Good Morning, San Francisco

The forecast app is on the fritz this morning, so we're flying blind — step outside, look up, dress accordingly. Old-fashioned, but reliable. Speaking of things the city wants to replace whether you asked or not: your gas stove is about to become a renovation liability.

Your Next Remodel Just Got a Mandatory Electric Bill

Starting July 1, San Francisco extends its new-construction gas ban to major renovations — and the fine print has teeth. Trigger a big gut remodel and you don't just get to pick new countertops. You're required to rip out every gas-burning system in the house: heating, cooling, water heater, stove, dryer. All of it, all at once, electric or nothing. The city pitches this as a money-saver. The contractors actually doing the work tell a different story.

Here's the catch the city's own numbers gloss over: a huge share of SF's older housing stock runs on 100-amp electrical panels. Go all-electric and many of those panels can't handle the load — which means a service upgrade, which often means new wiring, sometimes a call to PG&E, and a bill that can run five figures before you've boiled a single pot of water. None of that shows up in the rosy "electrification saves you money" brochure. It's the kind of cost that's invisible right up until it lands on a homeowner who just wanted to fix their kitchen.

We're all for cleaner energy — and if all-electric genuinely pencils out, plenty of homeowners will choose it on their own. That's the part that grates. This isn't a nudge or an incentive; it's a mandate that bolts a mandatory, unbudgeted capital project onto anyone unlucky enough to own a pre-war flat. The city gets to claim a climate win on paper while quietly shifting the entire cost onto private owners and pretending the panel problem doesn't exist.

A policy that works only if you ignore the homes it actually applies to isn't a cost-saver. It's a cost-shift with better branding. Renovate before July 1 if you can — and if you can't, get the panel quote first.

The Rundown

City Hall & Politics

The California top-two primary nearly produced a November governor's ballot with zero Democrats on it — a structural flaw in the 2010 open-primary experiment that lets one party grab both general-election slots and lock millions of voters out of a real choice. What saved the system this time wasn't the system working; it was Eric Swalwell exiting amid sexual assault allegations. When your election design only survives by way of someone else's scandal, it's worth asking whether the design is doing its job.

Around the Bay

Volunteers now steward 137 of SF's street parks — micro-parks filling a 200-gardener gap the city couldn't or wouldn't cover, like the Quesada Medians in Bayview, a neighborhood with the lowest tree canopy in town. Public Works finally held its first-ever summit to teach these unpaid stewards how to do the job the city stopped doing. Credit where due: residents stepped up where the bureaucracy fell down. That's civic life working — just not the way the org chart drew it up.

Across the bay, Oakland's Lakeside Park oaks are dying off, the canopy thinning under years of deferred maintenance from a tree crew gutted back in 2008 and never rebuilt. Down the Peninsula, South San Francisco repainted its century-old Sign Hill letters red-white-and-blue for America's 250th — and in scrambling the colors to "protect the city's identity," accidentally made the words "South San Francisco" vanish from the 101. There's a metaphor in there about local identity getting painted over, and it's free.

The Sporting Life

On Giants Pride Night, four of five pitchers in a 5-1 loss to the Cubs either Sharpied a Bible verse over the rainbow cap or refused it outright. The deeper story isn't the players' faith — it's that MLB built an optional loyalty test, then the franchise that profits off the night went conspicuously silent when it got awkward. Institutions love a values statement right up until standing behind it costs something.

Meanwhile, stop writing the A's obituary — the nomadic, city-less club just ripped off four straight comeback wins and sits two games back. (And no, that game wasn't in Vegas; they play in West Sacramento, whatever the wire says.) The Giants hand the ball to Logan Webb today, which is the whole bet: a bullpen with an 8.74 June ERA can't lose a game it never touches.

And we owe Aldon Smith an honest word. The 49ers great died Saturday at 36, and for a decade we called him a bust and a discipline problem. He was a sick man with a disease, living it out in public while we built a commentary genre around watching. The record's set now. The least we can do is stop pretending it was about character.

Culture & Food

Burma Superstar's longtime GM Tiyo Shibabaw opened Teni East Kitchen on Piedmont Avenue — a bar program, a patio, and a decade of know-how betting on himself. That's the small-business engine in action, no mandate required. The bookstore picture is messier: A Great Good Place for Books closed in Montclair after 29 years, even as four East Bay indies have opened or reopened since 2023. The "indies are dying" headline is lazy; the truth is churn, and the survivors are the ones who adapted.

And the 80th annual Juneteenth celebration filled eight blocks of the Fillmore this weekend — free, three stages, CAMEO and the Bar-Kays — with the citywide parade still to come June 20. Eight decades of a community throwing its own party, no permission slip needed. That's the good stuff.

One More Thing

The San Mateo County Fair closes tonight — and the real headline is the door price: $23 a head, $20 to park, no in-and-out. A Peninsula family of six is out $138 before a single corn dog. Fair enough — just maybe eat before you go.