SF News Supes Hold Hearing on Evictions of Formerly Homeless From SROs, Which Just Makes Them Homeless Again In a puzzling phenomenon, the city of San Francisco spends hundreds of millions of dollars to house the homeless population. But it also spends millions of dollars evicting some of those same people from the very housing they were placed in.
SF News Tahoe Sees Second-Snowiest Winter on Record; Snow Buries Ski Lifts in Sierras Even the tops of the ski lifts are buried in snow in the Lake Tahoe area, as this winter is now officially the second-snowiest season ever since records began being kept in 1946.
Business & Tech New Video By SF Business Lobby Taps Giants Announcer Jon Miller to Lure Businesses Here A coalition of the city, bankers, and big-business types is using the voice of the Giants' Jon Miller in a new marketing video to bring businesses to San Francisco, in a campaign that conveniently ignores the affordability issues that keep them from doing so.
Business & Tech Game Developers Conference Opened Today at Moscone Center, Drawing an Estimated 24,000 The big annual Game Developers Conference returned to San Francisco with its Monday morning opening, and it runs through Thursday at the Moscone Center, with twice as many attendees expected compared to last year’s scaled-down version.
SF News Friday Night Lights Above NorCal Freak People Out, Were Actually Just Space Junk What appeared to be a fleet of invading space alien ships above Sacramento and much of Northern California Friday night spurred plenty of Cloverfield chatter, but it was apparently just flying, discarded parts from the International Space Station.
SF News Nob Hill’s Century-Old Huntington Hotel Has Been Bought (Out of Foreclosure) Closed for the entire pandemic, and foreclosed and in default for the last six months, Nob Hill’s 101-year-old Huntington Hotel has new owners who apparently bought it on the cheap and claim they will make it “the single finest luxury hotel in San Francisco.”
SF News Sunday Night Shooting On Muni Bus Leaves One Injured, Suspect Still at Large A Muni bus shooting just before 6 p.m. Sunday night, apparently on the 49-Van Ness, left one 34-year-old man injured and hospitalized, and the suspect fled the scene and is still at large.
SF News Reminder: SFPD Will Have DUI Saturation Checkpoints All Over Town For St. Patrick’s Day As they do every year, SFPD will have DUI saturation patrol checkpoints around town for St. Patrick’s Day, so stay out of the paddy wagon on St. Patty’s Day and do not drive while intoxicated tonight.
Arts & Entertainment Robert Smith Forces Ticketmaster to Give Refunds to Overcharged Fans Who Bought Cure Tour Tickets The Cure frontman Robert Smith put Ticketmaster’s head on the door in a series of tweetstorms over price gouging and market manipulation, so now Ticketmaster is giving $5-$10 refunds to “verified fans” who got tickets, though a few refunds will be much larger.
SF News Now Oakland Burglars Are Disguising Themselves as Amazon Delivery Drivers The Oakland Police Department sent out a warning Thursday about “an uptick in residential burglaries where the individuals involved are disguised as Amazon workers” who ring the bell to see if you're home, and then they bust right in.
SF News Oakland Catholic Diocese May File For Bankruptcy Over 330 Sex Abuse Lawsuits The Diocese of Oakland is trying to get ahead of what appears to be around 330 looming clergy sexual abuse lawsuits, announcing they may file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which critics say is just a tactic to avoid testifying and paying damages.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Sergio Romo Signs Symbolic Contract, Will Retire as A Giant PG&E admits Tuesday’s outages were the worst in nearly 30 years, the 4/20 Hippie Hill party announced its 2023 plans, and Sergio Romo, who famously wore an “I just look illegal” t-shirt in a championship parade, will retire as a San Francisco Giant.
Bay Area Sports March Madness Cult Hero ‘Sister Jean’ Was Born And Raised Right Here in San Francisco The annual NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is underway, and it turns out that the 103-year-old nun who’s become the tournament’s unofficial Cinderella-team mascot, Sister Jean Schmidt, grew up here in San Francisco.
SF News Central Subway Ridership Already Declining, Barely Two Months After Fully Opening We have two months of ridership data on the new Central Subway, and the second month saw a notable decline in riders — and stunningly, only about 300 people are using the Yerba Buena/Moscone Station on average each day.
SF News It’s the Three-Year Anniversary of Our COVID-19 Lockdown, San Francisco On the three-year anniversary of the Bay Area’s stunning shelter-in-place announcement, which would be duplicated within days around much of the country, we look back on these three bad years, and the order that was originally only supposed to last for three weeks.
SF News Condo Neighbors and Bissap Baobab Wrangle In Eight-Hour Hearing at State ABC The new, big Bissap Baobab was hauled before the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control for eight hours on Wednesday, as condo neighbors are trying to deny the restaurant and bar’s beer and wine license — essentially put it out of business — over NIMBY noise complaints.
Arts & Entertainment The Cure Tickets Went On Sale Today, and It Was A Ticketmaster Disaster The Cure had hoped to make tickets affordable for their first U.S. tour in seven years. But Ticketmaster’s gonna Ticketmaster, so fees sometimes exceeded the price of tickets, and many fans were still left empty-handed.
SF Politics SF Supervisors Approve Reparations Draft Document; SF NAACP Comes Out Against $5 Million Payments The SF NAACP came out on record against the proposed $5 million per Black SF resident proposal in the current list of reparations recommendations, and the Board of Supervisors approved a draft of that document that won’t be finalized until September.
Business & Tech Report: Ron Conway Was Among Venture Capitalists Begging For Silicon Valley Bank Bailout The “small-government libertarians” got their big government bailout this past Sunday, and as observers slag the hypocrisy of founders and VCs who oppose safety nets for everyone else, we learn that local mayor whisperer Ron Conway was helping pull strings to get the bailout.
SF News Car Catches Fire at SFO Parking Lot, Which Then Spreads to Multiple Cars One car caught fire at the SF International Airport parking lot Wednesday morning, which quickly spread to three cars, though flights and schedules were not affected and no one was injured.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Winds Knock Over Big Rig On Richmond-San Rafael Bridge Reddit has been down for several hours Tuesday, Muni riders seem to be skipping fare more than ever, and a semi that got overturned by wind gusts closed down traffic on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge for about three hours.
SF News Allegations of SF Fire Department Assault and Cover-Up Roil Department There had been rumors about an SF firefighter attacking another with a wrench last year, and now there’s a lawsuit from the alleged victim saying the SF Fire Department interfered with the criminal investigation, and took away the accuser's healthcare when he refused to drop the charges.
Business & Tech Appeals Court Upholds Prop. 22 Gig Worker Law, But It’s Still Likely Headed To State Supreme Court A big win for Uber and Lyft to not treat their drivers as employees, as a state appeals court has upheld the Prop. 22 law exempting rideshare companies from minimum wage and overtime rules, but this thing’s expected to go to the state Supreme Court.
SF News SF Supervisor Proposes Waiving the First Year of Parklet Permit Fees Bars, restaurants, and other businesses will have to pay permit fees for their “shared spaces” parklets starting April 1, but Supervisor Ahsha Safai wants to eliminate that few-thousand dollar fee before it goes into effect.
Business & Tech Meta Laying Off Another 10,000 Employees, Or 13% Of Workforce It’s another 10,000 layoffs at Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, on top of the 11,000 layoffs from November, as their pandemic growth hangover collides with bad bets on Web3 and metaverse boondoggles.