Flour + Water sister restaurant Central Kitchen reopens for outdoor dining Friday, October 9 as Central Kitchen Wine Bar, with a pared-down menu meant for enjoying with a glass or bottle of vino.

A Pacifica yoga studio owner is now advertising mask-free indoor yoga classes on social media with hashtags like "#fearfree", "#cowardfree," and "#Trump2020."

Maki, a 21-year-old ring-tailed lemur, was apparently abducted from the San Francisco Zoo earlier this week, and the zoo is offering a reward for his safe return.

Starting on Halloween, October 31, voters in Alameda County will be able to drop off ballots or vote in person at the Oakland Coliseum, up until Election Day on November 3.

A four-alarm vegetation fire broke out Friday just after noon on Sign Hill/San Bruno Mountain in South San Francisco, immediately threatening homes and a densely populated area.

The drama about the redevelopment of the wholesale San Francisco Flower Mart in SoMa goes back many years. But now a new Flower Mart in a different part of town is one step closer to being a reality.

After a very long wait, San Francisco restaurants will be allowed to reopen for indoor seating at limited capacity starting Wednesday, September 30 — just in time for fall.

Citing the city's climate-change goals, some Twin Peaks area residents are objecting loudly to extending the life of a gas station on Portola Drive that's been there for almost 50 years.

The landmark illuminated Ghirardelli sign went back up Thursday morning, after a dark and dismal couple of months in which it was missing.

You can go enjoy the Michelin-starred AL's Place experience once again, in person, at socially distanced, plexiglass-separated tables.

The House of Prime Rib is waking from its pandemic slumber, and surely a large segment of San Francisco meat-lovers is excited to have a martini and a hunk of hand-carved prime rib once more.

A classic Irish bar that has served up pints of Guinness to the downtown set in SF for much of the last century has decided to close, seven months into the pandemic that shut down its business.

This week, as some restaurants are beginning to bring diners indoors, House of Nanking is just now reopening for takeout and delivery — for the first time in its history.

After the second change of ownership in five years and a full renovation, the former Loews Regency (nee Mandarin Oriental Hotel) has reopened as the Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco at Embarcadero.

The SFMTA is installing temporary "emergency" transit lanes on Seventh and Eighth Streets in SoMa this week and next, in an effort to speed up service on the popular 19-Polk bus line.

A new seafood spot offering Maine lobster, Dungeness crab, crawfish, and raw oysters on the half-shell has just opened in Oakland's Jack London Square with a limited menu.

The many ardent fans of a San Francisco cheap-eats institution will need to stay calm and hope for the best as news arrives that Roxie Food Center has been sold.

A rally featuring Proud Boys adherents and QAnon conspiracy folk for which there is an online flyer and website is purported to be happening in Dolores Park on October 17.

The Rotunda at Neiman Marcus is closing indefinitely, and beloved neighborhood wine bar and cafe Orson's Belly is calling it quits.

San Francisco entered the state's "yellow" tier as of Tuesday, becoming the first Bay Area county to be in the lowest-level category for COVID. The positive move, as Mayor London Breed and Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax announced, isn't going to immediately impact many businesses.

A new Spanish tapas and aperitivo bar is preparing to open next month at the prominent North Beach intersection of Stockton, Green and Columbus.

With Lowell High School and its noted prestige among San Francisco residents making headlines this week, we thought some of you might need a lay of the educational land.

Respected local pitmaster Matthew Horn is finally opening the doors of Horn Barbecue (2534 Mandela Parkway) this weekend in the former Brown Sugar Kitchen space near the West Oakland/Emeryville border.

A giant papier-mache head of Donald Trump landed on the shore of Lake Merritt on Saturday. The interactive art piece, titled "Let’s Roll Trump Out of Office," is the work of Oakland artist Larry McSpadden who says it has been three years in the making.

Things turned from tense to creepy and frightening in the ongoing argument between the SF Board of Education and prospective parents, students, and others who are upset that Lowell High School is set to switch to lottery admissions in the 2021-2022 academic year. Late last week, two female board members, both women of color, were targeted by a threatening video featuring a hand in a bloody glove burning a piece of paper with their photos on it, both with Nazi symbols on their heads.

San Francisco food icon Cecilia Chiang, proprietor of the legendary Mandarin restaurant, died Wednesday at the age of 100, and with her goes a century of taste memories and a long lifetime of stories spanning two continents and multiple wars.

Freedom West Homes, the 47-year-old, 382-unit affordable development on four blocks bounded by Fulton, Gough, Golden Gate, and Laguna in the Fillmore District, may be replaced by a massive new development that will both re-house the existing co-op owners there, and create 100 more affordable units alongside 2,000 market-rate units.

