San Francisco

A city built by an emergency in 1849, destroyed by another in 1906, and rebuilt both times inside a decade. Gold, Angel Island, two bridges raised in the Depression, Howl on trial, the Haight, Harvey Milk, the epidemic, and every boom since, including the one currently deciding who can afford to stay.

A chronological documentary of 754 moments spanning 1776–2026 on Loreline.

Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-08-22

Eras

Everybody Came at Once, In 1848 San Francisco was a settlement of a few hundred people. Within two years it held tens of thousands, most of them young men who had crossed an ocean or a continent on a rumour. Ships were abandoned in the bay by crews who walked off to the goldfields and were built into the waterfront where they sat. The city was made by an emergency and has never entirely stopped behaving like one.
1906 Earthquake, At 5.12am on 18 April 1906 the San Andreas fault moved and the city fell over; then it burned for three days, because the water mains had broken with everything else. Around 3,000 people died and more than half the population was left homeless. The photographic record is extraordinary, including a film shot down Market Street days before, which turns out to be the last footage of a city that no longer existed by the end of that week.
Angel Island, Ellis Island processed arrivals in hours. Angel Island detained them for weeks, months, occasionally years, because its purpose was the opposite, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made it a place designed to keep people out. Detainees carved poems into the barrack walls, which is how we know what it was like. Chinatown grew as both a refuge and a confinement, and in 1942 the city watched its Japanese residents removed to camps.
Building the Bridge, Both bridges went up in the Depression, which is the point: the Bay Bridge opened in November 1936 and the Golden Gate in May 1937, built with public money at a moment when there was none. The Golden Gate was the first job site to hang a safety net beneath the work, it saved nineteen men, who called themselves the Halfway to Hell Club, and eleven still died.
Rock, A fort, then a military prison, then the federal penitentiary that held Capone. It closed in 1963 because it cost too much to run on an island. Then in November 1969 a group of Native American activists occupied it for nineteen months, citing an 1868 treaty, and turned the most famous prison in America into the most visible protest of the era. The Presidio, meanwhile, was an army post continuously from 1776 to 1994.
Six Poets at the Six Gallery, On 7 October 1955 Allen Ginsberg read Howl aloud in a converted garage on Fillmore Street. Lawrence Ferlinghetti published it, was arrested for obscenity, and won, a 1957 ruling that a work with redeeming social importance is not obscene, which changed what American publishers could print. City Lights is still open. North Beach was cheap then.
Haight, A neighbourhood of a few thousand people received something like a hundred thousand arrivals in the summer of 1967, most of them broke, and a media apparatus that covered it as a spectacle. The Acid Tests, the Human Be-In, the Dead, Owsley's supply, and the moment it stopped being a scene and became a destination. Shared with our Psychedelics and LSD archives, because it is the same story told from the city's side.
Harvey Milk, Milk was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977, one of the first openly gay elected officials in America, and was shot dead in City Hall a year later along with Mayor Moscone. When his killer got a manslaughter verdict the city rioted. Four years after that the same neighbourhood was the epicentre of the AIDS epidemic, and buried a generation while the federal government looked away.
Tech Boom, The city has had a boom roughly every fifty years and has never once handled one gracefully: gold, silver, shipping, the 1934 general strike that shut down the waterfront, the dot-com bubble, and the platform era. Each one arrived promising to remake the place and each one mostly remade who could afford to live in it.
What It Costs, A city of extraordinary wealth with people dying on its pavements, an argument about housing that has run for forty years without resolution, and a national commentary that treats it as either a utopia or a ruin depending on the week. Both readings flatten a place that has been simultaneously rich and broken since 1849.

2021-05-02 - Trailer for the ruth weiss documentary. ruth weiss escaped Nazi Europe as a ten-year-old refugee and became a jazz-backed poet in North Beach, one of the few women given standing in a scene remembered almost entirely through its men. The trailer for this Emmy-winning documentary sets out a life that spanned ninety-two years.
2021-05-17 - City Lights marks McClure's last book of poems. The first day of City Lights' memorial tribute to Michael McClure, who died in 2020, built around Mule Kick Blues, his final collection. Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles and Garrett Caples read from the work of the last surviving reader from the 6 Gallery bill.
2021 - San Francisco's Hidden History: The Trail Most Tourists Miss. Today, I spend six hours exploring San Francisco's Barbary Coast Trail. It is an urban hike that takes you from Downtown SF and walks you through some of the most historical sites in the city. The walk is steeped in the city's fascinating history starting in the Gold Rush Era to 1906; when it went
2021 - The Fight to Save the Cable Cars | HISTORY. The Cable Cars of San Francisco are unique, there are no others like it in operation anywhere in the world today! But preserving them has been quite an uphill battle. Here now is their story from inception and construction in 1873, to the present day (2021). To get exclusive content and videos fea
2021-11-10 - Lincoln Cushing on the home front that remade Bay Area labor. Historian Lincoln Cushing presents for the Rosie the Riveter Trust on the wartime home front seen through the Kaiser shipyards at Richmond. The period reshaped labor organising, race and gender relations, and health care, with the Permanente Health Plan opening to the general public on 21 July 1945. The Richmond yards delivered 747 ships before closing in 1945 and 1946.
