Roblox Safety Overhaul Wipes Out a Quarter of Its Stock Value

Hal Brenner, Managing Editor

The bill is coming due on several long Bay Area debts today — a federal court has just reopened bond hearings for immigrants detained across the state, an eight-year Berkeley bike-lane standoff broke 7-2 in last night's council vote, and a new audit has put a number on 160 Haight apartments that will make your eyes water. Outside, August is behaving like August in this city: 57°F under a thin skim of cloud, the kind of morning that strips the varnish off a story and leaves only the number.

Bex Connolly — Politics

The audit on the former Haight McDonald's site runs to $166 million for 160 units — $1.04 million a door, across nine years and four mayors, for housing still unfinished. The federal bond ruling out of San Francisco today matters well past the city limits: immigration attorneys have been treating it as a statewide floor for detention hearings since the administration stepped up enforcement in January. And Lyle Prijoles, killed in April in a Philippine military operation on Negros island, is three months dead — it took 11 members of Congress, Schiff among them, to generate even a request for the independent probe his family says Manila cannot be trusted to conduct.

• The Burrito Boys Are a Dynasty Now: El Farolito Wins Second NPSL Title in Three Years
• A Database Is Coming for California's School Janitors. Its Teachers Just Dodged One Again.
• A Cannabis Café on Valencia, and the Ordinance That Rescued a 10-Year Bet
• Native or Invasive? The California Gull Boom Reshaping South Bay's Salt Ponds
• A Hayward Man Was Killed in a Philippine Military Operation. Now California Lawmakers Want Answers
• California's Largest Urban Bat Colony Puts on a Nightly Show Near Sacramento — but 2026 Tours Are Already Sold Out
• …and 8 more from this desk — see them all

Casey Wong — Neighborhoods

On Ashby Avenue, a Black congregation is trading a parking lot for fifty apartments bound by a hundred-year covenant — which means those units never enter the speculative market, not next year, not in 2075, not in any cycle that follows, because the church holds title in perpetuity. The Potrero Hill tech-density figure tells the housing story from the opposite end: 37 percent of working-age residents in tech, and the Chronicle's explanation for why isn't displacement-as-fate but something more actionable — this is one of the few neighborhoods in the city that actually permitted construction. Both pieces are working the same seam Bex opened this morning.

• On Potrero Hill, Nearly Two in Five Working Adults Now Work in Tech
• The Richmond's Picture Machine, San Francisco's Oldest Tattoo Shop, Still Inks 50-Year-Old Flash
• At the Main Library, Every Copy of the 'Odyssey' Is Already Checked Out
• Fifty Firefighters and Three Helicopter Drops Put Out a Half-Acre Fire in Joaquin Miller Park
• On Front Street, 18 Charli XCX Lookalikes and California's First Entertainment Zone
• On Ashby Avenue, a Black Church Trades Its Parking Lot for 50 Apartments It Keeps for a Century
• …and 2 more from this desk — see them all

Jules Martinez — Food

Thirty years in a 1905 Pacifica railway depot, and Vallemar Station's July closure wasn't about dwindling crowds — the Ash family had buyers, the lease fell through, and a room with an original working-railroad rail still embedded under the bar went dark because a deal didn't. The expansion counter is Anthony Strong's Pasta Supply Co: a June 30 DBA and a July 31 Type 41 application at 919 Cole St are the first hard confirmation of a Cole Valley third location that had been moving only as neighborhood rumor. Future Bars' Nightingale-to-Shotski's conversion on Kearny is the other register — same operator, same room, different costume, which tells you as much about what the Financial District will currently support as about any particular appetite for après-ski.

• Vallemar Station Closes After 30 Years in Pacifica's 1905 Railway Depot
• Future Bars Turns Its Own Nightingale Into Shotski's Alpine Lodge on Kearny
• A Beer-and-Wine License Is Changing Hands at Izumi Kaiten Sushi's Japantown Address
• Pasta Supply Co Files for a Third SF Location, at a Shuttered Cole Valley Peet's
• Joyride Pizza Seeks a Beer-and-Wine License at Its Valencia Street Address

Devon Park — Tech

Avi Schiffmann took $249 and a $9.99/month memory fee to TechCrunch this week, but the number I keep returning to is the one he didn't announce: one 2024 seed round, much of it swallowed by a domain purchase, with the cap table still unmoved — meaning everything he just launched rides on whether people will pay a recurring subscription to rent continuity with a piece of jewelry. The Zero Empty Spaces deal at 2036 Shattuck is worth reading less for the pop-up itself than for what it implies: when a discounted six-month lease is the economic argument for reanimating a downtown where the vacancy rate is still a matter of local dispute, the subsidy is doing work the market won't.

• Friend's AI Pendant Returns at $249 With a Voice. The Cap Table Hasn't Moved.
• In Downtown Berkeley, a Vacant Half Price Books Becomes a Six-Month Arts Marketplace — on a Discounted Lease

Sal Moreno — Sports

Logan Webb is 2-0 with a 1.78 ERA in four career starts against Texas, and FanDuel still has a 47-65 road club at even money — that's a Webb line, not a Giants line, and it's the right read given what Buster just spent the deadline telling us: this organization is rebuilding from the arm out, everything else be damned. The Roots story is the companion piece: three weeks after announcing this is their last year at the Coliseum, Oakland's only remaining pro team is posting security deposits before each home gate or forfeiting the match, which tells you everything about what trust looks like between that building and the last club still trying to play in it.

• Webb Owns Texas. Take the Giants at Even Money While Buster Sells Around Him.
• Atlanta Bought the Arm, Not the Record: The Braves' Buy-Low on Tyler Mahle
• Buster Posey Learns to Subtract
• The Bunker Goes Dark: What It Sounds Like When the Giants Turn on Their Own Radio Home
• Pay or Don't Play: Oakland's Last Team Learns to Rent by the Kickoff

Hal Brenner

A million dollars a door and August fog — the city has always been most honest about its costs on mornings when you can't see across the bay. Take that number with you.