With daily COVID case numbers and the number of hospitalized patients ticking up slightly in the last two weeks, SF city officials are not moving forward with a pledged date of November 3 for further reopening of businesses.

The Tenderloin's infamous O'Farrell Theatre closed last month without fanfare, and whether you believe in the freedom of speech when it comes to pornography and adult performers or not, you should know that this place was one of a few in San Francisco that started it all.

Over the next week or two, we'll be rolling out some exciting changes. Here's what we're doing, and why we're doing it.

The store, a 10-year fixture in the Haight, will likely close in September or October.

The former Barcino space at the corner of Gough and Grove (also formerly Boxing Room) has reemerged this week as Akna, a new Mayan-Yucatecan pop-up backed by the Absinthe Group.

Following a two-year legal fight that began with the Methodist Church suing the Glide Foundation for control of its considerable assets, Glide Memorial Church announced Wednesday that it is cutting ties with the larger church under which it was founded, in order to proceed independently into the future with its charitable and spiritual work.

Iconic San Francisco hofbrau/sports bar Tommy's Joynt (1101 Geary) has reopened for the first time in eight months, and the corned beef dinners have already begun flying out the door. 

On Tuesday, Mayor London Breed announced that the city of San Francisco would be halting all indoor dining, just six weeks after allowing it at 25% capacity, due to rising COVID cases.

Marina residents who live near the Buena Vista Motor Inn (1599 Lombard St.) say that break-ins, attempted break-ins, and two reports of gunshots in recent months have them on edge — and they connect this apparent uptick in crime to the motel being used to shelter homeless individuals during the pandemic.

Former food truck Torraku Ramen, which opened its first brick-and-mortar spot in the Design District three years ago, is expanding with a new location in SoMa, just south of Yerba Buena at 921 Folsom Street.

Rainbow Grocery is offering extra-socially-distanced shopping hours by reservation only, for everyone who's nervous about trying to do Thanksgiving grocery shopping amid the usual crush of humanity.

Amid a fair amount of turnover at San Francisco's Ferry Building this year, we have the good news that local high-end grocer The Epicurean Trader is still on track to open in the former Farm Fresh to You stall by early in the new year.

If you're saying to yourself, "Hey self, does Haighteration looks a little different today?", you would be correct. Here's what we did, and why.

The Bay Area has lost its only Deaf-owned and operated restaurant, Mozzeria (3228 16th St.), due to the ongoing pandemic downturn. Deaf owners Melody and Russ Stein say they will continue operating their food truck, but the time has come to give up the brick-and-mortar restaurant in the Mission.

Popular New York-based burger chain Shake Shack, which just opened its first San Francisco location earlier this year, is readying its Uptown Oakland outpost for a mid-December opening.

A man who made international headlines after allegedly attempting to board a Delta flight out of Salt Lake City while refusing to put on a face mask turns out to be the owner of Upper Haight smoke shop Pipe Dreams (1376 Haight St.), which advertises itself as the oldest smoke shop in San Francisco.

The landmark Hallidie Building (130 Sutter St.) is getting a new ground-floor tenant next year, and it's the professional organization for architects that has long occupied some offices on an upper floor of the building.

Just ten days after announcing a 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew for all "Purple" tier counties in California, Governor Gavin Newsom today gave a stark warning that stricter orders akin to what we saw in March may be coming within days amid quickly escalating coronavirus case counts and hospitalizations.

It was a dismal spring for San Francisco's bars and restaurants, and it looks to be an even more dismal and disastrous winter as more potential COVID restrictions loom and as a second round of federal stimulus relief continues not to arrive.

It's a sad day for fans of Castro/Duboce Triangle dive Lucky 13 (2140 Market St.), which is giving up the ghost after five years of limbo with the property slated for development. 

The Old Oakland sister restaurant to San Francisco's Tropisueno, El Gusano (1015 Clay Street), has closed for good after seven years in business.

Reem's (2901 Mission Street), the Arab bakery-restaurant that opened earlier this year in the former Mission Pie space at 25th and Mission, just suffered another setback in a year of setbacks for the restaurant industry when its primary deck oven apparently exploded.

San Francisco's iconic cliffside restaurant overlooking Ocean Beach and the Pacific, The Cliff House, is closing "permanently" according to longtime operators Dan and Mary Hountalas, after they failed to reach a new contract agreement with the National Park Service

The long-awaited West Portal spinoff of Original Joe's, dubbed Little Original Joe's, opened Monday in the space formerly occupied by Paradise Pizza at 393 West Portal Avenue. And unlike the classic, Italian American temples of red sauce that the Duggan family operates in North Beach and Daly City, Little Original Joe's actually serves pizza, as well as pastas and parmigianas.

