SF News Developers Swear They Will Finally Clean Up ‘SoMa Trash Lake’ After Years of Complaints For nearly three years, a vacant SoMa lot at Fifth and Clara streets has been accumulating water, garbage, and mosquitoes. Now three years and two lawsuits later, a new owner vows it should be cleaned up soon.
SF News Car Plows Into the Front of Miraloma Club on Portola Drive, Injuring Three A Tuesday afternoon car crash seriously damaged the storefront of Portola Drive’s Miraloma Club, leaving three people injured, and two of them hospitalized.
SF Politics Mayor Breed Appoints Former Michael Bloomberg Aide Stephen Sherrill to District 2 Supervisor Seat The relatively unknown Stephen Sherrill was just appointed by Mayor London Breed to fill the empty District 2 Supervisor seat formerly held by Catherine Stefani, and he’s vowing to vote exactly like Catherine Stefani did.
SF News SF Hires NY Consultant Firm to Jazz Up Union Square With 200 Events Next Year One of Mayor London Breed’s final downtown rejuvenation efforts is bringing in some New York-based consultant firm who’s agreed to create 200 events in Union Square in 2025, hoping to generate more foot traffic and fewer retailers abandoning their storefronts.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Hyatt Regency Across From Moscone Center Surrendered Back to Its Lender The Bureau of Prisons will pay $116 million to FCI Dublin sex abuse survivors, the “black spatula” panic may all have been overblown; and the Hyatt Regency Downtown SF SoMa has been surrendered back to its bank.
SF Politics Supervisors Reject Breed’s Final Commission Appointments, Because Breed Won’t Be Mayor Anymore Mayor London Breed clearly has less juice in City Hall these days, as her final three commission picks went down in flames at the last Board of Supervisors meeting of her mayoral tenure.
Arts & Entertainment Anti-Radiation Group Sues to Halt the Reinstallation of the Bay Bridge’s Bay Lights With the wildly popular Bay Bridge light display 'The Bay Lights' set to return in a couple of months, a group that files radiation lawsuits on the regular is suing to prevent the display’s reinstallation, calling it a “neurologic hazard.”
SF News Family of Cybertruck Owner Says Allegedly Antisemitic License Plate Was Misunderstanding Over Tagalog After an outrage last week that the DMV approved a license plate which appeared to make a joke about the October 7 attacks against Israel, the family of the truck’s owner says people are misunderstanding that it was meant as an unrelated Tagalog reference.
SF News Martinez WWII Veteran and TikTok Star Turns 102 Years Old on Friday, Getting Deluged With Birthday Cards Army veteran-turned-TikTok celebrity “Papa Jake” Larson will celebrate his 102nd birthday in Martinez this week with his nearly 900,000 social media followers tuned in, and he is not bashful about wanting you to send him a birthday card.
SF Politics Lurie Hires Former Twitter CFO Ned Segal to Be ‘Policy Chief’ of Housing and Economic Development A former Twitter executive who’s suing Elon Musk over unpaid severance is now taking over SF’s housing and economic recovery response under the Daniel Lurie administration, as Ned Segal has been named Chief of Housing and Economic Development.
Arts & Entertainment Gaggle of SantaCon Santas Manages to Conquer BART’s Evasion-Proof Gates With Mass Fare Evasion A battalion of Santas successfully cheated BART’s new evasion-proof fare gates during this weekend’s SantaCon festivities, and a TikTok video capturing their gate-hopping exploits is going viral.
SF Politics Charges Tossed Out for San Mateo County Sheriff's Deputy Whom Sheriff Had Ordered Arrested Controversial San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus had the head of the sheriff’s deputies’ union arrested last month, accusing him of grand theft. But the San Mateo County DA has dropped all of those charges, in the latest black eye for Corpus.
SF News Mendocino Town of Point Arena Being Rocked By City Councilmember Buying Up Properties With LLCs A sort of “California Forever” type situation has been brewing in the small Mendocino County town of Point Arena, where a sitting member of city council has bought up about 20 properties through a web of LLCs and chased out long-term tenants.
SF Politics El Cerrito to Have First Majority-LGBTQ City Council In Bay Area When New Members Are Sworn In Tuesday Well check out El Cerrito, as the Contra Costa County city will have an LGBTQ majority on its city council as of Tuesday night, the first ever such majority in the Bay Area and only the third ever in state history.
SF News SFPD Rescues Two Dogs From SoMa Apartment After Apparent Battery Fire Another apparent battery fire broke out at an apartment at Sixth and Minna streets this weekend, and two dogs had to be rescued from the blaze.
SF News BART Releases Bodycam Video of Incident Where BART Police Shot a 32-Year-Old Woman We now have bodycam video of the November 18 BART Police shooting of a woman at the Union City BART station parking lot, after BART Police responded to reports she was doing donuts in the parking lot.
Business & Tech OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Sucks Up to Trump With $1 Million Inauguration Donation It’s a little awkward for incoming mayor Daniel Lurie that his top transition adviser is now a Donald Trump donor, as AI titan Sam Altman has donated $1 million to the Donald Trump inauguration, obviously hoping to curry favor.
SF News Scathing SFPD Audit Finds Rampant Abuse of Police Overtime Charges The SF Police Department is now spending $108 million a year on overtime pay alone, with wild and potentially fraudulent abuse of paid sick leave, officers approving their own overtime, and some taking paid time off to moonlight as security guards.
SF News SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin is Resigning at the End of the Year The five-year reign of SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin will come to an end on December 31, and while he steered Muni through the pandemic and saw some big projects completed, he was a lightning rod for criticism over bike lanes and car-free streets.
SF News Day Around the Bay: SFPD Reportedly ID’ed Luigi Mangione Days Before He Was Arrested The Union Square holiday Winter Walk starts Friday; SFMTA won’t start issuing those “daylighting” parking tickets until March; and there are reports that SFPD identified accused CEO shooter Luigi Mangione days before he was arrested in Pennsylvania.
SF Politics Pamela Price's Phone Records Subpoenaed Over Extortion Allegations Against Her A public defender claims former Alameda County DA Pamela Price tried to shake her down for political donations in exchange for a lighter sentence for her client, and that public defender just won a subpoena to go through Price’s phone records to prove it.
SF Politics Lurie Taps Former Giants Executive as Chief of Staff, Announces Other New Hires Mayor-Elect Daniel Lurie announced his first three hires, and while two of them were campaign staffers, his out-of-left-field pick is former Giants executive vice president Staci Slaughter as his new chief of staff.
Arts & Entertainment Brace Yourself: SantaCon Has Expanded to Three Consecutive Days This Weekend You better watch out, as Saturday’s SantaCon has fattened up with additional new Friday and Sunday events, making SantaCon a three-day, weekend-long affair as SF’s new holiday pop-up bars are hosting expanded SantaCon events.
Business & Tech No Surprise Here: Bay Area Has Highest Concentration of Million-Dollar Jobs of Any US Metro Area The good news is that the Bay Area has the highest concentration of high-earning people of any United States metropolitan region. The bad news is that this is partly the case because rich people have priced so many lower-income people out of the city proper.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SF’s Next Boozy ‘Entertainment Zone’ Could Be Coming to Cole Valley Three blocks of Cole Valley are poised to be the next “entertainment zone” where bars can sell to-go cocktails during certain outdoor events and gatherings, adding to the two existing entertainment zones on Front Street and outside the Chase Center.