2022-03-23 - How a Kaiser in-house poster became a labour icon. Historian Lincoln Cushing traces the Westinghouse-era poster now universally known as Rosie the Riveter from obscure workplace notice to political shorthand. The Rosie the Riveter Trust recorded the talk in 2022. Cushing's point cuts against the image: the real Richmond job was overwhelmingly welding, and welders were over forty per cent female by 1944.
2022 - San Francisco Cable Car. *This video received 2nd Place, Documentary for SCAN NATOA Awards 2023 and also was nominated in the California Emmy Awards 2023* Cable cars were invented by Andrew Smith Hallidie here in San Francisco in 1873. By 1947, the lower operational costs of buses prompted Mayor Roger Lapham to declare, "t
2022 - Emperor Norton: America's Most Unconventional Leader. Invest in blue-chip art for the very first time by signing up for Masterworks: Purchase shares in great masterpieces from artists like Pablo Picasso, Banksy, Andy Warhol, and more. How Masterworks works: -Create your account with crypto wallet or traditional bank
2022-07-22 - A maritime museum traces the long career of Harry Bridges. An hour-long museum programme from Foss Waterway Seaport on the Australian-born longshoreman who chaired the 1934 strike committee and led the ILWU from its 1937 founding until 1977. Employers and federal prosecutors spent three decades trying to deport him. The talk was recorded and published in 2022.
2023-03-06 - San Francisco before the strike of 1934. The opening chapter of the Strikestory documentary, on the conditions that produced the walkout: the shape-up on the Embarcadero, the company union, and the Depression-era waterfront. It sets up the eighty-two-day coastwide strike and the four days in July when roughly 130,000 San Francisco workers stopped work.
2023-03-23 - Sid LeProtti and the music of the vice quarter. Jazz researcher Dave Radlauer on pianist Sid LeProtti and the Barbary Coast music scene, built on the district's own venues and recorded recollections. The quarter's clubs included Purcell's So Different Club at 520 Pacific, Black-owned and home to the So Different Jazz Band, and the Thalia at 732 Pacific with its double-tiered slummers' balconies. LeProtti remembered the literal last night in March 1921, when a corporal walked in and stopped the music at one o'clock.
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2023 - How They Work: SF's Cable Cars and PCC Cars. Experience the thrill of San Francisco's famous cable cars as we take you behind the scenes to uncover the secrets of these incredible historic marvels. How do they manage to tackle some of the steepest hills in any city without an engine? We'll show you! We also explore the PCC Streetcars, the mo
2023 - How they work - what's happening out of sight on the San Francisco Cable. Here's a more in-depth look at the workings of San Francisco's unique cable cars. What goes on below the slot - how does the cable stay in tension and how does the grip work? I've already looked at the history and taken a ride in this film This is a closer look at the
2023 - The Last Surviving Cousins Of The San Francisco Cable Car. Cable tramways - or in North America, cable cars - were once common in cities across the United States. But famously, San Francisco is the only American city that still operates them today. Less famously, the United Kingdom used to have cable tramways too. And one of them still survives! But why did
2023 - Garcia on Wolfe. Jerry Garcia on The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe's 1968 account of Kesey's bus, the book that fixed the era's image for everyone who wasn't there.
2024-01-12 - Supreme Court agrees to hear the anti camping case. In January 2024 the Supreme Court agreed to review the Ninth Circuit rulings that barred West Coast cities from clearing encampments when shelter beds were unavailable. The case, Grants Pass v Johnson, was decided on 28 June 2024 in favour of the cities, and San Francisco began aggressive sweeps the following month.
2024-02-10 - Waymo robotaxi burned by crowd in Chinatown. On the evening of 10 February 2024, during Lunar New Year weekend, a crowd surrounded a driverless Waymo Jaguar on Jackson Street in Chinatown, smashed its windows and threw a firework inside, and the unoccupied car burned out. It was reported at the time as the most destructive attack on a driverless vehicle in the United States, and became the defining image of San Francisco's backlash against autonomous vehicles.
2024-02-10 - Crowd smashes and burns a driverless taxi in Chinatown. On the evening of 10 February 2024, during Lunar New Year weekend, a crowd surrounded a driverless Waymo Jaguar I-Pace on Jackson Street in Chinatown, broke its windows, sprayed it with graffiti and threw a firework inside. The car burned out completely; it was carrying no passengers and nobody was hurt. The burning white robotaxi under Chinatown lanterns became the most widely circulated image of the city's backlash against autonomous vehicles.
2024-02-10 - Crowd burns a driverless Waymo in Chinatown. On the Saturday of Lunar New Year weekend, a crowd surrounded an unoccupied Waymo Jaguar I-Pace on Jackson Street in Chinatown, smashed its windows, sprayed it with graffiti and threw a firework inside. The car burned out completely and no one was hurt. It was described at the time as the most destructive attack on a driverless vehicle in the United States.