A beloved institution on Grand Avenue in Oakland, The Alley, a divey piano bar/restaurant which has been in operation some 90 years, is one of many bars and music venues around the Bay that have suffered with little or no revenue the past nine months. But now, things are coming to a head because the longtime owner of the bar also has upstairs tenants who are having trouble paying rent.

Before you think about cooking your thousandth meal of the year for the last night of 2020, check out some suggestions for how to treat yourself while also supporting a local business.

San Jose Vietnamese restaurant Café Paradise (2400 Monterey Hwy) was the location that sold a winning SuperLotto Plus ticket on Saturday — and the unidentified winner is taking home $18 million.

A program to test wastewater at sewage treatment plants in order to better assess the presence of the coronavirus in a community is set to begin via a partnership between Stanford University, Santa Clara County, and San Jose’s Environmental Services Department.

Tenderloin bar/club/restaurant 620 Jones, a.k.a. Jones, got dinged by the SF Department of Public Health this week after it appeared to be promoting a New Year's Eve bash in violation of state and city health orders. Following some confusion about whether the event was still happening, it has been "postponed."

UCSF and the City of San Francisco announced a community benefits package that will go along with an agreement for the university to rebuild and expand its Parnassus Heights hospital over the next decade — and it includes 1,263 new units of housing, 40 percent of which will be designated as affordable.

Though the situation in hospitals remains worse in Southern California, Santa Clara County has become the first county in the Bay Area to experience serious delays as ambulances arrive at emergency rooms — due to the ERs and the hospitals already being overwhelmed with patients. As cases and hospitalizations potentially surge again following the holidays, other counties are on alert that this emergency-response failure may spread.

A pair of cherry blossom trees outside the Japanese Cultural and Community Center in San Francisco's Japantown won't be blooming this year after a vandal or vandals went to great efforts to rip all the branches off of them.

A new LGBTQ bar appears to be headed for downtown Oakland — technically in the Uptown vicinity — in a ground-floor space of the iconic I. Magnin Building at 2001 Broadway.

Los Angeles-based sandwich outfit Heroic Italian recently got its feet wet in the Bay Area, launching a pop-up in mid-December inside wine and spirits shop Swirl on Castro (572 Castro Street). With online ordering available, it's a quick and delicious lunch or dinner option — and if you pick it up yourself rather than opting for DoorDash delivery, you can snag a bottle of wine too.

As she promised to last year, Ayesha Curry has just opened her first retail store in Oakland, in conjunction with her lifestyle magazine called Sweet July. The Sweet July store and cafe debuted Tuesday at 455 23rd Street in the Uptown neighborhood. 

An autobiographical essay titled "The Hard Crowd" by novelist Rachel Kushner, published in last week's New Yorker, offers some vivid snapshots of several long-gone Tenderloin bars, including one with a convalescing person in a bed in back.

While San Francisco and other cities around the country are facing shortages of vaccine supply compared with demand, the process of getting vaccines into arms quickly and efficiently continues to be honed in the city with the opening of the first of three mass-vaccination sites, at the main campus of City College.

The new hybrid digital/pipe organ that has been in the works for the grand Castro Theatre for about six years is finally about to become a reality, and depending on how long it takes to ship from Pennsylvania and how long it takes for movie theaters to safely reopen in San Francisco, it may arrive just time for the Castro's next public screenings.

Low Bar (2300 Webster Street, Oakland), a new bar and restaurant from a pair of industry vets that was announced early last year and subsequently delayed by the pandemic, is getting ready for an imminent grand opening.

Sadly, Arguello and The Commissary are no more at the Presidio, and we learn this nine months after the restaurants laid off their staffs to prepare for months of pandemic closure. And despite the greater-than-average amount of outdoor space around these restaurants that would make outdoor dining more than feasible, something in the six-year-old business arrangement that opened the restaurants appears to have collapsed.

Like all neighborhood restaurants and bars around the city, the businesses of Bernal Heights/La Lengua need your support — and there's no better time to go check out the scene again than this sunny weekend in SF.

Two kids were found safe in the Bayview after a carjacking/kidnapping in Pacific Heights on Saturday, Oakland swears in a new police chief, and San Jose police de-escalate two standoffs in one morning.

Sand Bar, a new Caribbean-themed "beach club" and cocktail lounge, is readying for an opening on Oakland's Auto Row, in a former auto dealership space at 2418 Broadway. Hoodline has the exclusive news of this new project from the team behind Uptown cocktail spots Drexl and The Miranda, and the sports bar Fort Green in Old Oakland.

