Rideshare Drivers Win Union Rights Without Becoming Employees

Hal Brenner, Managing Editor

The desks came in this morning with a Bay Area quietly rewriting who gets to set the terms — a county drafting permits for robots, a conservative PAC declaring itself a town's most trusted news source after the paper folded, a man released a day early and killed before his attacker's monitor was even switched on. It's 57 degrees and overcast, the summer fog holding flat, which feels about right for a digest this unresolved.

Bex Connolly — Politics

Buffy Wicks's AB 1340 gets its first real test today: the California Gig Workers Union cleared 30% driver support, which starts the 30-day clock for formal representation of hundreds of thousands of Uber and Lyft workers who — by the law's explicit design — Uber and Lyft still get to classify as independent contractors. That legal architecture, built to sidestep Prop 22 rather than repeal it, is either the most creative labor statute California has passed in a decade or a mechanism that hands the companies the cheaper classification while performing collective bargaining; the next 30 days will begin to answer which. Matt Haney's 10% ticket-resale cap got the same weekend-recap treatment as new, but it passed the Assembly 49-16 in May and landed in the Senate suspense file on Aug. 3 — the mass hearing that decides whether it survives the session hasn't happened yet.

• Haney's Ticket-Resale Cap Cleared the Assembly. Now It's Stuck on the Senate's 'Suspense File.'
• SF Contractor Couple Charged in Alleged Workers' Comp Fraud Scheme Involving an Injured Worker
• San Mateo County Could Be Among the First in the U.S. to Make Businesses Buy a Permit for Their Robots
• Clayton Lost Its Newspaper. A Conservative PAC Now Calls Itself the Town's 'Most Trusted News Source.'
• Rideshare Drivers Just Cleared the Bar to Unionize Under a Law Written in Oakland — Without Ever Becoming Employees
• Suisun City Won't Rule Out Paying a Ransom as Its Cyberattack Enters a Second Week
• …and 5 more from this desk — see them all

Casey Wong — Neighborhoods

Abbie Dwelle never announced she was closing Paul's Hat Works, and I couldn't reach her — which means the first record of a 108-year-old hatmaker at 6128 Geary closing is a Reddit thread from a neighbor who walked past one too many times. The permit file is doing louder work: 149 New Montgomery's new owners logged two $1 revision permits against a $1.19 million buildout they haven't publicized, and 2550 Filbert filed $740,000 in simultaneous front-and-back construction on August 8, both buildings announcing themselves in city records before anyone said a word publicly. Bruce Labadie, at least, made sure people heard the last note — 36 years building San Jose Jazz from one stage to eight, and he said goodbye at a microphone.

• What Happened to Paul's Hat Works? A 108-Year-Old Geary Hatmaker Appears to Have Closed, Quietly
• Bruce Labadie Built San Jose Jazz From One Stage to Eight. After 36 Years, He's Handing Over the Park
• At 149 New Montgomery, a $1.2 Million Buildout — and Two $1 Permits — Are the First Signs a Foreclosed Building's Redevelopment Is Real
• A Vacant Downtown Oakland Storefront Became a Free Streetwear Shop for a Night — 124 Pieces, No Register
• At 2550 Filbert Street, a House Files to Rebuild Itself Front and Back on the Same Day

Jules Martinez — Food

Shelley Lindgren's team filing a new LLC at 1 Ferry Bldg Suite 36 on August 1 means Lucania has a lease, not a concept — and a full-service room built specifically around Basilicata cooking would be the most purposeful thing to open in that building in years, at a moment when the Ferry Building has been running on tourist foot traffic more than destination dining. The El Patrón story is the one to hold more carefully: 1325 Fillmore has been dark since 2023, the opening is announced but nothing is permitted, and the distance between an announcement and a permit is, as Casey's work today shows, where real intentions get revealed.

• A16 Team Takes the Old MarketBar Space for Lucania, a Southern Italian Room at the Ferry Building
• Tacos El Patrón Takes the Old Scott's Chowder House on Fillmore

Drew Bennett — Things to Do

Tonight's new moon is the one variable that makes the Perseids worth setting an alarm for — no light wash means Bay Area skies are as dark as they'll get all year, and the window runs 11 p.m. to pre-dawn from any ridge outside the city glow, with Marin Headlands being the closest practical call for most readers. The weekend earns its own separate trip: Public Enemy at Stern Grove is free Saturday, and anyone who assumes the box office is already locked hasn't tried the day-before window, which has consistently had seats at the last three shows I've tracked.

• SF's Weekend Is Stacked: A Carb Festival, Free Dahlias, and Public Enemy at Stern Grove
• The Perseids Peak Wednesday Night Over a Moonless Bay Area. Here's When to Look Up.

Devon Park — Tech

A Google Search VP confirmed via his own social post — no blog, no announcement — that the button reading "Google Search" for the better part of twenty-five years is being swapped out in a live desktop test, and Google won't say how many users are seeing it. The three replacements are "Create images," "Brainstorm," and "Ask about files" — not one of them is "find the thing you came here for." The test runs on signed-out users, the population with the least reason to stay, which is either a cautious pilot group or the most candid admission yet of where Google thinks it's already losing.

• Google Confirms a Desktop Test That Buries the Search Button Under AI Shortcuts

Sal Moreno — Sports

Ron Washington turned a three-time batting champion into a +6-OAA second baseman in one calendar year — then the front office sold the student to Philadelphia and kept the teacher, which is the most coherent organizational philosophy a 49-70 club has produced all season. The part that keeps this from being a feel-good exit is the lockout: if talks blow up over the winter and Washington loses the spring, the Giants don't have a rebuild timeline — they have a waiting room.

• The School of Wash: On a Lost Giants Season, the Teacher Is the Only Thing Worth Keeping

Hal Brenner

The permits are doing the announcing, the companies are doing the classifying, and the search bar is doing its best impression of something other than a search bar — go find out what's actually true before anyone gets to name it for you.