• A hacker wrote a post on the Sacramento Fire Department’s X account Thursday, falsely claiming a "mass casualty incident" occurred near Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara and the World Cup game was being moved to a different stadium, which disappeared within a few seconds. [KPIX]
• The driver of a California State Parks lifeguard vehicle struck a 20-year-old beachgoer on Kelly State Beach in Half Moon Bay Wednesday who is expected to survive. [NBC Bay Area]
• Apple shares fell 6.12% after the company raised prices on its MacBook Neo, MacBook Air, iMac, and iPad lines by up to $200 to offset soaring memory costs tied to AI-driven supply shortages. [NBC News]

National:

• As per usual, former President Barack Obama provided some gems when it comes to President Donald Trump’s “obsession” with him, joking that he occupies “a suite” inside Trump’s head. [New York Times]
• Dusty Ray Spencer, 44, of Florida, who was convicted of fatally stabbing his wife in 1992, was executed by lethal injection Thursday, making him the oldest person executed in the state’s modern history, and another 74-year-old inmate is scheduled for execution next month. [Associated Press]
• After two days of deliberations in the federal arson trial tied to the deadly 2025 Palisades Fire in Los Angeles, jurors told the court they remain split on all charges against Jonathan Rinderknecht and cannot reach a unanimous decision, prompting attorneys to consider their next move. [Associated Press]

Video:

• SF’s Muttville Dog Rescue now has a resident cat on staff named Little Dude. The organization says one of the most common adoption questions it gets is whether its dogs are cat-friendly, and Little Dude helps provide a quick read, usually by watching each dog closely — out of the corner of his eye — and offering the occasional playful swat of his paw. [KPIX]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Several women say local nonprofit HomeRise ignored complaints spanning at least two years while a high-profile case manager repeatedly harassed and sexually assaulted them at its supportive housing complexes in SoMa and on Treasure Island.

As the Chronicle reports, former residents and employees allege that Salesh Prasad — a formerly incarcerated case manager known as “Sal” who became something of a local success story after avoiding deportation and landing a job with HomeRise — routinely sexually harassed, propositioned, and in some cases sexually assaulted residents and co-workers while working at the nonprofit.

Prasad had previously drawn widespread local media attention after immigration authorities detained him upon his release from prison in 2021 and attempted to deport him to Fiji, where he had not lived since childhood. The bisexual former inmate became a high-profile cause in San Francisco and was featured by numerous Bay Area media outlets before ultimately winning his fight to remain in the US.

Women who lived and worked at HomeRise properties told the Chronicle that a very different picture emerged when Prasad began working as a case manager. At least five former employees and three residents told the Chronicle they reported Prasad’s alleged behavior to supervisors between 2023 and 2025, both verbally and in writing, but say little or nothing was done.

Former staff members said HomeRise ignored their complaints until a resident accused Prasad of raping her at the nonprofit’s Treasure Island housing in 2023, prompting his transfer to Jazzie Collins Apartments.

“This is a person who is inappropriate,” one employee said she thought to herself upon first meeting Prasad at Jazzie Collins. “I need to keep my eye out to protect the population of the building.”

The allegations finally prompted an internal investigation last fall after a Jazzie Collins resident reported that Prasad had sexually assaulted her. According to city records reviewed by the Chronicle, HomeRise staff delayed filing mandatory reports for nearly two weeks, and Prasad was allowed to continue working in the building for days after the investigation began. He resigned in October 2025.

Residents told the Chronicle that Prasad often served as the only case manager available in the nearly 100-unit building, leaving tenants with few alternatives if they wanted help accessing services or avoiding eviction. One resident said she feared being alone with him, while another said he repeatedly pressured her for sex until she eventually relented.

In a text message to the Chronicle, Prasad denied all of the allegations, calling them “all false” and saying he had always treated residents and colleagues with respect.

“I am proud of my work as a case manager, helping people who are formerly homeless or who struggle with substance use, mental health, and severe trauma,” Prasad continued. “I met every challenge with professionalism, treated the people I served and my colleagues with respect, and left HomeRise on good terms.”

The allegations come as HomeRise, one of the city's largest supportive housing providers, remains under heightened city scrutiny. Much of that scrutiny has been driven by Aisha McCain, whose brother Eric McCain was found dead and decomposing in his room at Jazzie Collins last year after staff failed to conduct required wellness checks, according to city investigators, as the Chronicle reported in March.

The nonprofit has also spent much of the past two-and-a-half years on the city's watch list for organizations with serious fiscal or programmatic concerns, while the City Attorney’s Office is also investigating the organization over unrelated issues. HomeRise interim CEO Leo Levenson told the Chronicle the allegations surrounding Prasad are “extremely concerning” and said the nonprofit is looking into what happened and what changes are needed to better protect residents and staff.

