Feature Pieces Archives

BART Debuts Its Domestic Violence Awareness Campaign. Then One of Its Board Members Was Racially Harassed on Public Transit.

18Feb

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know

BART Debuts Its Domestic Violence Awareness Campaign. Then One of Its Board Members Was Racially Harassed on Public Transit.

Leaving the launch of BART's "Let's Talk About Us" campaign at Powell Station, its board president had both racial names and gummy candies thrown at her taking an SFMTA line home. BART passengers — myself included — have become all too acclimated to problematic behaviors conducted while riding the Bay Area’s rapid transit trains. Yelling matches are common. Open-air drug use is not rare. Violent crimes and property theft continue to be central problems to rider safety. (However, it’s important to note that these issues aren’t unique to BART. Many public transit services in large urban areas face nearly identical problems, all of which have been exacerbated by rising rates of homelessness, the ongoing fentanyl epidemic, and upticks in certain types of violent crime.) Yes, there’s th...

We Asked ChatGPT ‘What Is San Francisco?’

17Feb

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories

We Asked ChatGPT ‘What Is San Francisco?’

The results? 451 words of quite accurate content — with an uplifting end — about the city hundreds of thousands of us call home. 'ChatGPT Takes on SF' is the series that sees us interact with the controversial chatbot about all things San Francisco, shedding a light on how (hopefully) human-produced hyperlocal journalism can't be replaced by a machine-learning algorithm. ChatGPT has had the world in a chokehold since it publicly debuted on November 30th, 2022. The open-source AI has all the makings of dystopian tech; it gives major Skynet energies. OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT that was co-founded by (of course) Elon Musk, promises the technology will bolster humanity’s future, opening up everything from economic opportunities to catalyzing medical advancements. Niceties...

This Hike Is a Heartfelt Love Letter to San Francisco Scenery

6Feb

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Feature Pieces, Nature + Climate Crisis

This Hike Is a Heartfelt Love Letter to San Francisco Scenery

The Upper Market Stairway Walks in San Francisco is a digestible walk around some of SF's most gorgeous vistas — ones that are especially pretty to sponge up on a sunny day. One of the joys of hiking the San Francisco Crosstown Trail — an almost 17-mile passageway that weaves through the city, beginning at Candlestick Point and ending at Lands End — is being able to sponge up SF’s numerous superb viewsheds. But again: that path is more than twice as long as the Bay to Breakers race course. From past experience, it takes close to seven hours to complete the trail at a brisk walking pace… sans any water breaks or scenic pauses. Alas, tackling the SF Crosstown Trail is a commitment I’d wager not too many of us are eager to adopt on a consistent basis. I know I’m not. But the thought of in...

What Lies Beneath: The Ships Buried Under San Francisco

1Feb

By Azucena RasillaNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks, Feature Pieces

What Lies Beneath: The Ships Buried Under San Francisco

Every day in San Francisco, people walk the city’s streets unaware of the history that our concrete jungle holds in its depths. Little do most people know that roughly 40 ships are buried underneath the Embarcadero and the Financial District, which used to be the city’s original shoreline. Most vessels are remnants of the Gold Rush, left behind by men who arrived in the San Francisco Bay from near and far in search of fortune. Today, the abandoned ships are all around us—a hidden reminder of the city’s history. So much of San Francisco is its relationship to the water. “Other cities have their claims to fame,” said archaeologist James Delgado, who has been studying SF’s ships for decades. “But beneath our streets and sidewalks lie the bones of the Gold Rush city and the decks of sh...

Yes… Everyone’s Utility Bills in San Francisco Have Been Bonkers

31Jan

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know

Yes… Everyone’s Utility Bills in San Francisco Have Been Bonkers

'The price increase of my PG&E bill was so shocking that I had to pull from my savings to cover it.' When I opened an email including my recent PG&E bill estimate, I was genuinely shocked. I refreshed the web page — three times. I was convinced something was wrong. (Maybe the utility meter in my building was malfunctioning? Perhaps my bill was accidentally combined with someone else's? My dyslexia could be playing on an inescapable loop.) Alas, I wasn’t. After navigating through a relentless onslaught of automated phone prompts — “just give me a fucking person” — I managed to speak with a living, breathing, presumably endothermic human being. I shared my concerns, primarily about how proportionally larger this bill was than my prior ones. Even this time last ye...

