Gavin Newsom is not a man who minces words:

“I know folks say, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all these fancy leaders are coming into town.’ That’s true…because it’s true.”

Newsom was of course referring to the now-infamous “facelift” parts of San Francisco received ahead of this week’s Xi Jinping-attended APEC summit, in which vast swathes of downtown’s streets were swept, scrubbed, repainted, stripped of homeless encampments, and lined with dozens of smiling, heavily-armed law enforcement officers. Almost everyone in the city immediately asked: why has this taken so long, and why was it done on behalf of a foreign dictator rather than the taxpaying citizens of San Francisco? The Democratic party line, half-heartedly parroted by Newsom himself (when he remembers not to say the quiet part out loud), is the clean-up has been “months and months” in the making, and safe, clean streets will be the status quo for San Francisco going forward. Others have speculated the facelift represents a growing entente between the Democrats and the CCP. On his Substack, Balaji put the point most incisively:

“If Newsom pulls it off, we may soon see rapprochement between the farthest culturally left party in the world (the ultra-woke American Democrats) and the farthest culturally right party in the world (the ultra-nationalist Chinese Communists). That is, after the last few years of kicking and screaming, the declining Democrats may actually settle for a power-sharing agreement with the Communists to become their allies — and perhaps eventually their clients.”

But separate from the question of a potential global communist awakening, there is the more obvious and difficult question for Democrats moving forward: now that it seems to most Bay Area residents the city is capable of effectively cleaning and policing the streets, has the political cost of inaction in some way greatly risen? In the months to come, when faced with the problem of growing homeless encampments and open air drug markets, “it’s complicated” isn’t going to cut it. After all, Gavin Newsom just admitted there’s a solution to the city’s problem, and that solution seems to look a lot like “more police.”

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City Hall

votes, policy, and more from the city’s executive and legislative branches (and their sprawling army of unelected hall monitors)

• London Breed thinks she’s doing a great job. In a recent interview with the Examiner, Breed boasted that, since she became mayor, the city has “helped over 10,000 people exit homelessness” and enter “permanent supportive housing” (otherwise known as indefinitely taxpayer-funded one-bedroom apartments). “We are definitely doing that work,” she said. 

• Most of San Francisco’s homeless are recent transplants to the city, so Breed is essentially touting her record of putting drug tourists in publicly funded housing.

The other mayoral candidates who have announced their run in next year’s election are Daniel Lurie (whose new spokesman was apparently a vocal defender of Chesa Boudin) and District 11 Supe Ahsha Safaí (who is “family friends” with a real estate developer recently hit with massive bribery charges — more on that below). Pick your poison.

• A member of the city’s (unelected and unaccountable) Sheriff’s Oversight Committee, which is tasked with “investigating allegations of misconduct by sheriff’s deputies,” was arraigned on Monday on charges of sodomy by use of force, sexual battery by restraint, assault and false imprisonment. The man, described as “an outspoken activist for social justice reform,” is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in his home, after offering to give her a ride to a nearby BART station. 

• Board of Supes Prez Peskin (along with Supes Shamann Walton, Hillary Ronen, and Connie Chan) introduced a resolution “reaffirming support for the fundamental role of an independent, impartial, and qualified judiciary.” The subtext? Progs are upset that two incumbent judges on the San Francisco Superior Court bench will face challengers backed by tough-on-crime political group Stop Crime Action. 

• “A rare thing is happening in San Francisco where a number of incumbent judges are being challenged…[this] is misplaced, it is dangerous and we cannot allow it to happen [here],” Peskin said at a press conference last Thursday. 

• As others have pointed out, this is actually not a very rare phenomenon; Peskin himself endorsed an incumbent judicial challenger in 2008, and resolution co-sponsor Ronen endorsed one as recently as 2018.

• Unrelated, but I just learned that Peskin is extremely short. (Evidence here.)

• A prominent building developer (and self-described “family friend” of supervisor and mayoral challenger Ahsha Safai) was charged with bribing three former Department of Building Inspection employees, and a former city engineer-turned-construction-firm-CEO was charged with bribing disgraced (and currently imprisoned) former Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru. 

