additional area will "feature three unique, skateable geometric art pieces, which are being designed by Olympic skateboarder, MIT-trained architect, and Converse CONs skate rider Alexis Sablone."

A Skate UN Plaza kickoff event will officially christen the new skate area on Saturday, February 15, from noon to 3 pm, hosted by Converse, along with Tony Hawk's The Skatepark Project, and Skate Like a Girl. The event will feature giveaways, trick competitions, and live demos, and Rec & Parks is hoping to bring in skaters from across the Bay Area to watch and participate.

"San Francisco is one of the most skateable cities in the country, and [the Skatepark Project] is proud of our longstanding partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department,” said Benjamin Anderson Bashein, CEO of The Skatepark Project (formerly the Tony Hawk Foundation), in a statement. "We're especially pleased to be unveiling Alexis's skateable sculptures, which combine public art and skate spot architecture to engage both novice and experienced skaters alike. This innovative installation showcases the fusion of skateboarding, art, and design and reimagines public spaces as hybrid playscapes."

"Our public spaces are part of what makes San Francisco great, and improving them will be central to our comeback," said Mayor Daniel Lurie in a statement. "The expansion of UN Skate Plaza will make this critical space more welcoming to our families and visitors. I want to thank the Skatepark Project and Converse for being partners in this project and our city’s revitalization."

Rec & Parks estimates that the skatepark has already attracted around 340,000 visitors, and officials say it has led to a 79% reduction in daytime drug-related incidents in UN Plaza.

The construction of the skatepark, along with several other recreational areas featuring chess tables and an outdoor gym, came amid a pre-election effort by Mayor London Breed to improve street conditions around UN Plaza and Seventh Street.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that this pushed illegal activity further down Seventh Street to the area around the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building, and over onto Sixth Street — which has been the site of yet another crackdown under Lurie's watch this past month. That effort has yielded over 200 arrests, but it's unclear if it's made any lasting impact.

Rec & Parks would like to think it has.

"The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department has been proud to lead the way in transforming the Civic Center area into a vibrant, welcoming space for everyone," says SF Rec and Parks GM Phil Ginsburg. "The Skate Plaza has become a national model for creative spaces that bring people together."

Previously: And Just Like That, UN Plaza Becomes a Skate Park

The skaters and their fans would not be deterred on Saturday, and instead of doing the traditional hill bomb on the Dolores Street hill between 19th and 21st, they just bombed down Church Street from 20th.

The SFPD put up barricades Saturday in an effort to stop the skater kids from doing their annual hill bomb on Dolores Street. But police apparently didn't anticipate their pivot, and the hill bomb happened anyway — albeit smaller than previous years — one block over, on the other side of Dolores Park.

The unpermitted Church Street hill bomb utilized a street with just as steep of a grade as Dolores Street, and skaters sped down the street into the Church and 18th intersection — where car traffic was of some concern.

As KTVU reports, two people were injured at the event, but their injuries were not considered life-threatening.

Mission Local confirms that the mood was "calmer than expected" and the crowd was somewhat limited. While skaters started out using the middle of Dolores Park itself — the central walkway — they soon moved over to Church Street for the impromptu hill-boming. While it didn't appear any arrests were made, at least one skater was seen being taken to the hospital after a crash.

“It’s kinda like playing pinball in real life,” said Amire Lofton, one skater who spoke to Mission Local.

Previous Dolores Hill Bombs have resulted in some serious injuries, as well as the death of a fixed-gear cyclist who did the hill bomb on his bike in 2020. That fatality, and a rowdy crowd that year, led police to install raised dots on Dolores Street to deter skateboarding, but those did little to stop subsequent hill bombs.

The Dolores Hill Bomb in 2023 led to the mass detention and arrest of over 80 teenagers, which prompted outcry from parents and the community, and led to a civil lawsuit.

Over 100 SFPD officers were reportedly out on Dolores Street, setting up zig-zagging blockades on sidewalks and the street Saturday, but the clever skateboarding crews inaugurated what could be a new tradition on Church Street instead — and maybe the police will have to blockade both streets next year.

Some more images from Saturday's hill bomb below.

