Good Morning, San Francisco

A gray, cool Wednesday out there — 52°F with a few clouds, barely cracking 54 for the high, and that signature Bay humidity sitting at 79%. Grab a layer. Meanwhile, the city's Arts Commission director is pulling down $314K and apparently can't be bothered to show up to work — and honestly, that tells you everything you need to know about how San Francisco runs.

SF Arts Commission Director Makes $314K, Apparently Doesn't Show Up

There are cushy government jobs, and then there's whatever Ralph Remington has going on at the San Francisco Arts Commission. The director is pulling in $237,943 in base salary — ballooning to $313,802 when you factor in benefits — and according to his own staff, he's essentially a ghost. No staff meetings. No constituent meetings. No presence during what everyone acknowledges is one of the most challenging periods the agency has ever navigated, with federal arts funding under serious threat.

Let's put that number in perspective. The median household income in San Francisco is roughly $136,000. Remington is making more than double that, with benefits that would make a tech worker blush, and the people who work under him say he's not doing the job. He's also reportedly been moonlighting as an author on the side, which — good for him as a creative — but maybe finish your day job first?

This is the kind of story that erodes public trust one paycheck at a time. San Francisco asks its residents to pay some of the highest taxes in the country. In return, residents get to watch a department head collect a fortune while allegedly phoning it in. The Arts Commission isn't some obscure backwater — it manages public art, grant programs, and cultural policy for a city that prides itself on its creative identity. If the person at the top isn't engaged, the whole operation drifts.

The fix here isn't complicated. Show up or step aside. The city has every tool it needs to enforce basic accountability — performance reviews, attendance requirements, termination clauses. The question, as always, is whether anyone at City Hall has the spine to use them. Every day Remington allegedly collects a paycheck without earning it is a day San Francisco's government proves its critics right.

The Rundown

City Hall & Politics

SF's Overpaid CEO Tax is backfiring exactly as predicted. The city's own chief economist is warning that Prop D — the tax on companies where executive pay dwarfs median worker pay — could actually shrink the local economy and eliminate jobs. Not slow growth. Shrink it. In a city already watching businesses flee to Austin and Miami, this is the economic equivalent of locking the doors from the outside. Populist tax policy makes great bumper stickers and terrible fiscal strategy.

Saikat Chakrabarti's campaign is littering the city it wants to represent. Residents are reporting glossy flyers jammed in doors, scattered on sidewalks, and abandoned in stairwells across neighborhoods. Every campaign distributes literature — but there's a line between outreach and pollution, and apparently nobody on this campaign knows where it is.

Public Safety

Two hantavirus exposures have been linked to the Bay Area, and before you spiral, take a breath. It spreads through direct contact with rodent droppings, not person-to-person. You're not catching this on BART. The real story is that media outlets are juicing this for clicks while public health officials are saying the actual risk to the general public is low. Stay calm, clean up rodent-prone areas carefully, and move on.

Get a dashcam. Seriously. New footage circulating among SF drivers shows the kind of reckless, lawless driving that's become routine. SFPD traffic enforcement is a skeleton crew, Vision Zero is a punchline, and if someone sideswipes you and bolts, a $50 camera is the only thing standing between you and a insurance nightmare with zero accountability.

Housing & Transit

Muni riders have built their own survival guide because SFMTA — with its $1.4 billion annual operating budget — apparently can't provide a reliable enough system to make one unnecessary. Commuters are swapping route hacks, timing strategies, and workarounds like soldiers sharing field intelligence. It's resourceful and damning in equal measure.

A tenant and landlord both signed a lease — then the landlord ghosted. A signed contract should mean something. We're all for property rights, but the foundation of free markets is enforceable agreements. Without that, you don't have capitalism. You have chaos.

Culture & Food

SF's bun bo hue situation is bleak inside city limits. The spicy Vietnamese noodle soup has world-class representation in the Bay Area — just mostly down in San Jose. Hoi An on Polk Street will scratch the itch, but for the real deal, you're getting on 101 South.

House of Prime Rib is now booking a full year out. You need to decide what you want for dinner in June 2026 before you've planned this weekend. SF's reservation culture has become its own endurance sport.

History Worth Knowing

140 years ago, SF's Chinese laundry owners won a civil rights case that still matters. Yick Wo v. Hopkins struck down race-neutral laws applied in discriminatory ways — a principle born right here that echoes every time a government uses bureaucratic process to target people it doesn't like.

One More Thing

While the city spends millions on consultants and committees that produce nothing, birds in Golden Gate Park are out here weaving tiny botanical archives into their nests — cataloging the park's plant life for free, no pension required. Nature: undefeated.