United States Representative, District 11: Nancy Pelosi. Our hometown congressional hero is awesome, and remains if not at, close to, political peak power. That said, please Nancy, retire gracefully when you feel you’re slipping. State Controller: Former District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen is a pretty good politician. She does not, however, have a reputation for…
Eastern medicine – which focuses on treating the person rather than the symptoms – has been practiced for more than 3,000 years, with medical texts that date to the Han Dynasty in China (206 BCE to 220 CE). Western medicine principally attempts to understand linear sequences of adverse events culminating in a pathology that’s tangible…
Passersby may have noticed two rows of identical bungalows huddled together on Tennessee and Minnesota streets near 22nd. These are Pelton Cottages – 1002, 1004, 1008, 1010, 1012, and 1014 Tennessee Street – and their backyard neighbors; 903, 905, 907, 909, 911, 913, and 915 Minnesota Street. San Francisco was once home to 26 of…
There’s been a coffee shop at 301 Arkansas Street for the last 22 years. Not anymore. Masoud, who owned and operated Chatz since 2005, reluctantly had to close the business in April. Challenges caused by the pandemic, combined with nearby construction that disrupted parking, created traffic congestion, and drew unregulated food vendors selling to site…
After weeks of heated debate and threats of lawsuits the nine-member San Francisco Redistricting Task Force adopted a final draft map for supervisorial districts last month. Under the plan Bayview, Dogpatch and Potrero Hill will remain in District 10. The Tenderloin, formerly in District 6, will shift to District 5, alongside the Haight. Mission Bay…
As the pandemic hopefully wanes, Muni lines have been restored, altered, and temporarily or permanently abandoned. The 55 Dogpatch began service last January, replacing the 22 Fillmore, which’d shifted the eastern portion of its route as part of the 16th Street Improvement Project. More than 1,000 community members expressed opinions about their preferred route for…
Amazon has paused development of a proposed 5.8-acre parcel delivery facility at 900 Seventh Street in response to municipal legislation passed earlier this year. The location is the site of a former waste maintenance facility, now empty, which Recology sold to Amazon in 2020. The land use law, authored by District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton,…
Potrero Annex-Terrace residents are concerned about periodic instances of high asbestos levels in the air caused by construction at 1801 25th Street and an associated lack of immediate notifications from Bridge Housing and the San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA). Annex-Terrace is being slowly redeveloped under Potrero HOPE, launched in 2017. In 2021 the project…
California College of the Arts’ unionized staff ended a four-day strike in February without an agreement with the school’s administration. The walkout was never intended to be indefinite, said Jennie Smith-Camejo, a spokeswoman with the Service Employees International Union Local Number 1021. The strike began February 8 and ended on February 11, with daily picket…
Last month San Francisco voters recalled three of the seven-member San Francisco School Board: Alison Collins, Gabriela López – who had served as board president – and Faauuga Moliga. Collins was withdrawn by 79 percent of voters, López 75 percent, and Moliga 72 percent. Just 26 percent of those eligible cast a ballot, a fraction…
Chef Dario Barbone’s specialty delicatessen, Alimentari Aurora, on 18th street, offers family meals, snacks – pintxos – small plates, and aperitifs. Opened in the fall of 2020, during stringent shelter-in-place orders, the deli quickly became a favorite amongst residents looking for new flavors. The deli’s menu is “unpredictable and erratic by design,” said Barbone, who…
Since 2003, the San Francisco Fire Department has received 576,462 service calls. Roughly 20 percent of those, 110,305, originated from Bayview-Hunters Point, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, Visitacion Valley, and South-of-Market. Ten percent required firefighting, five percent involved first aid or assisting the physically disabled; another five percent necessitated reactivating or shutting down alarms or sprinkler…
Frames on 3rd, located on the corner of Third and 22nd streets, beckons passersby with its simple storefront, its door typically open on a warm day. Owner Robb Dominguez can often be found stationed at his worktable in front of a large wall of perfectly arranged frame samples, helping guide customers as to what dimensions…
Forced to navigate COVID variants, shifting mask mandates, and cautious students, neighborhood fitness studios have experienced a rocky two years, in a time when maintaining well bodies and minds is as crucial as ever. Potrero Hill resident Gizella Donald opened Yoga Mayu at Mission and Harrison streets in 2008, launching a second location in Noe…
Mission Creek Park, off Channel Street, will be home to a new public art installation by the end of next year; “The California Grizzlies of Mission Creek.” The two-part sculpture, by San Francisco artist Rigo 23, will feature a thirteen-and-a-half-foot tall mama bear and her six-foot tall cub, standing on their hind legs facing Downtown…
Last fall, Mayor London Breed appointed then State Assemblymember David Chiu to be San Francisco City Attorney, filling the seat vacated by Dennis Herrera, who Breed selected to head the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, a position which’d been made available by the resignation of Harlan Kelly in the face of corruption allegations. The political…
According to Head of School Valentina Imbeni, PhD., Italian-immersion La Scuola is delighted with its new campus in the Mission, but would’ve preferred to have stayed in Dogpatch, where its pre-kindergarten program is located. Established in 2002, La Scuola is a co-educational day school with 300 preschool through eighth grade students split between two campuses:…
Former District 10 Supervisor, Sophie Maxwell, spends most mornings at Lake Merced, enjoying the scenic views and natural landscape that surrounds it. The lake, which now serves as an emergency water supply, was San Francisco’s main drinking water source until it was replaced by the Hetch-Hetchy reservoir in the Sierra Nevada almost a century ago.…
A bit more than five percent of District 10, which includes Dogpatch and Potrero Hill, consists of green space, compared to 13 percent for San Francisco as a whole. Residents have steadily worked to remedy this deficit, successfully advocating for community gardens and green patches. These efforts created the Kansas Street Community Garden, Arkansas Friendship…
Beauty has a sordid history in art. Once held up as the most essential aesthetic principle, beauty has been championed, diminished, and had to fight for its value. An esthetic of pain has taken center stage in twentieth and twenty-first century art, emphasizing artists who express or parse personal struggle in their work, often correlating…
This month playwright/lyricist, Diane Sampson, and musician/cabaret performer, Lauren Mayer, will unveil what they accomplished during the pandemic. Living Large, their musical about the lives and loves of Marie Dressler, will debut on December 10 and 11 as a reading at the Potrero Stage Theater. Though Bay Area artists Sampson and Mayer had admired each…
If you’ve made your way past 1501 Vermont Street you might’ve noticed Books Inc.’s unassuming office and warehouse, with its caricature of a friendly mustachioed sun hovering above the loading docks. Don’t judge this book by its cover, though. Books Inc. distributes to its own Bay Area stores, hosts book signings by local authors and…
San Francisco developers Ronaldo Cianciarulo and Workshop1 want to develop a roughly 603,286 square feet life science laboratory complex on 3100 to 3150 Third Street, a property owned by 3150 Third LLC and 3240 Mindful LLC. The site is the largest of three properties the team wants to cultivate as life science labs in Dogpatch…
“It costs the same to build an “affordable” house as it does a market rate one,” my friend, Chris Block, presently San Francisco’s Chronic Homelessness Initiative Director, told me almost two decades ago. That’s still roundly true. Modest savings can be achieved by deploying different construction techniques, materials, and modular units, such as those manufactured…