• A new report from Zillow shows rents across the Bay Area — particularly in San Francisco — have fallen as much as 9% from where they were a year ago. Interestingly enough, the Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI) shows the average rental price across the United States was $1,721 in January — a 0.5% increase from January 2020; like SF, San Jose also saw a decline in rent, down 6.3% from this time last year; many industry experts who lent a hand updating ZORI still believe rents across the board will stabilize in the second half of 2021 and could see marginal increases from there on out. [Chronicle/Zillow]
  • Vice President Kamala Harris has sold her SoMa condo. The Wall Street Journal reported that the asking price for her San Francisco home was $799K, but the final sale price has not yet been disclosed; additional information on her former property shows Harris purchased the condo at almost half that price around seventeen years ago. [Hoodline]
  • Bay Area-born food brand Annie's Homegrown, which is now owned by General Mills, has pledged to remove any trace of a dangerous class of chemical that was found to be present in its popular mac and cheese. The chemicals are called ortho-phthalates, they've been linked to bad effects on humans, and they are found in plastics that are sometimes present in conveyor belt systems that handle food, and they were found to be present in 10 different brands of mac and cheese. [New York Times]
  • Sonoma Plaza restaurant The Girl & the Fig has reopened, one week after temporarily closing due to a highly publicized departure of a server — which the server framed as having been "forced out" because she refused to stop wearing a Black Lives Matter face mask. The former server's social media post and a subsequent SFGate article about it led to much online rage, but the restaurant insists it supports the movement and simply had instituted a uniform policy for employee masks. [Chronicle]
  • The reason why that huge Eastlake lot in Oakland has remained empty for years exists as another example of lofty real estate projects failing to properly address the housing crisis. [Oaklandside]
  • With Salesforce declaring the traditional nine-to-five as we know it is basically "dead," the eateries shouldering Salesforce Tower that once catered to those workers might have to contend with yet another financial hardship on the horizon. [SF Eater]
  • Just like Uber and Lyft, Instacart is raising its prices to pay for Prop 22. [Chronicle]
  • The United Kingdom's Supreme Court has dealt a blow to the gig economy, declaring Uber's drivers to be "workers" and therefore entitled to benefits. [ABC7]
  • Remember when Kanye West brought Kim Kardashian to San Francisco to propose to her on the jumbotron screen at what was then known as AT&T Park? Welp, it's over, and Kim has officially filed for her third divorce. [CBS SF]

Image: Getty Images/frankix