West Portal's beloved arthouse cinema, CineArts at Empire (85 West Portal Ave.), is closing for good due to the pandemic, though the city says it is working to find a new operator for the theater.

Japanese fast-fashion retailer Uniqlo announced Friday — via a filing with the state employment department — that it is closing its nine-year-old Union Square location at 111 Powell Street for good and laying off all 69 employees.

There's been a massive jump in burglaries in the Richmond District, year over year, according to new data from the SFPD's Richmond Station. And while burglaries are reportedly up in multiple neighborhoods, we're only hearing a definitive report on the first five weeks of 2021 from the Richmond.

A priest has died of COVID-19 at Saints Peter and Paul Church in North Beach, 27-year-old Muddy's Coffee House has closed at 24th and Valencia, and an East San Jose gym that had remained open in defiance of health orders has temporarily closed.

Thanks to a streamlined approval process from the city and a proposed law making its way through the state legislature, San Francisco could be looking at an outdoor dining explosion in the coming years — going from a town with very few al fresco dining options to one with several thousand relatively new ones.

Two bars, two different fates. Over in Bernal Heights/La Lengua, next-door bars El Rio and Virgil's Sea Room, which almost share a backyard were it not for a fence, have arrived at diverging moments in this COVID year.

A local group of history buffs and conservators is hoping that the collection — at least some of it — can remain together and available for public view, even after the Cliff House potentially becomes a different restaurant.

One of the last vestiges of a long-gone era in San Francisco's Chinatown, the worn-in Far East Cafe (631 Grant Ave.), is remaining open after all, following an announcement in December that it might have to close.

Mr. Digby's, a casual restaurant and cocktail spot from a couple with established SF restaurant cred in the former Noe's Cantina space (1199 Church St.), is now aiming for an April opening after being delayed nearly a year by the pandemic.

102-year-old Tosca Cafe (242 Columbus Ave.) is coming alive yet again in North Beach, after a too-brief rebirth last year, and following its much bemoaned 2019 closure.

Nine-year-old cocktail-focused spot Maven is closing its doors later this month in the Lower Haight, one of the swans at the Palace of Fine Arts has died, and Old Oakland has a new pizza spot and a salad spot on the way.

The iconic, nearly 40-year-old SoMa Mexican restaurant Don Ramon's (225 11th Street) has skirted a permanent closure for now as it attempts to escape its current financial woes via Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring. 

Sad closure news came this week out of Noe Valley, where local chef and food entrepreneur Azalina Eusope's first brick-and-mortar Malaysian restaurant, Mahila (1320 Castro Street), has permanently closed after just 21 months.

Sad news arrived late last week that Cowgirl Creamery is closing its Ferry Building store after 18 years of cheesemongering in the beloved food hall. Both the store and its next-door Sidekick Cafe will close on April 10, ending an era for cheese lovers across the region.

Boasting 100 seats outside on two sidewalks, a much anticipated new tapas bar is finally debuting in North Beach following several months of introducing itself to the 'hood via a takeout window.

As more businesses get to reopen around the Bay, we have news of some new ones opening for the first time, as well as a vaccination promotion from Krispy Kreme, and a Cal/OSHA fine for Alta Bates Summit Medical Center.

The storefront at 575 Castro Street, which for over a decade has been home to a Human Rights Campaign (HRC) merchandise store but which was once the home of the camera store out of which Harvey Milk did much of his early political work, may be destined to become a national historic site. HRC announced that they are vacating the space in April, and the landlord has hinted at something "much larger" on the way.

Beloved Mission District bar El Rio is finally reopening its patio, 12 and a half months after it was forced to close along with the rest of the bars across the city in March 2020. Thursday, April 1 is the big day — and the patio will reopen for table service at 4 p.m.

They've been called "Oakland's cutest couple" and "Ebony and Ivory" and various other things, but a pair of domesticated ducks that were evidently dropped off at Lake Merritt last year to fend for themselves have officially settled into new digs at a rescue sanctuary for injured or neglected farm animals in Marin County.

A majority of respondents to a recent survey by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority say they think the Upper Great Highway along Ocean Beach ought to remain closed to vehicle traffic post-pandemic. 53 percent of residents, many of them living in the Sunset District, said the four-lane stretch between Sloat Boulevard and Lincoln Way should remain the pedestrian and bicycle promenade that it has been for the past year.

Liholiho is temporarily moving the Dear Inga space on 18th Street, a new Japanese fine dining spot from a former Californios chef is taking the La Folie space in Russian Hill, and Oakland is getting a new ghost kitchen food hall.

