Arts & Entertainment Funk Legend Sly Stone, Whose Career Was Born In SF, Has Died at 82 The founder of Sly and the Family Stone, a one-time San Francisco DJ who started the groundbreaking funk band that’s now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, died Monday morning in Los Angeles from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
SF News Saturday Portola Rollover Crash Killed Driver, Left Dog Seriously Injured A fatal one-car crash this weekend at the border of the Portola and Bayview neighborhoods took the life of the driver who was in his 30s, while a dog who was in the car with him suffered serious injuries.
SF News Renegade Transit Activists Install their Own ‘Guerilla Benches’ at SF Bus Stops That Don’t Have Benches A rogue group of activists won’t stand for the lack of benches at many SF Muni stops, so they went and installed a bunch of their own unauthorized benches this past weekend. But we’ll see how this sits with SF Public Works.
SF News SF’s Controversial Vaillancourt Fountain Deemed 'Hazardous,’ Now Getting Fenced Off to the Public The fugly but beloved-to-some Vaillancourt Fountain at Embarcadero Plaza was already on the ropes and uncertain to be kept around, but now the city is fencing it off, as a new architectural report says it's a hazard to the public.
SF News All SF Speed Cameras Now Working, They’ll Start Issuing Fines on August 5 Every one of those 33 speed-limit enforcement cameras is now up and running across San Francisco, and while they’re still just issuing warnings, they’ll start slapping speeders with fines of $50 and up come August 5.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Haight Street’s Trax Bar Is Closing, But Will Reopen as ‘Mary’s on Haight’ A story about a longtime neighborhood queer bar closing during Pride Month isn't great. But in the case of Trax in the Haight, it will reopen soon as a "straight-friendly gay dive bar" called Mary's.
SF News First Cohort of Lowell High ‘Lottery Kids’ Just Graduated, and They Did Pretty Well Academically SF's Lowell High School has already reversed its short-lived lottery admission policy, but the first graduating class from that era just graduated, with grades that were more or less close to the "merit-based" admissions students.
Business & Tech San Mateo Company Claims They’ve Got a ‘True Flying Car,’ Taking Pre-Orders Now A local startup says their flying car is now operable, they’ve got a hype video for it, and insist they are now taking pre-orders for this $300,000 vehicle. But there may not be many places in the Bay Area you can legally fly it.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Tesla Lost $150 Billion In Value Today Amidst Trump-Musk Spat Mayor Daniel Lurie surprisingly slammed the Twitter tax break; a new trove of unearthed Sly and the Family Stone recordings is coming out this summer; and Tesla lost $150 billion in value just today over that whole hilarious Trump vs. Elon skirmish.
SF News Jilted Neighborhood Groups Vent Over How Much of Their Money the SF Parks Alliance Made Disappear We heard from several small organizations Thursday about how much of their money the SF Parks Alliance blew through before that group dissolved this week, but it sure looks like there will be subpoenas issued, and audits to autopsy what all went wrong.
SF News SF Art Institute Will Reopen With the New Name California Academy of Studio Arts (CASA) The team including Laurene Powell Jobs that bought up the 152-year-old SF Art Institute just announced it will reopen with the new name California Academy of Studio Arts, or just “CASA” for short.
SF News Healdsburg Woman Heard Using N-Word In Viral TikTok Video Speaks Out, Insists She's Not Racist A May 23 TikTok video of a Healdsburg woman hurling a racial epithet at a team of movers racked up millions of views and became a viral “Karen video,” but that woman, who’s since moved out of state, blames the whole thing on being bipolar.
SF News ACLU Sues Sonoma County Over Drone Use, Could SF Be Next? A pair of Sonoma County farm owners say that county’s drone surveillance program is unconstitutional, and they’ve enlisted the ACLU to bring a lawsuit, which could set a legal precedent affecting SFPD’s new drone-happy policies.
SF Politics SF’s 10 Wildest Nonprofit Spending Scandals of the Last Five Years, Ranked This week’s blow-up of the SF Parks Alliance only underscores the staggering number of SF nonprofits with improper spending scandals, and other riches-to-rags financial improprieties that have happened here over the last five years.
Arts & Entertainment SF Porchfest Returns Saturday to Rock Out the Mission District with Lo-Fi Magic The seventh annual DIY “front porch” music festival SF Porchfest brings 74 live acts to 13 stages (well, porches) in the Mission District on Saturday, in what will be the biggest SF Porchfest ever held.
SF News Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty for Half Moon Bay Shooting Suspect, Though He Likely Won’t Be Executed The San Mateo County District Attorney said in court Tuesday that he’s seeking the death penalty for accused Half Moon Bay mass shooter Chunli Zhao, though this is mostly a symbolic move, as the state doesn't execute people anymore.
SF News 40-Minute East Bay Highway Patrol Car Chase Tuesday Went All the Way From San Ramon to Milpitas The California Highway Patrol’s Contra Costa division was kept busy Tuesday afternoon with another high-speed car chase that went on for 40 minutes, though this one fortunately did not end with any deadly consequences or injuries.
SF News Day Around the Bay: E-40 Drops a New NPR Tiny Desk Concert, Bay Area Goes Nuts An Antioch grandfather pleaded not guilty in that shooting death of his toddler grandson; Meta is buying a bunch of nuclear power to run its AI; and E-40 proves he’s absolutely still got it in his new NPR Tiny Desk concert with an eight-piece band.
Arts & Entertainment Hollywood Making a Movie About That OpenAI Sam Altman Firing Drama, and It Will Be Partially Shot In SF The movie industry trade publications are buzzing that SF will be the backdrop of a forthcoming movie about Sam Altman getting fired and rehired at OpenAI, and it’s likely going to be a comedy starring Andrew Garfield.
SF News Pete Hegseth Orders the Navy to Strip Harvey Milk’s Name Off Naval Ship The US Navy’s oiler ship known as the USNS Harvey Milk was christened in 2016, but Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is ordering Milk’s name stripped off the ship, and he’s reportedly doing this during Pride Month on purpose to enrage people.
SF News Crypto Mogul Chris Larsen Kicking Down Nearly $10 Million to SFPD for More Surveillance Efforts Ripple Labs and its co-founder Chris Larsen are trying to kick down a $9.4 million gift to the SFPD in the form of drones and surveillance gadgets, a new “surveillance gadget” coordinating center, and an apparent $2 million video wall.
SF News SF Parks Alliance Shutting Down, As Millions of Dollars In Other Groups’ Money They Were Holding Has Disappeared The show’s over for that nonprofit that organized free movie screenings in SF parks, as the SF Parks Alliance has reportedly decided to dissolve amidst a criminal investigation and the allegation that they’d mismanaged millions of dollars.
SF News Oakland Elementary School Mortified as Racial Slur Ends Up in Children's Yearbook The PTA at Oakland's Montclair Elementary School is frantically trying to undo the damage, as their new and just-released yearbook contains a pretty outrageous racial slur from a reprinted 1940s-era newspaper clipping.
SF News SFPD Makes an Arrest in Last Month’s Outer Richmond Hit-and-Run That Injured a Five-Year-Old Both a mother and her five-year-old child were hospitalized after a hit-and-run driver collided with them on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, but now a 35-year-old suspect is in custody.
SF News Surfer Lives to Tell After Shark Attacks His Surfboard In San Mateo County A Saturday afternoon shark attack at San Mateo County’s Montara State Beach has left a surfboard ruined, but the surfer himself was able to avoid getting bitten, and the beach was closed off for the remainder of the weekend.