The Chronicle also reports that after leaving HomeRise, Prasad was hired by East Bay supportive housing provider Bay Area Community Services. The organization said it was unaware of the allegations during the hiring process and fired him in May after learning about the city's findings.

Despite the allegations, Prasad continued to receive public recognition. A short documentary about his life, Off the Record: Sal, reportedly premiered at the Roxie Theater in December and later screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival. The film's producers, who partnered with the San Francisco Public Defender's Office on the project, told the Chronicle they were unaware of the allegations against Prasad while making the film.

Related: SF Supervisor Says Drug-Free Supportive Housing Would Allow Relapses If They Don’t Disrupt Others’ Sobriety

Image: Google Maps

The team behind Solano County's theoretically marvelous but pragmatically very complicated new city from scratch, known as California Forever, has enlisted some help from two people who can probably whisper in the ear of the governor to help accomplish their agenda.

Last we heard, the billionaire-backed California Forever crew was working with state and federal agencies to establish a Maritime Prosperity Zone in what is now the tiny unincorporated town of Collinsville, on the Delta. They are hoping that the Trump administration, in its desire to revive the American shipbuilding industry, will look kindly on their plans and add an economic engine to their still unnamed city from whole cloth, the majority of which will actually be about 15 miles north in southeastern Solano County.

Also, last fall, California Forever CEO Jan Sramek confirmed the group's plan, which was first reported last June, to become an "extension" of nearby Suisun City — something that, in practice, may end up being complicated, but which theoretically will exempt them from needing to override a county growth ordinance, after a scathing report by county officials caused them to withdraw a ballot measure they'd been pushing in 2024.

Now, as the Chronicle reports, California Forever has brought on former state legislative leaders Darrell Steinberg (also a former mayor of Sacramento and a close ally of Governor Gavin Newsom) and Bob Hertzberg (a former Assembly speaker) in the role of special counsel to the project. Both had been working with California forever for free before being added to the payroll in April, the Chronicle reports, and it seems the hope is that they will help get some legislation passed in Sacramento that will help the project get around local opposition and CEQA lawsuits, both of which are inevitable.

Rewinding a bit, this project, which seems to largely be Sramek's vision but which has gotten the financial backing of a cabal of local billionaires, including Marc Andreesen, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Michael Moritz, aims to build a new Bay Area city of around 400,000 residents from the ground up, seemingly because the group doesn't believe that existing Bay Area cities can be saved. The billionaires funded the covert purchase of around 50,000 acres of farmland, to the tune of $900 million, near Travis Air Force Base — leading to some intrigue the summer of 2023 before the project was publicly exposed.

Similar to other billionaire-backed ideas of the past two decades, like seasteading and Elon Musk's talk (going back a full 20 years) about colonizing Mars, the crux of the project is an elitist belief that the world as we know it is screwed and we need to start fresh, rather than coming up with ideas and funding projects to improve the cities and countries we have.

AI-generated renderings that California Forever created to try to sell county voters on their idea depict a sun-dappled, European-styled, walkable village of brownstones and charming plazas, where of course there are none of the ills of real cities like poor people, drugs, or crime. They referred to it, sort of wildly, as a "city of yesterday."

The influential environmental group, the Solano Land Trust, weighed in on the project back in June 2024, saying that they opposed it because it "would drastically increase the current population of Solano County... [and] a development of this magnitude will have a detrimental impact on Solano County’s water resources, air quality, traffic, farmland, and natural environment."

So that's just a taste of what to come as this "extension" of Suisun City, which will take a fairly sleepy town of 29,000 and add 400,000 new residents as well as industrial and commercial traffic to the area, moves ahead.

Previously: California Forever Group Petitions Feds to Turn the Delta Into a Maritime Prosperity Zone

No stranger to toxic tweeting in recent years, former Giants first baseman and outfielder Aubrey Huff has added his homophobic and royally offensive two cents to the Pride Night controversy.

It's unfortunate that the decision of four Giants pitchers' to let their displeasure be publicly known about their team's longstanding embrace of their LGBTQ fans has dominated the local conversation this Pride Month. But here we are, two weeks into this controversy, and it continues to inspire more hate speech and general public outrage, at a time when the local queer community would like to just be celebrating the freedoms they have left.

The latest uproar is over a highly offensive tweet from former Giants player Aubrey Huff, who was part of the magical misfit bunch who won the World Series in 2010 and 2012 before becoming a Trump-loving, rage-filled, sexist lunatic on Twitter.

The Giants even disinvited Huff from a 10-year reunion ceremony they were planning in 2020 for the 2010 World Series-winning team, before the pandemic hit, because of his toxic social media presence, which included a tweet about going over to Iran to kidnap women, and some negative comments about female coaches being hired in men's sports.

