SF News This Week Is the 50th Anniversary of the Patty Hearst Kidnapping, One of SF’s All-Time Wildest Stories SF headlines of the mid-1970s were dominated by the saga of Patty Hearst, an heiress who was kidnapped, only to join her captors and rob banks with them. After her release from prison, she has led a life of dog shows and John Waters movies.
Business & Tech Feds, DMV Investigating More SF Cruise Robotaxi Incidents Than We Realized, Two Cars Allegedly Almost Hit Kids The self-driving robotaxi company Cruise may have had a worse track record of highly dangerous near-misses than previously reported, and faces five state and federal probes into incidents like almost running over children.
SF Politics Defeated Ron DeSantis Still Campaigning on ‘Don’t Allow Florida to Become San Francisco’ Kick Fresh off having his clock cleaned by Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is still seeking attention with his new “Don’t Allow Florida to Become San Francisco” campaign.
Bay Area Sports 49ers Taking Great Pains to Ensure Their Players Don’t Party Too Much In Las Vegas This Week Sunday’s 49ers-Chiefs Super Bowl will be the first one ever played in Sin City, and the 49ers team brass is going to great lengths to make sure the players keep their noses clean amidst the Las Vegas nightlife and gambling scene.
SF News Mission Street Vending Ban Declared a Success, Gets Extended for Six More Months A little over two months into the Mission Street vending ban, city officials are pleased enough with the general decrease in blight that they’re extending the ban for another six months.
Business & Tech SF Rapper and Local Pot Icon Berner Gets Lengthy New York Times Feature on His Cookies Dispensaries Local rapper Berner has become the Pied Piper of marijuana, with his Cookies brand now boasting 70 dispensaries globally, and he celebrated his recent New York Times profile by posting “I smoked a 10 gram joint in the @nytimes lol!”
Business & Tech Meta Oversight Board Rules Altered Biden Video Can Stay on Facebook, But Urges New Rules After the QAnon crowd widely shared an altered video clip of President Joe Biden last year, the Meta Oversight Board just ruled the video can remain on Facebook. But the board is also recommending a massive policy overhaul on manipulated content.
SF Politics PAC Opposing Dean Preston Gets Half of Its Donations From Firm Whose CEO Posted ‘Die Slow’ Tweet The so-called "Dump Dean" PAC opposing Supervisor Dean Preston pulled in $300,000 in 2023, but about half of that total comes from a small number of employees of one tech incubator — the one whose CEO sent the “die slow motherf***ers” tweet last weekend.
SF News Yep, That Was a 3.4M Earthquake In SF, With an Epicenter Apparently Just Off the Coast Didja feel it? A 3.4-magnitude earthquake shook San Francisco just after 1:30 p.m. Friday afternoon, and fortunately, no damage is being reported.
SF News BART’s ‘Fleet of the Future’ Trains Still Glitchy as Heck Whenever It Rains, May Require Expensive Repairs Rain delays are far more frequent with BART’s new “Fleet of the Future” trains than they were with the shoddier old trains, and brake problems on the new trains are the culprit. A new investigation finds the problem might cost ten times more to fix than BART had estimated.
SF News Sup. Dorsey Demands Report on ‘Drug Tourism,’ Seems to Be Itching For Crackdown District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey has a hunch that people are coming from out of town to buy or sell illegal drugs in SF, and is asking the City Controller for an analysis of the home addresses of those arrested to see how many are from other countries.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Chinatown Gets New Set of ‘Avant Garde’ Lanterns in Time for Lunar New Year The bar coming into the Castro’s former Harvey’s will now be called Pink Swallow; two more SF supervisors got Garry Tan-inspired death threat mailers; and some newly designed lanterns have been placed up in Chinatown.
