Activation or Appropriation? How Hayes Street Became a Stage Set

What began as a temporary pandemic closure in 2020 has stretched into its fifth year. Somewhere along the way, the City stopped asking if the street should reopen and started inventing new reasons to keep it closed. The most powerful of those reasons arrived in 2023 under a single word: “activation.”

The Turning Point
When the permit came up for renewal that fall, SFMTA staff no longer spoke about circulation, safety, or neighborhood balance. Instead, they praised the block’s “activation potential”…a vague promise that more events might justify keeping the closure. The focus shifted from outcomes to optics: activity itself became the goal. By the end of the year, “activation” wasn’t a condition of the permit; it was the excuse for its continuation.

The Rebrand
In 2024 the fiction hardened. HVNA’s own representative and permit holder, Andrew, began marketing the 400 block as a “promenade,” staging private events and leasing out space without the consent of the broader business corridor. He became the de facto Hayes Street broker deciding who gets access, when, and under what terms. What was once a public street turned into a curated backdrop. Retailers who depend on visibility and access were never consulted; they simply woke up to announcements for the next “community activation.” Meanwhile, Hayes Valley’s actual public spaces: Patricia’s Green, Parcels R and S, the Living Alleys…sat underused. When existing squares/parcels and outdoor public spaces stand empty but a revenue-producing street remains closed for pop-up profit, that isn’t activation. That’s appropriation.

The Rhetoric of Inclusion
City officials and promoters love to say “streets are for people.” But in Hayes Valley, that tagline has become cover for exclusion. The “people” who benefit are the ones hosting and monetizing the events, not the merchants who built the corridor, nor the residents navigating detours, traffic, noise, and trash. To claim the closure “helps business” or “serves the community” while those same businesses plead for relief is beyond tone-deaf; it’s gaslighting. For many small merchants, weekends now mean blocked deliveries, lost parking, and lost revenue — proof of an unfair playing field where those who pay to be here compete with those who don’t.

The Larger Truth
On Hayes Street, the word “activation” has become code …code for who gets to control and define the space on weekends, and who gets left out of it. A neighborhood once built and thriving on daily rhythm has been turned into a stage set, its access rationed by permit and personality. Every broken policy in this city starts the same way — with a word that sounds better than the truth. Among the business corridor and the adjacent blocks off Hayes, the sentiment is nearly universal: the same few members of the HV “country club” now treat every facet of the neighborhood like a sandbox to experiment, extract, and then move on …while the rest of us are left to live with the mess. If Hayes Street is “for people,” then what are all the other open spaces they control (and the Entertainment Zone) for? Should we start re-purposing those too, just to keep their game alive? Hayes Street doesn’t need another rebrand. It was already working, thriving, balanced, and real before HVNA’s intervention turned it into a managed spectacle.

It is time they step back, take their hands out of the many cookie jars, and let the neighborhood breathe again. The only path to lasting success for Hayes Street is simple: those who claimed to save it must finally let it go and stop hiding control behind the guise of civic good.