At the time, Huff tried to excuse his tweets as "locker room humor," and wrote in an open letter that he was "surprised" to be told he wasn't invited to the reunion, blaming it on the fact that he supported Trump and had been "satirical and sarcastic" on Twitter. He also said at the time, "To the Giants board members who seem to think every Giants fan is a liberal, they aren't."

Now Huff has resurfaced in the Giants universe again, with a tweet that is even more hostile and offensive than anything the team took offense to six years ago. Reacting to the controversy over the acts of pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, Ryan Walker, and Sam Hentges to protest their own forced participation in a Pride Night game on June 12 — with the former three defacing their Pride-themed Giants caps with a handwritten reference to a Bible verse.

Writing on Xitter on Tuesday, following the various stories about his onetime teammate Buster Posey failing to meet the moment and fully address the controversy, Huff said, "I can pretty much guarantee you I know exactly what Buster wants to say about having to answer irrelevant non-Baseball questions that pertain to the sexual preference within the LGBTQ fudge packing community... I’m not wearing this gay bullshit. Queers don’t watch Baseball anyway. They watch The View, enjoy therapy, & fudge packing sessions."

Huff adds, "And anyone inside the LGBTQ community, or those who support them don’t like what I just said, then I say to you…. Go fuck yourselves, & eat a dick. And I mean that in the most literal sense."

Huff also posted a screenshot of a lengthy comment he left on the San Francisco Chroncle's Facebook page, reacting to the story about Posey, saying, "All of you gay activist fuck stucks can eat a dick. Literally! Are you that dumb to realize [sic] that Buster is from Georgia, and a good old boy with traditional Christian values?"

He added, among other things, "I know it's San Francisco and most of the population there are definitely into the gay lifestyle. However it doesn't mean they go to Giants games."

He also refers charmingly to "the human excrement that populates within the LGBTQ community."

So yeah! Maybe Posey will have something of substance to say about this controversy now?

Previously: Aubrey Huff Called Out of Giants’ Reunion After Umpteenth Sexist Tirade

Top image: Aubrey Huff of the San Francisco Giants bites his red rally thong during the San Francisco Giants victory parade on November 3, 2010 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

San Francisco was set to begin installing 600 of those long-awaited “Slim Silhouette” trash cans in July, but a last-minute redesign involving the new model’s locking mechanism caused a further delay until fall.

San Francisco’s rollout of its new-generation “Slim Silhouette” trash cans has been delayed yet again, pushing the first large shipment to September or October, as the Chronicle reports. The installation of 600 new receptacles — part of a 3,000-unit rollout, was delayed from an earlier July timeline in a project that dates back to 2018.

As SFist reported previously, a small pilot testing program of eight cans has been in place since April, which officials say is performing as expected.

The department of public works reportedly said the design change was tied to a durability tweak for the Slim Silhouette’s heavy-duty anti-scavenging lock, meant to prevent people from rifling through bins and scattering trash onto sidewalks.

“It’s been difficult keeping the streets clean around some trash cans,” said spokesperson Rachel Gordon, speaking to the Chronicle. “We have found that they’re much more difficult to rifle through, which is one of our top priorities.”

The new cans are reportedly designed with separate trash and recycling compartments, sensors to monitor capacity, and a more vandal-resistant exterior intended to reduce graffiti and overflow issues.

The project has also seen a significant reduction in cost. According to the Chronicle, the custom bins are now priced at about $1,375 each, down from earlier projections of up to $3,000. Initial prototypes in 2021 drew scrutiny after costs were reported between $11,000 and $20,000 per unit, but that was for each prototype with design work included. Officials also said fluctuating tariffs tied to the Trump administration did not ultimately have a major impact on pricing.

District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter, who serves on the Board of Supervisors’ budget and appropriations committee, said he will push for answers if delays continue, noting that “my constituents expect us to be able to do the little things right.”

Sauter began addressing constituents’ concerns over North Beach’s littered sidewalks and lack of trash cans earlier this year. In January, Sauter installed “pizza trash cans” in high-traffic locations, which are designed to better fit square boxes, as previously reported. In April, Sauter wrote on Reddit that his office added 30 of the older 1990s-era bins while waiting for the new rollout.

Previously: Eight Years Later, the First of Those Fancy New Trash Cans Arrive on SF Streets

Image: SF Public Works

A federal judge in San Jose barred ICE agents from making courthouse arrests nationwide, finding in a class-action lawsuit brought by asylum-seekers in San Francisco that the practice violates an 80-year-old federal statute.

In a 71-page ruling issued Tuesday, Northern District of California Judge P. Casey Pitts of San Jose found that ICE and the DOJ's Executive Office for Immigration Review violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law governing agency policymaking for the past eight decades, as the Chronicle reports.

The ruling reportedly overturns the Trump administration's courthouse arrest policy nationwide and restores previous guidance that generally limited civil immigration arrests at courthouses to exceptional circumstances, such as national security threats. Pitts also struck down a policy allowing ICE to hold immigrants in field offices for more than 12 hours after arrest. The judge rejected the federal government's request to pause the ruling while it appeals.

