Hyperlocal News + Stories Archives

What if San Francisco’s Crooked Lombard Street Was Car-Free?

7Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories, Nature + Climate Crisis

What if San Francisco’s Crooked Lombard Street Was Car-Free?

Reinvisiton arguably the most crook street in the world as a playground for pedestrian activities is a lofty longing, for sure. But it opens the door to understanding how giving back roadways to people can liven up asphalt that otherwise only sees car tires go over it. Silver linings are odious cliches that usually coincide with blind optimism and denials around cherry-picked realities. The pandemic was rife with these metallic undertones — for better and worse. Among those upsides, all of which were shadowed by a global health crisis, San Franciscans explored the city on foot. And bikes. Scooter, too. Both of which were likely electrified. Car-free street corridors sprouted up across the city; they grew in popularity; they became subjects of controversy and morphed into political to...

The Long Weekend Catch-Up: San Francisco’s Iconic Queer Stud Nightclub to Be Rebirthed in 2024

6Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Hyperlocal News + Stories, Queerness

The Long Weekend Catch-Up: San Francisco’s Iconic Queer Stud Nightclub to Be Rebirthed in 2024

Plus: Dozens of sea lion deaths around the Bay Area are linked to a certain disease — that can be spread to dogs, FYI. San Francisco exists as a nexus for a litany of matters — one intersection being queerness and entertainment. (SF is still widely considered the queer mecca of the world.) But alas, the pandemic reminded us all of the semi-permanence of things and that our lives can painfully change in the blink of an eye… or the howl of a cough… or fit of a sneeze. The shuttering of the Stud, a touchstone of LGBTQIA+ nightlife in San Francisco, was such a nudge. However, as SF continues disproving its ill-ascribed doom loop narrative, growing pockets of vitality around the seven-by-seven are glowing by the day. The grand opening of downtown’s IKEA location saw thousands shop a...

The Burning Man Flood Brought to Life These Prehistoric Creatures

5Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Editors' Picks, Hyperlocal News + Stories, Nature + Climate Crisis

The Burning Man Flood Brought to Life These Prehistoric Creatures

With nearly an inch of rain flooding the Nevada desert in less than a week, three-eyed "dinosaurs" and shrimp as long as a human hand began popping up in temporary pools during this year's Burning Man festival. The scene that unfolded at this year’s Burning Man was apocalyptic; it also doubled as a sliding glass window into our future defined by the climate crisis. The unusual late-summer storm brought nearly an inch of rain — at least 0.8 inches, to be exact — from Friday to early Saturday morning. This rainfall amount is what the arid area normally receives over the course of two to three months. It’s little wonder then why this past weekend’s deluge left the temporarily erected Burning Man city inside the Black Rock Desert slick with mud, trapping its estimated 80,000 festival a...

In the SF Bay Area, Beyoncé Brings Out Blue Ivy Carter — Under a Blue Moon

2Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Editors' Picks, Essays, Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories

In the SF Bay Area, Beyoncé Brings Out Blue Ivy Carter — Under a Blue Moon

Days removed from attending Beyoncé's SF Bay Area stop on her Renaissance World Tour, the profoundness, pyrotechnics, and sheer talent displayed remains in our mind — "deadass." Beyoncé, as a concept, is hard to wrap one’s brain around... let alone Beyoncé as a human being. (The mere fact that the 29-time Grammy-winner belongs to the same species as the world’s other 7.9 billion bipedal apes is an enigma enveloped within a riddle.) But Mrs. Carter — or “Mayor Carter,” as she would later say in the first act of her nearly three-hour spectacle at Santa Clara's Levi's Stadium on August 30th, nodding to her honorary mayor distinction of the SF Bay Area county that was bestowed upon her that same day — walks and breathes among us. Nevertheless, sharing the same space as her, no matter h...

Look at This Baby Picture of SF’s Transamerica Pyramid Building

31Aug

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Hyperlocal News + Stories

Look at This Baby Picture of SF’s Transamerica Pyramid Building

With construction starting in 1969 and ending in just three short years, the 48-story building was San Francisco’s tallest structure for decades. The San Francisco Transamerica Pyramid building is an icon of local architecture — on par with the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, and (*clutches pearls*) now Salesforce Tower. For 46 years, the 850-foot-tall traffic cone positioned in the Financial District existed as the tallest structure in the city, surpassed only by Salesforce Tower once it was completed in 2018. (Though, unlike the latter skyscraper, the former is one of nearly 40 San Francisco high-rises vulnerable to sizable earthquakes, due to a weak, faulted welding technique used throughout the Transamerica Pyramid’s skeleton.) Like many things with San Francisco roots, the she...

