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When Retweets Become ‘Incidents’: What the Permit Holder Reported to City Hall

A particular email has stood out during a recent record retrieval — not for what it proved, but for what it revealed. 1. The Hayes Street closure permit holder has been forwarding social-media posts about our account to the Supervisor as ‘incidents.’ On October 3, the permit holder sent an email chain titled “HVSafe barricade removal.” The message suggested there … Read post

SFMTA Hearing Materials Debrief: What the Public Is Not Being Told

posted at 11 am Our team has reviewed SFMTA’s staff report and slide deck released ahead of next week’s SFMTA Board hearing. What is being shown publicly and what is being left out raises serious concerns about transparency, data integrity, and decision-making during one of the worst financial crises in the agency’s history. SFMTA now faces a $322 million budget … Read post

How SFMTA Manipulated Sales Tax Data on Hayes Street

posted at 9am SFMTA’s presentation hides the downturn on the closed 400 block by combining its sales tax data with two other blocks. Our team’s review shows that this approach was not a neutral analytic choice — it materially masked the harm and produced a misleading economic picture for the Board. This analysis explains how the data were combined and … Read post

February 2025 HVNA Briefing: Early Plans for Permanent Hayes Street Closure

This internal presentation, dated February 10, 2025, shows early coordination between the Supervisor’s office and HVNA on making the Hayes Street closure permanent. Weeks into office, the Supervisor met with HVNA to discuss making the temporary Hayes Street closure permanent—without any public dialogue or community input.

Experiment or Exploitation? When temporary policy becomes permanent politics on Hayes Street.

The 400 block of Hayes Street is closed off on Fridays and Saturdays to project an Instagram version of urban joy. Little music setups sprout up, chalk boxes appear, tango lessons unfold, and bubbles drift through the air between Octavia and Gough; meanwhile, playgrounds, parks, living alleys, and public parcels within blocks in each direction sit underused. But that’s apparently … Read post

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 PointWhen the permit came up for renewal … Read post