SF News SF City Hall OKs Whole Foods Moving Into the Long-Empty Former Best Buy at Geary and Masonic Nearly six-and-a-half years since Whole Foods called dibs on the vacated Best Buy space in City Center plaza at Geary Boulevard and Masonic Avenue, the SF Planning Commission finally authorized the Amazon-owned grocery chain to move into the space Thursday.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SF’s Phenomenally French Restaurant Jeanne d'Arc In Union Square Has Reopened After a Four-Year Closure The very authentic French restaurant Jeanne d'Arc inside Cornell Hotel de France has been closed since 2020, but has reopened under new ownership, and its Old France interior and art serve a feast for your eyes while you feast on French cuisine.
SF News Apparent Rash of Wallet Thefts Hitting East Bay Trader Joe’s Stores The Livermore Police Department is sounding the alarm over a “crime trend” of unattended wallets being stolen from shopping carts at Trader Joe’s locations, though the obvious solution is just not leaving your wallet unattended.
SF News California Legislators Introduce First Reparations Bill, Cash Payments Not Proposed In a move that coincides with the beginning of Black History Month, members of the California Legislative Black Caucus introduced 14 bills addressing reparations for the harms of slavery and historical racism, though cash payments are not among the proposals.
SF News Right-Wingers File Lawsuit Against SF’s Transgender Guaranteed-Income Program Mayor Breed launched a Guaranteed Income for Trans People program in 2022, but a new lawsuit from a conservative legal group (that regularly sues Bay Area cities) hopes to halt it.
SF Politics Poll Shows Daniel Lurie Beating London Breed by 18 Points Head-to-Head, But Breed Still Leads If You Count All Candidates The good news for mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie is that a new poll shows him 18 points ahead of London Breed in a head-to-head matchup. The bad news for him is that Breed’s still ahead by five points if you count all candidates, though ranked choice favors Lurie.
SF News San Mateo County Will Charge Unhoused People With a Crime If They Refuse Shelter While it only applies to unincorporated areas of the county, a new law just passed by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors will make it a misdemeanor to refuse shelter if you’re homeless.
SF News Alt-Right Wackadoodles Now Impersonating the NorCal Journalists Who Exposed Their ‘Zoom-Bombing’ of City Meetings Two Northern California journalists got to the bottom of who was disrupting various city hall meetings with anti-semitic messages in Berkeley and Marin County. The neo-Nazis then started impersonating those journalists in the same meetings, and others across the country.
SF Politics Three SF Supervisors Say They’ve Received Death Threat Mailers After Garry Tan’s ‘Die Slow’ Tweet After a weekend uproar over a tweet in which local political donor Garry Tan posted that some SF supervisors should “Die slow,” three supervisors say they received physical hate mail citing the tweet and reading “I wish a slow and painful death for you and your loved ones.”
SF News Day Around the Bay: Lost MC Hammer Tapes Discovered in Modesto Storage Unit Michael Bloomberg just gave $200,000 to re-elect London Breed; a San Leandro man has been sentenced to eight years for sex trafficking; and a trove of what appears to be lost MC Hammer tapes was discovered in a storage unit in Modesto.
Business & Tech Lyft Hit With Rape Lawsuit From Woman Who Says She Was Impregnated by Her Driver We’ve heard untold numbers of sexual assault stories from women riding Lyft and Uber over the years, but the latest stands out, because the alleged victim says she was impregnated by a driver a driver who raped her.
SF News Report: Vallejo PD Considering Unbendable Badges, So Cops Can’t Bend Them to Celebrate Killing People Since the Vallejo Police Department has been dogged by scandals for the better part of a decade now, the department is reportedly considering a rebrand with new badges — badges that can’t be bent to celebrate fatal police shootings.
Arts & Entertainment Photos: Giant Dragon Statues Ring In the ‘Year of the Dragon’ In SF Meet all the dragon statues just installed around San Francisco to celebrate the Lunar New Year’s Year of the Dragon, as these intricately designed, wooden dragon monuments now adorn SF parks, markets, and public spaces.