Bus Fires A dozen “smallish” privately owned buses went up in flames last month beneath Interstate 280 in Dogpatch. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in just under an hour. No injuries were reported. “They look like they are abandoned buses,” that were stored on 23rd Street between Pennsylvania Avenue and Iowa Street, said San Francisco Fire…
Jackson Approved Last month the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission approved designs for a new playground, sports viewing areas, community learning gardens and an outdoor ball court at Jackson Park. The $40 million renovation of the 4.4-acre Potrero Hill commons also includes creation of a dog run; moving the clubhouse from the park’s southeast corner…
Infrastructure Privatized Mayor London Breed and District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton are pushing legislation to create an “infrastructure financing district” at the Potrero Power Station, a 2,600-unit waterfront project located just south of Pier 70. The district, known as an IFD, would allow the developer, Associate Capital, to raise $150 million to finish building streets,…
Coffee Dogpatchers have another place to caffeinate, with the opening of Ikon Coffee on Knox Landing’s 22nd and Mississippi streets ground floor. Roaster Marcel Costas has vended his cuppas at farmers market for more than a decade and ran a café out of his South San Francisco roasting facility during the COVID pandemic. He and…
Health San Francisco plans to open its first psychiatric hospital specifically designed to help youth experiencing a mental health crisis at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. The facility will be funded by a $33.7 million state grant to the San Francisco Department of Public Health and will include a 12-bed psychiatric inpatient program and a…
“It ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” goes a pre-woke idiom, perhaps more respectfully phrased as, “it isn’t over until the beautiful human being sings their final farewell song.” Either way, it’s over, California, at least the latest eco-cultural tech-bro (anti-) social media wave. Musk has cut Twitter into Twit, Zuckerberg has meta on…
Food, Wonderful Food Last month, the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank officially opened its newly expanded warehouse and welcome center. The facility now has an additional 32,000 square feet for food storage and distribution; two extra loading docks, enabling inbound truck capacity to increase from eight daily to 12 to 15 per day; 5,200 square feet…
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…