Good Morning, San Francisco

Broken clouds, 55 degrees, and that familiar June chill that makes the rest of the country wonder why we pay these rents — high of 57, so keep the fleece handy. Today's headline: PG&E's CEO looked you in the eye and promised flat bills. The state's own watchdog just put a number on how wrong that was.

PG&E Promised Flat Bills. The State Says $840 More a Year.

Here's the math nobody at PG&E wants on a billboard. California's Public Advocates Office — the independent consumer watchdog whose entire job is to defend ratepayers — projects that a typical PG&E household could be paying $444 more per year by 2027 and $840 more per year by 2030. CEO Patti Poppe spent last spring assuring Bay Area residents the opposite was coming. The utility disputes the forecast and offers its own, far rosier numbers. But the gap between "trust me, bills will be flat" and "actually, add $840" is wide enough to drive a fleet of bucket trucks through.

The detail that should bother you isn't the disagreement — forecasts disagree all the time. It's the structure underneath it. PG&E is a monopoly. You don't get to shop around when the bill comes. So when an executive stakes her credibility on a promise and the state's analysts forecast something four times worse, there's no market to punish the miss. There's just you, your meter, and a Sacramento commission deciding how much more of your paycheck the company gets to keep.

And this is the same week Dennis Herrera announced he's leaving the SFPUC after 25 years — the one commissioner who actually championed yanking distribution infrastructure out of PG&E's hands and building city-owned power. That fight already took a beating when Sacramento killed SB 875. Now the succession pick lands on Mayor Lurie's desk.

We're not romantics about government-run utilities — public power has its own ways of going sideways and sticking taxpayers with the tab. But when a private monopoly can't keep a promise it made in public, ratepayers deserve every option on the table, including the one PG&E hates most: competition for the thing it currently owns outright. Accountability isn't a vibe. It's a number, and today's number is $840.

The Rundown

City Hall & Politics

Jackie Fielder returns to District 9 this Sunday, three months after a mental health crisis pulled her off the board and nearly out of office entirely. Give her credit for candor — she's telling the story straight instead of spinning it — and the Mission, Bernal, and Portola went a full quarter without a vote at the Board of Supervisors. She's back with two bills ready to move; we'll judge those on the merits, but representation showing up to work is the baseline, not the achievement.

Herrera's SFPUC exit closes a 25-year run and hands Lurie a quietly consequential pick (see above). Whoever fills the seat shapes whether SF's public-power dream stays alive or dies of neglect.

Public Safety

Pacifica's seawall money got killed in Washington, and the most plausible Plan B is "Rob's Reef" — an underwater boulder field 600 feet offshore, dreamed up by a surfing civil engineer over coffee. Price tag: $100 million on top of $80 million the seawall already needs. We love the bottom-up ingenuity. We'd love it more with a hard look at whether $180 million of anyone's money beats a managed retreat from a coastline the Pacific is going to win eventually.

Oakland controls its own airport but can't stop the weapons moving through it — activists have documented hundreds of military cargo shipments for nearly a year, the mayor backs stopping them, and the Port Commission still hasn't voted. Whatever you think of the cause, "we own the asset but won't take the vote" is governance by avoidance. Take a position or admit you don't have the authority. The limbo serves no one.

Tech & Startups

Oracle's 10-K said the quiet part in SEC ink: 21,000 jobs cut — nearly 13% of its workforce — while it spent $55.7 billion on AI infrastructure. The filing literally names AI deployment as a cause of the layoffs. Most companies launder this through "efficiencies"; Oracle just printed it. For younger workers, that's the trade getting made in real time — capex up, headcount down. Worth watching whether the $55.7 billion bet actually pays off, or whether it's the dot-com playbook with better marketing.

Culture & Food

The Mess Hall opens at Presidio Tunnel Tops in late June — a 6,200-square-foot food complex with three counters (Breadwinner, Boda, Dayboat Seafood) running under one shared kitchen instead of the usual food-hall leaseholder model. Smart structure, real foot traffic, no taxpayer rescue required. This is what a healthy small-business ecosystem looks like.

Birdhouse Comedy Night turns an Outer Sunset gallery into a comedy room this Thursday, 8–9:30 p.m. on Judah — seven comics, headliner Jalisa Robinson, BYOB. True Skool's new "Elevation" soulful-house series launches July 3 at Golden Ratio in Oakland, free before 10. Both are exactly the kind of cheap, scrappy nightlife the city forgets to celebrate.

South Bay July 4 goes droney: San Jose is swapping pyrotechnics for a drone show after the 2025 Yolo County warehouse explosion gutted the region's fireworks supply. The free move — watch Great America's 9:40 p.m. show from Mission College without buying a ticket. You're welcome.

Housing & Transit

A transplant picked Chinatown for the price and is now learning Cantonese. André Lucas chose the neighborhood because listings run around $1,800 — roughly $1,000 below the citywide one-bedroom average of $2,818 — and built 53,000 Instagram followers documenting the math. The takeaway isn't the follower count. It's that affordability and community still exist in this city if you're willing to live where the spreadsheet actually works.

One More Thing

The Warriors drafted Yaxel Lendeborg 11th overall this week, and at the podium he confessed he "used to hate Steph Curry" as a 13-year-old Kyrie loyalist. Kid, you're not joining a dynasty — you're being handed the broom. Welcome to Golden State.