The Balboa Theater is one of those San Francisco landmarks that everyone says they love but nobody seems willing to actually save — at least not with anything resembling a coherent plan.

The historic single-screen cinema in the Richmond District has been a neighborhood fixture since 1926. Nearly a century of movie magic, community gatherings, and the kind of local character that city officials love to wax poetic about in press releases. But loving something and funding its survival are two very different things, and San Francisco has a long, painful track record of confusing the two.

Here's the pattern we know all too well: a beloved local institution starts showing its age. The city talks about "preservation." Maybe there's a hearing. Maybe someone drafts a resolution. Months pass. Years pass. The building deteriorates further. Eventually, the conversation shifts from "how do we save it" to "what do we build on top of it" — and by then, it's too late to do anything but mourn.

The question San Franciscans should be asking isn't whether the Balboa Theater deserves to be preserved — of course it does. The question is whether our city government is capable of doing anything beyond symbolic gestures. Historic preservation in SF too often means slapping a plaque on something while letting it rot from the inside out.

If we're serious about keeping places like the Balboa alive, the path forward isn't more bureaucratic designations or drawn-out review processes. It's removing the red tape that makes it nearly impossible for private operators to renovate, adapt, and actually run these spaces as viable businesses. A theater that can't turn a profit is a theater that eventually becomes a condo development with a "historic facade" — and we've seen that movie before.

The Balboa deserves better than performative preservation. It deserves a city that gets out of the way and lets people who care about it do the work.