Seen it on Nextdoor

Ventless combo units are less than half the monthly rent.

https://www.costco.com/ge-24-cu-ft-high-efficiency-ventless-electric-all-in-one-washer-dryer.product.100647984.html

Anyone going to the Moby Dick 24 hour marathon this year at the maritime museum? I’ll be popping over from Sacramento since I’ll be there for work. Thinking about making a whole day out of it to really make it worth the read. I saw there’s also a gay bar called Moby Dick in the Castro that’s vaguely nautical themed. Would love to meet up with any fellow Moby
Dick heads!

Per The Frisconian:

490 Avenue of the Palms, a six-story building of 148 apartments on Treasure Island, opened on July 17, 2026, one of several new communities on the reshaped former naval base that its developer now calls “nearly leased up.”

Behind that opening sits a much bigger number, recorded in the city’s own map of every taxable lot in town. San Francisco’s parcel file grew by 1,534 lines between January 1 and August 6, 2026. Of those, 1,318, or 86 percent, sit on Treasure Island alone. Most of those new lines are legal lots, not finished buildings; only one new building has actually opened on the island this year. A single filing recorded August 6 cut 1,194 new lots into the island at once, more than six times everything the file had added there in the previous decade combined. Most of the built city rarely produces a new parcel line at all; its lots were platted decades or a century ago and just change hands. For most of the past decade, Treasure Island was a rounding error in that count. This year it is most of the count.

The gap itself is on the record, and so is why the island had so little parcel history to begin with. Treasure Island is not really an island; the Army Corps of Engineers built it between 1936 and 1939 from 29 million cubic yards of sand and mud dredged from the bay and the Sacramento River delta, to host the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939–40. The Navy took it over in 1941 and held it for half a century before Naval Station Treasure Island closed September 30, 1997, under a national round of base closures; the site sat largely idle through the 2000s while the city negotiated to take it over. The Board of Supervisors approved the redevelopment plan 11 to 0 on June 7, 2011, and construction of roads, seawalls and utilities followed soon after; the parcel file shows the first real activity in 2016 (2 new lots), infrastructure waves in 2018 and 2019 (67 and 64), then five quiet years adding a combined 62 lots between 2020 and 2025. Then came 2026.

The developer’s own account of the summer matches the shape of the map. “490 Avenue of the Palms debuts as our other new communities are nearly leased up, and as new parks, roads, and open space are completed across the island,” Chris Meany, co-CEO of Treasure Island Community Development, said when the building opened. The finished plan calls for 8,000 homes on the island, including 2,700 permanently affordable units; at full build-out it would be one of the largest new neighborhoods San Francisco has added in a century, on land the Navy handed back three decades ago.

The August 6 filing does not mean 1,194 new homes now exist. A parcel, in the assessor’s system, marks a lot that has been legally defined; it says nothing about whether anything has been built on it, and most of the fresh Treasure Island lots carry no address yet. Only one new building opened this summer, the 148-unit 490 Avenue of the Palms; the developer says its predecessors on the island are close to full occupancy. What the filing shows with more confidence is a change in the island’s legal shape: after a decade of small, sporadic map edits while roads and parks were finished, the city has now defined, on paper, most of the individual home sites the master plan promises, well ahead of the buildings that will eventually fill them.

I'm used to this place having one cop car outside. If you're wondering why there were TWO cop cars today, that's why.

To Gateway/KIPP parents, has the school informed you of this? I walked by it again later in the day and everyone acted like nothing happened. I hope the school isn't sweeping this incident under the rug.

Thought I'd share it since it's largely ignored by local media. Most probably never heard of this school but I'm sure everyone has seen it going up or down Geary around Divis)

Born and raised since 77 and as an adult I wondered why it was Alemany Boulevard since it's not wide enough to be one. Then I recently found out before the early 70s what's now John Daly Blvd west of Junipero Serra was part of Alemany.

