Proposition SDR: Should meter maids run San Francisco?
I split my time between the Silicon Valley and San Francisco. It’s a great arrangement: Just when I’m getting tired of too many places to […]
Reynolds Rap
Upscale comfort food
I’m troubled by the possibility that, as the Bay Area has become increasingly wealthy and more ideologically self-selecting, the Chez Panisse ethos has become a […]
Grow up, Airbnb
Last fall, Airbnb was embroiled in a nasty battle to beat Proposition F, which would have strengthened regulations on the short-term home rental start-up and its competitors. The company spent more than $8 million on deceptive ads to scare the daylights out of anyone using the service (“Don’t let the government in your bedroom!”).
Some of the homeless people you pass have been in your shoes
A few months ago I came across a letter to the San Francisco Business Times. The author, an understandably frustrated San Francisco resident named Richard Kales, went on at length about the perils of working downtown with its throngs of drug addicted, mentally ill, and sometimes violent denizens.
Paradise Cost
This month San Francisco residents will vote on Proposition C, which would raise the affordable housing requirements for developers from 12 to 25 percent and […]
You can’t be shot in the back if you’re charging forward
In April 2014, I received a call from someone inside the San Francisco Police Department. “You should look into the shooting of that dog at […]
My love/hate relationship with Uber
Three years ago, headed down to the studios of radio station KGO to guest host on a Saturday afternoon, I had grown weary of giving […]
We built this city: Post-Super Bowl shantytowns show the city doesn’t know how
In less than a month, San Francisco built a city for the Super Bowl and tore it down as if it never existed — an […]
A vote of disdain for Mayor Ed Lee: How the accidental mayor turned San Francisco into a playground for tax-skirting techies
When an article called “The Power Broker” ran in the July/August 2012 issue of Washington Monthly, it was no surprise that the title referred to former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. An in-depth look at the inauguration of Ed Lee after he was elected to his first full mayoral term, author Elizabeth Lesly Stevens pulled no punches in pointing out Lee’s carefully crafted ascent over a two-year period. The groundwork laid by Brown, with help from longtime political pal and Chinatown rabble-rouser Rose Pak, paid off, leading to Lee’s appointment as interim mayor in 2011 when Gavin Newsom left office early to become lieutenant governor, and, subsequently, to an elected four-year term.
Does the Board of Supervisors care more about protecting illegal immigrant felons than preventing another tragedy?
“We’re here not only for Kate, to keep her memory alive, but to have something done,” James Steinle said this past September at a news […]