San Francisco’s New Spaceship Toilet: Dark Mode Edition

29Nov

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories

San Francisco’s New Spaceship Toilet: Dark Mode Edition

After just three days of operating, SF's "futuristic" toilet broke down — but it still looked gorgeous underneath street lights. By now, you’ve likely heard of the hoopla around the “futuristic” toilet that opened in SF’s Embarcadero last week. A favorable review in the San Francisco Chronicle highlighted the Spaceship-like restroom's new-age amenities and feel. The commode, which offers eight minutes to get in and get out to take care of business, is now open right in front of the Embarcadero Plaza between Market Street and the Ferry Building. Juxtaposed with the old-age, decades-old structures around it, the lavish loo draws immediate attention for its harsh contrast to the building around it. Per the newspaper, the plan from the City is to now install twenty-four identic...

You Need a Receipt and QR Code to Use the Restrooms at This SF Whole Foods. I Peed There.

22Nov

By Matt Charnock3 Comments

Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know

You Need a Receipt and QR Code to Use the Restrooms at This SF Whole Foods. I Peed There.

The downtown San Francisco Whole Foods has been embroiled in controversy ever since it slashed store hours and debuted a long list of new bathroom protocols. Releasing one’s bladder or bowels can prove to be a perilous, frustrating, eye-opening experience in San Francisco. For a city of over 880,000 full-time residents, SF operates just 136 staffed public toilets at 62 locations across the city — 25 of these are self-cleaning stations, cocooned in a deep-army green metal exterior with signage that reminds you to not leave anything in them after you've exited. Doing some simple number crunching, this means there’s one publicly accessible restroom for every 6,500 San Franciscans, housed or otherwise. It doesn’t take an astute mathematician to see the problem here: There’s a massive ...

This San Francisco Newspaper’s Front Page Is a Dangerous Blunder

17Nov

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Editors' Picks, Feature Pieces, News to Know

This San Francisco Newspaper’s Front Page Is a Dangerous Blunder

To put a literal bullseye on an openly Jewish elected official in San Francisco is not only an insensitive decision — but an outright dangerous one, too. Kanye West is no longer a billionaire. The rapper-turned-fashion-mogul lost his partnerships with both Gap and Adidas for his clothing and footwear line Yeezy after making an uncountable amount of anti-Semitic comments. West’s anti-Semitic remarks delegitimized the millions of European Jews killed by Nazi Germany during The Holocaust, made a mockery of Hanukkah, and were organized around language that aimed to dehumanize Jewish people as sentient beings — a key factor to any genocide in human history. Instagram temporarily banned him. Twitter permanently removed him from its platform. Over a dozen brands have formerly severed ties wit...

27Oct

By Matt Charnock2 Comments

Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know

Remember… There’s a San Francisco Target Built on a Cemetery

Target is, presumably, only second to Walmart in large retail corporations detested by the City of San Francisco. SF's first Target store opened a decade ago in 2012, also called a “CityTarget” back then, at the Metreon. Ten years later, this location has become the butt of shoplifting jokes and a source for conservative media outlets to wax dystopian on all things San Francisco. This location, which denounced rumors it was shuttering in 2021, now closes at 8 p.m., instead of 10 p.m.; it once closed as early as 6 p.m. due to shoplifting concerns earlier this year. San Francisco’s second Target — the store at the southwest corner of Geary and Masonic streets — opened in October of 2013, a year after the Metreon location began welcoming customers. But many Target runners still remain...

Working for Boba Guys Comes With a Dollop of Toxic Workplace Culture

21Oct

By Matt Charnock4 Comments

Feature Pieces, Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know

Working for Boba Guys Comes With a Dollop of Toxic Workplace Culture

Workplace allegations against arguably the most notable Bay Area boba chain keep piling up — and make it clear working for the company comes with its own set of demoralizations. What began as a self-described pipe dream in 2011, Boba Guys — the nationwide boba tea chain founded by Andrew Chau and Bin Chen (who met while working at Timbuk2) — has matured into fruition over the past eleven years. Their first store, the company’s Mission District storefront at 3491 19th Street, began like many successful restaurants in the 2010s: a popular pop-up that was snaked with long queues and became a darling among Instagram influencers. That very same location unexpectedly shuttered Wednesday amid a company-wide backlash; this store’s closing also comes in tandem with accusations that Boba Guys ha...