Top image: MaxDubler/X

The annual, unsanctioned skate punk joyride known as the Dolores Hill Bomb might be happening this Saturday, and at a community meeting to discuss police plans, neighbors were split on whether the event should be welcomed, or cracked down upon even harder.

The highly unsanctioned annual celebration of hooliganism known as the Dolores Hill Bomb has brought out skater kids and various fun-seekers to ride skateboards or other wheeled devices down then very steep Dolores Hill on some given Saturday every year since 2016. It is a completely unorganized, rogue event, and yes, there are a few misdemeanors committed here and there.  

But the 2023 event got ugly after SFPD put on the riot gear and arrested 81 minors and 31 adults, handcuffing dozens of kids, and detaining them until as late as 4 am. According to a Mission Local report, several of the detained teens “peed their pants while being kept zip-tied on the bus, awaiting transfer to Mission Station.” After extensive media uproar, DA Brooke Jenkins dropped the charges against all of the minors. But angry parents still brought a civil lawsuit against the city, which is still in the courts.

Fast forward to last week, when we learned that some social media posts were promoting that the 2024 Dolores Hill Bomb would be happening this Saturday, July 6. SFPD insisted they would be there and making arrests as they saw fit, while some in the community wondered why the city couldn’t get ahead of this thing and make it more sanctioned and safe.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @vellskiiii

Well, someone who’d promoted the event as happening on July 6 seems to have had a change of heart. “Event CANCELED!!! Police will be waiting at Dolores!!! Keep my name out of it!!! Stay away!!!” that poster said. But there is an obvious likelihood that some teens and adult thrillseekers will show up anyway, or that like in 2020, there ends up being more than one Saturday where the skaters congregate at Dolores Park and try to make this happen.

Mission Local reports there was a Monday community meeting for concerned Dolores Park-area residents, with a panel of SFPD Chief Bill Scott, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, and various other SFPD brass. And Chief Scott reiterated there would be a strong police presence, with no tolerance for foolishness.

“It is our intention, from the police department perspective, to not allow illegal activity to occur,” Scott said, per Mission Local. “I would highly encourage whoever can be a liaison to people that plan to show up … to encourage them not to do that.”

But some adults in the skater community were baffled that the city can’t come up with a more productive response after eight years of the exact same thing happening. “It occurs like a butterfly migration — so consistent, you could almost prepare for it,” skateboard instructor and Comet Skateboards brand manager Aaron Breetwor said at the meeting. “You could go outside and watch it like the sun goes up and sun goes down.”

Yet some neighbors were exasperated by the disorderly element this event attracts.

“We ask the city right now to please help us stop the violent acts: No more assaults or projectiles, broken bottles or fireworks,” Dolores Heights Improvement Club chair Carolyn Kenady told the panel. “Prevent arrests, especially of bystanders and minors, and prevent this illegal event.”

There was talk of sanctioning the event, though it clearly seems too late to do so now. One of the ideas mentioned was providing $3,000 for 100 helmets for the skaters, as there have been several gruesome injuries over the years, and even a fatality in 2020.

When the $3,000, 100 helmet proposal was discussed, some sympathetic skater in the audience shouted “If you need $3,000, I can donate to make that happen,” according to Mission Local.

Related: Just 10 Days Out From the Annual Dolores Hill Bomb, SFPD Gearing Up For More Skateboard Mayhem [SFist]

Image: @ki_tranada via Twitter

The annual, unpermitted and outlaw Dolores Hill Bomb event is being advertised as happening on Saturday, July 6, and neither police nor event organizers appear to be changing their approach after last year’s fiasco that saw 81 minors arrested.

The rowdy and unsanctioned annual Dolores Hill Bomb event has served as a way for skate punks to get their ya-ya’s out barreling down the very steep Dolores Hill for years.

But last year’s event took a dark turn when SFPD arrested 81 minors and 31 adults, handcuffing kids and detaining them for the night (and not even offering the bathroom access). DA Brooke Jenkins dropped the charges against all minors, and all but two of the adults. But that didn’t soothe hard feelings from parents, who brought a civil lawsuit against the city, which is still not resolved.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @vellskiiii

Oh, and this year’s Dolores Hill Bomb is scheduled for Saturday, July 6 — a mere ten days from now.