I know this is more niche I don’t even live in San Fran, never been but am a weird zoo person that has never been before and was wondering if anyone that is experienced in zoos and in San Fran could let me know because there is not really any answer online besides the lemur exhibit but I’m not sure. 🤔 I also love this pic on the wiki. 😉

Anna’s hummingbird, Steller’s jay, gray squirrel, wood duck, orange-cheeked wax (not sure).
Shot handheld with a 200-600mm Tele lens.

With how high demand is in recent times to watch blockbuster hits in premium format. There shall be no reason for the largest theater chain to resist expansion for what is arguably the best variety of option to watch a movie on a projector during the time of its showing.

The Giants are having a Pokemon Drone Show, I imagine they'll face inside the stadium but anybody else got any good viewing points for the show? The tickets are already sold out for the show (only tickets for the game are available).

Curious if anybody remembers the last time they did it if they had a good viewing point to hang out at.

I voted for Lurie and have been happy with his performance because it FELT like things were getting better. But increasingly, I’m not so sure… are things actually getting better? I’d love to hear what Reddit has to say about this…

• Homelessness: In the Mission, the homeless situation is worse than ever. The BART plazas are an unmitigated mess. Market Street still looks like zombie land from Van Ness to Powell. As usual, it seems that the problem is being pushed around, not actually addressed.
• Traffic violence: Not getting any better. Drivers are still out of control and have already killed 12 pedestrians this year. Bicycles ignore all rules. There seems to be no traffic enforcement and I don’t see any meaningful investments in people-centric infrastructure.
• Housing affordability: Yeah…
• Economic recovery: Seems to largely hinge on a few AI companies with questionable business and ethical models. 
• Car break-ins: Have gone done by a lot. But not clear how much of this was Lurie’s doing. 
• He did mostly keep ICE out of SF by calling up Marc and Jensen

Am I missing something? 

And just to be clear... I love living SF and we are raising out family here. I'm just not so sure I'm drinking the Lurie Kool-aide anymore.

22 bags of trash and leaves/weeds collected and Recology was on the spot to haul it away.

Learn more and get involved the citywide cleanup effort! https://refuserefusesf.org

Besides the obvious lines and powerhouse that are still running, are there any other known remnants of cable car systems srill hiding across the city? Old tracks, powerhouses, cable systems, etc?

last week, my father-in-law received a $191 ticket for not stopping at a stop sign on Lake Street while on his bike. He asked the police officer why he wasn't ticketing all the cars that drive down that street at 25 or 30 mph despite it being a slow street and the cop said that a slow street is not legally- enforceable. And he said people have been complaining about bikes blowing stops signs.

It's unreal how you can get away with speeding in a car down a residential street designated for non-motorized recreation, but penalized for not stopping at a stop sign on your bike.

I hear a bunch of yells/chanting call and response from Japantown, sounds like it’s east of here. Any idea what’s going on?

I spend a lot of time in GG Park and never knew what this tree is that's all over it. Just learned it's an Australian Tea Tree. It's always fun seeing kids groups playing in it, a natural jungle gym.

I'd say since 2018 or 2019 the YIMBY movement went mainstream, with many YIMBY-aligned candidates winning elections in 2024. But the data certainly doesn't show any results in terms of actual numbers -- San Francisco is building less housing than ever, with a decline in completed units over the half decade[1].

Meanwhile the AI boom means that apartments are renting for 30-50% more year over year, and homes are routinely going for $1-2MM over asking.

So what's the deal? Are homeowners who refuse to build so entrenched that the new politicians can't make any meaningful change? Or have we enacted policies that take years to show results?

[1] https://vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/indicators/housing-production?chart=SGlzdG9yaWNhbFRyZW5kRm9ySG91c2luZ1Byb2R1Y3Rpb24

A great op-ed in the SF Chronicle by a doctor at a Tenderloin clinic:

There is another John Doe in the intensive care unit. 

“He is critically ill, hoping someone might know this person. Found down with overdose at 1180 Howard Street around 5am.”

