Local resident Christine Blasey Ford has come forward as the woman who narrowly escaped Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh's alleged attempted rape at a party in the early eighties.

Ford, a Palo Alto University professor, chose to come forward after a week of intense speculation into the accusation, first forwarded by Senator Dianne Feinstein to the FBI.

Kavanaugh's terse denial and contemporaneous accounts of drunken partying have led many to question his truthfulness during a heated confirmation hearing process.

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The ingrained resistance of SFPD 'higher ups' to accept policy or technological input from community oversight organizations and subject matter experts is detailed through the fate of a lone tracked-changes document by Mission Local's Joe Ekenazi. more

District 2 Supervisor candidates John Dennis and Schuyler Hudak would back building homeless Navigation Centers for homeless San Francisco residents outside of San Francisco - pointing to the high cost of San Francisco real Eetate and the regional nature of the homelessness problem. There are currently no Navigation Centers in District 2.

Meanwhile, in Oakland, officials are trying to move homeless Lake Merritt residents out of tent encampments and into shared 6' x15' Tuff Sheds, but are facing pushback from those questioning he humanity and efficacy of the program in Monday's Matier & Ross. more

Beginning in February 2019, BART will be initiating a four-year seismic retrofit project- cutting early morning service for the length of the project. Trains will begin running at 5am, one hour later than current service, with some express buses to cover the shortfall- angering some early morning commuters. more

The Small Business Commission has unanimously approved a  plan authored by Supervisor Katy Tang that would allow two different types of business to co-locate in the same storefront space.

If approved by the Planning Commission next week, the "Flexible Retail legislation" would help combat rising rents, empty storefronts, and help smaller business be better able to compete with online retail outlets. more

Friendly neighborhood billionaire Marc Benioff of Saleforce fame and wife Lynne have purchased Time Magazine.

The Benioffs are the latest tech titans to purchase a print media outlet, following Amazon's Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, Laurene Powell Jobs purchasing a majority stake in The Atlantic, and Chris Hughes ill-fated purchase, then sale of, the New Republic. more

Carbon-busting corporate jet traffic to SFO spiked 30% the week of the Climate Change Summit in San Francisco, as tony attendees worldwide flew the corporate skies to attend the climate focused event. 

Meanwhile, the BART Board of Directors unanimously approved transit oriented-development with 44% affordable housing at the Lake Merritt Station, the Twin Peaks Tunnel suffered yet another financial and service setback, and SFPD has moved a mobile-command station semi-permanently into Civic Center to deter open-air drug dealing in Sunday's Matier & Ross. more

Parcels in the Hunter's Point Shipyard are slated to be retested after previous efforts to conceal corner-cutting cleanup came to light.

But the current retesting plan retains some of the cost-cutting recommendations from the 2012 testing plan, reports the Chronicle. more

Senator Dianne Feinstein's decades-long style of bipartisan cooperation was on full display at the Kavanaguh hearings, when she chose to forward an allegation of sexual assault to the FBI, rather than to bring up the incident during Senate Judiciary hearings. Critics allege this style is out of place in the current moment and does not reflect the political reality of the times.

The Chronicle provides a deep dive into the history and context of an old-school politician in a deeply partisan moment. more

Former Republican New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's  support and high-profile role in the Climate Action Summit fuels rumors he may be running a 2020 Presidential run...as a Democrat.

Meanwhile, outgoing Governor Jerry Brown provides a plumb state job to a choir leader, and Prop C backers may lose out on donations should the corporate tax pass, while Senator Feinstein raises campaign cash in Sunday's Willies World. more

Muni drivers tell their stories of assault by passengers and neglect from management, in an update by the Examiner and Mission Local. more

On a yearly basis, there are hundreds of verbal and physical assaults reported against Muni operators. So far in 2018 to date, there have been 316 assaults. 

SFMTA has convened a task force as a result, and new security measures include silent driver alarms and driver enclosures.

However, drivers are still fearful, and hope that more can be done to address safety concerns.  more

Despite ongoing coverage of the poor shape the 16th Street BART Station has continued to be in, not much has seemed to improve. 

For months, Supervisor Hillary Ronen and former BART Board Member Bevan Dufty spent their Wednesday mornings cleaning the station themselves in order to bring attention to its chronic filthiness. Finally, in March of this year, the transit agency promised that they'd handle it, pledging to hire two full-time janitors focused on the station, along with power washing the station on a nightly basis. 

Things were quiet for months, but recently some of the same old complaints started rolling in. Finally, Supervisor Ronen called up the Chronicle, furious at how poorly things seemed to be handled by BART. 

The most frustrating part? BART insists they've held up their end of the bargain, despite the "yuckiness" consistently found in and around the station. 

Gross.  more

Early Friday morning before sunrise, city workers took down the controversial 'Early Days' statue in Civic Center Plaza. The statue depicts a vaquero and a missionary with a fallen Native American lying at their feet, and has been seen as a slap in the face to indigenous people who feel it glorifies their oppression at the hands of Americans. 

The removal of the statue was observed by indigenous activists, many of whom sang traditional songs. One of those gathered in the early morning hours was D5 Supervisor Vallie Brown, who is of American Indian heritage herself. 

It's still unclear what will be done with the statue, but for now it's out of the public square and will be placed in fine arts storage.  more

A radioactive object was found during soil testing in Parcel A, a residential area of the Bayview Hunters Point Shipyard. Although residents had previously been assured that Parcel A was safe, lacking the radioactive materials that were subsequently discovered last week and first reported on Thursday.

