San Francisco, CA
Hundreds Line Up in San Francisco to See 7-Foot Tall Corpse Flower That Smells 'Like a Porta Potty'
A corpse flower blooming in San Francisco is drawing in crowds anxious to smell the plant’s unique scent!
The California Academy of Sciences has named the rare plant Mirage, and the museum announced that they were excited to host their first-ever corpse flower bloom this week.
“It’s happening! Mirage, our corpse flower, is blooming,” the academy said in a tweet on Tuesday. Their post also contained a photo of the roughly seven-foot tall flower.
Adding that biologist Tim Wong would be hosting a Q&A for interested persons that evening, the academy also noted that Mirage could be seen in-person at the Osher Rainforest starting at 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday.
“Come catch a whiff!” the post concluded.
Corpse flowers, known scientifically as Amorphophallus titanum, get their name from the powerful stench they produce while in bloom — which is only for two to three days once every year or two, according to the United States Botanic Garden.
“It smells like rotten flesh and carrion, so you might get notes of all of those different things, people say garlic, sweaty feet, rotten flesh,” Wong told San Francisco’s ABC News 7 of the extraordinary plant and its extraordinary smell. “I actually kind of thought it smelled a little bit like a porta potty, like a collection of scents.”
He added that those wanting to witness the bloom may want to do so quickly.
AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
“The opportunity to see one of these in bloom is so ephemeral, the blooms last about one day so you really have a short window of time to come see the flower open.”
And Mirage is unique in many ways.
As of 2021, the USBG estimated that there were fewer than 1,000 individual corpse flowers remaining in the wild — making seeing one of these plants in person a remarkable experience.
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The San Diego Botanic Garden refers to a corpse flower bloom as “a rare and special event,” stating that “most plants require seven to ten years to produce their first blooms, and bloom only every four to five years thereafter.”
Wong called the timing of the bloom “very unusual” because the academy is at the end of their typical season.
Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty
“If you can take off work, come check out the flower, I would definitely recommend it if you can, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for many people,” the biologist said.
Their natural habitat includes the tropical rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia, and the bloom can reach heights of up to 8 feet.
Mirage was just a tiny flowering plant when it was presented as a gift to the California Academy of Sciences on behalf of the Conservatory of Flowers.
For those unable to attend the special show in San Francisco or see the corpse flower in its natural habitat, a live-stream of the academy’s exhibition can be viewed here.
San Francisco, CA
Missing man, 85, last seen in South San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A Silver Alert was activated Thursday by the California Highway Patrol after an 85-year-old man was reported missing from South San Francisco.
Zosimo Carmen is described by authorities as 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighing 155 pounds. He has gray hair and brown eyes.
Carmen was last seen around 2 a.m. on Thursday in the area of James Court and Livingston Place in South San Francisco. He was wearing a brown flannel shirt and blue sweatpants.
The Silver Alert was activated for San Mateo and San Francisco counties.
Anyone who sees Carmen is asked to call 911.
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco Giants honor Willie Mays with highway designation on what would have been his 95th birthday
The San Francisco Giants announced a fitting tribute to one of the best players in the history of Major League Baseball on Wednesday afternoon.
Willie Mays, the legendary center fielder and Hall of Famer, would have turned 95 on Wednesday. And the Giants, in conjunction with Mays’ Say Hey Foundation, along with several other sponsoring parties, will be designating a portion of a local freeway as the Willie Mays Highway.
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Hall of Famer Willie Mays tips his cap during introductions for Game 1 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Detroit Tigers in San Francisco on Oct. 24, 2012. (Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee/AP)
This designation will cover a portion of Interstate 80 where the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge reaches the city near Oracle Park, the Giants’ home stadium. Signs on I-80 have already been installed with the new designation, a way for Mays to become a permanent part of the San Francisco Bay Area and his home franchise.
Giants personnel spoke about the honor and what it meant to have a “reminder” of his infectious spirit and personality next to the stadium.
DODGERS’ SHOHEI OHTANI BLASTS HOMER IN WIN, ACHIEVES STATISTICAL FEAT UNSEEN SINCE WILLIE MAYS
“What an incredibly special way to honor Willie’s legacy,” said Larry Baer, Giants president and CEO according to MLB.com “For generations, this portion of I-80 on the Bay Bridge has carried Giants fans into San Francisco, and now it will forever carry Willie’s name—a lasting reminder of the joy and inspiration he brought to this city. It is also fitting that this same span of the bridge is named after former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown Jr., two great San Franciscans.”