San Francisco became a focal point in the fight over courthouse arrests, with two of five federal lawsuits challenging the practice originating in SF, per the Chronicle.

Pitts wrote that the federal agencies failed to adequately justify their change in courthouse arrest policy, calling the practice over the past year “arbitrary and capricious” and adding that it ignores the chilling effect such arrests have on immigrants appearing for scheduled hearings.

As SFist reported in December, Pitts issued a narrower order blocking ICE courthouse arrests in Northern California, but Tuesday’s ruling went further, extending the restriction nationwide after reportedly finding there was no workable way to sever the policy’s application by jurisdiction.

Attorneys with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, the ACLU, and other groups documented hundreds of cases in which immigrants attending routine hearings or check-ins were detained immediately after court appearances, according to KPIX.

"We saw ICE regularly coming to court and arresting people," Millie Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program. "These are people who have no criminal violations, no immigration violations."

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of several Bay Area asylum seekers, including Guatemalan asylum applicant Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, Colombian asylum seeker Ligia Garcia, and Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio, who said she was nearly separated from her infant daughter after being detained at San Francisco Immigration Court, as the Chronicle reports. Advocates argued that the arrests punished immigrants who were complying with immigration requirements by appearing for hearings.

KTVU notes that legal observers expect the Trump administration to appeal to the Ninth Circuit, though Pitts noted that a final appellate decision could take more than a year. Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival called the ruling "naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda" in a statement posted on social media.

Previously: Federal Judge Orders Homeland Security to Stop Arresting Immigrants at Courts In Northern California

Image: Google Maps

An East Coast-based food influencer/content creator who makes videos for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram recreated an entire In-N-Out meal, down to the ketchup, from scratch for her Korean parents.

Food content creator Grace Lewis, who is based in New Jersey and makes videos under the moniker Crazy Korean Cooking, went to a whole lot of trouble to recreate the In-N-Out experience from scratch in order to have her parents taste a simulacrum of an In-N-Out burger and Animal-Style fries for the first time.

As shown in the video below, which also appeared on Instagram and TikTok, Lewis studied In-N-Out's ingredient lists and made everything, including the burger buns, condiments, American cheese, often-soggy fries, pickles, and milkshake — with homemade ice cream — herself, from scratch. It seems like multiple days worth of effort, which prompted one commenter to say, "You could’ve flown in to a city with an in n out and returned in time for dinner with the amount of time it took for the homemade ingredients."

Lewis even printed her own authentic-looking menu, and dressed up in a homemade uniform to serve the meal, with logos that say "Out-N-In," perhaps to avoid a lawsuit? She then gives a strange, robotic delivery of lines that may come from In-N-Out's website, saying things like, "We use only fresh, 100% USDA whole chuck."

Also, Lewis set up a fake drive-thru at their house, and had her parents drive up to order. Look at how cute they are!

Lewis's dad appears to tear up saying the burger is so delicious, and her mother notes that the Animal-Style fries remind her of poutine.

We should all have such supportive parents!

Related: Michael B. Jordan Took His 'Sinners' Oscar to In-N-Out

The 2026 Michelin Guide to California is out, and with it the Bay Area has gained not one, but two new three-star restaurants, bringing our regional tally back to seven.

It was good news for the Bay Area Wednesday night at a ceremony in San Diego for the unveiling of the new Michelin Guide to California — with Michelin stars remaining, for a certain set of globetrotting diners and foodie tourists in general, the gold standard for restaurant excellence, for better or worse.

The Michelin Guide, which began as a marketing tool in France for tire-maker Michelin to get customers to drive more (and buy more tires), traditionally awards one-star ratings to restaurants that are worth a stop in a particular city, two stars indicate being "worth a detour," and three stars means the restaurant is worth a special trip on its own. And while the company line is that ratings are based entirely on food, two- and three-star ratings typically only go to fine-dining restaurants with world-class service as well.

Two restaurants in the Bay Area, Californios in San Francisco and Enclos in Sonoma, were elevated to three-star status from two, and in the case of Enclos, this is happening just barely two years into the restaurant's existence, after it debuted at two stars in last year's guide.

Californios, chef Val Cantu's elevated ode to Mexican cuisine which opened over a decade ago in the Misison District and moved to SoMa in 2021, is now the first three-star Mexican restaurant in the world. It is also now one of four three-star restaurants in San Francisco proper, and one of seven in the Bay Area, with only ten given that status statewide.

Of Californios, the anonymous Michelin inspectors write, "Combining a passion for Mexico’s rich heritage, an electric jolt of imagination and masterful technique, Chef Val M. Cantú has created a truly singular gastronomic destination. The menu draws upon a dizzying variety of Mexican flavors, utilizing the finest products and subtle international influences to transform familiar dishes into deliciously unique culinary creations."