2024-02-10 - Waymo robotaxi burns on a Chinatown street. On the Saturday night of Lunar New Year weekend a crowd surrounded a driverless Waymo Jaguar I-Pace on Jackson Street in Chinatown, smashed its windows and threw a firework inside, and the car burned out completely. No one was aboard and no injuries were reported. It was described at the time as the most destructive attack on a driverless vehicle in the United States.
2024-02-10 - Waymo robotaxi burned in Chinatown on Lunar New Year. On the evening of 10 February 2024, during Lunar New Year weekend, a crowd surrounded an unoccupied Waymo Jaguar I-Pace on Jackson Street, smashed its windows, sprayed it with graffiti and threw a firework inside; the car burned out completely. No one was injured, and it was reported as the most destructive attack on a driverless vehicle in the United States to that point.
2024-02-12 - Investigators work to identify who torched the robotaxi. Two days after the Chinatown burning, a reporter package covered the effort to identify the people who destroyed the vehicle. The attack came as Waymo was expanding driverless service across San Francisco, and it became the defining image of local resistance to autonomous vehicles.
2024-02-19 - Chinatown press conference demands robotaxi shutdown. Nine days after a driverless Waymo was burned on Jackson Street, labor and community groups held a press conference in San Francisco's Chinatown calling for driverless vehicles to be pulled from the streets. The footage records the organised political response to the February 2024 attack rather than the attack itself.
2024-04-17 - Police name teenage suspect in Waymo arson. San Francisco police announced on 17 April 2024 that they had identified a 14-year-old as a suspect in the burning of a driverless Waymo Jaguar on Jackson Street in Chinatown that February. The fire, set during Lunar New Year weekend after a crowd surrounded and smashed the unoccupied car, was reported as the most destructive attack on an autonomous vehicle in the country to that point.
2024-06-14 - Walking the emptied mall under its old name. A walkthrough of the mall months after the receiver renamed it Emporium Centre San Francisco, reaching back past the mall era to the nineteenth-century department store that occupied the Market Street site. Westfield and Brookfield had stopped paying the mortgage in 2023 and ceded the property to lenders; Bloomingdale's was still trading as the last anchor.
2024-07-06 - Skaters move a block to bomb the hill. After the 2023 Dolores Hill Bomb ended in mass arrests, police tried to shut the event down with barricades, and skaters relocated one block away to bomb a parallel slope. The turnout was far smaller than the previous year, and the fire department reported at least two injuries, both to skaters without helmets.
2024-07-06 - Skaters move the hill bomb one block from the barricades. After the 2023 event ended in mass arrests, police barricaded Dolores Street to stop the annual hill bomb. Skaters relocated to a parallel slope on Church Street and bombed it instead; officers were present but did not intervene, and the gathering was far smaller than the previous year.
2024-08-10 - SoMa residents kept awake by honking driverless cars. Residents of South of Market reported that Waymo vehicles converging on a parking lot were honking at each other through the night. The complaint marked a quieter register of the city's autonomous-vehicle conflict, in which the machines became a neighbourhood nuisance rather than a target.
2024-08-13 - Robotaxis honk at each other overnight in South of Market. Residents near a Waymo parking lot reported being woken around four in the morning by driverless cars honking at one another as they manoeuvred in the depot. The complaint marked a quieter register of the same argument as the Chinatown fire: what it means for a residential block to host autonomous vehicle infrastructure.
2024-10-02 - The Harry Bridges School of Labor teaches the general strike. A 2024 session of the Harry Bridges School of Labor on the 1934 San Francisco general strike, covering the conditions that produced it, the strike itself and its aftermath, and screening part of an older ILWU documentary. Bridges led ILA Local 38-79 in 1934 and went on to serve as ILWU president until 1977. The union still stops work in every West Coast port each 5 July.
2024-11-06 - Elections department counts ballots as mayoral race hangs. The day after the 2024 election, San Francisco's Department of Elections was still processing close to 160,000 ballots, leaving the mayoral result unresolved under ranked-choice tabulation. Daniel Lurie ultimately led through all fourteen rounds of counting.
2024-11-07 - London Breed concedes the mayoralty to Daniel Lurie. Two days after the election, incumbent mayor London Breed conceded to Daniel Lurie, who had won the final round of ranked-choice counting by more than 34,000 votes. Breed had led the city since 2018; her defeat by a first-time candidate marked the pivot point of San Francisco's post-pandemic politics.
2024-11-07 - London Breed concedes the mayoral race at City Hall. Mayor London Breed addressed reporters at City Hall on 7 November 2024 after conceding to Daniel Lurie, ending her tenure as mayor. Lurie led every round of the ranked-choice count and took the final round by more than 34,000 votes, unseating an incumbent with a candidate who had never held office.
2024-11-07 - Breed concedes the mayor's race to Lurie. KRON4's report on London Breed's concession, posted to social media on the afternoon of 7 November 2024, in which she thanked the city that raised her. Breed had served since 2018 and was the first incumbent San Francisco mayor unseated in decades.
2024-11-07 - London Breed concedes the mayoral race. Election coverage of Mayor London Breed conceding to Daniel Lurie, two days after voting closed and while ranked-choice rounds were still being tabulated. Breed lost the final round of ranked-choice tabulation by more than 34,000 votes to a candidate who had never held elected office.