So Mission Local checked in with the SFPD and the skateboarding community to see if either side was planning anything different this year, in terms of sanctioning the event, street closures, or less-harsh enforcement tactics. And no, it appears that neither side will be going about anything any differently this year.  

“If anyone chooses to break the law, the SFPD will not hesitate to make arrests,” SFPD spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky said in a statement to Mission Local. “Last year, individuals threw explosives at officers, assaulted officers and committed widespread vandalism. In response, the SFPD issued a dispersal order and ultimately arrested numerous people who chose to continue to commit violence and property destruction.”

“We will do the same this year if necessary,” he ominously added.

The district’s supervisor Rafael Mandelman also gave comment in rather draconian terms, telling Mission Local that skaters “shouldn’t come. Not this year. Not to this event.”

“If you participate,” Mandelman added, “you do so at the risk that the police are going to try to stop you.”

The event has no known official organizers. But members of the skateboard community feel like the city has dropped the ball by not sanctioning and helping organize the event.

“It basically seems like a trap,” skateboard advocate Aaron Breetwor told Mission Local. “If they know well enough that the event is going to happen, they should know well enough to conduct outreach.”

To be clear, the Dolores Hill Bomb is not for the faint of heart. Bicyclist Andrew Sanders was killed in a collision with a skateboarder at the 2020 event. Local skateboard entrepreneur Tomoko Oikawa fractured her skull and suffered a brain injury in an accident at the 2019 Dolores Hill Bomb. And one-time Thrasher magazine editor Jake Phelps was hospitalized after a serious head injury at 2017’s event.  

The city added raised dots to Dolores Street in 2020 in hopes of deterring the event and changing the skaters’ behavior, but that clearly has not worked.

Brace yourselves for another confrontation between a mob of teens on skateboards and the SFPD.

Related: SFPD Hit With the Inevitable Lawsuit Over ‘Dolores Hill Bomb’ Mass Arrest of 81 Minors [SFist]

Image: @ki_tranada via Twitter

Parents said they would sue over July’s draconian mass arrest of 117 people (83 of them minors) during this year’s Dolores Hill Bomb skateboarding meetup, and that lawsuit against the SFPD has now arrived.

SFist readers know that the annual guerrilla skateboarding event Dolores Hill Bomb will often get a little rowdy, but this past July’s event saw the mass arrest of 83 minors in addition to 32 people ages 18 and older. And yes, a Muni car was tagged, and one officer suffered a cut on the forehead. But it sure seemed heavy-handed that SFPD arrested 83 kids, some of whom they allegedly injured, over a matter where DA Brooke Jenkins dropped pretty much all of the charges anyway.

Some of the kids’ angry parents vowed to sue, and this has now come to pass. Mission Local reports that four of the arrested youngsters are named as the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit over the Dolores Hill Bomb arrests, in a suit brought by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).

“These arrests and police conduct were unlawful and violated the youths’ constitutional rights,” Oakland-based PCJF senior counsel Rachel Lederman said in a Tuesday announcement. “Children and young adults were arrested, traumatized, and held for hours under inhumane conditions for merely participating in or happening to be near the youth skateboard event. They were kept waiting in the cold until the wee hours purely as an illegal dragnet to collect identifying information in a desperate attempt to justify the mass arrest.”

The full text of the 23-page lawsuit details how each of the four young plaintiffs was making seemingly innocent attempts to get home, but were swept up and detained by SFPD. And the lawsuit’s description of these children’s hours-long detention paints a disturbing picture of SFPD.

“Hours went by and Plaintiffs and other arrestees needed to urinate. Children implored the officers to allow them access to bathrooms but their requests were denied,” the lawsuit states. “Eventually, a sympathetic neighbor tossed a bucket down from her window. Some of the kids were able to urinate in the bucket or on the street. Others were forced to urinate in their pants, causing them shame, humiliation and embarrassment, and compounding their cold and discomfort.”

The kids’ arrest and detainment are also called out. “After the children and young adults had been held on the street for at least two hours, the police began searching them, taking their phones, jewelry, belts and other property,” the suit says. “The police handcuffed them behind their backs with painful plastic zip ties.”