Enclos, led by executive chef Brian Limoge, is part of the hospitality arm of Stone Edge Farm Vineyards & Winery, in downtown Sonoma, and it opened in late 2024 to immediate acclaim. The inspectors say that the restaurant "exudes cozy sophistication and is a respectful retooling of a late 1800s Victorian structure in downtown Sonoma. This tasting menu marries global flavors, refined technique and exceptional ingredients, including produce sourced from affiliated Stone Edge Farm, all shot through with subtle nods to the chef’s New England roots."

Two new restaurants in San Francisco, Wolfsbane and Restaurant Naides, each earned their first Michelin stars, and both restaurants are serving food that will likely position them for star elevations in the future. Wolfsbane marks the second San Francisco venture for chef Rupert Blease and wife Carrie Blease, after closing their one-star Lord Stanley last year, and the inspectors say that "The indulgent multicourse tasting menu shows no shortage of creative flair, offering up Chef Blease’s distinctive take on contemporary Californian cuisine, cleverly accented with Nordic, Japanese and French elements."

Of Naides, the ode to Filipino cuisine from former Sons & Daughters chef Patrick Gabon, they write, "there’s no mistaking this jewel box operation as anything other than a labor of love. ... Naides serves an original interpretation of Filipino cuisine in the form of a stylishly modern tasting menu."

Also getting a new star for 2026 is Healdsburg's Troubadour, Melissa and Sean McGaughey’s sandwich shop and bakery by day that the inspectors say transforms at night "to offer an exciting tasting menu that highlights Californian ingredients with flair and technical precision."

Besides reaffirming the Bay Area's culinary dominance and returning the region to having seven three-star restaurants — which it also did for several years in the last decade — the new guide ratings officially put Sonoma County ahead of Napa in the star tally for the first time. The French Laundry retains its three-star status, and St. Helena's Press, Rutherford's Auberge du Soleil, and Auro in Calistoga all retain their stars, for a total of six. Sonoma County, with SingleThread in Healdsburg and now Enclos each holding three stars, and Cyrus in Geyserville and now Troubador having one star, now has a total of eight.

The Michelin inspectors also gave special honors to new upscale Mexican restaurant Maria Isabel for outstanding cocktails, and two-starred Sons & Daughters for exceptional service.

Losing stars this year are The Shota in downtown San Francisco, O’ by Claude Le Tohic in Union Square, and Le Comptoir at Bar Crenn, the latter it was recently announced will be closing. Kenzo, in Napa, also lost its star.

The full list of Michelin stars for 2026 in the Bay Area is below.

Three stars

Atelier Crenn, San Francisco

Benu, San Francisco

Californios, San Francisco (new)

Enclos, Sonoma (new)

The French Laundry, Yountville

Quince, San Francisco

SingleThread, Healdsburg

Two stars

Acquerello, San Francisco

Aubergine, Carmel

Birdsong, San Francisco

Commis, Oakland

Harbor House, Elk (Mendocino County)

Kiln, San Francisco

Lazy Bear, San Francisco

Saison, San Francisco

Sons & Daughters, San Francisco

One star

7 Adams, San Francisco

Angler, San Francisco

Auberge du Soleil, Rutherford

Auro, Calistoga

Chez Noir, Carmel

Cyrus, Geyserville

Hilda and Jesse, San Francisco

Kin Khao, San Francisco

The Kitchen, Sacramento

Localis, Sacramento

Madcap, San Anselmo

Mister Jiu’s, San Francisco

Naides, San Francisco (new)

Nari, San Francisco

Niku Steakhouse, San Francisco

Nisei, San Francisco

Plumed Horse, Saratoga

Press, Saint Helena

The Progress, San Francisco

Protégé, Palo Alto

San Ho Won, San Francisco

Selby’s, Redwood City

Sorrel, San Francisco

Ssal, San Francisco

State Bird Provisions, San Francisco

Sun Moon Studio, Oakland

Troubadour, Healdsburg (new)

The Village Pub, Woodside

Wakuriya, San Mateo

Wolfsbane, San Francisco (new)

Previously: Michelin Highlights Four More 'New Discoveries' In SF, Including Maria Isabel and Kitchen Istanbul

Top image: A dish at Restaurant Naides

There was an unplanned power outage in central San Francisco Thursday morning that was impacting almost 4,000 households and businesses in the Castro, Corona Heights, and Cole Valley neighborhoods.

The power went out just before 10:30 am for a swath of San Francisco that included part of Castro Street in the Castro neighborhood, much of 17th Street west of Castro toward Corona Heights, as well as Cole Valley, part of Clarendon Heights, and Forest Knolls.

In a standard statement on their website, PG&E says the outage was unplanned, and says "Our team is evaluating the electrical system to identify damaged sections and make necessary repairs in order to safely turn the power back on."

