Feature Pieces Archives

Popularly Reported SF Nonprofit Is, in Fact, Not a Nonprofit at All

25Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Editors' Picks, Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know

Popularly Reported SF Nonprofit Is, in Fact, Not a Nonprofit at All

Launched in 2023, Civic Joy Fund has been reported and labeled as a non-profit organization, but has yet to file the necessary tax forms required for its tax-deductible status. San Francisco’s boom loop is strong, [oscillating from] the proverbial chandelier. Downtown First Thursdays (DFT) — an outdoor street festival mixing live music and food trucks into a serotonin-soaked combination — has injected new vitality. Free weekend concerts in front of City Hall featuring big star power (think Shaboozey and the surprise rave spun up by Fred Again and Skrillex) are a refreshing development, albeit bubbled with controversy. More public art is going up. Sidewalks are somewhat cleaner. You can hear birds chirping from the windowsills of recently leased office buildings. One of the organiza...

Manny Yekutiel’s Bid for SF Board of Supervisors Seat Is (Already) Riddled With Red Flags

23Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Editors' Picks, Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know, Queerness

Manny Yekutiel’s Bid for SF Board of Supervisors Seat Is (Already) Riddled With Red Flags

Yekutiel’s newly launched crusade to vie for next year's District 8 Supervisor race in San Francisco presents contentious foreshadowings. The past two weeks have seen a whirlwind blow through San Francisco’s political landscape. The ACLU officially sued ICE in San Francisco in an effort to stop courthouse arrests; Governor Newsom hinted at support of a $750 million budget deal that could lessen Muni’s looming $322 million deficit; Mayor Laurie has been seen seemingly everywhere across the city. The successful recall of District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio — a first-ever of its kind, largely fueled by criticism over the Upper Great Highway closing off to private vehicles — sent the most shock through SF politics. Immediately after Engardio’s concession, whispers, rumors, and longings beg...

Coincidence Will Be Charlie Kirk’s Deplorable Legacy

17Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Editors' Picks, Essays, Feature Pieces

Coincidence Will Be Charlie Kirk’s Deplorable Legacy

And the fortuitous irony that led him to be gunned down on a school campus. 31-year-old Charlie Kirk died on September 10th, 2025. The prominent right-wing influence was at the University of Utah as part of his “The American Comeback Tour”; it was the tour's first stop and was preemptively boycotted by thousands of university students. Underneath a canopy tent with the words “PROVE ME WRONG” banded across, Kirk was shot in the neck by a single bullet fired by somebody atop a roof roughly two football field-lengths away; videos shared on social media captured the exact moment Kirk was assassinated, blood gushing out of his neck as his body limped. Kirk will be remembered by his wife, former Miss Arizona USA Erika Frantzve, their two children, both of whose names remain private, and the...

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Get Engaged … But It’s San Francisco Core

1Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Feature Pieces

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Get Engaged … But It’s San Francisco Core

Swift and Kelce — "your English teacher and your gym teacher" — are engaged to be married after more than two years of dating (and NFL jumbotron pandering). Your favorite climate criminal and blase white boy got engaged this week. In case you threw your iPhone into a large body of water before sailing across the Pacific, vinyl-terrorist Taylor Swift announced her engagement to rumored-to-be-retiring NFT tight end Travis Kelce on Wednesday, August 26th. The five-picture Instagram post shows Kelce and Swift swallowed inside a pastel wonderland of fresh flowers; the ring, a supposed 10-carat cushion-cut diamond valued at north of $550,000, looks uncomfortably (and unsafely) supersized; given what we know about Swift’s ongoing climate crimes, we’d wager it's not lab-grown, but mined … perhaps...

Yes, San Francisco Does Have an E-bike Problem. But It’s Specific to a Type of Bike (and Rider)

8May

By Matt Charnock4 Comments

Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks, Feature Pieces, Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories

Yes, San Francisco Does Have an E-bike Problem. But It’s Specific to a Type of Bike (and Rider)

Food app delivery drivers on their glorified e-mopeds, which are still classified as e-bikes, have brought a certain danger to San Francisco's bike lanes. I’m someone who’s grown accustomed to feeling my back moisten with sweat going to and from destinations in San Francisco. As a distance runner who grew up in the car-centric south, evolving into an urban cyclist over the past few years has nicely filled the liminal space in my day-to-day life that exists between a need for cardiovascular exercise and yearning to travel at highway speeds, nursing a canned Diet Coke that, like my back, wets as time goes on. Life in the bike lane checks off an exercise requirement and the desire to travel faster than one can on foot. Like so many San Franciscans—a city that boasts one of the largest...