A new neighborhood vaccination clinic at 20 Norton Street in the Excelsior District, similar to those that have opened in the Bayview and Mission in the last two months, just opened on Wednesday morning.

At long last, after about an 18-month delay, popular Korean American grocer H Mart is opening its first San Francisco location in OceanView Village at a near-term date still to be announced.

A new nightclub catering to the LGBTQ+ Latinx community of the East Bay is debuting on Tuesday, April 13 — but for obvious reasons it's going to start out sort of low-key serving drinks and quesabirria tacos.

The one-story, flatiron-shaped building that once lived at 2100 Market was home to multiple businesses over several decades. One of its brief incarnations in the 1970s, a 24-hour diner called The Truck Stop, figures into the unsolved case of "The Doodler," a serial killer who preyed on gay men in San Francisco, and about whom Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan has just done a new podcast.

SF Mayor London Breed on Tuesday announced a proposal to lease an empty office building at 1076 Howard Street for use as a 30-bed drug sobering center, making good on a promise first made before the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The facility will focus on those living on the streets who are experiencing methamphetamine-induced psychosis.

After months of operating a wildly popular bagel pop-up, Schlok's is getting set to open a brick-and-mortar shop at 1263 Fell Street, in a former laundromat off Divisadero in NoPa (in the same complex as RT Rotisserie and Nopalito).

A spate of high-profile closures at San Francisco's once-thriving Ferry Building is being followed by some more positive news, as four new businesses announce openings at the iconic shopping and dining complex.

Historic, beloved North Beach dive bar Specs turns 53 years old this week, and after nearly 14 months of being dark, the bar and museum of curios is planning to light up again next month and start slinging its cheap drinks outdoors.

Get your ten-layer Russian honey cake while you can. After eight years on Gough Street, pastry chef Michelle Polzine's ode to the cafe culture of Vienna and Prague, 20th Century Cafe, is calling it quits.

It's been a long 14 months of total closure for a pair of acclaimed neighborhood restaurants, Octavia and Frances, both of which were opened by chef Melissa Perello in the last decade. And she says that the team is taking the task of reopening them one step at a time, with Octavia happening first.

While many bars across the city have spent money on heat lamps and outdoor patio platforms, and partnered with nearby food businesses in order to abide by public health orders that drinking can only be done with a "bona fide meal" in front of you, the last of those rules for bars goes away starting on Thursday, May 6.

Bistro Central Parc, the popular French bistro at 560 Central Avenue in the NoPa neighborhood that closed in December 2019, will be reopening under new ownership but under the same name in June.

After nearly two years of being totally dark, the 102-year-old Tosca Cafe (242 Columbus Ave.) is opening its doors again this week, having undergone its second light remodel and refurbishing in the last decade.

At long last, the Mission District's beloved indie movie house, The Roxie Theater (3117 16th St.), has a reopening date and a reopening movie: 'Cinema Paradiso' (1988).

Another mountain lion has made it into the urban wilds of San Francisco, and it was spotted in Bernal Heights on Tuesday morning.

The Hayes Valley/Mid-Market environs are about to get a new and unique sounding restaurant/wine bar called Le Fantastique, from the team behind Bird Dog in downtown Palo Alto.

A mass shooting on Wednesday morning at the Valley Transit Authority (VTA) light rail yard (101 W. Younger Ave.) in downtown San Jose has claimed the lives of at least eight people, likely all VTA workers, and the shooter also reportedly took his own life at the scene.

The 92-year-old private social club on Lake Merritt, the Bellevue Club (525 Bellevue Ave.), is being sold to San Francisco-based club The Battery, for an East Bay expansion. 

We all knew that the Stacks space (501 Hayes St.) at the corner of Octavia and Hayes likely wouldn't stay empty for long, and as the pandemic wanes we learn that the owners of Cow Hollow's The Brixton (2140 Union St.) are set to open a new location — their third — there in the coming months.

Osito, a much-delayed restaurant with a celebratory, communal tasting-menu concept centered around live-fire cooking of meat and fish, is finally taking shape and aiming for a fall opening at 2875 18th Street (at Florida).

Namu Stonepot (553 Divisadero) is no longer serving its loco moco bowls and stonepot rice from the Divisadero space where it's lived since 2017, but the menu is still being served at Dolores and 18th, and will be appearing at a new food-hall concept the team is opening soon on 9th Street.

The Stinking Rose (325 Columbus Ave.), which opened in 1991 in North Beach and maintains a loyal clientele of tourists and garlic-loving locals, has been closed throughout the pandemic. And now we learn that it won't reopen unless a new owner steps in and wants to keep the concept going, with the original owners deciding to retire.