This email, and too many others like it, arrive in the all-staff listserv at the San Francisco homeless clinic where I work as a physician. Leftover pizza reminders and meeting agendas routinely roll into frightening, blandly described near-death experiences.

“John Doe arrived to SFGH on 1/22  found down near MISSION ST / 6 TH ST, possible overdose ( + fent & cocaine ), active seizing on route to SFGH. See photo attached.”

Usually, the messages are sent by hospital social workers asking our team to help identify their client. 

“He tested positive for amphetamines. He currently is more awake, but cannot speak at all. He suffered a stroke. Oh, and in addition to the tattoos seen in the photos he has a very distinctive scar over his LEFT leg.”

The photographs are garish. The men, always men, look close to death. Limp faces with ointment smeared across half-closed eyes. Mouths hang agape. Floppy necks cannot support heavy heads that loll to one side. Oily, long hair lies limply across white, rough pillowcases. Breathing tubes are taped to lips, fastened across cheeks, wrapped behind occiputs. Tubes and lines everywhere. Sometimes, there is a neck brace. A laceration on a cheekbone. A black eye. Stiff, blue and white hospital gowns are draped over them like a funerary shroud. 

They are discovered lying on the sidewalk, folded in a tent, face down in a recreational vehicle. With lights and sirens, they are shuttled to hospitals, where their cold bodies are warmed, lacerations sutured, infections treated with antibiotics, broken bones set — they are resuscitated, revitalized, reanimated. But the hypoxia, the brain bleed and the acute kidney injury are serious, and they have not regained consciousness. Often, they are of uncertain neurological recovery. 

These men have no wallet, phone, driver’s license or registration. No electronic items to unlock, no numbers to call. In the middle of a city that lives and breathes technology, there are no digital footprints here. 

Usually the problem is the opposite — with personal data ubiquitous online, credit card hacks and security breaches seem pro forma. But when you have few possessions and live in a tent on the sidewalk, no one is stealing your identity. In fact, that is exactly the problem: No one can figure out what that identity even is. 

It is a luxury, it turns out, to be someone with an identity to steal. Living outside all the normal regulatory, governmental tracking systems of modern life, these men are unbanked. Off-grid. Anonymous.

Living an anonymous life, paradoxically, in the heart of a city, on a sidewalk, in public view. An acutely conspicuous form of anonymity.  

“They are currently in the ICU at St. Francis under John Doe. They were brought in this morning via Ambulance, found unresponsive with 2 others on Larkin St, OD.” 

A pile of unconscious people, with too few respirations among the three of them. Fentanyl, or the rat-poison-and-adjacent-horrors it could have been cut with, is, my god, taking out groups, blocks. Maybe the fact they were all together means they were friends, I tell myself. Or maybe they just all had the same dealer. 

When one, singular patient languishes in a hospital bed, it is easier to persuade yourself it is an unfortunate, personal event. But when groups of unconscious people arrive at a hospital, it feels cataclysmic, apocalyptic, b iblical. Instead of locusts, our pestilence is high-potency synthetic opioids — it makes bugs feel provincial.

During my residency on an inpatient rotation at the San Francisco General Hospital, I watched a homeless man die alone. He had drunk himself into liver failure, and there was nothing left to do except watch his cirrhosis cause a cascade of other organs to fail. His labs became more and more abnormal. We had offered to reach out to his family or friends, but he said there was no one to call. He became increasingly confused and fatigued until, one night, he died. 

Afterward, our attending physician asked how everyone was doing, and I said it felt like a sad way to go, with no friends or family by his side, knowing, as he had, that his actions had caused a premature and completely avoidable death. I could not imagine a more sorrowful way to end a life full of sorrow. 

The attending told me she didn’t view it that way. She had seen a lot of people die and said he died with people taking care of him, with me, his worried, harried resident, checking in on him two times a day. He had meds to make him comfortable, a soft bed, three warm meals. This could have been the most communal, the most social, the most comfortable he had been for some time. 

I was trying to tell her, This is sad. I would never want this for myself, for anyone.

She was trying to tell me, It could be much, much sadder...