San Francisco Giants players Orlando Cepeda and Willie Mays stand at the Polo Grounds in New York on Sept. 11, 1963, during a game against the New York Mets. (Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images)
Mays came to the Bay with the Giants in 1958, and has a list of accomplishments to rival any other player in MLB history. A 24-time All-Star, two-time MVP, 12-time Gold Glove winner and 660 home runs, the sixth-highest number by an individual player.
Jeff Idelson, the executive director of the Say Hey Foundation, also issued a statement celebrating the announcement.
“Wille was more than a baseball great, he was a part of the fabric that helped define San Francisco culture for more than a half century,” said Idelson. “Not only is this a fitting way to recognize his lasting contribution to the community, but it furthers Willie’s legacy as a national icon.”
Willie Mays visits PS 46 in Harlem, next to the site of the former Polo Grounds where the New York Giants played before moving to San Francisco in 1958, on Jan. 21, 2011, in New York City. (Michael Nagle/Getty Images)
One of the state senators who introduced the bill paving the way for this designation was Bill Dodd from nearby Napa, who also added, “I cannot think of anyone better to welcome people traveling across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco than Willie Mays. He was an inspiration to so many of us growing up. I was so pleased to have had a part in making this happen.”
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The combination of speed, power, defense and joy Mays played the game with is incredibly rare, which is why his legacy is still viewed with such importance today, nearly 53 years after he retired. Hopefully, the next generation of baseball fans will stay familiar with his career thanks to this reminder.
San Francisco, CA
DoJ closes San Francisco immigration court in move critics say worsens case backlog
The Department of Justice shuttered a major San Francisco immigration court last week, a decision attorneys say could exacerbate the Bay Area’s immigration case backlog.
Early in the year, news reports emerged of the closure of the courthouse on 100 Montgomery Street slated for January 2027. Over the last year, the Department of Justice had fired 20 of the court’s 22 judges (the Trump administration has been accused of culling certain immigration judges, in favor of those more amenable to its ongoing mass deportation agenda).
The justice department’s executive office for immigration review (EOIR) described the court’s closure as “cost effective” in a statement last week. A smaller court in San Francisco remains open, but the majority of court operations will move to an immigration court 35 miles (56km) away in the East Bay city of Concord.
The Concord court opened in 2024 amid a Biden-era push to trim the ballooning immigration case backlog. As of September 2025, nationwide there are 3.75m pending immigration cases, according to data from the EOIR. In San Francisco, there are 120,000, per the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac), a research center at Syracuse University.
Some legal experts doubt the Concord court, where six judges were recently removed, has the capacity to inherit the closed San Francisco court’s caseload. A justice department spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
“With so few judges at the Concord court, we’re going to see a lot of people waiting years and years and years to have their cases heard,” said Milli Atkinson, director of the San Francisco Bar Association’s immigrant legal defense program.
“These delays deeply affect people. They affect people’s ability to have resolution … to have an answer and closure, whether a positive one that they’d hoped for or a negative one,” said Shira Levine, a former judge at the San Francisco immigration court, who is now legal director for the Immigrant Institute of the Bay Area.
The passage of time could also weaken the presentation of a case.
At asylum hearings, people are “presenting a lot of oral testimony from themselves and from witnesses. Over years, testimonial memories can fade,” Levine said. “Even if you submit the written evidence, years later, someone may not be available to testify in support of that evidence.”
The San Francisco court’s closure coupled with the exodus of judges has sown “a lot of chaos”, Atkinson said. There are court dates being pushed back and others being pushed up as a result of recent changes.
Atkinson expects that there several individuals will fall through the cracks of the court system.
“A lot of migrants have unstable addresses or don’t receive their mail,” she said, also adding that notices in English may not be heeded by those who don’t speak or read it.
People could then be placed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s radar if they miss their hearings, Atkinson said.
“If someone gets the wrong date, gets the wrong time, gets the wrong place, doesn’t file something exactly correct … the consequences are in some cases – where they really do have a serious fear of return – life-threatening.”
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