As (some of) the masks come off, here's some news this week about more things reopening in SF and elsewhere around the Bay.

SF's kitschiest Tiki bar experience, The Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel (950 Mason Street), will be welcoming guests and people who just want to Instagram the rainstorms starting July 9.

Starting next week, San Franciscans don't have to go to Cow Hollow to get your Shake Shack fix. The chain is opening its second San Francisco location in the heart of downtown, at the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall (845 Market St.), just a hop and a skip from the Powell Street BART station.

As businesses in Mid-Market and SoMa slowly come back to life, the Namu Gaji/Namu Stonepot/Sunset Squares team of Dennis Lee, David Lee, and Daniel Lee are opening up SSP Beer Hall (59 9th Street). Also, there's a Sunset Squares Slice Shop opening on Divisadero, in the former Namu Stonepot space.

SF's music venues are finally popping back alive, and the beloved Divisadero spot The Independent makes its resurrection official on Friday, July 9 with a show by Bay Area soul, psych-rock, and R&B band Con Brio. 

A new wine bar with dance bar aspirations is coming to the former Thieves Tavern space at 496 14th Street (at Guerrero), and it's called Bar Part Time.

We have news of a taker for the prominent corner space that was briefly home to AL's Deli (598 Guerrero St.), and beloved doughnut spot The Jelly Donut at 24th and South Van Ness is finally back alive.

Most of the Bay Area is masking back up, at least in some situations, and tensions are high as COVID cases and hospitalizations tick up. But things continue to reopen, and events are still happening.

With anxieties rising about the Delta variant and the current surge of COVID cases, more SF bars and restaurants are going to start carding — looking for your vaccine card along with your ID.

The Mission District space formerly home to Namu Gaji and more recently Namu Stonepot (499 Dolores St.), across the 18th & Dolores intersection from Dolores Park, has gone dark, marking the second closure for Namu Stonepot this summer.

The 2021 Michelin Guide for California, the company's first guide for the state in two years, is set to be released in late September. And ahead of the release, Michelin inspectors on Wednesday revealed 10 Bay Area honorees in the new category of "New Discoveries."

Frjtz, the go-to place for Belgian-style frites and waffles that first opened in the year 2000 on Hayes Street and later had locations in the Mission and Ghirardelli Square, has now ceased to even be a delivery option, which it had been for the past two years. 

Another company has run afoul of San Francisco ordinances and spray-stenciled ads on sidewalks in the Mission District.

Well-loved, 11-year-old Dogpatch ice cream shop Mr. & Mrs. Miscellaneous (699 22nd St.) is remaining open as an ice cream shop, however its co-founder and owner, Annabelle Topacio, has sold it to a new owner, and its name will be changing to Sunday Social come October.

The eight-story, 21-unit residential building being planned on the site of the historic Grubstake Diner (1525 Pine Street) has hit another hurdle this week, as we learn that an appeal has been filed opposing the project.

One of only two hotels in Japantown, the Kimpton Buchanan Hotel, has been identified as one of four properties around SF that the city hopes to purchase by the end of the year to turn into permanent homeless housing, but neighbors are pushing back.

San Francisco artist Optimist Williams says he grew up decorating his Trapper Keepers with paper Muni transfers, and using the now defunct tickets to record little memories, like scraps in a diary.

There's now a petition and multiple news stories about the fight to allow local burrito favorite El Farolito to open a new location in North Beach, which would be the brand's 12th in the Bay Area.

The Eagle Tavern, or as it's most recently been known the SF Eagle (398 12th St.), was given landmark status by the SF Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, becoming the third LGBTQ bar site in San Francisco to get the historic landmark distinction.

This is going to make some Zeitgeist regulars and people who live near Safeway Heights and the edge of the Mission very sad, but Hoodline regrets to inform you that the KFC/Taco Bell at 200 Duboce Avenue (at Guerrero) has transitioned to being just a KFC, so no more tacos.

The Duggan family, who own two Original Joe's locations in San Francisco and Daly City and Little Original Joe's, which opened late last year in West Portal, are preparing to open another restaurant in their home neighborhood — but this time it will be Mexican-American food, instead of Italian-American.

'Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story,' opened Tuesday night at Club Fugazi (678 Green Street), marking a new life for the venue that for 45 years was home to 'Beach Blanket Babylon.' 

Rare Device, the housewares and gift store and art gallery at 600 Divisadero, is opening up a spinoff plant shop across the street later this week called Plant House by Rare Device (505 Divisadero). 

