Free Republic

Experiencing a city on foot gives you the freedom to amble from one attraction to another, discovering hidden bars, quirky shops, and lesser-known spots along the way. It’s also free and reduces your carbon footprint. But what makes a city pedestrian-friendly? In 2023, the sustainable living nonprofit organization Smart Growth America released their Foot Traffic Ahead report, which analyzed factors such as how easily residents in America’s largest metro areas can walk from their homes to amenities, the distances between blocks, and access to public transportation. So, lace up some comfortable footwear and explore the most walkable cities in the...

The left loves it when professional athletes get political — as long as they do it for the right candidate. On Sunday, the San Francisco 49ers held on for a 30-24 victory over the Dallas Cowboys at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. During post-game interviews on the field with NBC’s Melissa Stark, defensive end Nick Bosa took the opportunity to display a quick non-verbal message to fans as he appeared and pointed to his white and gold MAGA hat before walking away. The intent was clear as Bosa wanted fans to know which candidate he was supporting in next...

Nick Bosa may have landed himself in hot water with the NFL following his actions after the San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night. The Niners enjoyed a 30-24 win over Dallas in the ‘SNF’ fixture. Quarterback Brock Purdy had a stellar game, completing 18 of 26 passing attempts for 260 yards and a touchdown while showing some surprising athleticism as a scrambler. Bosa also had an impressive outing as he made life pretty difficult for the Cowboys offensive line, also making three tackles, a sack, and two QB hits. After the game, he popped up behind...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A pair of local parents were in for a shock Halloween night after discovering a stray piece of candy in their child's bag of needles. According to Jim and Grace Kohler, the candy was not discovered until late Halloween night, after their son Ben had gotten home and was sorting through his haul of used hypodermic needles and shattered crack pipes. "He dumped it all out on the kitchen table and we were just sort of poking through it all," Jim recalls. "Then I caught a glimpse of a brown, red, and blue wrapper through...

On Thursday’s broadcast of WBUR’s “Here and Now,” Managing Director of the Immigration Defense Unit at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office Francisco Ugarte stated that if 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is elected the “idea that Trump could just simply get away with engaging in mass deportation without any semblance of a resistance is really kind of far-fetched.” And cited California’s Supreme Court saying that ICE agents shouldn’t be in courthouses because that deters people from going to court as an example of this.

A mysterious new street sign that reads ‘No Parking’ because of a 'drug injection site' has been installed on a street corner teeming with open-air drug dealers and users in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. The official-looking sign, affixed to a pedestrian crossing pole on the corner of Sixth and Jessie streets, is not a city sign, according to the Department of Public Works. It was not clear Thursday morning who was responsible for it. The sign reads: “No Parking 12:01 a.m. to 4 a.m. SUN thru SAT DRUG INJECTION SITE” *** Peaslee said the Sixth Street corridor between Mission and...

An unhinged Florida man horrifically pummeled a deaf and nonverbal passenger while he was sleeping until the cabin was spattered with blood on a cross-country United Airlines flight this week. The brutal beatdown happened about two hours into United Airlines Flight 2247 from San Francisco to Washington Dulles on Monday. It started when Everett Chad Nelson, 44, got up to use the bathroom, according to a criminal complaint. While returning to his seat, Nelson stopped at seat 12F and “without notice, began physically attacking a sleeping male passenger by punching him repeatedly in the face and head until blood was...

San Francisco 49ers player Jonathan Feliciano, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, is blasting the left and the media for attacking a comedian who appeared at Donald Trump’s huge rally at Madison Square Garden last weekend. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe — whose schtick is as an insult comic — quickly came under fire for joking that Puerto Rico is an “island of garbage” at the October 27 rally in New York. But NFL player Feliciano was not at all offended. The 49ers guard took to his X account to scold people for getting mad at a comedian. “The only Puerto Ricans...

An investigation by French newspaper Le Monde found that the highly confidential movements of U.S. President Joe Biden, presidential rivals Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and other world leaders can be easily tracked online through a fitness app that their bodyguards use... Le Monde found that some U.S. Secret Service agents use the Strava fitness app, including in recent weeks after two assassination attempts on Trump, in a video investigation released in French and in English. Strava is a fitness tracking app primarily used by runners and cyclists to record their activities and share their workouts with a community. Le...

A few months after the temporary stewards of San Francisco’s struggling downtown mall attempted to rename the place, the San Francisco Centre is again the San Francisco Centre this week, they announced. It’s been just over a year since the mall’s previous owners, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Brookfield Properties, defaulted on a $558 million loan and chose to abandon the 800,000 square foot property. Now, it’s headed to a public auction on the steps of the Memorial Court on Van Ness Avenue on Nov. 14.

