Mission Local, 2489 Mission Street #22, San Francisco, CA (2025)

08/08/2025

As dusk fell on the Tenderloin Thursday night, crowds of thirtysomethings in flat-billed caps and flannel shirts strolled the streets between galleries, popping into modest storefronts converted into art spaces.

Before First Thursdays in San Francisco became synonymous with parties and downtown hoedowns, a city project that encourages San Franciscans to hang out for concerts and street fairs downtown after the workday, a different First Thursday claimed the name: the First Thursdays Tenderloin Art Walk.

27 galleries and venues opened their doors across the Tenderloin to welcome visitors into a night celebrating local artists.

The Art Walk is a tradition handed from venue to venue through the past 12-plus years, said John Vochatzer, its current docent, who owns Moth Belly Gallery on Larkin Street at Geary, which he opened in 2021.

“It’s a small community, but it just seems to be so large and has connections to other bigger galleries,” said Justin Marks, owner of Low Key Skate Shop.

Read more from Jessica Blough at the link below:

Art galleries are proliferating all over the Tenderloin. On the First Thursday of each month, they get together to support local artists.

08/08/2025

In an attention economy driven by algorithms, there exists a bimonthly escape in the Richmond. Every other Wednesday, San Francisco Public Library’s Richmond branch hosts a Silent Book Club chapter in a small, unassuming room set up with a circle of chairs. ⁠
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From 3 to 5 p.m. the space turns into an ecosystem of ideas, jokes and stories that can include riffs from literature as diverse as the memoir of a playwright to a novel of exile set in the Malaysian islands.⁠
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The premise is simple: A group gathers in the Richmond branch and reads silently for one hour. At the end, the participants — nine on the day I joined the group — select blindly from a bowl of bottle caps labeled with numbers from one to nine. Then, in bottlecap-determined order, each reader has around seven minutes to talk with the group about what they’ve been reading. ⁠
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The group has also been a starting point for friendship. This was the case for Berry, a participant at the Richmond branch for years and a library user for the 50 years she’s lived in San Francisco. ⁠
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Read more from Madera Longstreet-Lipson at the link below:

Every other Wednesday, San Francisco Public Library’s Richmond branch hosts a Silent Book Club, offering an escape from the digital world.

08/08/2025

At approximately 7:50 a.m. Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested a 41-year-old Salvadoran father in the parking lot of his Napa apartment building.⁠
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Later, the woman’s husband called her from the ICE San Francisco field office at 630 Sansome St. Quickly, she gathered her daughter and since she doesn’t own a car, she took a cab from Napa to see him there. Her husband left El Salvador 11 years ago, the woman said, fleeing gang violence. He worked two jobs in Sonoma to support her and her daughter. ⁠
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Another person detained at 630 Sansome St. was a 25-year-old Colombian woman, who ICE arrested as she left immigration court around 9:30 am on Thursday morning.⁠
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As she left the courtroom with a friend accompanying her, she was surprised to see three uniformed Department of Homeland Security officers standing by the elevator. Two agents quickly handcuffed her, then placed her in the elevator, to be taken to detention on the 6th floor. ⁠
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Read more from Frankie Solinsky Duryea at the link below:

A 25-year-old Colombian woman and a 41-year-old Salvadoran father among those detained, held in San Francisco's ICE office

08/07/2025

Four employees at the San Francisco Department of Police Accountability have sent letters to the Police Commission, police chief, and the city’s
assistant chief of public safety to declare a lack of confidence in director Paul Henderson’s leadership.

In the four letters, former policy director Janelle Caywood — the author of one of them — and her colleagues say that Henderson mishandled citywide budget cuts by targeting an experienced investigator and attorney for layoffs, while keeping staffers in better-paid, less critical managerial roles.

C. Don Clay, president of the Police Commission, to whom some of the letters were addressed, said he had concerns about the growing number of employees coming forward, and planned to investigate. He was very surprised by Caywood’s dismissal, he added.

Inside the department, three of the employees Mission Local spoke with said that Henderson has failed to remedy what they see as a toxic work environment and has favored the hiring and promotion of managers over investigators.

Read more from Eleni Balakrishnan at the link below:

Employees at San Francisco's police oversight agency sent letters to the Police Commission and other city leaders about brewing discontent.

