And honestly? The city might have finally stumbled into a decision most San Franciscans can actually agree on.

The fountain, installed in 1971, has been one of the most polarizing pieces of public art in the city's history. Admirers call it bold, sculptural, a testament to uncompromising artistic vision. Detractors — and there are many — have spent five decades calling it an eyesore that looks like a freeway overpass collapsed into a plaza. The late Chronicle columnist Herb Caen famously suggested it was designed by someone who hated fountains.

Here's what matters from a fiscal and civic standpoint: the fountain has been non-operational for years, its plumbing deteriorated, its concrete crumbling. Maintaining a broken monument nobody asked for isn't "preserving culture" — it's the kind of sunk-cost thinking that keeps San Francisco's budget bloated and its public spaces underwhelming. The Embarcadero waterfront is some of the most valuable civic real estate on the West Coast. Letting a defunct concrete jungle squat on it because we're too sentimental — or too bureaucratically paralyzed — to act is peak SF governance.

The removal does raise fair questions. What replaces it? If the answer is another years-long planning process that produces a committee-designed nothing, we've traded one problem for a more expensive one. The city has a habit of tearing things down and then spending a decade and $50 million "reimagining" the space. Embarcadero Plaza deserves better than that.

There's also the preservation argument worth acknowledging. Public art shouldn't be disposable just because tastes change. But there's a difference between a functioning, maintained piece of civic art and a crumbling husk that costs money to ignore.

So good luck to whatever crane operator gets to wrestle those 10-ton arms. May the plaza that emerges actually serve the people who use it — not just the consultants hired to plan it.