Enola D. Maxwell, which used to be the name of a middle school campus, continues as the moniker of the 655 De Haro Street San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) facility. The site most recently was home to a comprehensive high school, International Studies Academy, which closed in 2016 due to low enrollment. SFUSD now…
It’s rare for a single family line to reside in the same home for more than century. It’s even more unusual for such continual occupancy to occur in the City and County of San Francisco, which was founded less than 300 years ago. Yet members of the Gallagher-McCarthy-Bray family have resided at 567-569 Mississippi Street…
Last April, a plaque was installed to officially commemorate the Carolina and 20th streets stairway as “Jack Balestreri Way,” after the man who built them. The late Jack Balestreri was the last known living laborer to have worked on erecting the Golden Gate Bridge when he died in 2012 at the age of 95. Starting…
After 150 years of continuous operation, the shipyard at Pier 70 shut down last month. The closure came less than a year after BAE Systems transferred the repair facility to Puglia Engineering. Roughly 250 workers were laid off. The Port is looking for a new operator.
At the start of John Cheever’s classic short story “The Swimmer” the main character is lounging in the backyard of a friend’s home in upper-middle-class suburbia, where everyone has a swimming pool. He thinks wistfully of his own house and family, eight miles away. Suddenly, it occurs to him that “he could reach his home…
Speakeasy, a pioneer in the emergence of the Bay Area microbrewery scene, purveyors of Prohibition Ale and Big Daddy IPA, was saved from closing its doors last month when it was purchased by Hunters Point Brewery, a new company owned by Oakland businessman Ces Butner. The 20-year old beer manufacturer, located at 1195 Evans Avenue,…
Voters in Dogpatch and Potrero Hill’s Northwest blocks elected four new members, and re-elected three incumbents, to the Green Benefit District (GBD) board last month. The first of its kind in California, GBD it is modeled on Commercial Benefit Districts, a popular undertaking in San Francisco in which business owners in a commercial corridor agree…
Last February, Recology, the private company that provides the City with garbage services, applied for a rate increase from the San Francisco Department of Public Works. Recology’s San Francisco operations consist of collectors Recology Golden Gate and Recology Sunset Scavenger, and refuse processer Recology San Francisco. The City has the authority to determine the residential…
A long stretch of underutilized land on San Francisco’s southeastern Bayfront is slated for massive mixed-use development in the coming years. With a shortage of affordable housing, and a lust for economic growth, the City earmarked the Southside neighborhoods, including the Bayfront, for increased residential development when it adopted the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan in 2008.…
The Dogpatch Historic District was officially designated by the San Francisco Planning Department in 2003, becoming the City’s eleventh such quarter. Roughly located between Indiana and Third; 18th and Tubbs streets, it consists of residential, industrial and commercial buildings, the oldest of which was built in 1870. Historic districts impose stringent design guidelines for new…
Last summer, Save the Hill and Grow Potrero Responsibly filed a lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco challenging the environmental review process for a large mixed-use development located on 3.5 acres, 901 16th Street and 1200 17th Street. The project had been approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in a…
In July, 2016, The Potrero View reported that Washington-based pet care startup, Wagly, planned to launch a “comprehensive” animal boarding facility, grooming service, and veterinary clinic in Potrero Hill. The business was expected to open later that summer at 1400 17th Street. By autumn, anticipated renovations at the gutted building, previously occupied by California Caster,…
In March, a new website, Dogpatch Solutions Tracker, launched at https://dogpatch.dillilabs.com. A community service aiming to improve neighborhood safety and cleanliness, the site features a digital map application where registered users can pinpoint such concerns as potholes, graffiti, trash, and vandalism in Dogpatch and Potrero Hill. Reporting a problem, however, is only the first step.…
On January 25, U.S. President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13768, which promised to withdraw federal grants from “sanctuary cities.” Although the term “sanctuary city” has no legal definition, it’s generally understood to refer to municipalities that permit residence by undocumented immigrants, with policies that prohibit local authorities from detaining individuals due to their immigration…
The words “manufacturing” and “San Francisco” aren’t often used in the same sentence, unless a historian is talking about the City’s mid-century last heyday as an active port and shipyard. Yet there are upwards of 700 manufacturers in San Francisco, employing in the neighborhood of 10,000 people. According to SFMade, a nonprofit dedicated to…
Love or hate the company, it’s a rare week when ride hailing mega-contractor, Uber, isn’t in the news. Potrero Hill resident and Fortune Magazine executive editor, Adam Lashinsky, has been covering Uber since its 2009 inception. His Wild Ride: Inside Uber’s Quest for World Domination, available May 23, will help feed the seemingly insatiable curiosity…
San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB), at 375 Rhode Island Street, is currently offering “Books of Course,” an exhibit that runs until June 11, featuring books, objects and creative assignments from nine Bay Area professors and a few of their former students. “Chronicle Books: Born in the Summer of Love,” which opens June 23,…
Whether they center on a superhero or psychologically complex character, comic books have long offered quirky role models. Underground comics have been a particular source of comfort to gay, lesbian and transgender people in search of personalities and storylines not found in traditional publications. Last month, at the Queer and Comics Conference, hosted by the…
Following the November election and inauguration of President Donald Trump, national nonprofit organizations, like the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, Sierra Club and Anti-Defamation League, reportedly experienced a dramatic boost in donations in response to potential threats to civil rights, healthcare access and the environment from the new Administration. According to BBC News, the…
In 2007, the Port of San Francisco issued a request for proposals for the development of Seawall Lot 337 and Pier 48 in Mission Bay, which currently serve as a surface parking lot. The site is just south of AT&T Park, the South Beach home of the San Francisco Giants. The baseball team immediately responded…
In January 2019, District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen will be termed out of office. She was first elected in 2010 to represent a large swath of San Francisco’s Southside neighborhoods, including Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, Bayview-Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley. This year has brought a shift in focus to the Board of Supervisors, with a new…
Potrero Hill residents who believe they’ve detected an increase in crime in the neighborhood appear to be right. According to information provided by the San Francisco Police Department’s Bayview District, which includes the Hill, vehicle theft jumped from 6,126 offenses in 2014 to 6,915 in 2015. There were 19,827 cases of objects getting stolen from…
The Potrero Hill Democratic Club (PHDC), a chapter of the San Francisco Democratic Party, is informally encouraging a boycott of San Francisco Bay Area stores that carry Trump-branded products. According to Robert Boileau, PHDC’s first vice president, club members are concerned that Donald J. Trump and members of his family are profiting from the presidency.…
When Lyft decided to open a place where its drivers could interact in person with company employees it seemed like a good idea. Drivers could get advice, questions answered and problems resolved by talking to someone face-to-face rather than resorting to email support. For the many out of town drivers, a physical location would also…
Almanac Beer is a San Francisco company whose brews can be found in 20 states. Launched in 2011 by Jesse Friedman and Damian Fagan, the “gypsy” brewery – one that relies on other breweries’ equipment – started in Dogpatch, where its administrative offices are still found. Friedman and Fagan began as homebrewers. For years in…