An estimate for power restoration was 2:30 pm, meaning the outage could extend to four hours.

A total of 3,996 customers are reportedly impacted. And there is no word on what may have caused this outage.

See the outage map below.

Update: The outage appeared to be almost fully resolved as of 3 pm, however that small swath of green south of Mount Sutro remained without power, as did a one-block area west of Buena Vista Park.

In collaboration with local, state, and federal agencies, the SFPD arrested five suspects in three separate World Cup-related sex trafficking investigations and provided assistance and resources to survivors, including a minor from Oakland.

The World Cup-related enforcement effort involved several separate investigations over the last few weeks, according to a release from the San Francisco Police Department. Among those assisted during the operation was a minor from Oakland who police say had allegedly been trafficked and brought to SF by 28-year-old Otis Broughton.

Officers stopped a vehicle near Turk and Mason streets on June 20 after observing reckless driving and learned the girl had been taken to multiple locations in the city and had repeatedly asked to go home. Investigators later found messages on her phone that allegedly showed Broughton had been attempting to recruit her. He was arrested on charges including human trafficking of a minor and pandering.

The operation also included a June 12 bust involving the Santa Clara Human Trafficking Task Force, BART Police, the SF Sheriff's Office, and the FBI. During that investigation, officers arrested 25-year-old SF resident Tyler Marchok after he allegedly arranged to meet a decoy at a city hotel through a commercial sex website. Police say Marchok tried to flee when officers approached, discarding a jacket that allegedly contained a loaded firearm, an additional magazine, and a knife. Officers also reportedly recovered a second firearm, multiple high-capacity magazines, and ammunition from his vehicle.

On June 18, Special Victims Unit detectives executed a search warrant at a suspected brothel on the 900 block of Bryant Street, where police said they found evidence of sex work and cited two men for solicitation. A third suspect, 64-year-old Hong Yu, was arrested on suspicion of operating a residential brothel. Police said the individuals found at the residence were connected with support services.

"Human trafficking of any kind will never be tolerated in San Francisco," Police Chief Derrick Lew said in a statement. "Our officers will be out in force cracking down on sex trafficking during the World Cup and after."

In January, city leaders released an anti-sex trafficking PSA ahead of the Super Bowl and this summer's World Cup events.

As SFist reported in January, a California woman filed a federal lawsuit against two luxury apartment complexes in SF's South Beach, alleging that employees ignored widespread sex trafficking that took place there while some took payments to stay quiet.

The public is urged to report any potential sex trafficking activity to the Bay Area Human Trafficking Hotline at 415-907-9911, which is open 24/7, or 911 in an emergency.

Related: Woman Sues Luxury SF Apartments Where Alleged Sex Trafficking Took Place, Says They Knew

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Top image: Photo by Jimmy Woo

• This morning's earthquake in Mendocino County was followed by dozens of small aftershocks, a total of 44 seismic events so far. The earthquake caused minor damage to goods like wine bottles inside stores, and a full assessment of building damage is still being made. [Chronicle]
• A vigil was held on the UC Berkeley campus Tuesday for political science student Paloma Foster, a mother of a seven-year-old who was killed in a car crash over the weekend on I-580. [KRON4]
• Mollie Stone's, the generally overpriced Bay Area grocery chain, has bought United Markets, which owns two Marin grocery stores in San Anselmo and San Rafael, and fans of the quirkier (and cheaper) United Markets are worried that things are going to change. [Chronicle]

National:

• Following Mendocino County's relatively minor earthquake this morning, Venezuela was rocked by major 7.2M and 7.5M quakes today, with the damage and casualties looking to be extensive. [CNN]
• There remains a division in the Republican Party when it comes to support for gay marriage, and the hateful anti-gay end of the spectrum feels, of course, emboldened to speak out under Trump. [New York Times]
• There is rampant speculation that a special event permit that's been filed for Madison Square Garden from July 2 to July 4 is for the wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. So that won't be a spectacle. [ABC News]

Video:

• NBC Bay Area just profiled Andre Lucas, a recent transplant to SF who says he's "on a mission to exist in San Francisco affordably," and part of the key to that mission is shopping in Chinatown, and showing off his Chinese language skills on his Instagram account (he spent a year abroad in Taiwan, and three in Shanghai).

Top image: Photo by alisondavis531/Instagram

A local gay resident, who’s been walking every street in San Francisco for the past four years plans to finish his last stretch along Washington Street over Pride Weekend.

Mission District resident Walter Parenteau will complete a four-year project to walk every street, alley, and staircase in San Francisco Saturday — including Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island — in celebration of Pride Weekend, according to the Bay Area Reporter. The last leg of Parenteau's trek will begin at Sue Bierman Park at Washington and Drumm streets, joined by friends and others who have followed his years-long effort.

