General Hospital Murder
On December 4, 2025, at approximately 3:04 p.m., San Francisco Police Department officers responded to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center regarding an assault. Officers were told that at about 1:39 p.m., an adult male stabbed Alberto Rangel, 51, a University of California, San Francisco social worker, multiple times and was being detained by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department. Rangel died from his wounds on December 6. Investigators arrested 34-year-old Wilfredo Tortolero-Arriechi of San Francisco, who was booked into San Francisco County Jail for murder. Tortolero-Arriechi allegedly made threats on the day of the attack against a doctor at HIV clinic Ward 86. A sheriff’s deputy was deployed to protect the physician. An eyewitness to the attack said that the deputy wasn’t within eyeshot of Tortolero-Arriechi when he attacked Rangel in a hallway.
More Psych Beds
San Francisco is doubling its locked psychiatric ward capacity for patients experiencing severe mental illness and addiction. The move is part of a host of expansions to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s mental health care facilities, located on Potrero Avenue, courtesy of state funding. The hospital will repurpose the second floor of its Behavior Health Center to accommodate about 57 more locked subacute beds. Officials for years have lamented the serious shortage of these beds, which, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, has contributed to homelessness and repeat psychiatric crises…the mental health expansion comes at a time of intense questioning about General Hospital’s ability to keep patients and staff safe; see above.
Mission Bay Dentistry
The University of California, San Francisco is investing $767 million to develop a Mission Bay home for its dentistry school. The money will be used, in part, to buy two buildings at 409 and 499 Illinois Street from long-time landlord Alexandria Properties, with 470,000 square feet of space, plus a 600-space parking garage. For more than a decade, the school’s clinics, laboratories, and administrative offices leased 90 percent of 499 Illinois. UCSF had an option to purchase it, as well as neighboring 409, when it became vacant in 2024, which it exercised last month. The 409 Illinois Street facility that previously housed biopharmaceutical company FibroGen, genomics firm Illumina, and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub will become the dentistry school’s new home along with dental clinics. It will get a “gut remodel,” with only minor work needed at the other building.
Anchor to Stay
A report in a niche beer publication that Anchor Steam plans to leave San Francisco is false, according to The Standard. Reopening plans for the facility, which closed in 2023, are apparently in the works, though there’s no confirmed schedule for starting production. Anchor Brewing, founded in 1896, has survived earthquakes, Prohibition, near-bankruptcy and the rise and fall of craft beer trends. Under Fritz Maytag, who owned the brewery from 1965 to 2010, it pioneered the modern craft beer movement. It was purchased in 2024 by Hamdi Ulukaya, who founded yogurt behemoth Chobani.
Caviar Patch
Dogpatch old-timers remember being grateful to have access to a decent burrito in the neighborhood. Now comes Wolfsbane, a three-month-old restaurant that offers a tasting menu for $248 per person, $390 including a wine pairing, with a 20 percent service charge automatically added. All-in a well-off foodie could pay more than $1,000 to dine for two, excluding such up-sales as caviar. Carrie Blease operates Wolfsbane along with her husband, Rupert, and chef Tommy Halvorson, formerly of Serpentine, located at the same 2495 Third Street address until it closed early in the pandemic.
Neighborhood Test Kitchen
Last month the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee voted unanimously to support legislation by Supervisor Jackie Fielder to require a special permit for some kinds of “laboratory” uses in industrial areas of the Mission, Dogpatch and Potrero Hill. The law exempts companies engaged in traditional life science research and production but would affect artificial intelligence and other tech enterprises, including DoorDash, which wants to test delivery airborne drones in and around the 1960 Folsom Street warehouse it occupies. The legislation, which needs full board approval, comes a month after the Board of Appeals confirmed that current zoning allows DoorDash to test. The food delivery company’s plan to field drones could be delayed by 18 months if the legislation passes. Teamsters Local 665 is concerned that drones will ultimately replace well-paying union delivery jobs. The soft war between humans and robots continues…
Ribbon-Cutting Mayor
In Apple TV+’s Slow Horses, a fictional London Mayor, Zafar Jaffrey, played by Nick Mohammed, deploys a somewhat cringey campaign slogan “Londerful” to promote London. Our own Mayor, Daniel Lurie, played by himself, is far less cheesy but similarly relentlessly promotional of San Francisco, as exhibited by his daily schedule. On one mid-December day that included cutting a ribbon to open Falafelland on Golden Gate Avenue; delivering “Remarks at Thrive City Menorah Lighting,” at least his second public menorah lighting remarks, in addition to whatever comments he makes to his children at home; and attending “San Francisco Interfaith Council’s Annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial.” If you haven’t yet bumped into Mayor Lurie at the launch of a store, spiritual, or business event, you will.
Sales Tax Holiday
In 2023, San Francisco authorized a generous tax break for companies that moved their offices Downtown, which has struggled with vacancies and diminished foot traffic since the pandemic.
Two years later, however, the City has nothing to show for its efforts. A recent San Francisco Treasurer and Tax Collector’s Office report found that no one has used the fiscal relief opportunity, which allows companies to reduce their business taxes by up to $1 million for three years if they open new offices in or near Downtown. How about this idea instead: create a temporary “duty-free” zone Downtown, eliminating all sales taxes from purchases made within the most economically depressed blocks. In fact, why not do the same in other hard-pressed neighborhoods, such as the Tenderloin and Bayview. Sales-tax relief could help jumpstart the retail, restaurant and entertainment sectors. Since the tax is largely regressive, taking a bigger percentage of income from poor individuals than rich ones, temporarily eliminating it in communities suffering from high unemployment and low wages would help address worsening wealth inequality. The average per capita income in Bayview-Hunters Point hovers around the mid-$40,000s; the average in Potrero is three times that much.