Good Morning, San Francisco

Broken clouds, 51 degrees, feels like 49 — grab the jacket, skip the umbrella, and accept that this is just what June looks like here. The big story today: Governor Newsom watched AI eat thousands of Bay Area jobs and responded by ordering a study about it.

Newsom's AI Layoff Plan: Study Now, Act… Later

Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order this week directing state agencies to study artificial intelligence's impact on California's workforce. Not to do anything about it, mind you — just to study it. Agencies have three to six months to document AI-related job losses and build a public dashboard tracking the damage. In the meantime, the layoffs continue.

Let's be clear about what this is: a press release disguised as policy. The order contains no new worker protections, no relief mechanisms, no retraining funding, and no regulatory framework. It tasks the Employment Development Department — the same agency that became synonymous with dysfunction during the 2020 unemployment surge — with tracking which layoffs are connected to automation. If your confidence in EDD's ability to deliver accurate, timely data is high, you weren't one of the millions who waited months for a callback during COVID.

Here's the thing — there's a legitimate role for government when entire industries restructure overnight. But that role isn't commissioning a dashboard six months from now while workers are losing paychecks today. A fiscal conservative perspective doesn't mean ignoring workforce disruption; it means demanding that government responses be efficient, targeted, and fast enough to matter. This order is none of those things. It's the bureaucratic equivalent of setting up a weather station after the hurricane.

The cynical read is that Newsom wants the headline — "Governor Acts on AI" — without the political risk of actual regulation that might annoy his tech donor base. The generous read is that good policy needs good data first. But California has been watching this wave build for two years. If you need six more months just to start counting the bodies, you weren't paying attention.

The Rundown

City Hall & Politics

Lurie's budget cuts cash grants for low-income City College students. Free tuition stays, but the living-cost grants that keep students fed and housed while they attend? Gone. This is the kind of cut that looks like a rounding error on a budget spreadsheet but functions as a wrecking ball for retention. A student who can't eat doesn't care that tuition is zero. Mayor Lurie is dealing with a real deficit, but cutting a program that costs relatively little while keeping students enrolled is the definition of penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Chakrabarti and Chan are burning cash in the June primary. Both campaigns are spending furiously to lock down the second-place finish that advances them past the first round. In SF's ranked-choice system, the silver medal matters — and both operations are carpet-bombing voters with mail, digital ads, and field work. Your mailbox already knows.

Golden Gate Park is getting more big concerts. Rec and Parks approved an expanded slate of large-scale permitted shows at the Polo Field and Speedway Meadow. More concerts means more weekend road closures, more traffic on Crossover Drive, and more of your Saturday plans getting rerouted because 40,000 people want to see Charli XCX. Keep an eye on the Rec and Parks calendar before you plan anything west of Stanyan.

Public Safety

E-bike strikes pedestrian at Embarcadero and Folsom during rush hour. A young woman was found propped against a lamp post after being hit by an e-bike at the intersection. This is not a new problem — residents have been documenting near-misses along the waterfront path for years. SFMTA's response to these complaints has been, charitably, glacial. At some point, "we're studying it" stops being an answer.

CHP vehicle blocked Valencia Street bike lane for 30 minutes. A Highway Patrol cruiser parked in the protected bike lane near 17th Street — roughly 20 feet from a publicly available parking lot — and at least one cyclist was nearly struck navigating around it. Law enforcement blocking safety infrastructure designed to prevent exactly this kind of danger is the sort of thing that makes people lose faith in institutions. Twenty feet. The parking lot was twenty feet away.

Housing & Development

Painted brick building draws preservation complaints. A masonry building painted black has neighbors upset about both the historic character loss and the thermal performance hit. San Francisco's planning code does regulate exterior alterations to historic structures, but enforcement is famously inconsistent. File this under "things that shouldn't require a community uproar to address."

Culture & Events

Bay to Breakers runs Sunday, May 17. The world's oldest consecutively run footrace — 7.46 miles from Howard and Spear to Ocean Beach. Competitive wave at 8am, hot dog costumes shortly after. Register at baytobreakers.com; prices go up as race day approaches.

Fillmore After Dark kicks off Friday. Free night market on Fillmore Street with live blues, food vendors, and something called "Boutique Bingo." First edition of a recurring summer series — show up before everyone else discovers it.

Las Cafeteras play free at Yerba Buena Gardens Saturday at noon. East LA son jarocho meets hip-hop on the outdoor stage. No tickets, all ages, national-caliber act on a public lawn. This is why the Yerba Buena festival is one of the best free programs in the city.

Sports

The Giants are 50 games in and the evidence is damning. Near-bottom NL OPS isn't a slump — it's a roster construction problem. Buster Posey has to decide whether the front office will make real moves or keep hoping the math changes. It won't.

One More Thing

Two free drum and bass nights are on the calendar — one at Underground SF in the Lower Haight, one at The Midway in Dogpatch with a 100-watt laser rig. Free DnB in this city usually means one DJ and a borrowed Bluetooth speaker, so when it's done right, you show up.