2024-11-08 - Mayor-elect outlines his plans in first address. Daniel Lurie's first public remarks after London Breed's concession, reported by KPIX. He ran on public safety, drug enforcement and downtown recovery, and would be sworn in two months later.
2024-11-08 - Lurie speaks after Breed concedes the mayoralty. Associated Press footage from 8 November 2024 of Daniel Lurie at a news conference the day after Mayor London Breed conceded. Lurie, a Levi Strauss heir and Tipping Point founder who had never held elected office, led through all fourteen rounds of ranked-choice tabulation and won the final round by more than 34,000 votes.
2024-11-08 - Lurie speaks after Breed concedes the mayoral race. Wire footage of Daniel Lurie addressing supporters at a news conference the day after Mayor London Breed conceded. Lurie, a Levi Strauss heir and founder of the anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point, had never held elected office and led through all fourteen rounds of ranked-choice tabulation.
2024-11-15 - Homelessness advocates weigh the incoming administration. Following the 2024 election, homelessness service providers and advocates set out what they expected of the incoming Lurie administration. The question followed a year in which the Supreme Court's Grants Pass ruling and a state executive order had cleared the way for aggressive encampment sweeps.
2024-11-18 - Lurie sits for his first local interview as mayor-elect. Daniel Lurie gave his first Bay Area television interview after winning the mayoral race, weeks before taking office. The Tipping Point founder and Levi Strauss heir had never held elected office and had led through all fourteen rounds of ranked-choice tabulation.
2024-11-25 - Mayor-elect Lurie interviewed on his plans for downtown. Three weeks after his election, Daniel Lurie sat for a televised interview on returning workers to downtown offices, public safety, and broadening the city's economy beyond technology. Lurie, a Levi Strauss heir and founder of the anti-poverty group Tipping Point, had never held elected office before defeating incumbent London Breed.
2025-01-04 - Mayor-elect joins neighborhood cleanups before taking office. On the weekend of 4 January 2025, three days before his swearing-in, Daniel Lurie hosted volunteer street cleanups at Ocean Beach, Ingleside and Bayview. The events set the presentational tone of an administration that would make visible street conditions its central measure.
2025-01-07 - Interfaith ceremony on the eve of inauguration. A KPIX report on the interfaith unity ceremony Daniel Lurie held on 7 January 2025, the day before he was sworn in. The gathering opened the transition from London Breed's administration to the city's forty-sixth mayor.
2025-01-07 - City prepares for the swearing-in of its new mayor. A report filed on the eve of Daniel Lurie's inauguration, covering the preparations at City Hall and the incoming administration's stated plans for law enforcement. Lurie was sworn in the following day.
2025-01-08 - Lurie delivers his inaugural address. The new mayor's speech to the crowd immediately after being sworn in. He took office facing a fentanyl crisis he had promised to attack in his first six months, and would shortly be granted emergency contracting powers by the Board of Supervisors to do it.
2025-01-08 - Oath of office administered to the forty-sixth mayor. The oath itself, administered after remarks by Lurie's wife Becca Prowda, completing the transfer of the mayoralty from London Breed. Breed had conceded on 7 November 2024 after losing a ranked-choice contest she led as the incumbent.
2025-01-08 - Inside City Hall on inauguration day. An unedited walk through San Francisco City Hall on the day Daniel Lurie was sworn in as the city's forty-sixth mayor. The footage records the building, the crowd and the ceremony staging rather than the speeches, following the day as it ran.
2025-01-08 - Full ceremony as Lurie is sworn in as mayor. ABC7's unedited recording of the 8 January 2025 inauguration of Daniel Lurie as San Francisco's forty-sixth mayor. He took office having never held elected office, after unseating an incumbent mayor two months earlier.
2025-01-08 - Steve Kerr speaks at the mayoral inauguration. Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr delivered remarks at the ceremony installing Daniel Lurie as the forty-sixth mayor of San Francisco. The appearance placed the city's basketball franchise, resident at Chase Center since 2019, inside the civic ritual.
2025-01-08 - Lurie sworn in and lays out his agenda. A local television report on the inauguration of Daniel Lurie and the priorities set out in his first address as mayor. He entered office having campaigned on the fentanyl crisis, street conditions and downtown recovery.
2025-01-08 - Agency footage of the mayoral oath at City Hall. News agency material from 8 January 2025 showing Daniel Lurie signing the oath of office indoors with his family and then taking the oath at the outdoor ceremony on the City Hall steps. The wide shots record the civic setting of the transfer of power from London Breed.
2025-01-08 - Full inauguration ceremony for Mayor Daniel Lurie. Unedited coverage of the 8 January 2025 ceremony at City Hall at which Daniel Lurie was sworn in as San Francisco's forty-sixth mayor. Lurie, a Levi Strauss heir and founder of the anti-poverty organisation Tipping Point, took office having never previously held elected office.
2025-01-08 - Inaugural address sets the new administration's agenda. A broadcast package on the agenda Daniel Lurie laid out in his inaugural address: a fentanyl emergency response, expanded shelter and treatment capacity, and a push to refill downtown. He could not lawfully declare a state of emergency on taking office, since city code reserves that power for sudden and unforeseen events, and the Board of Supervisors later voted him the equivalent powers.
