An internet service outage hit parts of San Francisco Saturday afternoon, and while most of us just refreshed our phones in mild annoyance, the outage exposed something worth thinking about: how completely dependent our local businesses are on staying connected.

Reports started rolling in around 2:50 PM, with residents across the city noticing their service had dropped. The real-world impact? The See's Candies on Clement Street couldn't process credit cards or gift cards — meaning if you wanted your chocolate fix, you'd better have cash. Which, let's be honest, in 2025 San Francisco, almost nobody does.

As one local put it, "Time to whip out the good ole cell phone hotspot tethering to their iPad cash register. Hopefully their cell phone isn't also serviced by Xfinity."

It's a funny image, but it points to a real vulnerability. We've built an entire commercial infrastructure — from corner candy shops to major retailers — on the assumption that the internet is always on. When it's not, business simply stops. No backup systems, no manual fallback, no sale.

And while we're talking about See's: one Bay Area resident noted that their iconic lollipops are now $1.30 each. Between inflation and infrastructure fragility, buying candy in this city is becoming an extreme sport.

The broader point here isn't that one afternoon outage ruined anyone's life. It's that San Francisco's small businesses are stacking single points of failure on top of each other — internet-dependent POS systems, no cash culture, and ISP monopolies that face zero accountability when service drops. When Comcast or whoever goes down for a few hours, there's no refund, no explanation, and no competition waiting to pick up the slack.

If the city actually cared about supporting small businesses — something every supervisor claims at election time — they'd start asking harder questions about broadband reliability and competition instead of just slapping another fee on commercial permits. But that would require caring about infrastructure more than ribbon cuttings, and we know how that usually goes.