While this obviously doesn’t hold the same joy as browsing the stacks for an hour before finally deciding what to buy, it’s a great opportunity to support a local business while we wait for things to more fully open up.

Mayors across the US, guided by 15 or so San Francisco arts organizations and Mayor London Breed’s office, wrote to Congress this week, asking the Fed to step up it’s support for the arts. The SFS thanks Mayor @LondonBreed, the SF Arts Alliance, & this group of 22 additional mayors

This isn’t the first shady thing that Veritas has done, not by a long shot. They’ve ‘allegedly’ harassed longterm, rent controlled tenants in order to try to get them out. They’ve ‘allegedly’ charged obscene rent increases to “cover rising maintenance and operations costs”. They’ve ‘allegedly’ maintained squalid building with lead-contaminated water and broken elevators. They’ve even ‘allegedly’ threatened to sue a housing nonprofit for a Facebook post they didn’t like. And that’s just the stuff people have been brave enough to speak out about. Just imagine all the other nefarious things they’ve gotten away with because people have been afraid they might lose their housing if they spoke up. Allegedly…of course. 

Update: The mayor announced Wednesday that 95% of businesses can reopen for pickup and delivery business on Monday. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced modifications to the statewide stay-at-home order this afternoon (5/12) to allow more businesses in California to reopen, including dine-in restaurants, shopping malls and offices. So as long as

East Bay to Palestine, Palestine to San Francisco: How Nabeel Silmi built a coffee staple in the San Francisco Mission.

Bear Vasquez passed away yesterday after a number of years of poor health. Bear was a virtual friend of mine for 5 years. I had first seen him through the Couchsurfing networks and groups of Yosemite, where he lived and then I saw him interviewed on Broke-Ass Stuart’s Kinda Late Show in 2015 and it made me want to meet him even more than I had already as a fellow active couchsurfer. So I contacted him about coming to stay at his place sometime.

Earlier this week Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California would begin partially reopening on May 8th. And guess what, that’s today! So what does that mean? Good question! Today marks the start of Stage 2 of Newsom’s 4 part plan to reopen California. This stage consists of allowing lower risk businesses

In a study conducted by researchers at UC Santa Cruz, which included in-person interviews with hundreds of San Francisco gig-workers beginning in February, followed up by several more surveys with gig-workers through the pandemic ‘shelter in place’ order, reveals an incredible view of our ‘essential workers’ during a pandemic. The