The California Public Utilities Commission approved a “flat-fee” change for electricity use on PG&E bills, and low energy users will pay the same amount as high energy users. The rates will be based on the season and time of day, but critics charge this will discourage electricity conservation. [Cal Matters] The Oakland Board of Port Commissioners went through with it, unanimously voting to change their name to “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport.” Let the lawsuits begin! Oakland airport’s interim director of aviation Craig Simon said that “This designation will let the world ..read more

The notoriously rejected 27-story residential tower in a SoMa parking lot had its Plan B version approved, but now the developer is putting the project on ice, and a highly frustrated Planning Commission approved letting it remain a parking lot for another five years. Arguably the most controversial decision that the SF Board of Supervisors had made in recent years was their 2021 rejection of a 27-story residential tower in what was then a Nordstrom parking lot, over seismic and displacement concerns. That rejection drew condemnation from state legislators, lawsuits, and even a mock funeral w ..read more

Every prisoner has now been abruptly transferred out of the federal women’s prison in Dublin, but some have been hauled as far away as Florida, and a judge is ordering their belongings returned and their medical care restored. The federal women’s prison known as Federal Correctional Institution of Dublin (FCI Dublin) has had a stunning string of ghoulish sexual abuse scandals bubble up over the last nearly two years. And while we knew the staff had been abusing the women prisoners, it was a shock when the prison was raided by the FBI in March, and then suddenly closed out of the blue on April ..read more

While Mayor Breed’s ballyhooed Tenderloin drug crackdown is pretty much failing to get anyone into treatment, a Code Tenderloin night program is getting drug addiction treatment to hundreds every month. We are now about a year into the Tenderloin drug crackdown engineered by Mayor London Breed and Governor Gavin Newsom. It’s produced a pretty fair number of arrests, though it’s highly debatable whether this has changed street conditions in any noticeable way. And one big component was that people would be offered treatment instead of incarceration. But as of six months into the program this p ..read more

Downtown SF's Vacant to Vibrant program, which puts pop-up businesses into vacant spaces rent-free around SoMa and the Financial District, is hosting a community market on this sunny Thursday afternoon on Market Street. The Vacant to Vibrant Community Market event started at noon Thursday and goes through 4 pm, and it features live music, food trucks, vintage clothing for sale, and free ice cream. The event, co-sponsored by Wells Fargo, is happening in the plaza outside the Wells Fargo branch at 333 Market Street. It's the latest in a series of activations organized by SF New Deal, which is r ..read more

We could have had it as a census question decades ago, and we almost had it on the 2020 Census, but then Trump happened. Now, maybe, finally, more than 50 years after the movement began for LGBTQ civil rights, the U.S. Census Bureau is moving ahead with adding long-overdue questions about gender identity and sexual orientation. It is insane that the U.S. Census has never adequately counted the number of Americans who identify as gay, let alone the panoply of orientations and gender identities that younger generations now accept as the norm. But after a near-miss in getting a sexual orientatio ..read more

A 63-year-old woman who’s a postal carrier in Dublin was robbed of her mail keys and cellphone at gunpoint Monday afternoon by two masked suspects, and security camera footage has captured what appears to be the suspects’ vehicle. The recent rash of postal carrier robberies continues, and may even be getting worse, as six mail delivery people have been robbed in the last month, according to the US Postal Inspection Service. KRON4 reports that the most recent of these was the armed robbery of a postal carrier in Dublin that happened at 4:30 pm Monday on Obispo Court. And as KTVU points out, th ..read more

An arrest was made within 30 hours of a Sunday morning shooting near Lake Merritt in Oakland, and the suspect has a known history of violence. A tragic scene unfolded Sunday just before noon, near the county courthouse by Lake Merritt, when a 61-year-old man was shot while driving his minivan, and he drove on for another half mile with a fatal gunshot wound before crashing the car in a motel parking lot. He was later pronounced dead at the scene. We now know that the victim was Michael Seymour, and Oakland police say that the shooting was unprovoked — it remains unclear if Seymour and the sus ..read more

It's set to be the warmest day of the year so far and the hottest in San Francisco since October! The warm spell continues on Friday but the high today is 79 and tomorrow it's a mere 74 in the city. [KPIX] In a new interview, Vice President Kamala Harris said she is "worried about fundamental freedoms" coming under attack from the Supreme Court, particularly from Justice Clarence Thomas — would love to overturn rulings on same-sex marriage, contraception, and more. [New York Times] A motorcyclist died Wednesday night in a collision in Rohnert Park. [Bay City News] Some Berkeley Unified School ..read more

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu reiterated the city's objections and again asked the Port of Oakland Board of Commissioners to reverse their decision to change the name of Oakland International Airport. The city has filed suit against the Port and the City of Oakland, and the board will take a final vote Thursday on the change to the rather absurd "San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport." [Chronicle] A suspicious death that occurred Sunday in the Tenderloin is being investigated by San Francisco police. The death occurred on the 200 block of Taylor Street just before noon on S ..read more