SF Weekly: San Francisco’s Musical Legacy Remembered. “It’s hard to choose a favorite among San Francisco photojournalist and diehard environmentalist Greg Gaar’s extraordinary collection of 1,114 concert photos — taken between 1972 and 1989 at venues across the Bay Area — through which icons of the city’s eclectic and vibrant music history live on.”
San Francisco Chronicle: Pandemic baby bust unprecedented in Bay Area, California history. “U.S. residents are having fewer babies this year. And California’s birth rates in January and February — around the time when early pandemic babies would be due — declined by 15% compared to the same period last year, the steepest year-over-year decline for those months since at least 1960, according to a Chronicle analysis. We used data from California’s Health and Human Services department, which collects monthly birth totals per county. We found that the state’s births declined from nearly 70,000 in the first two months of 2020 to fewer than 59,000 in the same period in 2021.”
Association of Bay Area Governments: Bay Area Energy Atlas Now Online!. “ABAG’s BayREN program has launched the Bay Area Energy Atlas. The tool, developed by the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, in partnership with BayREN, is a large database of PG&E account-level electricity and natural gas consumption linked spatially to building characteristics and sociodemographic data. The Energy Atlas was developed to assist local governments with climate action planning and to delve into how energy is being used in their jurisdictions. “
San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Public Defender’s Office launches website for searching cop records. “The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office on Wednesday launched a website where members of the public can search for police records of misconduct, shootings, civil suits and certain officer complaints.”
SF Gate: San Francisco rolls back reopenings as COVID cases surge. “As coronavirus cases in San Francisco surge, Mayor London Breed announced Tuesday the elimination of indoor dining, a limit on capacity at gyms and movie theaters and a pause on the reopening of additional high schools until further notice.”
Los Angeles Times: How San Francisco became a COVID-19 success story as other cities stumbled. “After cautiously approaching the pandemic for months, with a go-slow attitude toward reopening, San Francisco has become the first urban center in California to enter the least restrictive tier for reopening. Risk of infection, according to the state’s color-coded tiers, is considered minimal, even though San Francisco is the second-densest city in the country after New York.”
San Francisco Chronicle: People are fleeing the Bay Area. But they might not be gone for long. “Just like [Erica] Johnston, most other Bay Area escapees have left because the coronavirus pandemic, shelter-in-place rules and wildfires have amped up the region’s space constraints and high cost of living, while minimizing many of the cultural and career reasons that motivate people to bear with the downsides.”
San Francisco Chronicle: Worried about Bay Area smoke? Here’s how to look up the air quality in your microclimate . “The air over much of the Bay Area is generally clean, thanks to ocean breezes. But when the skies fill with wildfire smoke, that changes. For your health and safety, it’s vital to know the latest air quality information in your community. But it can be hard to find, especially since the Bay Area has so many microclimates. Here is a guide to resources that can help you monitor and understand your local air quality.” This article was written for people in the Bay Area, but it has plenty of resources for California in general and a couple for the entire United States.
Vox: San Francisco’s lonely war against Covid-19. “On June 25, San Francisco Mayor London Breed was excited the city’s zoo would finally reopen after closing down for months in response to Covid-19. She visited the facilities, posting photos on social media with a mask on and giraffes in the background. ‘I know people are eager to get back to some sense of normalcy, especially families and children,’ she tweeted. And it looked like her city was taking a step toward it. The day after the visit, Breed had to announce the sad news: San Francisco’s reopening plan — for the zoo and various other facilities, including hair salons and indoor museums — would have to be put on hold.”
San Francisco Chronicle: Should I isolate my newborn? Move to the Bay Area for college? Stories of pandemic risk, hard choices. “The coronavirus pandemic has forced countless tough decisions for Bay Area residents. We’ve weighed medical, financial and personal risks against needs and benefits. Experts say these calculations are not always easy under the best of circumstances, and especially difficult in periods of high stress and strong emotion. Here are the stories of four people in the Bay Area and how they approached difficult choices that seemed to have no clear answer.”
San Francisco Chronicle: SF Muni driver beaten with bat after telling passengers to wear masks. “A San Francisco Muni bus driver was beaten with a bat Wednesday by passengers who refused to wear face masks at the driver’s instruction, officials said. Three men with no face coverings boarded the bus around 3:30 p.m. at 11th and Division Streets in the SoMa district, according to San Francisco police.”
San Francisco Chronicle: More than 40 Bay Area school principals in quarantine after in-person meeting. “More than 40 school principals in the South Bay are in quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19 during an in-person meeting held by the Santa Clara Unified School District. A pre-symptomatic individual at the school reopening planning meeting on June 19 tested positive for the coronavirus just a few days after school administrators congregated.”
San Francisco Chronicle: UC health experts: San Quentin coronavirus outbreak could pose threat to entire Bay Area. “A team of UC Berkeley and UCSF health experts warned prison medical officials nearly two weeks ago that they’d need to cut the population of San Quentin State Prison in half to avoid a potentially ‘catastrophic’ outbreak there. But prison officials didn’t heed the warning and since then, confirmed coronavirus infections among prisoners have rocketed from 48 to 456, far outpacing any other facility in the state and overwhelming a system that waited too long to react.”
SF Gate: Coming to an SF street near you: A photo of what it looked like 100 years ago. “OpenSFHistory, an online archive of over 50,000 historic images of San Francisco and the Bay Area, recently launched a project to integrate modern-day S.F. with its historic past. With walking tours halted and most historic sites closed, the folks behind the site are hoping their ‘guerilla history posters’ will give residents a little entertainment and education.”
KPIX: Photo Tribute To 50 Years Of San Francisco Pride Celebrations Goes Online. “The exhibition features photojournalism, portraits, posters and magazine covers from prior Prides. Many images came from the GLBT Historical Society’s archives but others are from other institutions and more than a dozen independent queer photographers.”