08/07/2025

Since June, the team of researchers aboard the Reigle have been studying how interactions with boats affect the behavior of whales off the San Francisco coast. This early into the project, data collection is the researchers’ primary goal. ⁠
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On each expedition, they stop at one of five sites in the bay to record a 30 minute underwater acoustic sample while observing passing boats and wildlife. Analyzing these samples over time will help them identify any differences in the behavior of whales migrating through the heavily-trafficked area. ⁠
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What happened to the last Bay Area whale who was intentionally killed by humans? “Dogfood,” he said. That, however, was decades ago. Now, Jason Blair, a National Geographic naturalist, said, getting struck by a large cargo or fishing vessel is the greatest threat to whales passing through one the West Coast’s busiest ports. ⁠
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More whales have been observed around the bay in recent years, and scientists are still trying to figure out if it’s the sign of a healthy ecosystem or the result of whales being pushed out. ⁠
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Read more from Abigail Van Neely at the link below:

Researchers have been studying how interactions with boats affect the behavior of whales off the San Francisco coast with acoustic monitoring.

08/07/2025

Angela learned of her husband’s arrest through a video on NextDoor. It showed Reyes standing in the parking lot, surrounded by ICE agents.

See the path from arrest to detention to deportation for immigrants arrested by ICE in the "San Francisco Area of Responsibility."

08/07/2025

Philz Coffee has sold to private equity company Freeman Spogli & Co. in a $145 million deal that cancels its common stock and stock options, according to a press release from the company. ⁠
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No employees will be laid off and no stores will close as part of the deal, according to a Philz Coffee FAQ for stakeholders. Each current Philz Coffee employee — from baristas to C-suite — will receive a “thank you bonus” as part of the deal, which will range in amount. ⁠
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“Philz Coffee has been owned in part by private equity firms for the past 13 years, so this is not a change for the company,” reads the FAQ. The company previously received millions of dollars in investments from Summit Partners and TPG Growth; these firms will receive proceeds from the sale. ⁠
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Chris Watts, a former manager of the chain’s Mission and Castro locations, said the company is withholding a bonus that he earned before he left, citing his departure on bad terms. “It’s sad to see a culture collapse.” ⁠
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Read more from Jessica Blough at the link below:

Employees will get ‘thank you’ bonuses as part of the deal; common stockholders will lose their investments.

08/07/2025

On Friday, a 20-year-old asylum seeker from Colombia walked into immigration court at 630 Sansome St. for an administrative hearing related to his case. ⁠
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As has become routine in San Francisco’s immigration court, he did not make it out of the building that day. ICE officers swarmed him—and three other asylum-seekers—outside of the door of the courtroom. ⁠
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On Monday, the 20-year-old man walked out of 630 Sansome St., his belongings in a brown paper bag, a relieved smile on his face. ⁠
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Read more from Margaret Kadifa at the link below:

On Friday, a 20-year-old asylum seeker walked into immigration court at 630 Sansome St. As has become routine, he was arrested and detained.

08/06/2025

Tucked into the southern slope of Bernal Hill and shadowed by the traffic of I-280, Alemany Farm is home to the largest urban agricultural site in San Francisco — and medicinal herb garden. ⁠
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Like the rest of the farm, the Medicine Garden relies entirely on volunteer labor. Community support continues to show up—in hours worked, seeds donated, and other partnerships.⁠
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The Medicine Garden now hosts occasional public workshops, including two upcoming sessions on harvesting and preparing medicinal herbs. For Weaver, this educational focus is part of the larger purpose.⁠
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“All of our ancestors practiced herbal medicine,” she said. “This is a chance to remember that — to return to it. That’s what the Medicine Garden is here for,” said Tessa Kappe, who joined the team this spring to help lead an internship in community herbalism. ⁠
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Read more by Daniela X. Sandoval in the link below:

“It’s a public medicine chest,” said herbalist Bonnie Rose Weaver of the Medicine Garden at Alemany Farm, where herbs, food, and community care grow side by side. “This is a chance to remember — to return to it.”

08/06/2025

Longtime political consultant Jim Ross called Prop K, supported by Engardio and successful in transforming the Great Highway into a park, one of “those weird issues.” ⁠
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Engardio’s championing of Proposition K led outraged voters to circulate recall petitions. On May 21, they turned in nearly 11,000 signatures and now ballots to recall Engardio will be mailed to his constituents’ homes later this month for the Sept. 16 election.⁠
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The trio — Ross, John Crabtreeon, and Mission Local Managing Editor Joe Eskenazi — spoke for an hour at a panel about recalls, especially Engardio’s, their repercussions across the city’s political landscape and the reasons why San Franciscans are now seeing them more and more. ⁠
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“There’s never been more money concentrated in one city at any point. And a lot of people are willing to use that money for politics,” said Ross, reflecting on the preferences of the city’s tech millionaires, many of whom, he said, prefer to give⁠ money to advance their political beliefs. “Really, what’s changed comes down to money.”

Read more from Oscar Palma at the link below:

The insiders said Engardio is in big trouble. They added that new money, especially from tech, fueling city politics is behind recent recalls.

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