San Francisco - Community & Society

These lovely sidewalk benches are now being declared "unpermitted encroachments" on Mirabel Avenue in Bernal Heights, with the Public Works department now demanding $1,400 permits for benches that have been there as long as 20 years.

After over five years in the Castro, LGBTQ+ social club The Academy (2166 Market St.) has announced a significant expansion of the club's footprint.

The SFMTA will decide the fate of nearly two dozen Slow Streets on Tuesday, and it’s pretty clear how they’re going to vote on all of them — except for one, the highly contentious Lake Street, and it’s anybody’s guess what will happen with that one.

A Sunday afternoon one-alarm fire spread to both the first and second floors of the Buchanan YMCA in Japantown, and the facility that serves mostly seniors will remain closed until further notice.

The SF Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to make the entire corner of Turk and Taylor Streets a historic landmark, as the site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot that helped spark the LGBTQ rights movement.

The Bayview just got lucky, as a 10,000 square-foot Lucky supermarket has opened in the long-vacant former Walgreens location in the Bayview Plaza Shopping Center.

Plans for a six-story apartment building at Divisadero and Oak Street are now a wash, as the developer has surrendered the property back to the previous owners of Touchless Car Wash.

For the second time this year, Sunday Streets SF — an initiative of the non-profit Livable City that’s goal is to host programs that show the benefits of car-free spaces — will host another Phoenix Day event this Sunday, featuring eleven “Family Fun Hub Destinations.”

The pastor who transformed Glide Memorial Church into a feed-the-needy powerhouse, and an early activist for LGBTQ rights since 1964, the Reverend Cecil Williams turns 93 years old today.

The corner of 24th and Mission Streets is less chaotic, cleaner, and free of stolen goods for the first time in about nine months, as a new vendor permitting system is off to a promising start.

The San Francisco SPCA currently has a good amount of adult dogs and cats up for adoption. In order to help them find their forever homes, the animal rescue is participating in the Clear the Shelters nationwide campaign, which aims to help older pets get adopted.

The battle between a big private school and a little farmers market could end, as Supervisor Eric Mar has brokered a compromise deal, and the Outer Sunset Farmers Market has just won a ten-month extension either way.

St. Kevin’s parish on Cortland Avenue turns 100 years old Saturday, and their Centennial Celebration will serve up the dishes of the Latin American, Filipino, and Pakistani heritages that make up the congregation.

The last Corgi Con held in San Francisco was in 2019, bringing with it hundreds of stubby dogs and thousands of humans eager to see corgis race one another, don cute costumes, and grab a picture with one (or several) of them. After a pandemic-spurred hiatus, Ocean Beach will again have many short tails wagging in the wind this weekend.

Citing a list of financial concerns, the City College of San Francisco's Board of Trustees finalized 38 faculty layoffs during a virtual meeting this past Friday.

SoMa’s Common City Gardens will become 200 units to house families experiencing homelessness, after the SF Board of Supervisors approved its purchase for $145 million late Tuesday night.

No one was injured in the April 8 fire on Noe Street, but it displaced five residents and shut down Sushi Urashima, and crowdfunding campaigns have been launched for both.

The noodle wars are coming back, as the street food festival Noodle Fest will pit 29 North Beach and Chinatown restaurants against one another in a noodle contest with celebrity judges Martin Yan, Soleil Ho, and Broke-Ass Stuart.

The Golden Gate Greenway will be back on Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin this weekend, but just as a pop-up.

A loudmouth rooster named King Henry IV wore out his welcome in the Tenderloin, but his new home 90 miles away is something to crow about.

“King Henry IV” is the rooster whose cock-a-doodle doings have been ruining Tenderloin residents’ early mornings, but he’s now cooped up, and Animal Care and Control did not have to resort to fowl play.

The Tenderloin has the highest concentration of children of any San Francisco neighborhood, and the SF Board of Supervisors just approved a Yellow Brick Road to direct kids away from blight, and toward schools, parks, and community centers.

A fire station, a church with a notable window, and a log cabin with a bawdy past are in the running to be the first Vis Valley building awarded landmark status.

Privacy concerns raised by hotel guests and Castro residents have resulted in policy changes at the newly open 12-room boutique lodge The Hotel Castro (4230 18th St.).

Longtime Castro Merchants administrator Richard Magary died Tuesday, December 20. Magary was 81.