In a move that sounds like it was cooked up during a Silicon Valley brainstorm session — because it literally was — Dirt Alley in the Sunset is being renamed to "The Notion Way."

Yes, that Notion. The AI-adjacent productivity app company apparently started this as a joke in an internal chat, and now it's becoming an actual street sign in an actual San Francisco neighborhood. Because in this city, the line between tech company bit and municipal reality is thinner than your MacBook Air.

Let's be clear about what's happening here: a private company is getting its brand permanently embedded into the city's geography. Dirt Alley — a name with scrappy, unpretentious charm — is being replaced by what is essentially a corporate advertisement bolted to a pole. And the city apparently said, "Sure, why not?"

Look, we don't have anything against Notion. They make a decent product, and having tech companies actually want to be in San Francisco is something we should encourage after the post-pandemic exodus. But there's something deeply uncomfortable about selling off — or gifting away — public street names to private companies. What's next? Salesforce Boulevard? OpenAI Parkway? (Don't give them ideas.)

The broader issue is one of precedent. Street names belong to the public. They carry neighborhood history and identity. Dirt Alley may not have been glamorous, but it was ours. Once you start letting companies rename city infrastructure based on what started as a Slack joke, you're signaling that San Francisco's public spaces are up for branding.

If Notion wanted to show love for the Sunset, they could fund street cleanups, sponsor local parks, or invest in small businesses. Instead, they got the city to hand them a street sign. That's not community investment — that's marketing with a government stamp of approval.

San Francisco has enough identity problems right now without auctioning off its street names to the highest bidder. Dirt Alley deserved better.