At issue is a vaccine mandate for BART workers in San Francisco that was imposed in 2021.. Rail transit officials in California’s Bay Area have been ordered to pay more than $7 million to transit workers who were fired because they refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine years ago. On Oct. 23, a federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California sided with six former San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) workers who had refused to get the vaccine for religious purposes. BART was ordered to pay the group more than $7.8 million, with...

(SAN FRANCISCO) – Teamsters are calling on the San Francisco Ethics Commission to investigate Waymo, the autonomous vehicle (AV) subsidiary of Google, after several of the company’s employees illegally failed to register as lobbyists for meetings with San Francisco International Airport (SFO) officials. Waymo was pressuring the officials for access so their driverless cars could “map” the airport. “These companies know that their products are unpopular, unsafe, and bad for working families, so they’re trying to steamroll policymakers and the public by putting AVs on the road before anyone has a chance to find out just how dangerous they are,”...

San Francisco voters are poised to decide the fate of a ballot measure that would expand abortion in the city during the upcoming election. Mayor London Breed stood alongside pro-abortion leaders at a Planned Parenthood facility in June to announce Proposition O, which Breed herself co-authored. Also called the “San Francisco Reproductive Freedom Act,” the proposition would loosen zoning laws, allowing abortion facilities to operate on any floor in a building in a non-residential zone, establish an official Department of Health website pointing pregnant women to abortion businesses, establish an “Abortion Provider Appreciation Day” in the city, and establish a...

George Gascón is trailing his challenger, former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, in recent polls, and much of the incumbent’s support from 2020 has vanished.Hochman has unleashed a media blitz blaming Gascón for high-profile crimes, but the county race reflects a broader shift among voters across the state.Gascón has tried to maintain a positive spin, noting that he came from behind to defeat then-Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey in 2020. This year’s election is on Nov. 5. It’s a Saturday morning in late September, and Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón’s voice is hoarse as he struggles to film a TikTok...

Masks are coming back to the Bay Area — for a limited time.... The orders are aimed at reducing the spread of flu, COVID and other respiratory viruses in medical settings during the winter virus season that typically spans late fall to early spring. For the most part, the orders apply to health care workers only and echo similar local health orders announced last year for the 2023-24 winter virus season. But two local jurisdictions, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, are also extending the requirement to visitors — and Santa Clara County is also asking patients to mask up....

OAKLAND, Calif. - Mask mandates are returning to several Bay Area counties as an increase in COVID-19 cases overlaps with the cold and flu season. The local health orders require masks to be worn in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and other healthcare facilities, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Napa counties have reinstated the mask requirements.

Westbrook Partners is poised to lose the Four Seasons San Francisco at Embarcadero hotel at a foreclosure auction. The auction comes six months after the Florida-based investor led by Paul Kazilionis defaulted on a $72.5 million loan tied to the 155-room luxury hotel at 222 Sansome Street, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Late last week, the landlord of the 345 California complex affiliated with Chicago-based Metropolis Investment Holdings, sued Westbrook for allegedly failing to pay nearly $400,000 in rent and fees. Westbrook declined to comment on the complaint. The investment firm is still negotiating with its lender to try to...

SFGATE senior culture editor Dan Gentile watched M.I.A.'s politically provocative set at Portola Music FestivalDespite being barely a month out from the election, not many musicians at Portola Music Festival had much to say about politics. But there was one exception: M.I.A. Since her debut mixtape “Piracy Funds Terrorism” in 2004, M.I.A. has always been a political provocateur. As a child, she was displaced by the Sri Lankan Civil War, and her art has always been steeped in revolutionary rhetoric, refugee undertones and nothing-to-lose swagger. Her combative attitude, paired with frenetic club beats from the likes of Diplo and Switch,...

Kamala Harris received poor job performance reviews when she worked as a civil lawyer for the City of San Francisco, according to a copy of city documents obtained by DailyMail.com. The now vice president took a job with the City of San Francisco after she resigned from the San Francisco district attorney's office after she led a poorly organized coup to overthrow Chief Deputy District Attorney Darrell Salomon. 'I've become disillusioned and disappointed with the top leadership of the district attorney's office,' Harris said publicly as she resigned, complaining about the 'dysfunctional' leadership and 'low level of morale' in the...

San Francisco is gearing up to shut down 9% of its public schools in a desperate move to fix a massive budget deficit. With student enrollment plummeting and pandemic relief funds drying up, the city is set to close or merge 11 out of its 121 schools, leaving the future of thousands of students and teachers hanging in the balance. The proposal, which was announced late Tuesday, comes as the school district faces a whopping $113 million in cuts by 2026, or risk a dreaded state takeover. “Without a balanced budget and a plan to consolidate our resources, we risk...