If someone told former San Francisco Giants outfielder Hunter Pence when he retired from a 14-season baseball career in 2020 that he’d be moderating a panel in San Francisco on climate sustainability fewer than four years later, would he believe them? “No, I would not,” he definitively told The Examiner. “This is a shock.” The two-time World Series champion led a discussion among The City’s top environmental advocates Wednesday, part...

San Francisco’s 911 dispatch center just got a $9 million facelift. City officials and first responders gathered Wednesday in the Western Addition to unveil the renovations to the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management’s center at 1011 Turk St., which include a new dispatcher training room, an updated break room and an elevated supervisor bridge that provides better visual oversight of each dispatcher. There are now 55 workstations at the...

A San Franciscan’s weekend stroll through the Clement Street farmers market could score them fresh fruits and vegetables, homemade baked goods — and, these days, face-to-face conversations with some of The City’s political candidates. With San Francisco’s sights set on the upcoming November elections, contenders in this year’s races have taken to the Richmond district — and to other farmers markets across The City — to greet prospective voters and share their messages. ...

The easiest part of San Francisco’s fight against climate change is largely out of the way. “We’ve taken care of a lot of the low-hanging fruit,” San Francisco Environment Department Director Tyrone Jue told The Examiner during Earth Month and ahead of The City’s own Climate Week, which concludes Saturday. “Now we’re getting into this next phase, the more challenging part.” In order to ensure The City is not emitting...

Thousands of low-income San Franciscans are poised to lose a critical food benefit if Gov. Gavin Newsom’s currently proposed budget cuts pass through the California State Assembly, and local farmers market operators say they’re fearful of the impact in The City. The Market Match program, started 15 years ago and funded through the California Nutrition Incentive Program, allows recipients of CalFresh and federal food benefits to match daily purchases at farmers markets up to $15 with vouchers. ...

When the Board of Supervisors voted last month to override a mayoral veto and scale back the recent upzoning of San Francisco’s North Waterfront, Mayor London Breed was apoplectic. The mayor, whose difficult path to reelection has the strong support of pro-housing groups, decried the legislation as “anti-housing,” making good on her promise to stand against any bill that worsens The City’s housing crisis. But to those outside the mayor’s...

The death of Rev. Cecil Williams, a longtime San Francisco civil-rights leader and co-founder of Glide Memorial Church, continues to resonate with the people who knew him best. Colleagues told The Examiner that Williams, who died Monday at 94, set an example of acceptance and kindness well before those values became commonly associated with The City. “Cecil exhibited such bravery,” Karl Robillard, the GLIDE Foundation’s chief communications and public affairs...

Tenderloin neighborhood advocates who spoke with The Examiner are split over San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s proposal to close some corner stores in and around the area during the middle of the night. The bill, which Breed introduced Tuesday and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors must pass, would ban stores that sell prepackaged food and tobacco within O’Farrell Street and McAllister Street, and from Polk Street to Jones Street, from operating between 12 a.m. and 5 a.m. ...

Retail vacancies in San Francisco hit a record high of 7.9% in the first quarter, primarily due to worsening conditions downtown in and around Union Square, where retail vacancies hit a new peak of 20.6%, according to the real estate company Cushman & Wakefield. The overall Union Square vacancy rate was only 0.1 percentage points higher than the previous quarter but a whopping 5.1 points above last year’s figure, the company said. ...

Following weeks of speculation and internet sleuthing, Outside Lands organizers have officially dropped this year’s lineup. Another Planet Entertainment, the Berkeley-based promoter of the festival, revealed Tuesday just who'll be performing at the 16th edition of the music and arts festival in Golden Gate Park. Tyler, the Creator; The Killers; Sturgill Simpson; and Grace Jones are among the headlining acts set to take the stage Aug. 9-11, while Post Malone...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Monday expanded the availability of an online tool called HeatRisk, aimed at assisting those most vulnerable to health hazards associated with an increasingly hot climate. The tool comes on the heels of scientists at Berkeley Earth, a science nonprofit, reporting that March 2024 was the warmest on record since 1850, though only slightly. And while San Francisco...

San Francisco’s public parks and plazas will hold a monthslong series of free outdoor concerts beginning in May, culminating a yearslong effort to provide a post-pandemic boost to The City’s entertainment and nightlife industries. City officials and live entertainment promoters announced Monday that SF Live will kick off May 4 with an electronic dance party at the Golden Gate Park Bandshell, nearly two-and-half-years after Mayor London Breed first announced the initiative in November 2021. City Attorney David Chiu, in his prior role as a California...

San Francisco and the city of Grants Pass, Ore., could hardly be more different. But questions about how they enforce laws against people experiencing homelessness are much the same. The U.S. Supreme Court held oral arguments Monday in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, a case that will have major implications for cities around the country struggling to curtail the rising visibility of homelessness on their streets. ...

When 60 long-awaited tiny homes officially opened their doors in the Mission district earlier this month, Ramon Contreras said he was the first occupant to move in. “I’d been homeless for about 10 years,” he told The Examiner on Wednesday — in Spanish, through a translator — two days after the Mission Cabins first opened. Originally from Mexico, Contreras said he lost his home when his wife died 10 years...

San Francisco’s efforts to cut down on food waste just got a multimillion-dollar boost from the state. CalRecycle granted $2.1 million to the San Francisco Department of the Environment, which will use the money to expand its network of workers who recover high-quality food that would otherwise go to waste and distribute it to nonprofits and food pantries. City officials said they recovered 5 million pounds of food last year, averting it from landfills and reducing harmful greenhouse-gas emissions. ...

The recently announced closure of the salmon-fishing season delivered yet another devastating blow to the thousands of families that depend on commercial and recreational fishing for their livelihoods. For the second year in a row, fishing boats at Fisherman’s Wharf will remain mothballed. The recent drought contributed to the salmon decline, but the larger problem is archaic water policies that allow too much water to be diverted from our rivers and the Sacramento River Delta. As a result, salmon experience man-made droughts almost every year,...

As they jockey to respond to voters’ concerns over public safety, distrust in city government, and fears over The City’s economic instability, candidates on the mayoral campaign trail have dedicated little bandwidth to discussing climate policy. But whoever wins this tightly contested race for mayor will be tasked with shepherding The City towards its ambitious — and expensive — climate goals. The City’s 2021 Climate Action Plan calls for billions...

When passed in 2019, Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation ban on natural gas in new buildings was hailed as a major milestone in eliminating carbon emissions from the urban landscape — but it quickly ran into a lawsuit from the California Restaurant Association. Following a nearly five-year court saga, the city agreed to a settlement last month that includes a repeal of the ban. The outcome for Berkeley has called into question similar bans that have since been adopted by dozens of other California cities, including one that...

In a year featuring a contentious presidential re-match, a heated mayoral race, and horrific warfare playing out in Ukraine and the Middle East, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that humanity is up against a critical deadline. 2023 was the hottest on record — and 2024 is predicted to be as hot, or hotter, all while greenhouse gas emissions continue in the wrong direction. It’s easy to forget...