2025-01-08 - Chinatown marks the new mayor's inauguration. Street footage of Chinatown observances tied to the swearing-in of Mayor Daniel Lurie. The neighborhood's organized turnout for a new administration is a recurring feature of San Francisco civic transitions.
2025-01-08 - Lurie sets out his agenda after taking office. The new mayor's inaugural address on Civic Center Plaza, in which Lurie promised to restore trust in city government. Within his first months the Board of Supervisors granted him emergency powers over the fentanyl crisis, waiving competitive bidding on some contracts and allowing private donations toward shelter beds and public-safety hiring.
2025-01-08 - Full inauguration ceremony for the forty-sixth mayor. Daniel Lurie was sworn in as San Francisco's 46th mayor on 8 January 2025, having won the November 2024 election through all fourteen rounds of ranked-choice tabulation. The ceremony is recorded here in full, from the procession to the inaugural address setting out his agenda on fentanyl, shelter and downtown recovery.
2025-01-08 - Lurie sworn in, names fentanyl the first priority. Daniel Lurie took the oath of office as San Francisco's forty-sixth mayor and said the fentanyl crisis would be his administration's first priority. He could not legally declare a state of emergency on day one, and the Board of Supervisors later voted him extraordinary powers to act on it.
2025-01-08 - Crowd at the mayoral inauguration on Civic Center Plaza. Attendee footage from the swearing-in of Daniel Lurie on 8 January 2025, held outdoors on Civic Center Plaza before a crowd reported at around three thousand. The open-air ceremony was staged as a public event rather than a City Hall formality.
2025-01-08 - Daniel Lurie sworn in at Civic Center Plaza. The full inauguration ceremony for San Francisco's 46th mayor, held outdoors at Civic Center Plaza. Lurie was the first person since 1911 to win the office without having previously served in city government, taking over after defeating the incumbent in November.
2025-01-18 - Activists march through the city before the inauguration. Two days before Donald Trump's second inauguration, demonstrators marched through San Francisco streets against the incoming administration's immigration and reproductive-rights positions. The march came months before the June 2025 downtown protest against ICE arrests that ended in more than 150 arrests.
2025-01-21 - Bloomingdale's to close its Union Square flagship. Broadcast report on Bloomingdale's announcing it would close its San Francisco flagship. With Nordstrom gone since August 2023, the departure emptied the second of the San Francisco Centre's two anchors and left the mall without a department store.
2025-01-21 - Bloomingdale's to close its Market Street flagship. Bloomingdale's announced in January 2025 that it would close its store at the San Francisco Centre in the spring, in favour of suburban locations. With Nordstrom gone since August 2023, the departure left the mall without either of its anchor tenants.
2025-02-15 - Chinatown Lunar New Year parade for the Year of the Snake. The full length of San Francisco's Lunar New Year parade for the Year of the Snake, filmed from the route. The parade has run since the Gold Rush era and remains the largest event of its kind outside Asia, staged through the same Chinatown streets where a driverless taxi had been burned during the previous year's holiday weekend.
2025-02-15 - Culinary showcase during NBA All-Star Weekend. A food event staged alongside NBA All-Star Weekend, the first held at Chase Center since the arena opened in 2019. The All-Star Game itself was played on February 16, 2025, and the surrounding programme spread across San Francisco and Oakland.
2025-02-16 - Curry takes All-Star honours in the Chase Center game. The 74th NBA All-Star Game was played at Chase Center on February 16, 2025, the first held in the arena since it opened in 2019, before an announced crowd of 17,539. Stephen Curry was named most valuable player. The weekend was one of the largest events the city hosted between the pandemic and Super Bowl LX.
2025-02-16 - Inside Chase Center for the All-Star Game. The 74th NBA All-Star Game was played at Chase Center on 16 February 2025, the first All-Star Game held at the arena since it opened in 2019, before an attendance of 17,539. Stephen Curry was named most valuable player and the weekend's earlier events ran across the city and Oakland Arena.
2025-03-29 - How Did The Six Gallery Reading Get Its Name? - Im a 50s Baby. How Did The Six Gallery Reading Get Its Name? Step back in time to a moment in American literature that still sparks creativity and inspiration. In this engaging video, we’ll take you to the Six Gallery in San Francisco, where a gathering of poets and writers came together on October seventh, ninete
2025-04-03 - Bloomingdale's clears its shelves as the mall empties. Shoppers filled Bloomingdale's for a seventy-percent-off clearance while the surrounding San Francisco Centre stood largely vacant. The store's announced departure early in 2025 removed the building's second anchor, Nordstrom having closed in August 2023.
2025-04-07 - Zara to open a new flagship on Union Square. A year after closing its Union Square store, the Spanish retailer announced a new San Francisco flagship, later confirmed as more than forty thousand square feet in a historic four storey corner building at 400 Post Street. The announcement was made alongside the mayor and treated as evidence that national brands were returning to the district.