The project gradually took shape out of his daily life in the city, reportedly beginning as routine walks between the Mission and Parenteau’s job at St. Anthony’s Foundation in the Tenderloin, where he leads the “Hygiene Hub,” offering showers and laundry services. Over time, those commute routes expanded into planned excursions, eventually becoming a deliberate effort to cover the entire street grid.

Parenteau, who has lived in San Francisco for 22 years, said the experience pushed him into unfamiliar corners of the city and shifted how he understands its neighborhoods.

“It was a real joy to learn every nook and cranny,” he said, speaking to the BAR.

He said his interest in long-distance walking dates back to college in Vermont, after reading A Walk Across America, and resurfaced in 2012 during the 99-Mile March for Education and Social Justice, an Occupy-era walk from Oakland to Sacramento that ended in a rally at the state Capitol. While attending San Francisco State University and living in the Haight at the time, Parenteau reportedly began extending his own walking routes across the city, first informally and then with increasing intention.

Some of Parenteau’s routes stretched across large sections of the city, with walks often spanning multiple neighborhoods in a single outing.

Each walk was tracked on a large paper map kept at home and color-coded by year, with progress checked in real time using a phone photo of the map alongside Google Maps. He told the BAR he kept the system entirely analog throughout, never switching to apps or digital tracking tools, aside from sharing a couple updates on Threads.

As the project progressed, Parenteau moved from familiar commute routes into scheduled neighborhood-by-neighborhood walks, often after work. Evening walks became part of his routine, offering quieter streets and more intimate glimpses of the city and its everyday life.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, when it's wintertime, I won't want to go walking because it'll be dark at 5 p.m.,’" he said, “but what I found was just how much I loved walking at nighttime.”

Related: SF Father Walks 50 Miles In One Day to Raise Awareness For Pedestrian Safety

Image: Walter Parenteau/Threads

Chinatown's Out Museum, which opened last month and spotlights queer artists from China and the Chinese diaspora, was founded by an artist-activist who raised funds while she was still living in China, where such a museum is prohibited.

The Out Museum held its grand opening with a rainbow-ribbon cutting in late May, timed to fall between Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage and Pride months, as the Associated Press reports. Located across from the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, the bilingual Out Museum is currently open Saturdays and features work by artists from China and the Chinese diaspora, including photography, zines, and interactive installations exploring gender, sexuality, and identity.

Chen reportedly first began raising money for a Chinese queer art museum six years ago while still living in China, where such a space would likely never be allowed. After coming to the US in 2022 as a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, she later connected with San Francisco's Chinese American arts community through an exhibition at the Asian Art Museum and a residency at the Chinese Culture Center, which helped incubate the museum, per the AP.

According to KTVU, among the featured artists is Hong Kong-born Dixon Ngai, whose work includes a hand-painted porcelain wine pot inspired by Cantonese opera. Ngai said the museum gives Chinese LGBTQ artists a rare opportunity to tell their own stories and allows "more people to see our voice."

Supporters say the museum fills a longstanding gap in visibility for Chinese and Asian American LGBTQ communities, particularly in Chinatown. "It's a physical space to say that we exist," advisory board member Helen Zia told the AP, adding that it also showcases "the artwork that we do, the performances, the books we write."

Chen said she's been especially moved by the response from older Chinese immigrants, both queer and straight, including a transgender man who immigrated to the US decades ago seeking gender-affirming care and a mother hoping to better connect with her gay son.

Zia said those reactions reflect how much attitudes have changed, recalling that supporters of same-sex marriage were met with hostility while canvassing in Oakland's Chinatown during the late 2000s.

Chen told the AP that government crackdowns on LGBTQ organizing in China ultimately pushed her to leave, as public advocacy and even art exhibitions focused on queer issues face significant restrictions there. Both Chen and Ngai said San Francisco has offered a level of freedom and community support they had not previously experienced.

Related: Berkeley Professor Leads Students to Make 300,000 LGBTQ+ Wikipedia Pages Over Past Decade

Image: Out Museum/Google Maps

Michelle Zajko, a woman linked to the cultlike group that has become known as the Zizians, has now been charged with the murder of her parents three and a half years ago in Pennsylvania.

Zajko was charged Wednesday in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, with the district attorney explaining at a press conference that the investigation has been long and complicated, and there is still no "smoking gun," so to speak.

As NBC News reports, Zajko, 33, who has been in custody since being booked on trespassing charges in nearby Maryland last year, has now been charged with the murders of Richard and Rita Zajko on December 31, 2022 — which also happened to be Zajko's 30th birthday.

"It was an exhaustive investigation, and it took years to pull together, but we are finally at the point where we can say beyond any doubt that Michelle Zajko was at least in part responsible for the death of her parents,” said Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse at the news conference. Rouse added that "She did not act alone," and no other suspects have yet been charged.