There are also some issues brought up about how the kids were hastily released — some later than 4 a.m., and others to parents who were not confirmed to be the kids’ legal guardians.

This is a class action lawsuit, which means the attorneys would likely want other affected kids and families to join in the lawsuit too. And yes they are asking for money, or as the lawsuit puts it, damages for “pain, suffering, anxiety, and/or emotional distress, deprivation of liberty, and loss of constitutional rights.” But they also want the kids to be declared “factually innocent of all charges for which they were arrested,” and for their police records and fingerprint records to be destroyed.

The lawsuit was just submitted Tuesday morning, there are no court dates set, and as of press time it has not even been served to the SF City Attorney's Office.

“Once we are served with the lawsuit,” City Attorney spokesperson Jen Kwart told Mission Local, “we will review the complaint and respond in court.”

Related: Parents Fume That Their Kids Were Injured In Dolores Hill Bomb Arrests as SFPD Defends Harsh Tactics [SFist]

Image: @bernie via Twitter

In a matter of weeks, crews from the SF Rec & Parks Department transformed UN Plaza from the nexus of black-market chaos that it has been for at least a decade into a clean and lively skateboarding and table-tennis destination.

The new skate park, with adjacent fitness and game areas, officially debuted Wednesday, and the skater girls and boys were already out there taking advantage of it. At least two dozen skaters were doing ollies Wednesday afternoon on the new central, triangular hardscape pyramid, and the other mini ramps and rails that have been installed in the plaza. The center of the park is fenced off, and it appears the fences may be closed at night to discourage campers.

Also fenced off is the often beleaguered UN Plaza fountain, which has been spruced up with new potted plants and trees, and was once again running with water on Wednesday. This seems to be some last-minute lipstick being put on for the incoming visitors at the APEC Summit who may want to visit this landmark to the last major international gathering here, the 1945 creation of the United Nations.

Whether the skate park does what it's supposed to do, using daily skateboard activity to discourage and push out less desirable activities, remains to be seen.

But for the time being, while some aspects of the new park weren't much in use on its first day, the skate park was very active.

Professional skateboarder Andrew Torralvo spoke to ABC 7 on Tuesday, saying of the park, "With skateboarding, it's going to bring less sketchy activities around with people moving around and it's not so stagnant around here, you know."

Chess tables, which were a request of community members, were not in active use on Wednesday afternoon, though some were using the chairs to rest. Nor were the Teqball or ping-pong tables getting used, with the exception of one ping-pong table.

And how long before this foosball table gets destroyed?

The fitness court had one person using it — and it features mostly simple equipment for body-weight workouts.

It's a predictable ending to the mass arrest of everyone who happened to be standing near last month’s Dolores Hill Bomb skateboard rally — the DA is dropping the charges against all but two of the 34 adults arrested in the roundup.  

Last month’s iteration of the very rowdy annual skateboard event Dolores Hill Bomb ended with the brute-force mass arrest of 83 minors and 34 adults for failing to disperse. (Eyewitnesses say that most of the “adults” were 18 or 19). And pretty much all of those 83 minors saw their charges dropped a week later, as parents complained many were just in the wrong place at the wrong time when SFPD corralled and arrested the whole lot in the area.

And now the same applies to the 34 adults who were arrested, as Mission Local reports DA Brooke Jenkins just announced she’s dropping the charges against 32 of the 34 adults arrested that Saturday evening.

In the Friday afternoon statement seen above, the DA’s office says “the misdemeanor citations presented to my office for inciting a riot and failure to disperse are being discharged because we can not prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury the guilt of any specific individuals cited.”

The statement adds that “The SFPD had probable cause to act to disperse the group, which had been declared to be an unlawful assembly. But, the evidence does not clearly show which specific individuals were inciting a riot, heard the dispersal orders, and refused to comply with dispersal orders.”

Jenkins's statement indicates that the two still facing charges are being investigated for vandalism, and the Chronicle notes this possibly has something to do with the tagged-up J-Church car seen above. “There is no excuse for the vandalism that occurred to city and public property that day and our office is committed to holding individuals who commit vandalism and property crimes accountable,” the DA’s statement says.