2025-04-16 - Groundbreaking for affordable housing on South Van Ness. The Mission Economic Development Agency and the Chinatown Community Development Center broke ground on Casa Adelante at 1515 South Van Ness, a project bringing 168 affordable homes to the Mission District. The ceremony marks construction starting on subsidised housing during the city's long argument over what housing costs.
2025-05-30 - Mayor unveils a budget against an eight hundred million deficit. Lurie presented his first budget proposal, built to close a shortfall approaching $800 million. The gap defined the fiscal frame of his first year in office and preceded the department job cuts proposed the following spring.

…634 further moments continue the chronology here. Full text archive: /loreline-text/san-francisco.md

2025-06-08 - Driverless cars burned during immigration enforcement protests. On 8 June 2025 protests against federal immigration enforcement and the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles spread through downtown San Francisco, and driverless vehicles were vandalised and set alight. Waymo went on to curtail service across parts of the city, publishing a map of the affected zones on 13 June. A later downtown protest that month ended with more than 150 arrests.
2025-06-09 - Mission District rally against immigration raids. Protesters gathered in the Mission District as immigration enforcement raids swept California and the National Guard was deployed to Los Angeles. Demonstrations continued across San Francisco through June 2025; a downtown protest later that month ended with more than 150 arrests.
2025-06-09 - Union leaders denounce immigration raids at downtown rally. Union members rallied in downtown San Francisco on June 9, 2025 against federal immigration enforcement, with labor leaders speaking to a chanting crowd. The rally came during the wave of Bay Area protests over ICE arrests and the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles; a downtown demonstration later that month ended with more than 150 arrests.
2025-06-10 - Police confront anti-ICE protesters near Twenty-Fourth Street. Splinter groups broke from a larger San Francisco demonstration against federal immigration enforcement, and a McDonald's beside the 24th Street BART station was graffitied before police moved in. The June 2025 protests followed ICE arrests and the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles; a downtown march that month ended with more than 150 arrests.
2025 - Nine lions dance at the Chinatown night market. A lion dance with nine lions, a green dragon and martial arts weapon demonstrations at the Chinatown Night Market. The night markets were introduced to draw evening foot traffic back to the neighbourhood's commercial blocks.
2025-06-29 - Pride parade and festival fill Market Street. Walking footage of the San Francisco Pride parade and Civic Center festival, filmed the day of the event. Pride remains the city's largest annual public gathering and one of the few that reliably fills Market Street end to end.
2025-08-19 - A filmed portrait of the City Lights publisher. A biographical profile of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, born 1919 and dead in February 2021, tracing the Paris bookshop world he came of age in and the San Francisco store it inspired. It covers his role as the publisher who took on Howl and the ACLU-backed defence he arranged before the book was ever printed in England.
2025-08-27 - SoMa encampments clear out before the sweep arrives. The city posted notice that it would sweep encampments in South of Market, and most tents had gone before crews appeared. Residents interviewed said clearing sidewalks moved people rather than housing them, the standing objection to a sweep policy the city retained after settling the Coalition on Homelessness lawsuit.
2025-09-20 - Lowriders roll through the Mission District. The King of the Street lowrider parade ran through the Mission District on 20 September 2025. Lowriding is a Chicano tradition rooted in the Mission and long the target of cruising bans, and the parade is one of the neighbourhood's largest annual street gatherings.
2025-10-06 - Uniqlo announces a return to downtown. Uniqlo, which shut its three-floor flagship at 111 Powell Street in 2021 during the downtown retail exodus, announced it would reopen at 801 Market Street in the former Old Navy flagship. The announcement was read locally as the clearest reversal of the departures that had emptied Union Square.
2025-10-23 - Mission housing nonprofit marks fifty-two years. The Mission Economic Development Agency gathered partners, staff and community members at the War Memorial Green Room for its fifty-second anniversary, under the theme La Union Hace la Fuerza. Mayor Daniel Lurie addressed the event, one of the Mission's principal affordable-housing and community-development organisations.
2025-10-31 - Halloween block party fills a Noe Valley street. Avila Street's annual Halloween block party, filmed the length of the evening as neighbours and visitors gather among decorated houses. The neighbourhood parties have absorbed much of the costumed Halloween crowd since the city ended the official Castro street celebration.
2025-11-01 - Castro Night Market on Halloween night. Walking footage of the final Castro Night Market of 2025, held on Halloween, with costumed crowds, music and food vendors filling the street. The market is a city-permitted successor to the neighbourhood's Halloween street gatherings, which were shut down in the 2000s after repeated violence.
2025-11-12 - Waymo opens freeway rides between San Francisco and San Jose. Waymo began public freeway robotaxi service on 12 November 2025, merging its Bay Area territory into a single zone of more than 260 square miles running down the Peninsula. Riders in the early-access group could hail a car in San Francisco and be driven roughly forty-five miles to curbside at San Jose Mineta airport, turning a city-centre novelty into regional infrastructure.
2025-11-12 - Waymo opens freeway rides to the public. Waymo began carrying public passengers on freeways in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, opening the service to early-access riders first. In the Bay Area the change merged the service area into a single zone of more than 260 square miles running on US-101 and I-280, reaching down the Peninsula. It marked the point at which the robotaxi stopped being confined to the city core.
