A power outage left 36,895 homes dark last night (including one of your SFist editors) for a brief period during which they might have otherwise been enjoying David Letterman, or President Obama sticking up for gays at the Olympics and discussing Trayvon Martin on Jay Leno. The cause appears to have been "an equipment failure at a substation," as Bay City News reports.

We can report that the outage we observed extended from Steiner Street to Polk Street in the Western Addition and Civic Center, but not all blocks were affected, and it appeared to go south from Fulton toward the Lower Haight. Other neighborhoods seem to have been affected, however, because news outlets reported on 31 separate outages. The blackout began at 11:44 p.m. and power was restored 46 minutes later, at 12:30 a.m.

[SF Bay]
[BCN/Appeal]