But there still may be bigger legal ramifications beyond those two remaining suspects still facing  vandalism charges. Mission Local also reminds us that “dozens” of parents are threatening a federal civil rights lawsuit over the mass arrest, as some minors sustained injuries, were zip-tied for hours, and many were forced to urinate on themselves as they remained in custody for hours.

“We are definitely proceeding with a lawsuit for civil rights violations, which we are planning to file as a class action so that it potentially includes everyone that was arrested on 17th Street,” attorney Rachel Lederman told Mission Local. “The police department created the class by sealing everyone into that block so that they were all treated as a mass, without any individual basis for each arrest as the constitution requires.”

That said, the 32 adults who saw their charges dropped are technically not 100% out of the woods yet. As the Chronicle points out, Jenkins’s office could refile any charges within a one-year statute of limitations.

Related: Parents Fume That Their Kids Were Injured In Dolores Hill Bomb Arrests as SFPD Defends Harsh Tactics [SFist]

Image: @penkadilla via Twitter

The controversial mass-arrest of 81 minors (and 32 adults) at the year's unsanctioned Dolores Park Hill Bomb has some parents alleging brutal treatment of teens, but SFPD and Mayor Breed are doubling down on the need for that heavy response.

When you decide to mass-arrest 81 minors, along with 32 people who were 18 or older, there are bound to be some questions about how your police department handled those youngsters' arrests, or how the teens were treated while in police custody. And those difficult questions were already being asked when Mission Local published its extensive Sunday morning report on Saturday night’s Dolores Park Hill Bomb event that resulted in 113 arrests by police using riot tactics and pointing weapons at a crowd that was overwhelmingly minors.

Mission Local spoke to one 15-year-old who’d been arrested, and reported that “Girls hyperventilated” and “several peed their pants while being kept zip-tied on the bus, awaiting transfer to Mission Station.”

On Tuesday, Mission Local has more follow-up on teens who were injured or wrongly arrested. That report details several children being hit with batons or bean bags shot from rifles, and has parents complaining that the wide net of the mass arrest captured children who were not involved with the event.

One mother named Lisa tells Mission Local that she has screenshots proving her son was just passing through the event, and was merely on his way home on a scooter. “My son said that [the police] said, ‘Go that way, go this way,’ and pointed, but it was straight into the cops that were coming,” she told Mission Local. “It was complete entrapment.”

And yes, it is fair to wonder why teenagers skateboarding drew a paramilitary response that went far beyond the resources used to combat, say, drug trafficking in the Tenderloin.

The always-combative social media accounts of the police union, the SF Police Officers Association, posted a supercut of Saturday’s mayhem (and got some shit for using reporters’ content without permission). That video does detail an officer’s face being lacerated at the :45 mark, and a Chronicle report confirms, with the suspect likely a 15- or 16-year-old.

But those arrested seem to have taken far worse injuries. The Chronicle spoke with 32-year-old photographer Alessandra Nieto, who reportedly “suffered bruising on her arms and legs from being tackled by police.” And Mission Local adds several teens were lacerated by the zip ties used to cuff them.

Mayor London Breed issued a statement Monday, saying, “People assaulted police officers, set fires, and vandalized property, including Muni vehicles. No one at this event was arrested for skateboarding.”

An SFPD press release described the incident as a “Mission District Riot,” language they have not used to describe the event in the past. That release also adds that “As crowds moved out of the park at approximately 7:35 p.m. there were reports of gunshots at 18th and Church streets near an occupied MUNI light rail vehicle (LRV), which was unable to move due to the crowd blocking the street.”  

SFPD chief Bill Scott insists that it was the laceration of the officer’s face that led to the escalation. "The helmets went on, and rightfully so," Scott told KPIX. "No officer is going to stand to protect the public without protective equipment while people were throwing bottles and whatever else they were doing and explosives. And they should not be expected to do that."

And one neighbor says his house had taken gunshot fire, according to KPIX. “There was three bullet holes that went through the front door of our building, and there was one bullet hole that went through our living room,” that Dolores Street resident said. Though KPIX also details that other homes were damaged by “BB holes,” so these may not have been full-on firearms. SFPD’s claim that “officers located and seized several firearms left at the scene” may or may not also be a reference to BB guns.

