San Francisco's annual 5-block garage sale — a tradition stretching back more than 45 years — is back, and it's one of those rare community events that doesn't require a permit fee the size of a car payment, a DEI consultant, or a six-month environmental review.

Just people. Selling stuff. On their block. For nearly half a century.

This is the kind of organic, ground-up community building that no city program or nonprofit grant could ever replicate. No one sat in a Board of Supervisors meeting and allocated $2 million to "foster neighborhood cohesion through secondary market retail activation." Residents just decided to do something together, and they kept doing it — year after year, through booms, busts, tech waves, and a pandemic.

It's also a quiet reminder of something fiscal conservatives have always understood: the best things in a city don't come from City Hall. They come from people who actually live somewhere and give a damn about their neighbors. A garage sale is peer-to-peer commerce in its purest form — no middleman, no tax consultant, no regulatory overhead. Just "how much for the lamp?" and "five bucks" and a handshake.

In a housing market so absurd that one local described finding a two-bedroom in Hayes Valley as "a steal" — because studios in the Tenderloin are pushing $2,500 — there's something refreshing about an event where you can furnish your overpriced apartment without taking out a second line of credit.

So if you're anywhere near the sale this weekend, go. Buy something you don't need. Meet a neighbor you've never talked to. And appreciate that some of the best San Francisco traditions survive not because of government, but in spite of it.

Forty-five years and counting. Long may it run.