My Daniel Lurie Wishlist

Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie has a ton of problems to solve. He should know. He spent $8 million of his inherited wealth to acquire it. A true Brokeass voter, my question is, How will Lurie differ from all the other billionaires playing politics? Will he enter City Hall sated by his own wealth, or is he just another rich man getting richer at our expense?

Hard telling how Daniel Lurie will change San Francisco. He could end up doing more damage than incumbent Mayor London Breed, or he might be the best mayor the city has seen in recent memory. Maybe he’ll fall somewhere in the inoffensive middle. Before the next four sad years in America prove his character either way, I wrote my own honey-do list for Mr. Lurie. 

Please betray your class.

The media largely refers to him as an “outsider.” Lurie’s campaign strategist Tyler Law calls the label misleading. “Daniel had never held elective office, but he was not an outsider,” Law told the San Francisco Standard. “This is really important. We did not describe ourselves as outsiders. The press did. We just said he’s not a City Hall insider. There is a distinction there, although it’s nuanced. Daniel knows everyone around town, and they love him.”

To me, outsider means, “one who lives outside the status quo.” An heir to the fortune of San Francisco denim magnate Levi Strauss, Lurie does not qualify. But what if he became a class traitor, a people’s hero who serves not the rich, but the real? He could secure that legacy by boosting social services, eliminating rent hikes for residents and business owners, opening inpatient rehab facilities, shutting down the fentanyl market, and pushing affordable housing like no mayor ever has. He could become the greatest outsider the city’s ever known.

Roll back policies that punish city residents.

In summer 2024, London Breed ordered the nightly shutdown of corner stores in twenty square blocks of the Tenderloin. The effort to discourage fentanyl dealers only punished small business (read: corner store) owners and residents dependent on their services. Breed’s Tenderloin policy is representative of her office as a whole: superficial and ineffectual. I hope Lurie recognizes the damage it’s doing and promptly reverses it. 

One of my biggest gripes with Daniel Lurie is how staunchly opposed he is to expanding rent control. Indeed, he and seven million Californians killed Proposition 33, which would’ve allowed local governments to expand rent control. Currently, San Francisco City Hall enforces rent control on residences built prior to 1979. Lurie believes that if Prop 33 passed, it would “stymie the construction of badly needed new housing.” 

Don’t suck up to corporations who would gladly abandon us at the first sign of trouble.

The amount of simping Mayor Breed did for Big Tech companies was flat-out embarrassing. The future of San Francisco should never rest in corporate hands. Watching tech companies that owe their very existence to the Bay Area straight up desert it was a wake-up call. When the SF Chronicle asked if Big Tech has too much sway over City Hall, Lurie responded, “somewhat disagree.” “Many tech companies have left San Francisco,” he told the Chronicle. “The biggest threat to our progress as a city is the broken, corrupt culture inside City Hall.”

Please make city streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

If Mayor-elect Lurie sees this list and takes only one thing from it, let it be this. I am exhausted by all the pedestrian and cyclist injuries and fatalities. They keep happening because SF urban design still prioritizes drivers. I want Lurie to staff the streets with crossing guards. I want him to widen walkways and choke traffic lanes. Let him prioritize MUNI routes and construct walled-off bike lanes—paint and plastic are poor excuses for infrastructure. People are dying for lack of crosswalks in the right places, because bike lanes are unprotected, because Americans drive with their egos and not their brains. 

You should have to get out of your car if you want to visit San Francisco. If you believe cities are best experienced by car, Los Angeles awaits you. 

Build a subway line underneath Geary to the beach.

Traffic issues plague Geary from its forked Muni route downtown to the pooled terminus of the Boulevard by the sea. It is the vena cava of the Richmond District; it gets residents and tourists in and out of the city center. The 38-Geary is nearly at pre-lockdown daily ridership (20,000+) with an additional 25,000 on the 38R. The Rapid’s daily ridership peaked at around 34,000 prior to the pandemic. As San Francisco recovers, alternative means of transportation will become a more pressing need. A subway line underneath the busy thoroughfare would be a significant boon to us and future San Franciscans. 

And don’t shuffle it off to some future mayor to accomplish, Mr. Lurie. Please get underway with this project during your time in office. City leaders are already talking about the possibility. Start the necessary environmental studies now while you get settled in. Many Sunset residents will want a north-south light rail line along 19th Avenue or Sunset Boulevard. Wouldn’t you like to be known as the mayor that unified San Francisco? 

Don’t let us down, sell us out, or screw us over, Mr. Lurie.

It sounds like an abused person telling their new partner, “Don’t hurt me,” but after Breed’s term, that feels apt. San Francisco’s current residents are some of the toughest it has ever seen. We survived COVID, the Big Tech divorce, multiple fire seasons, and the worst drought in California history. Daniel Lurie may have taken on an insurmountable challenge, but he also inherited a city of people that live here because we love it. Don’t punish us for loving and living in the city you just got keys to. 

Alternative wishes:

• Transform Market Street into a 24-hour airport runway
• Linear induction motor rapid transit from downtown to the fucking sky
• Free pair of Levis for every registered voter
• A letter from my mother saying she’s proud of me