In years past, the Dolores Park Hill Bomb has usually been a one-day story in the media. This year’s aggressive tactics and large numbers of minors arrested ensure we’ll be talking about this one for a while, and it will likely be the poster boy example of San Francisco police use-of-force.

Related: Police Crack Down on Skateboarders' Dolores Hill Bomb Saturday, Arrest and Detain Dozens [SFist]

Image: @ki_tranada via Twitter

Photo: Giorgio Trovato

Hundreds of police officers in riot gear shut down the notorious Dolores Hill Bomb event Saturday night, arresting and detaining dozens of adults and teenagers in a chaotic scene.

The wild skate party where hundreds of daredevil skaters bomb the big hill on Dolores Street next to Dolores Park have been organized informally through word-of-mouth and social media for several years, usually during the summer but always spontaneously — because the city of San Francisco hates them.

Sure, in the past, there have been some fights, tagging self-driving cars, injuries, and even an unfortunate cyclist death in 2020. But SFPD also has faced costly lawsuits for use of force in breaking up the event, like in 2017 when an officer pushed a skater going downhill into a squad car, so the skater sued and won $275,000.

It was another showdown this year. SF’s strong skateboarding community was out in force. Hundreds of participants had gathered for the event, as videos on social media show, amid a heavy police presence and barricades. Mission Local reported that more than 100 officers were involved. Many cops in riot gear tried to stand in front of skaters at the at the top of the hill on Dolores Street to prevent them from going down the hill, according to SFGATE, and when skaters tried to go around to Church Street, even more police showed up there to stop them.

Police reportedly ordered the crowd to disperse and began to arrest many members soon after. Many juveniles were reportedly zip-tied. Some witnesses say that police “trapped” them and also used violence. As Mission Local reported, one 14-year old said the police were “trying to trap us … and [an officer] tried to hit me. He swung [the baton] at me and said ‘Move!’ and now all of them are under arrest.”

SFPD issued a statement Sunday morning that said that around 6 p.m., officers witnessed the use of fireworks and received reports of vandalism. Shortly after 7 p.m., a 16-year-old individual allegedly "spat in the face" of an officer at Cumberland and Dolores. The department stated that during the subsequent arrest, the crowd began hurling lit fireworks, smoke bombs, glass bottles, and metal cans at the officers, causing them to be struck.

According to the statement, SFPD also said a total of 113 people were arrested — 81 juveniles and 32 adults over 18. Most juveniles faced the same three misdemeanor charges: inciting riot, conspiracy, and failure to disperse, according to their notice-to-appear slips. According to KPIX, one adult was cited and released for resisting arrest and a second adult was cited and released for inciting a riot. All were reportedly given court dates later in the month.

RELATED: Dolores Hill Bomb Returns, Self-Driving Waymo Car Gets Given the Business by Skate Punks

Image via Getty Images/lechatnoir.

Things really went downhill at the notorious annual Dolores Hill Bomb skater celebration Saturday, and while it appears there were no human injuries, a passing Waymo self-driving car got mobbed, jumped on, and tagged.

If you get mad about all the illegal fireworks going off in San Francisco these days, get ready to Karen yourself sick over this treasury of videos from Saturday’s return of the annual, outlaw Dolores Hill Bomb skater punk bacchanalia. The no-holds-barred, daredevils-barreling-down-Dolores Street skate party has certainly been marred in some years by significant injury, and even a fatality in 2020, plus the requisite confrontations with police.

It does not appear any of that happened this year. But as seen below, one self-driving Alphabet-owned Waymo vehicle was sacrificed to the skater gods during its ill-advised attempt to navigate through the bedlam.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Zack (@clrblnd.z)

The incident took place after dark. Vice News reports that yes, a Waymo did get trashed at the Dolores Hill Bomb this year. “A group of skateboarders mobbed a Waymo vehicle in San Francisco on Saturday night, jumping on and spraypainting the car,” Vice reports. “In a video of the encounter, dozens of people can be seen swarming the car, several jumping on top of it and dancing, a few drawing on the car, and at least one individual sitting on the large sensor on the roof.”