2025-11-12 - Waymo opens paid robotaxi rides on freeways. Waymo began carrying public riders on freeways in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix on 12 November 2025, and merged its Bay Area territory into a single zone of more than 260 square miles reaching down the Peninsula. The change moved the robotaxi from a downtown novelty to regional infrastructure, with rides possible from near City Hall to San Jose.
2025-11-13 - Atmospheric river brings wind and rain to the city. Broadcast coverage of an atmospheric river striking San Francisco and the wider Bay Area with heavy rain and destructive gusts. Thousands lost power, flights were delayed or cancelled, and an 80 mph gust was recorded in the Marin Headlands.
2025-12-15 - Union Square merchants describe a retail rebound. By late 2025 Union Square was signing tenants again after the flagship exodus of the pandemic years, with Pop Mart, Nintendo and John Varvatos among the arrivals. Uniqlo had announced in October that it would return downtown at 801 Market Street, the former Old Navy flagship, four years after closing its Powell Street store.
2026-01-03 - Mayor signs a reparations fund for Black residents. Lurie signed a measure establishing a reparations fund for San Francisco's Black residents, drawing both support and criticism because the fund carries no taxpayer money for direct payments. The signing came as the city faced a budget shortfall of nearly eight hundred million dollars.
2026-01-08 - Residents take stock of the mayor's first year. A local news package marking one year of the Lurie administration, gathering residents' assessments of the public-safety priority the mayor set on taking office. Contemporaneous reporting recorded 588 overdose deaths in 2025 against 635 the year before, roughly 500 treatment beds delivered against a promised 1,500, and a street tent count down to 162 structures by December.
2026-01-09 - Mayor describes the talks that halted the federal immigration surge. Lurie discusses the conversations with President Trump that preceded the calling off of a threatened surge of federal immigration agents into San Francisco. The plan, announced by the Department of Homeland Security, was scrapped in October 2025 after Trump cited conversations with the mayor and with tech executives who live in the area.
2026-01-09 - Gig drivers protest as robotaxis stall in a blackout. Gig workers gathered in San Francisco on 9 January 2026 after driverless vehicles stalled on city streets during a power outage. The protest followed two years of friction over autonomous vehicles, from the Chinatown burning in February 2024 to Waymo's opening of freeway service across a single 260 square mile Bay Area zone in November 2025.
2026-01-11 - Crab sold off the boats at Fisherman's Wharf. After weeks of delay to the Dungeness season, crabbers began selling their catch directly to buyers at Fisherman's Wharf at about eleven dollars a pound. It was the fourth year of off-the-boat sales, a working remnant of the waterfront economy inside a tourist district.
2026-01-15 - Lurie delivers his first State of the City address. Daniel Lurie gave his first State of the City address, recorded in full by the city's government channel. He pointed to declining crime, an expanded police hiring pipeline, added treatment capacity under a recovery-first approach to fentanyl, and a family zoning plan alongside permitting reform, arguing the city was on the rise.
2026-01-20 - Downtown mall announces its final week of trading. A broadcast report from the week the San Francisco Centre confirmed it would shut for good. The Market Street mall opened in 1988 and was expanded in 2006; it lost its Nordstrom anchor in 2023, was handed to lenders after its owners stopped paying the mortgage, was renamed the Emporium Centre in 2024, and lost Bloomingdale's in 2025.
2026-01-24 - Mayor backs state legislation targeting sideshows. Mayor Daniel Lurie announced his endorsement of state legislation intended to curb sideshows in San Francisco. The brief broadcast item records one of the administration's street-enforcement positions during its second year.
2026-01-24 - Last week of the San Francisco Centre mall. ABC7 reports on the imminent permanent closure of the San Francisco Centre, which opened on Market Street in 1988 and shut for good on 24 January 2026. Nordstrom left in 2023 and Bloomingdale's announced its exit in January 2025, emptying both anchors before the building's owners handed it to lenders.
2026-01-24 - A last walkthrough of San Francisco Centre. A full walk through San Francisco Centre in its final days, recording the spiral escalators under the glass dome, the vacated storefronts and the concourse connection to the Powell Street station. The mall closed permanently on 2026-01-24 after thirty-seven years.
2026-01-24 - Last days of the San Francisco Centre mall. The San Francisco Centre, opened in 1988 on Market Street and expanded in 2006, closed permanently on 24 January 2026, two days ahead of its announced date. Its owners had stopped paying the mortgage in 2023 and ceded the building to lenders; Nordstrom left in 2023 and Bloomingdale's in 2025.
2026-01-24 - Final walkthrough of every floor before the mall closes. A floor-by-floor record of the San Francisco Centre in its last days of trading, shot before the building closed permanently on 24 January 2026, two days ahead of its announced date. The spiral escalators rising under the glass dome were among the most recognisable interiors in the city.
2026-01-25 - A farewell party for the shuttered downtown mall. San Franciscans gathered for an impromptu goodbye at San Francisco Centre the weekend after it closed for good. The Market Street mall opened in 1988, was expanded in 2006, and shut permanently on 2026-01-24, two days ahead of its announced date.
