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 fine, because a feel-good vibe is where governance lives these days.
A short-term pandemic experiment has become a permanent political project sustained by curated images, selective validation, and the feel-good rhetoric of “joy.” People walk where traffic once flowed, and city leaders call it an “activation.” To a visitor, it reads as a civic success story; but ask the small businesses who built this corridor—or the neighbors circling side streets in search of parking—and another story emerges: a neighborhood turned into a stage set, its access rationed by permit, its economic pulse fading.
Continuation of the ‘temporary’ gets rubber-stamped
When Shared Spaces launched in 2020 on Hayes Street, it was an intended lifeline —designed to help restaurants survive and allow for social distancing. The closure was meant to last only a few months, yet each extension blurred the lines between relief, entitlement, and a new vision.
The so-called outreach that followed never met the standard of real public dialogue. In 2020, a few tightly managed online town halls occurred, but the permit holder was quick to squash counter views or concerns. Since then, no broad civic engagement has taken place at the neighborhood level; Mayor Breed briefly offered a flash of visibility when her office convened a stakeholder meeting, but that, too, was quickly hijacked by the self-appointed “Faux Hayes Promenade” manager.
SFMTA permit renewal hearings have become the city’s only venue for “community input” … sessions that are emotional and polarized, more spectacle than substance. Business owners who voice frustration are dismissed as “anti-community,” while promoters of the closure fill the microphone with talk of “more vitamin D” and “joy.” At the most recent ISCOTT hearing, many of those same operators and small-business owners stayed silent, a quiet protest born of fatigue and the growing sense that decisions are already made. It’s a dynamic that flips the script entirely; those most affected are made to look unreasonable, while the orchestrators of exclusion perform reasonableness itself.
The hidden cost of “joy”
The real absurdity is geographic: Hayes Street sits beside an abundance of open spaces—Patricia’s Green, the Proxy plaza, Linden Living Alley, the Octavia parcels—all underused; rather than coordinating across agencies to use these spaces effectively, some City leaders and SFMTA officials have embraced the notion that blocking the heart of a thriving business corridor is visionary policy.
Supporters describe the closure as “vibrant.” Yet weekend-quality foot traffic has fallen, retail sales have dropped, and once-loyal customers complain they can’t access their favorite stores. Deliveries, curb access, and ADA accommodations remain unresolved.
And even if weekend gatherings are valued, San Francisco already has an established SFMTA event-permitting process for temporary street activations. Festivals, block parties, and community markets can and should happen under those rules. But an eighteen-hour weekend closure, the very window when retail depends on steady sales, is not a “win-win.” It drains the corridor’s peak hours while diverting spending toward temporary vendors and event-driven programming — a model that forgets the simple math of a neighborhood where storefronts pay more than $10,000 a month in rent just to stay open. For those who built their livelihoods here, the “activation” feels less like community and more like appropriation; an erasure of the daily rhythm and local economy that made the street thrive long before the buzzwords arrived.
Pattern recognition: from the Great Highway to Hayes Street
If this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen the same playbook before. The Upper Great Highway was also closed “temporarily” during the pandemic, rebranded as “for the people,” and repeatedly extended while meaningful review lagged. Neighborhoods fractured, traffic spilled into side streets, and a once-simple question: reopen or not? became a referendum on moral virtue.
Hayes Street is following that same arc; a local street became a policy experiment. City agencies mistook “no immediate catastrophe” for success and now govern by pilot project—start small, call it temporary, extend indefinitely, and dare the public to object.
Pandemic makes way for redesign by those with no vested interest
This isn’t about cars versus people; it’s about process versus power. The people most invested in the corridor: small retailers, residents, and service workers have been out-voiced by hospitality promoters and political intermediaries who speak the city’s new dialect of “vibrancy.” The language of joy has become a bureaucratic shield, transforming what should be public deliberation into performance.
The pandemic accelerated that shift. What began as a temporary initiative gave event organizers many with business interests far beyond the neighborhood the right to redesign it. The Hayes Street business corridor was built and sustained over decades by independent retailers who shaped its identity through care and consistency; yet this experiment has stripped control from them in favor of curated events and photo-ops. The irony is that this event-driven “revival” model was never needed here; Hayes Valley was already vibrant, built on everyday commerce, not weekend spectacle. When merchants point out that these crowds rarely translate into sales, they’re ignored by those who now feel entitled to call it success. San Francisco has somehow made it acceptable to tear down and redesign success so that a different set of people can take credit. When concerns arise, officials promise “further study,” the bureaucratic equivalent of suggesting they know better.
A call for restoration
The SFMTA Board doesn’t need to extend or study this any further. The verdict is already written on the street itself. Five years of fractured access, divided neighbors, and diminished commerce have proven that this experiment has run its course. It’s time to restore Hayes Street; to return a functioning public corridor to the people who live and work here every day.
San Francisco doesn’t need another “activation.” It needs accountability and balance. Reopen Hayes Street during retail hours and revitalize the open spaces that already exist for gatherings and events. Let parks be parks, plazas be plazas, and streets once again serve the daily rhythm of city life. Joy belongs in San Francisco; but true joy is shared, not imposed. Restoration, not continuation, is the measure of progress.