Art Gift Venture capitalist David Hornik and philanthropist Pamela Hornik donated $1 million to the new Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco last month. The gift places the couple in the top tier of founding donors to the institution, along with Minnesota Street Project Foundation founders Andy Rappaport and Deborah Rappaport, and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger…
Election Results Much ink has been bled interpreting Chesa Boudin’s recall by 55 percent of San Francisco voters. Most believe that Boudin was a sacrificial lamb for pitchfork-carrying residents looking for something, or someone, to burn. But why were we so mad? The City’s crime rate is low by historical standards; the population of those…
Haney Wins District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney won last month’s special election for the District 17 State Assembly, trouncing David Campos, 63 percent to 27 percent, with fewer than 62,000 voters. Mayor London Breed will name a successor to fill Haney’s seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors until an election is held in…
Esprit Park Late last year the Eastern Neighborhoods Citizens Advisory Committee (ENCAC) approved $800,000 for Esprit Park improvements, which’ll be used to pay for material and labor cost increases largely related to the COVID-19 pandemic. “It really isn’t a case of one particular item. It’s that everything costs more across the board right now. We…
Drum Licks Last month, Arkansas Street resident Dawn Richardson launched a music education platform, Online Drum Lessons, featuring two courses: Drumming Basics and Beginner to Band. The fundamentals class features such tips as what sticks to start with, drum kit parts, grip and positioning, basic strokes and notation. Beginner to Band is a comprehensive guide…
Concrete Timber For nearly a decade cross-laminated timber — a layered material billed as “the concrete of the future” — has been widely used in Europe and Canada because of its low carbon footprint and handsome woodsy grain. In Showplace Square, developer SKS Partners is finishing 1 De Haro, a 134,000-square-foot, five-story edifice that’ll become…
10 Townsend At a December 2021 San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency meeting the #10 Townsend bus was tentatively approved to partially return this Spring. The revised route will run from San Francisco General Hospital to Sansome and Montgomery in the Financial District. Plans include relocating the Potrero Hill stop from 17th Street to 16th Street…
Jackson Efforts to rename Jackson Playground are being resisted by longtime Potrero Hill residents who insist that it’s never been widely known that the appellation was taken from a U.S. President famous for killing Native Americans. Perhaps a way forward is simply to repurpose the designation. Musician Michael Jackson may not be a good pick,…
Pennsylvania Avenue Extension The San Francisco Planning Department, San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) and Caltrain are jointly studying the potential to construct a rail tunnel under Pennsylvania Avenue, improve the 22nd Street Caltrain Station, and build a station in Bayview. The agencies will collectively hold community meetings on November 4 and 6 over Zoom…
Recall Last month, Recall San Francisco School Board turned in what appears to be a sufficient number of signatures to trigger an election to unseat San Francisco School Board President Gabriela López, Board Vice President Fauuga Moliga, and Commissioner Alison Collins. The campaign needed 51,325 autographs, 10 percent of registered voters, per candidate; it submitted…
Enola Maxwell Gently Weeps The school site at 655 De Haro Street is commonly referred to as the “Enola Maxwell Campus,” named for civil rights leader and longtime Potrero Hill Neighborhood House executive director, whose moniker was applied to a middle school that occupied the location during the first decade of this century. It’s presently…
Odds and Ends San Francisco Police Department has a new Bayview Station captain, David Maron… Jackson Park will be re-named through a public process to be kicked off in October by Friends of Jackson Park…The closure of the 18th Street commercial strip hasn’t resulted in the hope-for deluge of happy crowds. Enthusiasm has perhaps been…
#MeToo Peskin News that District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin is an alcoholic bully, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Area 7, and elsewhere shocked pretty much nobody. Peskin has been bursting into angry, expletive-soaked, personal attacks on boatloads of people for two decades or more, often calling colleagues, enemies, frenemies, anyone late-night to…
Shootings Two men were shot to death, a third critically injured, in separate Potrero Hill incidents last month. The first occurred near 25th and Connecticut streets. After a 10:08 a.m. report of a shooting, San Francisco Police Department officers found Darryl Haynes, 61, suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. He was transferred to a hospital, where…
Plastic Pooch Pollution San Francisco’s dog population seems to have exploded during the public health crisis; so too has the resulting stream of canine poop. The dominant way to dispose of this doo-doo is through the use of plastic bags, which’re no less environmentally damaging than plastic shopping sacks, cups, and straws. Long-time 20th Street…
Bus Stop Housing Moves The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved construction of more than 500 housing units, at least half of them affordable, at the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency’s Potrero Bus Yard. As part of the five-year project a 100-year-old storage yard and trolley bus maintenance yard located on 4.4-acres at 2500…
Herrera Sues Last month, City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the San Francisco Unified School District to compel it to reopen public schools as allowed by public health officials. A hearing is set for March 22, 2021. The submission details the harms being visited on children as a result…
Walton Board President District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton was installed as San Francisco Board of Supervisors president last month, becoming City Hall’s second most powerful politician. Walton was elected to the Board in 2018 to represent Bayview-Hunters Point, Dogpatch and Potrero Hill after serving eight years as the executive director of Young Community Developers, a…
Twenty years in the future, 2040. “So, Grandpa, what was it like during the pandemonium?” “That’s pandemic, sweetie.” Robert squinted into the iAir; his eight-year old granddaughter’s face pixilated into a rectangle, then a triangle, until finally settling back into being recognizably Mona. “How’re things on Mars?” “Good! Wanna see?” the view into the…
Mission Bay School Designed San Francisco Unified School District staff presented design details for the Mission Bay elementary school and Linked Learning Hub planned for Block 14 to the Mission Bay Citizens’ Advisory Committee (CAC) at a virtual meeting in December. The design was enthusiastically received by CAC members, and prompted remarks that school construction…
Slow Streets Phase III of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Slow Streets program launched last month, with the addition of Minnesota Street from Mariposa to 22nd Street, 20th Street from San Bruno to Pennsylvania, Arkansas from 23rd to 17th streets, and an extension of the Mariposa Slow Street from Texas to Mississippi. Enjoy! Food Union…
Jackson Park Bonded Two thousand postcards sent to Mayor London Breed calling for Jackson Park to be included in the 2020 Health and Recovery Bond that’ll appear on the November ballot resulted in the inclusion of $10 million towards park improvements in the proposed measure…one-fifth of Crowded Fire Theater’s acting ensemble has fled San Francisco,…
Park and Rec Hassles Kids Four San Francisco Park and Recreation staffers took the time to hassle a teenager, two adolescents, and two eight-year-olds for playing soccer at the Potrero Hill Recreation Center last month. The officials accused the group of not being a “coronavirus pod,” even though two were siblings, and all have been…
Flowers At an April Potrero Boosters online video meeting the San Francisco Flower Mart design team presented its latest plans for 901 16th Street and 1200 17th Street. According to Brian Liles, Jackson Liles Architecture principal, the existing water tower at the back of the site would be removed and a modular office constructed on…
Merchants The Good Life Grocery is limiting customers at its Potrero Hill store to five at a time. Raises have been given to all employees, along with bonuses and unlimited paid sick leave…San Francisco Natural Medicine is seeing chronic patients who receive injections, as well as offering telemedicine…Rickshaw Bagworks is selling masks, which can be…