Good Morning, San Francisco

Broken clouds, 57 degrees, and the kind of gray that makes you forget it's almost July. We top out at 59 today — wear the jacket you pretend you don't need. And speaking of things that don't add up: the school board just passed a $1.36 billion budget by a single vote, with a $62.9 million state penalty clock ticking in the background. Let's talk about it.

SFUSD's Billion-Dollar Budget Passed by One Vote — and the Bill Comes Due in 2028

San Francisco Unified approved a $1.36 billion operating budget for 2026-27 on Tuesday, and the 4-3 margin tells you everything the press release won't. This wasn't a rubber stamp. Three board members looked at the numbers and said no — and they had reasons.

Here's the part that should make every taxpayer sit up: roughly two hours before the vote, Superintendent Maria Su forwarded board members an email from the California Department of Education. A $62.9 million state penalty clock had started ticking at midnight. Nothing focuses a board's attention like a deadline with a price tag attached. The budget squeaked through, the accountability plan passed 5-2, and everyone got to go home calling it progress.

But let's be honest about what "progress" means here. The structural deficit didn't get solved — it got scheduled. The hard math moves to 2028-29, which is the bureaucratic equivalent of paying your credit card with another credit card. A district that has spent years bleeding enrollment and shuffling closure plans just bought itself two more years of breathing room, and the people who'll have to make the brutal cuts later are betting they'll be someone else's problem by then.

Credit where it's due: a 4-3 vote means the dissenters are doing their job. The real test isn't this budget — it's whether anyone on that board spends the next 24 months actually shrinking the structural gap, or whether they coast to 2028 and act surprised when the bill arrives. We'll be watching the spending, not the speeches.

The Rundown

City Hall & Spending

Berkeley's $650,000 dog park opened last weekend at Adeline and MLK — an 8,000-square-foot off-leash run plus a Miyawaki pocket forest, built on the lot where the "Here There" encampment sat for six years before the 2023 clearing. Nobody's against dogs or trees. But $650,000 of Measure T1, parks-tax, and general-fund money for one intersection is the kind of number that deserves a second look — especially on a corner that took the city six years to reclaim in the first place. Pretty is not the same as priorities.

Housing & Transit

East Oakland's empty lots are finally moving — three affordable housing projects broke ground along International Boulevard and 73rd Avenue within weeks of each other. The engine: Measure U bond money, state Homekey rounds, and a $40 million CalHCD grant all clearing the financing gauntlet at once. That's hundreds of permanently affordable homes going up where parking lots and pop-up programming used to be. When the money actually produces units instead of consultant studies, we'll happily say so. This is what it's supposed to look like.

Public Health

Oakland's free clinic just had its busiest year ever. The Order of Malta Clinic near Lake Merritt logged nearly 6,000 patient visits in 2025 — its highest since 2008 — and sent exactly zero bills. A mobile dental service is coming next. A privately run charitable clinic quietly out-delivering the systems that cost a thousand times more? That's a story worth more attention than it gets.

Culture & Food

The 45-foot nude at the foot of Market is up for sale. R-Evolution, Marco Cochrane's 32,000-pound stainless-steel figure at Embarcadero Plaza — the one that "breathes" between 5 and 6 p.m. — is now listed on Sotheby's as "available for immediate sale," price upon request. Her permit's expiring and the plaza closes for renovation in October, so the clock's running. Make your offer before she breathes her last.

Troubadour Bread and Bistro in Healdsburg earned its first Michelin star — for a bakery that turns into a prix-fixe tasting room by night. Sean and Melissa McGaughey's Le Diner pulled it off the same evening Enclos in Sonoma vaulted to three stars. Proof that small, weird, and exacting still beats big and safe in this state's kitchens.

The Cheese Board Collective drew over 100 paying alumni to a reunion in North Berkeley, trading 60 years of lore ahead of its 2027 anniversary — kibbutz roots, Alfred Peet's skepticism, and at least one manure-cured cheese. A worker-owned shop that's outlasted nearly everything around it. The free market and the collective shaking hands over pizza with no tomato sauce — only in Berkeley.

And Arepas Restaurant owner Joanna Torres — Willow Glen and SF — is pledging 30% of a month's proceeds to Venezuela earthquake relief after twin quakes killed at least 235 people. Private generosity, moving fast, no committee required. Go eat there.

Weekend Plans

GKIDS is bringing the Evangelion 30th Movie Fest to 18 Bay Area theaters July 21-22 — Death & Rebirth one night, The End of Evangelion the next, AMC Metreon included. If you know, you know. If you don't, ask the most intense person you work with.

Over in Berkeley this weekend, it's mostly free: a Midsummer natural-wine market Friday, national Free RPG Day at Games of Berkeley on Saturday, $5 trapeze science at the Lawrence on Sunday, and The Marsh's storytelling night turning 21. A full weekend that won't touch your wallet — our favorite price point.

And down at Raimondi Park, the fan-owned Oakland Ballers are 14-19 and could not care less — this weekend it's Phish Night, "Oakland Stands Up," and Christmas in June. Owned by 3,800 fans who put up $3.2 million, the B's are what Oakland built after the A's walked. There's a possum involved. The record is the least interesting thing about them.

One More Thing

Next time you're grabbing lunch in the Financial District near Drumm and Davis, tip your hat to 33 Pacific — where in the 1870s a crimp named Shanghai Kelly threw a "birthday party," spiked the free whiskey with opium, and shipped a hundred passed-out men off to waiting vessels in the bay. San Francisco has always known how to throw a party you don't remember. At least these days the worst you'll wake up to is the bar tab.