2026-02-03 - Security briefing before Super Bowl week. Federal, state and local agencies briefed reporters in San Francisco on preparations for Super Bowl LX, played on 8 February 2026 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara with the fan facing week staged in the city. The mayor ran a street cleanup and safety operation through the Emergency Operations Center, and the city opened shelter beds for unhoused people displaced during the week.
2026-02-03 - Agencies outline Super Bowl security and confirm no ICE role. NFL, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and local police chiefs set out security plans for Super Bowl LX, covering road closures, flight restrictions and bag policies, and stated that no immigration enforcement agents were assigned. The game was played at Levi's Stadium on February 8 with the fan-facing week staged in San Francisco.
2026-03-02 - Drivers and Teamsters rally against robotaxis at City Hall. Professional drivers and Teamsters members rallied outside City Hall before a Board of Supervisors committee meeting on autonomous vehicles, arguing that robotaxis and workplace automation threaten their livelihoods and public safety. The rally followed Waymo's expansion onto Bay Area freeways in November 2025, which turned the service from a city-centre novelty into regional infrastructure.
2026-03-02 - Drivers and unions rally against robotaxis at City Hall. Teamsters Joint Council 7 and SEIU 1021 members rallied on the City Hall steps to demand that Waymo vehicles be removed from San Francisco streets over safety concerns, timed to a city hearing. By late 2025 Waymo had extended its Bay Area service onto freeways and across a single 260-square-mile zone.
2026-03-03 - Mayor calls for hundreds of job cuts across city departments. Facing a budget deficit, Mayor Daniel Lurie proposed eliminating hundreds of positions across municipal departments. The shortfall had run near $800 million during his first year, and the cuts set the terms of the city's second post-pandemic budget argument.
2026-03-03 - City departments ordered to cut five hundred jobs. The mayor directed departments to eliminate at least five hundred positions to cut one hundred million dollars in personnel spending. San Francisco entered 2026 facing a shortfall of nearly eight hundred million dollars, the fiscal backdrop to a year in which office leasing recovered faster than street level activity.
2026-03-07 - Crowds fill the Chinese New Year parade route. Tens of thousands turned out for San Francisco's Chinese New Year Parade, the largest Lunar New Year celebration outside Asia, with Olympic gold medallist and city native Eileen Gu serving as grand marshal and a drone show accompanying the procession. The parade runs through the same Chinatown streets where a driverless taxi was burned during the 2024 holiday weekend.
2026-03-25 - Rideshare drivers rally outside the Waymo depot. Uber and Lyft drivers organised by SEIU California massed outside Waymo's San Francisco depot to demand passage of SB 1246, a bill regulating autonomous taxis, arguing enforcement standards differ between human and driverless fleets. The rally followed Waymo's expansion onto Bay Area freeways the previous November.
2026-05-27 - Howl Audio Commentary. Howl is a 2010 American film which explores both the 1955 Six Gallery debut and the 1957 obscenity trial of 20th-century American poet Allen Ginsberg's noted poem "Howl". The film is written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and stars James Franco as Ginsberg.
2026 - Dragon dance and firecrackers through Chinatown. The Lunar New Year parade ran through Chinatown with lion and dragon dances, floats and firecrackers. The parade is the city's largest annual Chinese community event and fills the same streets where a driverless taxi was burned during the 2024 holiday weekend.
2026 - Mayor Lurie delivers his first State of the City address. In his first State of the City address Daniel Lurie pointed to declining crime, an expanded police hiring pipeline, added treatment capacity and a recovery-first approach to fentanyl, alongside a Family Zoning plan, permitting reform and childcare subsidies. The speech closed his first year in office.
2026 - Walking the Chinatown street fair on parade day. A continuous walk up Grant Avenue from California Street to Broadway during the Chinatown Community Street Fair, held on the day of the Lunar New Year parade. The fair fills the neighborhood's main commercial spine with drumming, vendors and crowds, and remains among the largest Lunar New Year celebrations outside Asia.
2026-06-28 - Pride parade fills Market Street. Bystander footage of the San Francisco Pride parade along Market Street. The march remains among the largest annual gatherings staged in the downtown core.
2026-06-28 - Highlights from the Pride parade on Market Street. Broadcast highlights of the 2026 San Francisco Pride parade down Market Street. The parade remains the city's largest annual public gathering and its most durable civic ritual.
2026-06-28 - Pride parade fills Market Street again. The 2026 Pride parade drew visitors from outside the region along its Market Street route. The march remains the city's largest annual public gathering and one of the few that reliably fills the downtown corridor.
2026-07-04 - Police in riot gear clear Mission District fireworks. Block after block of the Mission District hosted impromptu illegal fireworks displays on the Fourth of July. San Francisco police in riot gear closed streets after 10pm and dispersed hundreds of people.
2026-07-29 - Mayor pushes charter reform onto the ballot. A report on three ballot measures promoted by Mayor Daniel Lurie to amend the city charter. The push came in a year when San Francisco voters were also being asked to decide new transit taxes against a projected Muni funding shortfall.

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