A new retro-diner-inspired brunch spot, Hilda & Jesse (701 Union St. at Powell) has just opened in North Beach, in the space formerly occupied by North Beach Gyros.

A new banh mi shop, Banh Mi Viet, has quietly opened at 518 Divisadero, in a former beauty salon, offering both banh mi sandwiches and a couple of Vietnamese entrees as well.

The latest retail casualty in the ongoing shutter parade around Union Square — and in the ongoing retail decline nationwide — is the Market Street/Westfield Mall location of Abercrombie & Fitch.

Another local restaurant that had a mid-pandemic opening is calling quits already, and that is Daughter's Diner in Oakland.

Cafe du Soleil, the well-loved and worn-in Lower Haight Cafe at the corner of Fillmore and Waller streets, is making a surprise comeback, a little less than two years after it closed permanently at 200 Fillmore Street.

Apparently not all of restaurateur Charles Phan's landlords have worked out deals with him for pandemic-closed properties. Nine-year-old New Orleans-themed whiskey bar and restaurant Hard Water has now been hit with a lawsuit from its landlord at Pier 3.

There's a taker for the large bar-restaurant space at 1875 Union Street that was formerly known as Hollow Cow and Lightning Tavern, and it's called Sacred Taco

Mirame, the acclaimed two-year-old Mexican restaurant in Beverly Hills from chef Joshua Gil, is readying a second, NorCal location — and it's going to be in the new Springline development in Menlo Park.

Bernal Heights dumpling and Chinese food restaurant United Dumplings is readying to open a second location in the Marina, at 2015 Chestnut Street.

Tom Silargorn, the acclaimed chef and founder of the Lers Ros chain of local Thai restaurants, appears to be on the move with another restaurant concept, just a few doors down from the 16th Street location of Lers Ros.

Former Tartine head baker Nick Beitcher finally realized his goal of opening a brick-and-mortar bagel shop last week with the debut of Midnite Bagel (646 Irving Street).

The Slanted Door pop-up, featuring new dishes in testing, will be happening in UC Berkeley Wurster Hall on nine nights, Wed-Fri, in the second half of June, and reservations are now available.

By the end of summer, Johnny Doughnuts plans to be open in the former Smitten Ice Cream space at California and Fillmore, next to Pizzeria Delfina.

After five years in Hayes Valley, Johnny Doughnuts has closed at 392 Fulton Street, but a new SF location appears in the works and they're making Off the Grid appearances.

A new Indian restaurant has just debuted on the Divisadero corridor, Curry and Kabab, in the former Wine Kitchen space at 507 Divisadero.

A nonprofit has formed specifically to thwart plans by Another Planet Entertainment to remake the interior of the historic Castro Theatre to be more conducive to live music events — and specifically the group wants to stop a plan to remove all the seats from the theater's main level.

Two people were shot and one was killed Wednesday morning onboard a Muni train traveling between Forest Hill and Castro stations.

A new location of Scott's Chowder House has made its debut at 1325 Fillmore Street, in the space formerly occupied by Afro-Caribbean restaurant Isla Vida, which closed in 2019, and before that Black Bark BBQ.

The Castro's fine-dining gem Frances (3870 17th St.) reopens Thursday night (June 23), after a months-long remodel, and after remaining mostly dark since March 2020.

César, the 24-year-old tapas bar next door to Chez Panisse, is closing in two weeks, on July 23. But this likely isn't the end of the North Berkeley neighborhood favorite — which had its own crew of regulars who only sometimes might patronize the more lauded restaurant next door.

"Ultimately this was a decision rooted in wanting to offer the best possible dining experience with the resources at our fingertips while maintaining as much of the original Frances character as possible," Perello says.

Plants by Rare Device (505 Divisadero), the plant store that opened in November 2021 as Plant House by Rare Device, is closing on Monday, July 18, after just eight months in business.

A three-alarm fire on Tuesday afternoon did significant damage to a three-story apartment building at 901 Divisadero/1640 McAllister. 

An annual barbecue competition and food festival that started in 2016 is coming back for its fifth year this weekend, after taking two years off during the pandemic.

Le Marais Bakery & Cafe in the Castro is becoming Bistro Le Marais, and they're opening a Grande Creperie window on the 18th Street side in back of the existing restaurant.

Mission mainstay Delfina (3621 18th St.), which has been one of the neighborhood's great success stories and go-to restaurants for all of its 24 years, is finally reopening this month after a planned four-month renovation has turned into a nearly year-long wait.

After 10 years of serving tacos and Mexican-inspired cocktails in Cole Valley, Padrecito (901 Cole St.) has called it quits.

