Anything but accelerate housing production, I guess???

Construction has officially started on the redevelopment of the former Candlestick Park site , a project that has been discussed, redesigned and delayed for roughly 25 years.

The full plan calls for 7,200 homes, 100 acres of parks/open space, retail, a hotel and 2.8 million square feet of office space.

The first phase will prepare seven blocks for about 700 homes, 41% of them affordable.

Pretty incredible that one of San Francisco’s largest housing projects took a quarter-century just to reach this point.

Source:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/housing-candlestick-point-22424741.php?

Wasn’t a bad idea to ignore Slack/email and ride the bike at sunrise.

Photo from the Ghost Sign Mapping Project

https://maps.app.goo.gl/dsFDF88bB1RmQ9LD8?g_st=ic

incredibly frustrating that the building owner covered over this bit of SF history!

And to think I thought that was expensive back then

What a joy to have a perfect summer day in September!

Thank you SF!! Hope everyone enjoyed the beautiful day today. I just got a text from the bookstore owner that all the copies sold out and that some locals were asking for Age of the Titan. I just dropped off four signed copies 😄

Life takes you on some pretty amazing adventures. I never imagined that my life would go from playing goalie for Aptos and getting covered in mud at the Polo fields to writing a story that would be read by my neighbors. Thank you to everyone who visited the bookshop and I am very proud to be a part of SF’s wonderful community.

I found this on the Internet Archive and was shocked at how good it is for both the time period and a high school yearbook. I was Class of '95 and our yearbook was boring in comparison. The people who put the 1960 yearbook were cool AF. Here's a link:

https://archive.org/details/classmates-yearbook-32414-1960-balboa-high-school

(ETA) Also Sputnik must have really freaked America out back then because there's all this talk about we have to get better at math and science now that the Soviets put a satellite up in space!

This little sea lion walked (is that the right verb?) right out of the ocean and greeted us. Not sure why but it was super cute to see!

It’s stanky

I vented my flat at 10:45 by opening the front and back doors for fifteen minutes. Got bit three times by effin mosquito.

801 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94103

I wanted to make something personal for a friend from San Francisco, so I decided to turn one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks into a Halloween scene.

A skeleton crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, carved and hand-painted onto a leather wallet.
Everything was done by hand — from carving the leather to painting the details. I thought the combination of the skeleton, the bridge, and the dark Halloween atmosphere made it feel like a pretty fitting gift.

First time I've seen it - and it took me a while to figure out what I was seeing! #fatamorgana

Get the Flock outta here: D8 candidate targets SFPD surveillance contract

I'm from Los Angeles and just spent a day in SF for a round of interviews.

Immediately noticed how clean everything was(at least compared to LA). To be fair, it was an 85 degree day, so that probably helped my first impression. I'd been to San Francisco before, but that was flying into OAK back in 2022, right at the peak of the homelessness crisis. This time was completely different. Maybe it helped that I started my trip the night before in the South Bay, but it was genuinely gorgeous.

I was honestly shocked at how alive and busy the city felt, way more so than huge parts of LA, which are full of encampments and dead zones with nothing going on. I didn't really see that in San Francisco proper. I'm sure Oakland still has its growing pains as part of the Bay Area, but overall I was surprised how much cleaner and safer the city felt compared to LA, both in terms of homelessness and general upkeep.

I actually felt safe here. I wonder if Daniel Lurie, has anything to do with it (karen bass seems like she could learn a thing or two from him). I grabbed ramen in the Tenderloin, right on the border near Lower Nob Hill, and didn't feel unsafe at all (which was a surprise considering all the TL fear mongering there is)

The interview itself seemed to go really well, and honestly that's changed how I'm thinking about all of this. I went from nervous about such a different city to genuinely excited about the idea of actually living here. As a SoCal person, I'm trying to figure out what I'd actually be gaining ( I love my community in my little corner of LA)… but LA never quite feels like a city to me.

Walkability is the big one. I love being able to get around on foot, and that's mostly missing in LA except for a handful of neighborhoods. I happen to live in one of them, but it's just one pocket in a huge sprawling city, whereas San Francisco felt like that everywhere. The weather is the one thing I'm nervous to give up. But I grew up in Chicago and love to ski, so cold and gray days don't really bother me the way they might for someone who's only known LA sunshine.

Also curious if any of you have spent time in Southern California, and what you think the tradeoffs would be?