Yep, California Was Right in Calling State Emergency for Bird Flu As Virus Continues Mutating

2Jan

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories, Nature + Climate Crisis

Yep, California Was Right in Calling State Emergency for Bird Flu As Virus Continues Mutating

The current strain of H5N1 is a few mutations away from posing concerns about it becoming the next pandemic-causing virus — but California was the first state to highlight that concern. The avian flu has been recorded in at least 108 countries — a number that’s expected to only grow in the coming weeks and months. 70 mammalian species and at least 530 bird species have been infected by H5N1, the most current strain of bird flu circulating the globe. Among those species affected is the endangered California condor, which has prompted zoological intuitions like the Oakland Zoo to start vaccinating their housed condors against the disease. It’s a move that came just a week after California became the first state in the country to enact a state of emergency around the bird flu. The mot...

Reddit Post Shows Magical Independence Self-Driving Cars Afford Blind People

29Nov

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories

Reddit Post Shows Magical Independence Self-Driving Cars Afford Blind People

The ability to get to and from a place without the need for a driver is something most of us take for granted. Robotaxis make that freedom more ubiquitous. Waymo has been on a roll as of late (but not entirely skirting past our criticism of self-driving companies and their motives). The Alphabet-owned company has offered discounted rides to local transit centers, reduced rider fares, and expanded its service network — all of which have helped the company see a three-fold increase in monthly ridership since the beginning of this year. Waymo as a blind person finally gave me that feeling most people get at 16, driving independently for the first time. MAGIC!!!! byu/Dowhile93 inwaymo For able-bodied people, robotaxis remains more of a novelty than an earth-shattering shift in daily norms...

Deadliest Tesla Cybertuck Crash Yet Highlights Car’s ‘Horrifying’ Safety Concerns

27Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Editors' Picks, Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories

Deadliest Tesla Cybertuck Crash Yet Highlights Car’s ‘Horrifying’ Safety Concerns

A fatal Tesla Cybertruck crash in the San Francisco Bay Area early Wednesday morning killed three people and left another injured. Tesla’s giant “refrigerator on wheels” car model quickly became the butt of jokes after the company finally began delivering the futuristic trucks in November of 2023. The polarizing design made the trucks become darlings of social media and online video engagement overnight. But the truck’s ascent into the cultural zeitgeist helped reveal an almost immeasurable amount of flaws in the final product that shipped out. The cool-looking aerodynamic wheel covers caused damage to the tires; the stainless-steel body panels became pitted and rusted in the rain; the massive lightbar had alignment issues; the body panels were not rounded out — and their edges wer...

San Francisco’s 2024 General Election Autopsy Shows the Rise of Moderatism

26Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Editors' Picks, Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know

San Francisco’s 2024 General Election Autopsy Shows the Rise of Moderatism

Millions of dollars flooded San Francisco's November election — with most of that money aimed at pushing deceitful narratives pedestaled by moderates. San Francisco’s 2024 local election is (mostly) over. All of the City’s 514 precincts have reported their in-person ballots. Additional mail-in ballots might be included in the San Francisco Department of Election’s December 3rd report — likely the final results report from the department for the 2024 general election cycle, due to deadlines established by California law — but 78.9% of San Francisco’s registered voting population have had their voices counted, tallied, and ranked. San Francisco's total registered voter count for the 2024 general election is 522,265 individuals, and the City’s elections department has counted 412,090...

On OnlyFans, Porn Remains Personal in a Post-Pandemic World

22Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Feature Pieces, Queerness

On OnlyFans, Porn Remains Personal in a Post-Pandemic World

The adult content-forward website OnlyFans enjoyed explosive growth shortly after the COVID-19 health crisis struck; years later, that blossoming has only gotten bigger and brighter. When the porn industry essentially shut down overnight in March of 2020, queer adult film star Michael Boston did what many in the business did: He joined OnlyFans. The then-26-year-old went from professional studio lighting to creating, directing, and marketing his own content. The move turned out to be quite lucrative. “I’ve been able to buy more shoes and live comfortably in this new house I just moved into in L.A. because of my OnlyFans revenue,” Boston told me in 2020. He estimated he’s made tens of thousands of dollars from the site — his large fan base gained from an illus...