The Weekly Digest (June 18, 2023)

Written By Bill Jackson

Happy Father’s Day, Brionies!  And happy Juneteenth! Hopefully, you were able to make it out to the Fillmore to celebrate. Here’s what you need to know about San Francisco politics this week and beyond:

City Hall

  • In observance of the Juneteenth holiday, there is no meeting of the Board of Supervisors this week. Since there isn’t a meeting to preview, let’s take a quick look at how the Board items we featured in last week’s Digest played out:

    • Xavier Pittman, who was accidentally shot by an SFPD officer while he (Pittman) was committing auto burglaries, was given a settlement of $195 thousand for his troubles. Good work if you can get it!

    • In a burst of competence and common sense, the Board approved the details of the Castro Theatre’s historic landmark designation without including the venue’s recently installed seats. This means the new owners can rip those seats out and install fancy new movable platforms in an effort to, y’know, make a profit. Of course, much teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing ensued. 

    • The wild parrot is the official animal of the City and County of San Francisco, per the unanimous vote of the Board (none dared stand up to Big Parrot). Stock up on crackers.

Happenings around town

What we’re listening to

  • Ourselves! The latest episode of The Briones Society Podcast features Nathan Hochman, former federal prosecutor and head of the USDOJ’s Tax Division under President George W Bush. Hochman is currently running to unseat far-left District Attorney George Gascon in Los Angeles.

  • The Heritage Foundation is running a series of podcasts on immigration issues, and we found this episode particularly fascinating.

What we’re reading

  • The descent of downtown San Francisco continues unabated. The latest bad news is probably not much of a surprise: Westfield is turning its Market Street mall over to its lender in the wake of anchor tenant Nordstrom closing. Almost immediately following the news from Westfield, Cinemark announced the closing of its cineplex in the mall effective June 15th. And AT&T announced the shuttering of its flagship store downtown, joining fellow telecom giant T-Mobile, which closed its own flagship outlet in May. 

  • Grab a cup of coffee for this long read that suggests the best outcome for San Francisco’s homelessness crisis might be for City Attorney David Chiu to lose his appeal of Judge Ryu’s injunction against encampment clearings. The idea sounds a little too much like an episode of The West Wing: Chiu could use the ruling as a way to marshal all of the disparate City agencies and, gosh darn it, finally get them to add the four thousand shelter beds that would bring San Francisco into compliance with Ryu’s bizarre and unprecedented interpretation of Martin v Boise.

  • Relatedly, the Chronicle’s editorial board published this hard look at just how dire the interlocking crises of homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness in California have become. Maybe grab a bourbon instead of coffee for this one.

  • More bad news this week for San Francisco Unified School District: A civil grand jury found that a quarter of SFUSD’s teachers were not fully credentialed. The grand jury named a few well-known factors in why we can’t recruit good candidates: low starting salaries, a failure to publicize competitive benefits, and a protracted payroll snafu that left paychecks riddled with errors still requiring costly outside help to resolve. And even when the district does succeed in hiring an eager new teacher, it somehow still manages to screw things up.

Quick hits

Palate Cleanser

Bill Jackson
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