It’s the Season of Bougainvillea in San Francisco

30Aug

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Hyperlocal News + Stories, Nature + Climate Crisis

It’s the Season of Bougainvillea in San Francisco

Because of San Francisco's unique microclimates, flora of all types thrive in the seven-by-seven. Bougainvillea is one of those effortlessly growing plants. San Francisco is a city where small pockets of beauty exist around every corner. I’ve lived here now for nearly a decade — having previously made the move from Austin, Texas’s scenic hill country — and continue to be gobsmacked by this city’s grand appeal. (This, however, isn’t to say there aren’t more issues here to shake a six-foot stick at; misplaced trash is still everywhere.) Being a born-and-bred Texan, I’m accustomed to the year oscillating between two seasons: Half the year when things are green and alive, and the other of the year when things are brown and dead. Bluebonnets and other wildflowers blossom in the state...

The Weekend Catch-Up: Long Live This Cornerstone of San Francisco Matcha

30Aug

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories

The Weekend Catch-Up: Long Live This Cornerstone of San Francisco Matcha

Plus: San Francisco's "doom loop" tour was an epic failure — and exposed a City committee member as the organizer behind it. In just five short years — two of those years marked by a carousel of pandemic-born closures, reopenings, and stay-at-home orders — Stonemill Matcha helped San Franciscans acquaint themselves with authentic matcha. The sprawling Mission District cafe was heralded as a touchstone for SF matcha heads; it, too, played a key role in the city’s reputation as a mecca for matcha along the West Coast. Stonemill Matcha wasn’t only just an Instagram darling, it was an IRL source for ceremonial-grade matcha, matcha-inspired sweets (think matcha mochis and mooncakes), and a place to experience time collapse while holding handmade ceramic tea cups. But one of San Franc...

‘Did You Know That [There Was a Pedestrian Bridge at SF’s Ferry Building]?’

25Aug

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks, Hyperlocal News + Stories

‘Did You Know That [There Was a Pedestrian Bridge at SF’s Ferry Building]?’

Constructed sometime in the late 1920s, San Francisco had a large pedestrian bridge on the Embarcadero that saw thousands walk across it daily. Opened in 1898, San Francisco’s Ferry Building began primarily as a welcome portal for people arriving by train. As the Gold Rush continued until the 1930s, thousands of people a day passed through the iconoclastic structures by way of shipping and fishing boats and, of course, ferries. At its peak during this era, SF’s Ferry Building saw as many as 50,000 people walk through the two-story public structure on a daily basis to commute by ferry. Lana Del Rey reminded us earlier this year that there is, indeed, “a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard'' in Long Beach, California — an underground passage opened in 1927 to provide a safe passage to the b...

The Co-Founder of an SF PAC Says ‘Covid Is Over.’ It’s Not.

24Aug

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Feature Pieces, Hyperlocal News + Stories

The Co-Founder of an SF PAC Says ‘Covid Is Over.’ It’s Not.

Sachin Agarwal, who co-founded GrowSF in 2020 with Steven Buss — both of whom now co-own The Bold Italic — wrote in a now-deleted post on X early Thursday that “Covid is over,” never mind that COVID-19 cases have spiked across the country, including right here in San Francisco. Endemecy is an ongoing conversation, becoming standard discourse since the first COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose MRNA inoculation, was made publicly available in December 2020. The ensuing months (which later turned into years) would see supplemental dose recommendations, strain-specific booster shots, and antiviral drugs like Paxlovid and Lagevrio enter our collective health consciousness. “Long COVID” is real — debilitating, frightening, and all-consuming for between 6% and 8% of all American ...

I Got *V* Stoned at SF’s First-Ever Pizza, Bagel, and Beer Festival

23Aug

By Matt Charnock2 Comments

Editors' Picks, Essays, Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories

I Got V Stoned at SF’s First-Ever Pizza, Bagel, and Beer Festival

‘At one point, I earnestly believed I saw Julianne Moore and Laura Dern cackling over two cold hard ciders.’ As my ostensible youth flickers into irrelevance, few activities coax me out of my innate introversion and into the greater, unknown collective. But the promise of complimentary meals and attractive novelties exist as evergreen proddings. (I could also argue that the opportunity to engage in fulfilling sex lives in that same canon, though time dedicated to after-work napping now usually takes prominence over any fleeting horniness.) This past weekend on Saturday, August 19th, the intersectionality of those two nouns met in San Francisco’s first-ever food festival dedicated to all things carbohydrates, specifically pizza, bagels, and beer. Making things neurochemically more...