A Waymo spokesperson confirmed the incident in a statement to Vice. “At approximately 10 pm on July 9, one of our cars operating in manual mode in San Francisco was surrounded by individuals who jumped onto the hood, roof and the trunk of the car and vandalized the vehicle with spray paint,” a Waymo spokesperson told Vice’s Motherboard. “The autonomous specialist was eventually able to direct the car safely out of the crowd and remove themselves from the situation. We are in close communication with the San Francisco Police Department as they actively investigate this incident."

Haha, good luck with that SFPD “active investigation,” Waymo spokesperson!

SFist is obliged to officially remain neutral on the merits and morals, or lack thereof, of the annual Dolores Hill Bomb. But on a personal level, I will buy you a drink if you are one of those people who tagged the self-driving Waymo car. But sheesh, we would like to see more helmets being worn at this thing.

As one commenter noted in the 50-comment Reddit thread for this event, “I work at SFGH. We see so many cases of head traumas from skateboarders, and they are DEVESTATING. [sic] Brain bleeds, requiring brain surgery, etc. Heart breaking esp in young adults. Ruins their life and their cognition. WEAR YOUR GOD DAMN HELMETS!!”

Related: Crowd Gathers For Annual 'Dolores Hill Bomb,' Smashes Windows Of Vehicle That Drove Into the Fray [SFist]

Screenshot: clrblnd.z via Instagram  

Instead of one there were three Dolores Street Hill Bomb events over the past week and a half, and during the third one on Friday, a cyclist collided with skateboarder sending both of them to the hospital — and the cyclist died from his injuries on Sunday.

The first and what we thought was the official Dolores Hill Bomb happened a week ago Thursday, on July 9, leading to at least one hospitalization and several injuries — and the vandalism of a vehicle that unknowingly drove into the chaos during the event on Dolores between 21st and 19th streets. But as the Examiner reports, different dates were promoted for the event this year, leading to confusion and multiple Hill Bombs — including a "Part 2" on Saturday, July 11.

As one local skater and friend of the deceased cyclist, Daniel Mejia, tells the Ex, the third Hill Bomb felt sparsely attended and "The energy and the overall vibe of it was very odd. Even before it started, it felt like it shouldn’t have happened."

The cyclist, Andrew Sanders, was a recent graduate of San Francisco State University, graduating with a BA in visual art. He leaves behind a group of friends, some of whom gathered for a small vigil on Dolores Street on Sunday. Sofia Montes, a coworker of Sanders, tells KPIX he was "Super creative, always dancing, super happy. Such a nice guy to be around."

And Sanders' roommate of five years, Jonathan Concool, tells the Examiner, "Anyone and everyone he met, he could always find something to connect with them. He’s the most full-of-life person I’ve ever met."

Sanders reportedly suffered a head injury in the crash that led to an aneurysm.

His parents say they hope to set up a fund to support the arts in Sanders' name.

SFMTA chief Jeffrey Tumlin mistakenly tweeted that two people had died Friday night while Sanders and the injured skateboarder remained hospitalized with critical injuries. He later corrected himself, as the Chronicle reports, but he instructed the agency to immediately begin installing the Botts' dots across the street to deter future Hill Bombs. "SF has a world renowned skate scene I love," he wrote, tweeting the photo of the installation. "So I hate doing this to Dolores."

"We’re certainly not anti-skate at the SFMTA [but] we did need to stop what was happening," Tumlin said to KPIX.

In addition to Sanders' death and the skateboarder injured this year, another young man who was seen spectacularly wiping out on social media was hospitalized with a brain bleed on July 9.

At the 2019 Hill Bomb, a wipeout left skateboarder 23-year-old Tomoko Oikawa hospitalized with a skull fracture and traumatic brain injury. Oikawa has since been recovering, and said in a February interview that she was re-learning how to skate.*

Regarding the new speed dots, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman wrote on Facebook over the weekend, "I understand kids wanting to skateboard, have fun, and congregate after having had to shelter in place for several months now. However, the public safety concerns extend well beyond the possible spread of COVID-19 and serious injuries have occurred to participants, neighbors and passersby."

Previously: Crowd Gathers For Annual 'Dolores Hill Bomb,' Smashes Windows Of Vehicle That Drove Into the Fray

*This post has been updated with new information about Tomoko Oikawa's recovery.