Good Morning, San Francisco

Broken clouds, 53°F, wind whipping at 18 mph — it's the kind of day where you grab the jacket you almost left behind. Meanwhile, a congressional race that's supposed to be about San Francisco is looking a lot more like it's about everywhere else.

Outside Money Floods SF Congressional Race While Policy Takes a Back Seat

There's a Democratic primary fight brewing for a San Francisco congressional seat, and it has all the ingredients of a race that should matter deeply to voters here — housing, transit, public safety, the cost of living. Instead, the conversation has been almost entirely consumed by where the money's coming from and who isn't endorsing.

Saikat Chakrabarti, best known as the founding chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is running for the seat with no prior elected office on his résumé. That alone isn't disqualifying — plenty of good representatives have come from outside the political machine. What is worth scrutinizing is the financial architecture of his campaign: large self-funded contributions and a donor base that tilts heavily out-of-state. When a significant chunk of your campaign war chest comes from people who will never ride MUNI, never navigate the city's permitting nightmare, and never step over a tent on their way to work, voters are right to ask: who exactly are you accountable to?

Then there's the AOC-shaped hole. Chakrabarti built his political identity in her orbit, yet she hasn't endorsed him. That absence is loud. Whether it reflects a strategic calculation on her part or genuine reservations about the campaign, it's created a vacuum that online commentators have gleefully filled — mostly with speculation rather than substance. And that's the real problem. Every news cycle spent debating donor ZIP codes and missing endorsements is a cycle not spent asking Chakrabarti what he'd actually do about San Francisco's $800 million budget deficit, or whether he thinks the city's approach to street-level drug markets is working.

Here's the fiscal conservative's take: representation should be local, and money should follow voters, not the other way around. If you're running to represent San Francisco, your campaign should look like San Francisco funded it. Voters deserve a candidate whose policy positions are stress-tested by the people who'll live with the consequences — not by ideological donors in Brooklyn or Austin who think they're buying a vote in Congress. Ask about the platform. Demand specifics. That's the part that actually matters.

The Rundown

City Hall & Politics

New Sculptures Land in the Panhandle — and Not Everyone's Thrilled. Two large-scale sculptures went up along the Panhandle as part of the Big Art Loop public art trail, and the neighborhood response has been... mixed. The pieces have Burning Man origins, which in San Francisco is the aesthetic equivalent of bringing a vegan charcuterie board to a steakhouse — some people love it, some people have questions. One sculpture of a reclining woman has drawn comparisons to a corpse, which is not the vibe most public art installations are going for. Public art is great when it earns its space; the question is always who's doing the curating and whether anyone asked the neighbors first.

Public Safety

Castle Rock's Parking Lot Has Become a Weekend War Zone. Not the violent kind — the passive-aggressive, circling-for-gravel-spots-at-7:45am kind. Castle Rock State Park, the Santa Cruz Mountains gem that Bay Area hikers treat like a personal backyard, is getting crushed by its own popularity. The lot fills by 8am on Saturdays and doesn't clear until dusk. This is what happens when you have a region of eight million people and exactly zero political will to expand trail access or add capacity at popular parks. The solitude you drove 45 minutes to find? It's stuck in traffic behind you.

Culture & Food

DocFest Turns 25 With Sea Monkeys, Rock Stars, and High-Heeled Anarchy. The San Francisco Documentary Festival is screening at the Roxie through mid-June, and the anniversary lineup is gloriously unhinged — a film about the brine shrimp empire, another with enough rock-star nudity to warrant a headline warning, and something described as "high-heeled anarchy." Tickets run $15–$18. This is the Roxie at its best: scrappy, weird, and completely uninterested in what's playing at the multiplex.

SF Porchfest 2026 Brings 90+ Bands to Your Neighbor's Front Yard. Ninety-plus acts, one neighborhood, zero fences, zero tickets. Porchfest is the most San Francisco event San Francisco has — genuinely distributed, radically informal, and impossible to fully experience. You will miss most of it. That's the point. Check sfporchfest.org for the schedule drop.

AAPI Women Makers Fair Offers Direct-from-Maker Shopping. Details are still being finalized, but past editions have been tight, well-curated, and worth showing up early for. The food vendors alone tend to outclass most festival fare. Watch the organizers' social channels for the confirmed location.

Three Comedy Nights Running Across the City. Monday at Mirthquake in the Richmond ($5 drinks, neighborhood bar energy), Rush Hour Comedy Night at The Function (rotating lineup, loud crowd), and Golden Gate Comedy Night (intimate, no-phone-zone vibes). Different rooms for different moods — pick your fighter.

Neighborhoods & Community

On Van Dyke and Third, the Bayview Holds On. A quiet portrait of the neighborhood that sun-seekers and longtime homeowners know but real estate marketing hasn't fully digested yet. Working-class, multigenerational, industrial lots next to modest homes — the Bayview is still the Bayview because people chose to stay. That's worth more than any rezoning plan.

A Mysterious Flyer Near Mollusk Has the Outer Sunset Asking Questions. Someone stapled a handmade flyer to a telephone pole on Irving asking about a car — no contact info, no plate number, no context. Art project? Social experiment? Neighborhood weirdness operating at peak efficiency? The Sunset will debate this for exactly as long as it takes for the fog to pull everyone back inside.

One More Thing

The Ocean Avenue Car Show is coming back to the Ingleside strip — lowriders, American classics, Japanese imports, and a perfect excuse to eat your way down the avenue. Take the K/L/M to Ocean Avenue Station and leave your car at home, because the irony of driving to a car show and not finding parking would be too on-the-nose, even for this city.