Sequoia Billionaire Commits $150 Million to Fix San Francisco

Hal Brenner, Managing Editor

The through-line I keep coming back to this morning is money meeting ambition — a Sequoia partner writing a nine-figure check, SFO betting eleven billion on luxury terminals, and a bid date finally landing on the dead mall at Fifth and Market. Clear skies out there at 57 degrees, the rare kind of morning that makes you believe all this spending might actually work before you've read past the first paragraph.

Bex Connolly — Politics

Crankstart hasn't published its judging criteria yet, but Michael Moritz's foundation is already the sole arbiter of "Boundless San Francisco" — a $150 million competition whose finalists will define what civic revival is supposed to look like, with no public process attached. The same foundation already funds SF ballot campaigns and at least one local newsroom, which makes "who picks the winners" a governance question before it's a philanthropy story.

• California Says It Dodged the National Cyclospora Outbreak — So Why Did Its Own Cases Jump Fivefold Since June?
• Richardson Bay's Anchor-Out Era Ends With a Housing Voucher — and a Decade of Pressure to Clear the Bay
• SFMTA's Outside Lands Plan: Extra Muni, Road Closures, and a New Leash on Waymo
• Stanford Scientists Used AI to Build Working Viruses — and Warn the Method Could Be Turned Dangerous
• A Sequoia Billionaire Will Pay $150M to 'Fix' SF. He's Already Been Reshaping It.
• SF Can Only Fine the Scooters It Permits. The Real Problem Rides Unregulated.
• …and 3 more from this desk — see them all

Casey Wong — Neighborhoods

The ground lease at 865 Market just got restructured to run until 2082 at reduced rent — that's the actual mechanism behind the September 9 bid date, not a new buyer or a building that changed, just the paperwork finally fitting together after the March deal fell apart. The Chronicle called the Richmond the city's most coveted neighborhood; the city's own records from the same stretch show 28 eviction notices filed in 90 days and 675 311 requests in a single week, which is the portrait the poll doesn't take.

• The Dead Mall at Fifth and Market Gets a Bid Date: Sept. 9
• The Foggiest Corner Won: Richmond District Tops a Chronicle Reader Poll of Where to Live
• 186 Tons of Trash Leave Golden Gate Park This Weekend. Here's Where It Actually Goes.
• Dr. Simi's Meet-and-Greet Tour Lists Two South Bay Stops — at CVS, Not a Farmacia
• At 145 Winston Drive, a $9,000 Permit to Comply With the City's Front-Yard Order
• The Rec Center on 10th Street Comes Down This Month. What Replaces It Doubles as a Disaster Shelter.

Drew Bennett — Things to Do

Cameron Winter walked into Golden Gate Park on Friday wearing a T-shirt that said "Nothing feels real" — which landed harder than irony when you know there's an active argument about whether Geese's 2025 breakout was engineered by a marketing firm running "trend simulations," and that subtext is underneath every Outside Lands review you'll read this week. If you're reading this before noon, the parade is already over at Pistahan: the Great Lawn at Yerba Buena is free through 5 p.m., no ticket, and Sunday is specifically the low-friction day — Casey's 311 numbers remind me that "coveted neighborhood" is a story that gets written about places people are already leaving, which makes a free Filipino street festival in SoMa feel like the actual counterweight.

• Tedeschi Trucks Band Plays the Greek Wednesday, With Lukas Nelson Opening
• Pistahan Fills Yerba Buena Gardens This Weekend — and Sunday Is Still Wide Open
• Geese Played the Most-Hyped Set at Outside Lands. The "Psyop" Followed Them In.
• West Edge Opera's 'Turn of the Screw' Has Two Shows Left in Oakland
• Free Toddler Mondays at Union Square Run Through September. Here's the Full Schedule.

Devon Park — Tech

Paragon Legal, which sells attorney placements to firms in the same metros it ranks, produced the June report now circulating through SFGATE and San José Spotlight putting San Jose at $314,430 in average lawyer pay — and that figure matches no BLS occupational series or independent wage survey I can find, which makes the origin more interesting than the number. Moderna's mFLUSIVA is a genuine first — the initial mRNA flu shot licensed in the U.S., and the company's first approved product that isn't a COVID vaccine — but its own guidance puts meaningful revenue in 2027-28 at the earliest, against a base that's contracted roughly two-thirds from peak, with a frozen federal vaccine committee that hasn't met to recommend it.

• Moderna's First Non-COVID Shot Clears the FDA. The Balance Sheet Won't Feel It for Years.
• San Jose Tops a Lawyer-Pay Ranking. A Legal Staffing Vendor Built It.

Jules Martinez — Food

Memento SF spent three years building an identity around a low-ABV program at 1305 Castro, which is a genuine editorial position — and also a ceiling on every check the room rings. The Type 47 application it just filed says the small-plates model alone isn't carrying the math at this address, and that tension is worth watching whether the license clears or not.

• Memento SF Files for a Full-Liquor License at Its Noe Valley Room

Hal Brenner

Moritz writes a check, Crankstart skips the rubric, and somewhere a lease runs to 2082 — the city's great talent has always been making process look like progress. Go find the free festival.