A 1/8 cent sales tax to fund Caltrain will appear on San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara county ballots this November. It took the San Francisco and Santa Clara Boards of Supervisors until just before an early August deadline to be included in the fall vote to reach an agreement to strip the measure…
The commercial real estate market in Potrero Hill and Mission Bay has so far been largely immune to COVID-19’s economic disruption. Vacancies remain low, office rents are rising, and tenants are signing leases for newly constructed retail storefronts. Life science spaces with research laboratories have a waitlist. “It seems almost impossible when you look at…
The public health crisis, combined with economic, political, and social turbulence, has prompted a rise in anxiety and other mental health disorders. Last spring, as the number of COVID-19 infections rose, so did demand for antidepressants. “Zoloft prescriptions climbed 12 percent year-over-year to 4.9 million in March, the most ever in the U.S.,” reported Bloomberg…
San Francisco has been sheltering in place for almost six months. The full or partial closure of the tourism, restaurant, and retail sectors prompted the City’s unemployment rate to jump from 2.3 percent in February to 12.6 percent in June, damaging people’s ability to afford food and rent. Elderly and disabled people, among others, have…
Last month, outdoor dining, curbside pickup, retail stores, and gym classes were greenlit to operate in public spaces, such as on sidewalks, parking lanes, parks, and Port of San Francisco lands. The Shared Spaces Program (SSP), which’ll run until the end of the year, was created by the City’s COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force, a…
Project Artaud, pronounced Ar-toe, is a live/work nonprofit that houses roughly 70 artists at 499 Alabama Street, in a building that spans an entire city block, from Mariposa to 17th, Alabama to Florida. Many of the residents are older than 65 – some in their 80s – elevating the need for adequate COVID-19-related health protocols. The…
In May the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH) released data that confirmed earlier results that the 94103-zip code, South-of-Market (SoMa), has the City’s greatest intensity of individuals testing positive for the novel coronavirus, approximately 46 per 10,000 residents. The 94124-zip code, Bayview-Hunters Point, has the second highest concentration, approximately 41 per 10,000 residents…
Construction of Crane Cove Park began in 2019, following years of neighborhood advocacy. Now, after missing its targeted spring inaugural, the Port of San Francisco hopes to partially open an unfinished park by this fall. Work at the site stopped in April, due to the City’s shelter-in-place order, resuming in May with a limited workforce.…
A group of Potrero Hill residents, with assistance from Hibiscus Studio, is creating a “Poppy Path” from Wisconsin and Coral streets to 23rd and Arkansas streets. The walkway will be lined with native plants – including poppies – as a means to create a beautiful and calming perambulation between Starr King Elementary School and the…
A distillery switched from making spirits to hand sanitizer. A factory that normally manufactures messenger bags and backpacks is fabricating fabric face masks. The COVID-19 pandemic, and associated shelter-in-place (SIP) orders, have caused businesses deemed non-essential to radically alter their operations to stay open, forced others to temporarily close, and demonstrated the adaptability of production,…
During almost two months of sheltering-in-place parks and open spaces have become central to maintaining people’s health and sanity. Many of the largely community-created commons in Dogpatch and Potrero Hill are kept up, in part, by the NW Potrero Hill/Dogpatch Green Benefit District (GBD). The GBD provides “…additional maintenance and capital improvements to parks,…
What if an earthquake’s time, location, and magnitude could be known days before it struck? That’s the promise of precursor SPC, a Washington-based company which, according to its chief executive officer, Clive Cook, is “on-track to deploy earthquake forecasting technology both in California and internationally” and is “in the process of closing multiple initiatives.” According…
On the day before Mayor London Breed announced a shelter in place order for the City and County of San Francisco, my daughter, Sara, and I hit the road to Tacoma. We were on a sad mission: to empty her dorm. Her college, like most others throughout the country, had shifted to online learning for…
Public schools in California have boosted their counseling staffs by 30 percent over the past five years, a trend that’s likely to continue due to a rise in mental health issues, and associated pressures from teachers’ unions. The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is ahead of the curve, boasting a 110-to-one ratio of counselors…
The Potrero View, San Francisco’s longest-running neighborhood newspaper, was added to the City’s Legacy Business Registry earlier this year. The Registry recognizes venerable community-serving enterprises as valuable cultural assets, with educational and promotional assistance provided to support their continued viability. To date 239 companies have been listed on the Registry. Administered by the San Francisco…
A proposal to open a cannabis dispensary at 667 Mississippi Street will be considered by the San Francisco Planning Commission on February 6 after a neighborhood group voiced concerns over the number of children living on and passing by the block. Friends of Mississippi Street, which formed last summer when the dispensary concept surfaced, has…
The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is a collaborative effort led by the National Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology to gather data on local bird populations throughout the world. Launched in 1998, the GBBC takes place annually over the four-day Presidents’ Day weekend. This year, that’s February 14 to 17. Anyone can participate…
The San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH) offers medical care to people experiencing homelessness throughout District 10. Two programs, Street Medicine and Shelter Health, play a predominate role in these efforts. According to Rachael Kagan, DPH communication director, Street Medicine is mobile, serving people sheltering in encampments, roads, parks, and under bridges. Street Medicine…
My Gym’s Dogpatch location, which offered fitness classes for children from six months to six years-old, permanently closed at the end of last year. Part of a franchise that has more than 600 locations worldwide, it’d operated at 901 Minnesota Street since 2004. Owner Marci Briskin said her own children, Amanda and Jonah Briskin, were…
Proposals to relocate the 115,000 square foot San Francisco Flower Mart to 901 16th Street and 1200 17th Street, known as the “Corovan” site, or to Indiana Street between Cesar Chavez Street and Islais Creek, appear to be gaining traction, while efforts to repot the blossom businesses at the San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market, in…
Al Giddings first opened Bamboo Reef, a scuba diving shop located at Fourth and Brannan streets, in 1961. Ten years later Sal Zammitti bought the store. In 2016 father and son duo, Mark and Brian Stanley, purchased the shop, which also has an outlet in Monterey. “I have to tip my hat to Sal for…
Earlier this fall, the San Francisco Board of Education unanimously denied the New School of San Francisco’s charter school re-authorization request. Launched on Potrero Hill in 2015, currently serving kindergarten through fifth graders, New School had applied to expand to the eighth grade. The Board rejected that appeal and refused to reauthorize the school’s existing…
Townsend Street from Third to Eighth streets – an area encompassing the Fourth Street Caltrain depot – is being significantly renovated to improve safety and transit speed, with the installation of Muni bus loading zones, protected bikeways, and an 1,000-foot-long raised sidewalk where no safe footpath had previously existed. The Townsend Street Corridor Improvement Project…
Over the past ten years California’s four large investor-owned utilities (IOUs) have been rocked by disturbances. The 2010 San Bruno natural gas line explosion was followed by more than 2,000 wildfires in the ensuing decade, sparked by IOU equipment. The 2017 Camp Fire, caused by a Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) transmission line, was the…