A San Francisco sandwich institution is closing and changing hands after today — Monday, October 24 — and fans of the place were clamoring to get one last sub before the lights go out.

San Jose City Hall, the 2005-completed complex with its 18-story tower designed by architect Richard Meier (of Getty Center fame) was built to withstand earthquakes, but boy does it sway, say city employees.

Once upon a time, there was a cabaret-style nightclub in San Francisco's North Beach that featured a cast of female impersonators. The place gained nationwide notoriety, and became a go-to destination for tourists, sailors, and celebrities alike.

Johnny Doughnuts is coming back to life again in SF about a mile away from their shuttered Gough Street shop at California and Fillmore streets. The doughnuts will start coming out of the fryer on Saturday, October 29, with the public grand opening starting at 7 a.m.

Coming soon to the space that was formerly home to Mission Cheese and then Korner Store at 736 Valencia Street is BoBop, a new Korean snack bar from the family team behind downtown businesses BibimBar and Matko.

Sheriff Laurie Smith has left the building at the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, having suddenly submitted her resignation Monday effective immediately. Smith remains on trial over corruption charges relating to concealed-carry gun permits that she reportedly issued in exchange for campaign donations, as well as other charges.

San Jose is one of several big cities in California — including Oakland and Los Angeles — voting for brand new mayors on Tuesday, with their incumbents termed out. And spending in the San Jose mayor's race is reaching record levels for the two top candidates seeking to replace Mayor Sam Liccardo.

One of the early craft distilleries to gain traction in the Bay Area, Hangar 1, whose tasting room on the old Naval Air Station on Alameda Island has been a popular tourist destination for the last decade, is closing up shop and taking its production to an undisclosed location elsewhere in the region. 

A closure could be coming soon as the property is on the market for $6.5 million as a potential development site.

Divisadero Mediterranean restaurant Zaytoon (607 Divisadero) has closed up shop after five years on the corridor — and three years after the closure of Zaytoon's original Mission District location.

The days of bars reopening and then closing again appear not to be over, as once-bustling Tenderloin/Civic Center cocktail spot Whitechapel (600 Polk Street) has decided to close temporarily once more due to flagging business, and it will operate temporarily as a private event space.

Longtime SPQR executive chef Matt Accarrino appears to have a new venture in the works, and it is set to open around the corner from SPQR in Pacific Heights.

Popular Vietnamese supermarket Dai Thanh, which sold off a downtown San Jose property in 2021 for a pretty penny, has now opened the second of two new locations, this one on North Capitol Avenue in the Berryessa district. 

Bad news for SF fans of the midcentury knockoff sofas and other modern accouterments sold by CB2 — the brand's 15-year-old store on Ellis Street, next to the newly open Central Subway entrance, is giving up the ghost.

Uber-popular chicken tenders specialists Dave's Hot Chicken keep multiplying, and as of this week there will be a Dave's Hot Chicken in Oakland just a hop and a few skips from a BART stop.

At long last, one of the Castro's staple dance bars, Q Bar (456 Castro Street), is readying to reopen after a lengthy closure. After completing some renovations, owner Cip Cipriano says that the bar will be back open sometime this spring, at a date to be determined.

Dumpling Union (1809 Union Street) is joining the brigade of dumpling shops expanding in SF, and opening a second location in the Lower Haight, at the corner of Haight and Steiner.

It may be hard to look ahead to outdoor movies right now, but SF remains a town that loves an outdoor film screening, and the season for those is around the corner.

Another of the towering, glowing neon signs leftover from the heyday of Mission Street's days as a hub of cinema has come back to life. It's the sign above the Grand Theater, which is now home to arts org Gray Area, at 2665 Mission Street (between 22nd and 23rd). 

As construction is ongoing inside the former Rose Pistola restaurant space at 532 Columbus Avenue, Flour + Water's Mission District restaurant (2401 Harrison Street) has the tell-tale signs of a union protest, including a big grim reaper outside its front door.

It hasn't even been a year since Maybeck's (3213 Scott Street at Lombard) reopened under the joint management of chef-owner Aaron Toensing and husband-and-wife restaurateurs Lori Baker and Jeffrey Banker, and it's already gone dark.

Following a successful pop-up near Union Square, the popular candy megastore It'Sugar (pronounced It's Sugar, FYI) is opening a big new location next to Fisherman's Wharf on Friday.

The Wooden Nickel, the women-owned bar that moved into the former Truck space at 15th and Folsom streets seven years ago, has permanently closed.

A little over 18 months after its 2021 debut, Castro restaurant Copas (2223 Market Street) has decided to make a pivot.