• Bribes reportedly included “a box stuffed with $25,000 in cash,” a $40,000 John Deere tractor delivered to Nuru’s “vacation ranch,” an $85,000 interest-free loan, and “free meals and drinks” of unspecified quantities.

• (Yes, these are separate from the bribery charges we covered last week.)

• At last week’s BoS meeting, several employees from the Department of Public Works tearfully recounted how they routinely face violence and harassment on their “illegal vending enforcement” assignments, which send unarmed city workers out to impound stolen goods from (often armed and dangerous) vendors.

• President Peskin’s response? “It is not this mayor’s fault. It is not this board of supervisors' fault. It is the state of California, Gov. Newsom, and the state Legislature's fault.”

• For once, he’s partially right; SB 946, a 2018 CA Senate bill that decriminalizes street vending, complicates local efforts to arrest criminal vendors. But the bill doesn’t explicitly preclude cities from using law enforcement from scoping out rouge vendors, so the Supes could theoretically devolve this duty to the SFPD.

• Over 530 suspected drug dealers with open bench warrants have recently failed to show up to court to face narcotics sale-related charges, the DA’s office said. Of these suspects “nearly 140 have been arrested and released from jail, multiple times.”

• In related news, DA Jenkins recently announced the city has “turned a corner on the culture with respect to retail theft” and promised to actually prosecute thieves. (It remains unclear how prosecuting theft works in a Californiawhere Prop 47 is still in effect.)

• Supe Joel Engardio held a rally at City Hall on Monday in support of his proposed ballot measure to bring algebra back to eighth graders in the city’s public schools.

• Y-Combinator CEO Garry Tan hosted an election party last Tuesday “to celebrate victories scored by moderate Democrats in 2022” and bring together elected officials and political organizers “in a rallying cry” for upcoming elections in 2024. 

• In attendance were DA Jenkins, supervisor candidates Marjan Philhour and Trevor Chandler, along with members of political orgs like GrowSF, TogetherSF Action, and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco.

• A political organizer in attendance reportedly estimated their group could spend around $15 million in next year’s elections.

• Former Obama administration staffer and CA Assembly candidate Bilal Mahmood announced his run for a seat on the 33-member SF Democratic County Central Committee, a powerful committee that issues official Democratic Party endorsements for political candidates and local propositions. 

• Mahmood is also running to unseat Millionaire Marxist supervisor Dean Preston in next year’s general election. 

• Pretty much nobody likes him — he’s generally considered a compromise candidate for moderates who absolutely hate Preston and have no one else to support.

• Supes Melgar and Ronen appear to be enjoying their taxpayer-funded weeklong vacation to Japan, from which they plan to “bring back lessons” about math education. 

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Rose Alert

notes from san francisco’s beloved class of bat shit crazy local activists

• A tale of two summits. Over 1,000 people reportedly showed up to a nine-hour “People and Planet over Profit and Plunder” summit organized on Saturday by the No to APEC Coalition — the first event in a weeklong “Mass Mobilization against APEC” planned by an umbrella group of 150 “grassroots organizations.” Topics addressed by speakers included “workers’ rights, climate policy, Palestinian freedom and the Israel-Hamas war.” 

• The coalition also held a “teach-in” on “tech, APEC, and Palestine” to instruct attendees on “Big Tech’s complicity in war profiteering through the military industrial complex,” and publicized “fact sheets” on deregulation, privatization, and liberalization. 

• A truckload of Palestinian, Irish, and Filipino-flag waving protesters chanted “we’re going to bring imperialism down” at an anti-APEC march organized on Sunday.

• Protesters also spray painted “Free Palestine” on the side of a Waymo car.

• On Thursday, the SF DSA reaffirmed their commitment to Palestinian liberation, writing in a statement: “we also recognize the connection between the Palestinian fight for liberation with Native peoples’ fight in the US for liberation from capitalism and colonialism.” It remains unclear where these people plan on living in Decolonial America. 

• Bay Area K-12 schools have apparently become ideological “battlefields,” as school districts, elected officials, teachers unions, and students take sides on the conflict in Israel/Gaza. (Reminder: as of this writing, middle schoolers at SF public schools still aren’t allowed to learn algebra.)