As a result, activists are calling for additional testing, including health checks on residents and soil sampling, calling the discovery a "public health emergency." 

Parcel A homeowners, including 10th District Supervisor candidate Theo Ellington and his wife Seray, have filed a lawsuit against the developer and the company tasked with cleanup after the Navy began the process of transferring the land over to the City.  more

In a stark contrast to the federal government, Governor Jerry Brown has announced a plan for California to launch a satellite, geared towards tracking climate change. 

The announcement was made on the final day of the Global Climate Action Summit, which came about after President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. 

So California goes, so goes the rest of the planet. Hopefully.  more

Although it's not scheduled for a grand opening until a year from now, the new Golden State Warriors arena in Mission Bay reached a construction milestone yesterday as the last steel beam was put in place. More than 1,000 construction workers signed the top of the beam in celebration.

The Warriors' 2018 - 2019 season tips off in just a month, and it's scheduled to be their last one played in Oakland.

Go Dubs!  more

The Bay Area Reporter illustrates a proposed plan for protecting and enhancing San Francisco's LGBT cultural heritage, which calls on the expansion of the Mayor's Office of Transgender Initiatives into something more akin to an LGBT affairs office.


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On this November's ballot, three City College Board of Trustees spots are up for grabs. Thea Selby, John Rizzo, and Brigitte Davila are incumbents who are all running for reelection, but they have one challenger in Victor Olivieri. Olivieri is leading the pack in fundraising, and has high-profile backers including Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and CCSF Board Members Alex Randolph, Shanell Williams, and Tom Temprano. 

Olivieri wants to focus on expanding the Free City College program, while also working to make it more sustainable. 

The Examiner profiles Olivieri and the three incumbents, and it'll be up to voters to decide in less than two months. more

A highly radioactive “radium deck marker” the size of a silver dollar has been found in the Hunters Point Shipyard development site, despite San Francisco public health official's May statement that there are “definitively no public safety concerns or health concerns” in the area.

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In an attempt to secure additional funding for homelessness housing, Mayor London Breed introduced a resolution to declare a state of emergency over the lack of shelters.  The resolution has been sent to the Board of Supervisors and if approved, would green light the City to apply for $27.7 million in additional funding from the state.  

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The Chronicle recommends Nick Josefowitz for District 2 Supervisor saying the race includes “two highly capable officeholders,” ostensibly referring to current Supervisor Catherine Stefani, but they believe “City Hall really needs a constructive disrupter on big issues that others are reluctant to fully confront.”  In their opinion, Josefowitz fits the bill.

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Senator Dianne Feinstein sent federal investigators information about Brett Kavanaugh, though she is not disclosing details about the tip.  Feinstein released a statement that the person she received the information from requested confidentiality.

The Intercept, the online news source that broke the story, says the tip “describes an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school.”  Kavanaugh attended male-only Georgetown Prep located outside Washington, D.C.

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Supervisor Vallie Brown is hosting a community meeting this coming Monday to discuss a proposed housing development on Divisidaro that has stalled for three years. The project developer says they need the city to set a mandate on how many below market rate units are required for the plans to move forward.  

The meeting will include officials from the Planning Department and Office of Workforce Development and is intended to discuss the project with residents and hear their concerns.

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A proposed Exelsior housing development that would have built 175 affordable housing units, a community health center, retail, and a new Safeway along Mission Street, has failed after the property owner and Safeway could not agree to a deal.

Supervisor Ahsha Safai, whose district includes the Excelsior neighborhood, blamed Safeway saying the grocery chain reneged on their portion of the project.

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In a 98.6% membership vote, UNITE HERE Local 2’s members voted to support their 2,300 San Francisco Marriott Hotel workers to go on strike.  Their contracts with the Marriott Corporation hotels expired on August 15th and negotiations are ongoing.  Workers could go on strike at any time.

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On Thursday, as protestors continued actions in front of the Global Climate Action Summit, Governor Jerry Brown signed eight bills to combat the impacts of climate change, including reducing transportation pollution, electrifying school buses, and setting new emissions standards for rideshare companies.

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The BART Board of Directors unanimously voted to implement a new process giving the board and the public the ability to review new surveillance initiatives to safeguard riders’ privacy and limit the information that can be shared with federal agencies. 

Renewed scrutiny of BART’s safety measures followed this summer’s significant uptick in violence on trains and stations. The Board’s decision comes after ACLU and other civil rights advocates had expressed concern over how increased surveillance could impact immigrant communities. 

NBC Bay Area reported that tens of thousands of license plates were recorded at the MacArthur BART station and plugged into a database that may have been accessed by ICE, a move that immigration advocates say violates BART’s sanctuary policy.

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The SFMTA is blaming continuing delays through the Twin Peaks tunnel on damage to the light rail control system they say was caused by the project’s contractor. 

The tunnel was recently reopened on August 25th after a two month construction closure, and death of a construction worker which brought to light on Shimmick Construction's history of workplace safety violations.

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The Department of Building Inspection has walked back its threat to yellow tag Millennium Tower over safety concerns after a cracked window was found on the 36th floor. 

Initially the department said they could limit access to the sinking building if its management did not complete a survey of the entire structure and provide a comprehensive report on their findings by the end of this week.  

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