Here's a sentence that should sting: visitors to San Francisco can no longer reliably find a California Common beer — a style literally invented here — on tap in the city.

Since Anchor Brewing shuttered in 2023 after 127 years, the iconic Anchor Steam has all but vanished from local taps. Travelers planning trips to the Bay Area are now crowdsourcing leads on where — anywhere — they can find the city's signature beer style poured fresh. The fact that this requires detective work in the very city where the style was born is, frankly, a civic failure.

Let's be clear about what happened. Anchor Brewing didn't die because people stopped loving craft beer. It died after years of mismanagement under Sapporo's ownership, ballooning costs, and — let's be honest — an operating environment in San Francisco that makes it brutally expensive to run any business that actually produces something physical. Between sky-high commercial rents, a labyrinthine permit process, and a tax-and-regulate-first mentality at City Hall, it's a miracle any manufacturer survives here at all.

As one local put it bluntly: "The city is broke. Special taxes are rampant. City services suck." Hard to argue.

The loss of Anchor Steam isn't just a beer story. It's a symbol of what happens when a city prioritizes bureaucratic process over productive enterprise. We talk endlessly about "preserving San Francisco's character," and then we let the most San Francisco beer in existence disappear without so much as a resolution from the Board of Supervisors.

Now, there are glimmers of hope. A handful of smaller local breweries have taken a crack at the California Common style — and some are genuinely good. But none have the scale or distribution to fill Anchor's shoes, and finding one on tap still requires insider knowledge rather than simply walking into any decent bar.

If San Francisco wants to be a world-class city — and not just a world-class expensive one — it needs to make it possible for businesses that make things to survive here. A city that can't keep its own beer alive has no business lecturing anyone about culture.

Someone brew a California Common. We'll be at the bar, waiting.