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Memo Sacramento

a brief, essential spotlight on the state of california

• The massive fire that shut down a portion of the I-10 in Los Angeles and prompted Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency may have been caused by a massive homeless encampment below the freeway, eyewitnesses (and Twitter speculators) say. City officials remain cagey about the cause. “It’s too early to say how exactly the fire started [u]ntil we get all that information from Calfire and the state fire marshall,” said California Secretary of Transportation Toks Omishakin. 

• The fight over Dianne Feinstein’s massive estate (which includes an extensive art collection, luxury cars, and residences in San Francisco, D.C. and Hawaii), has become even more embittered, as the late senator’s daughter allegedly changed the locks of her parents’ Stinson Beach property to spite other co-trustees.

• More homeowner insurance companies have announced plans to leave California, citing rising business costs and an increased risk of property damage caused by wildfires. 

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Around Town

stories from the neighborhood you should know about

First, a special dispatch from the one and only River Page on “GAYPEC,” a city-sponsored event happening today at Beaux, a club in the Castro:

On Wednesday, the city will host an event in the Castro called GAYPEC. What is it? APEC but with more cut guys? A gay body building competition? Sadly, neither. Instead, it is a taxpayer funded celebration of “Queer Asian History and Culture,” intended for both international visitors from Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, and the “city elite, gay and straight alike.” There will also be a drag show, because its the one gay thing straight people know about. Mayor London Breed will be there, hopefully to explain how Queer Asian History and Culture differs from the regular kind. Obviously for the taxpayer this is a daylight robbery, but I guess if you live in San Francisco you’re used to that sort of thing.

• Hundreds of Bay Area tech and biotech layoffs were announced last week by Amazon, Google, Zillow, and Gilead.

• Thieves ripped an ATM out of the Walgreens on 23rd and Mission early Sunday morning, reportedly tying it to a vehicle and driving it away. This is the latest in an ongoing series of ATM thefts across the city.

• Fumio Kishida, Prime Minister of Japan, published a glowing op-ed about San Francisco in the Chronicle, in advance of APEC.

• “I will continue to do my utmost to further strengthen and develop this special Japan-San Francisco relationship and to take the unwavering Japan-U.S. relationship to new heights,” Kishida wrote.

• I don’t know exactly why but it’s giving The Man in the High Castle.

• The Ferris Wheel has officially been moved from Golden Gate Park to Fisherman’s Wharf. General admission is $18. VIP “gondolas” which seat up to five people and feature leather seats and hardwood floors can be rented for $50/person. 

• Authorities say a body was found in the East Beach parking lot at Crissy Field.

• The Alaska Airlines pilot facing 83 counts of attempted murder for attempting to shut down a San Francisco-bound plane’s engines while riding off-duty in the cockpit gave a jailhouse interview in which he explained that he attempted to stop the engines of the plane because he was “desperate to awaken” from a hallucinogenic state induced by taking shrooms two days before.

• A crew of Czech TV journalists were reportedly robbed at gunpoint on Monday outside the City Lights bookstore.

• Is this the safe and clean APEC San Francisco we were all promised?

• Members of Bandaloop, a vertical dance troupe “specializing in aerial performances on the sides of buildings,” rappelled down the 853-foot tall Transamerica Pyramid on Monday to kick off the APEC summit.

FYI — we want to add some more fun stuff to this section and hear about places (restaurants, cafés, bookstores, parks, etc) you love around town. This week, we’re focusing on new restaurants in the city. Let us know if you have checked any of these out, and consider leaving a comment or sending an email with any spots you’d like us to preview for future editions of Dolores Park.

Without further ado, here’s where you should head for your next:

• Date night: JooDang, a “soju-soaked” Korean restaurant and bar that opened this week in the Tenderloin. Standout dishes include a truffle bulgogi with soy-marinated ribeye, and pan-seared scallops with kabocha miso puree.

• Bakery run: Butter & Crumble, a new North Beach bakery specializing in sweet and savory danishes and croissants.

• Quick lunch: Daily Driver, the Dogpatch-based bagel shop that just opened up a new location in Cow Hollow. A revamped menu features a new egg, cheese, and kimchi bagel sandwich, and in-house made yogurt.

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Hope you enjoyed this issue of Dolores Park. Share it, tell us what you’d like to see more of below, send tips and stories to sanjana@piratewires.com, and check us back here next week.