Updates have been sporadic in the saga of the Zizians , a small and cultlike group that sprung from the Bay Area and specifically Berkeley's Rationalist scene, who have now been linked to the deaths of six people in different parts of the company. SFist has covered many of the twists and updates in the case, beginning with the brutal stabbing death of Vallejo resident Curtis Lind in January 2025.

The suspect in that case, then 22-year-old Maximilian Snyder, had ties to a young woman who was arrested just a week later in the Vermont shooting of a border patrol agent, and the consequent shooting of a friend and fellow "friend of Ziz" who was in the car with her at the time. 22-year-old Teresa Youngblut was indicted last summer in those kilings.

But prior to those three deaths, there were three others that occurred in late 2022, also on two sides of the country. First, in November 2022, as they were about to be evicted from Lind's Vallejo property, a group that allegedly included suspects Suri Dao, Somni Leatham, and Emma Borhanian, who had all been living together in two box trucks with Jack "Ziz" LaSota, is accused of attacking Lind one morning with knives and a sword. In the ensuing struggle, Lind fatally shot Borhanian, and lost an eye in the stabbing.

A little over a month later, Ziz was in Pennsylvania, and was arrested in January 2023 at an airport motel outside Philadelphia along with Michelle Zajko and an additional suspect, Daniel Blank. Zajko's parents had just been found murdered inside their suburban Philadelphia home, in the town of Chester Heights, and all three would be taken in for questioning as persons of interest and ultimately released — though Ziz was charged with obstruction, and disappeared after being released on bail.

The group then appears to have laid low for nearly two years, with financial help from both Zajko and Ophelia Bauckholt — a trans woman and German math prodigy who had made a significant sum of money by age 28 as a quant trader in New York. Bauckholt cut ties with her friends around the summer of 2023 and began making frequent trips out of town, possibly to Vermont, where Zajko purchased some property in a rural area near the Canadian border. Bauckholt also appears to have funded the rental of two Airbnbs in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which they group appears to have used as an outpost in 2024.

Dao and Leatham remained in jail through this time, and the murder of Lind occurred in January 2025 just a day after the Solano County District Attorney gave a statement in the case, identifying the elderly Lind as the only eyewitness to his own stabbing two years earlier.

A second witness who lived on the property, who is also old and infirm, has given sworn testimony about seeing the aftermath of the stabbing and shooting which was reportedly spotty.

Media reports snowballed following the killing of Lind and the border patrol agent, with many trying to understand the motivations and beliefs of Ziz LaSota and the others in the group. Much of the evidence of their mindset came from several blogs that they wrote in the years between 2018 and 2022. LaSota spoke of being a "Sith," referring to the fictional Star Wars religion, and wrote frequently both about being trans and about discomfort around sexual activity.

The group espouses strict veganism, linking this to a belief that AI is going to take control of Earth and we as humans should want to set an example about how we treat innocent animals.

There was also some spurious pseudoscience around left- and right-brain functioning, and a practice of putting one half of one's brain to sleep. And Ziz believed that trans women, in particular, possessed intellectual and moral gifts over other humans. At least half of the identified members of the group identify as trans women.

Zajko denied murdering her parents in an open letter released by her lawyer last year. She also derided coverage of the Zizian group in "the papers," saying, "My friends and I are being described as like Satan’s lapdogs, the devil & the Manson family all rolled into one. These papers are flagrantly lying."

She added, "I think the truth about my friends and I will make a lot more sense than what you’ve been reading about in the papers."

As the Associated Press reports, he Delaware County DA's office says that it has multiple pieces of evidence to implicate Zajko, including a recording from a neighbor's doorbell camera the morning of the murder that picked up someone yelling "Mom!" and "Oh my God! Oh, God, God!"

Shell casings found at the scene were linked to a gun that Zajko purchased, one of which was used in the Vermont shooting. And prosecutors say Zajko made a handwritten list of "mistakes" in the crime, which included leaving behind the shell casings.

Zajko was reportedly estranged from her parents for about a year before the killings, and investigators found a text message from Rita Zajko to her daughter wishing her a happy birthday and expressing a desire to reconnect, hours before the murders occurred.

Members of the Berkeley Rationalist community had been sounding alarm bells, at least among their cohort, about LaSota for several years before these killings occurred — and they had warned that LaSota seemed to be espousing some sort of intellecutal basis for committing violence.

The group had first made headlines in the Bay Area after LaSota and three others, including Borhanian and Leatham, allegedly stalked a Rationalist retreat in Sonoma County in 2018 and protested there, leading to their arrest.

Youngblut remains in federal custody in Vermont, while LaSota and Blank also remain in custody, as far as we know, following the Maryland arrests — and LaSota is believed to be a person of interest in the Vallejo cases.

Snyder, Dao, and Leatham all remain in custody in California pending trial.

Previously: Threads Connected In Story of Zizian Shot In Vermont Who Was German Math Whiz