Fans in San Francisco’s Thrive City cheered as they watched Spain come out on top over Argentina in the World Cup final on Sunday.

The big screen at Thrive City had been a popular spot for World Cup watch parties, and Sunday’s was not the exception.

With the match scoreless after 90 minutes and heading into extra time, fans watched every minute closely, reacting to it all.

Sunday’s win represents the second men’s title for Spain, and fans in Thrive City who waited for this day were beaming with joy.

“So happy Spain won, they are the better team. Argentina didn’t have any shots on goal, Spain dominated they deserve it. Second win, second World Cup win, we’re so happy and thrilled,” Dubai resident Ammar said.

“I am feeling like a pure happiness I don’t even know how to explain I am so happy,” San Francisco resident Guiani said.

Although not everyone in attendance was a fan of Argentina or Spain, they still wanted to be part of the energy during the final.

Fans in San Jose’s San Pedro Square celebrated Spain’s World Cup victory on Sunday.

Supervisor Jackie Fielder has sent a second letter of inquiry to the San Francisco Police Department, asking for more information on its choice to deploy officers in riot gear to arrest several individuals at Trans March and Stud Alley on June 26 and 27. 

Fielder is requesting more details about the types of officers deployed to both events, and whether those officers were on overtime or regular hours. Fielder also requested drone footage “of the 22-minute window of active enforcement at Trans March, between 7:40pm and 8:02pm,” and — if that was not available — “the number of officers that participated in the 22 minute window of active enforcement.” 

Twenty-six people in total were arrested over Pride weekend this year: six at Trans March on charges of vandalism, and 20 the next evening at the so-called Stud Alley party on charges of unlawful assembly and resisting arrest. Those arrests — and dramatic videos of the officers making them — have raised questions as to the size and scale of SFPD’s response.

In response to Fielder’s initial letter of inquiry, Chief of Police Derrick Lew rejected Fielder’s description of  SFPD’s response as “clashing with residents and visitors participating in Pride activities.”  

Lew instead described SFPD’s behavior at Trans March as the outcome of an effort to arrest several people who had been spotted using Super Soaker-style water guns filled with paint to spray-paint buildings and private security cameras. “A Department drone helped track two vandalism suspects to the area of Turk and Taylor Streets, capturing footage of them placing the water guns into a paper bag, discarding the bag on the sidewalk, and removing their outer clothing and face coverings in an apparent attempt to blend back into the crowd of law-abiding marchers,” Lew wrote.

“When officers moved to detain the two suspects,” Lew continued, they were blocked from doing so by a crowd “estimated at roughly 300 people” that linked arms, chanted for the suspects’ release, and threw glass bottles. “As officers attempted to place the two detained individuals into a patrol car, one person climbed onto the roof of the vehicle and was pulled down by officers, and another forced open the rear door in an attempt to free the suspects, while others pushed officers back.” 

“Given the size and intensity of the crowd, additional officers were called in,” Lew concluded.

Lew’s response did not answer questions from Fielder, such as what the total number of officers deployed to the scene of both events was. He stated only that “Pride Command” at the Southern Station was staffed with “approximately 24 personnel (three sergeants and 21 officers)” the  evening of Trans March, and that SFPD does “not have a complete count of the number of officers who responded to the Stud Alley incident.”  

In her second letter, Fielder quoted extensively from a letter from Rainbow Families Action, a group for parents of trans and gender-expansive youth, some of whom were present at the Trans March.

The letter described parents who were there with their children seeing, “A large pack of police officers came charging past us, weapons drawn and with a terrifying enough urgency that one officer fell. Police cars raced down streets filled with marchers who dove to the sidewalks. We couldn’t see where they were headed, and started to fear the worst. The Pulse massacre anniversary echoed in our heads … We were terrified. Our kids were terrified.” 

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Fielder’s letters of inquiry come as part of a larger push for answers about SFPD’s deployment of officers over Pride Weekend. In the three weeks since the initial arrests, there have been protests, petitions, and community meetings.

A letter with demands for change circulated by the organizers of the Trans March received more that 1,500 signatures, which organizers presented to the mayor’s office on Monday.  

At a police commission meeting on July 8, seats were packed with people wrapped in pride flags and holding signs with slogans like “Cops out of Pride” and “SFPD = Waste.” The meeting lasted nearly three hours as participants filed up to speak at public comment. Over and over, people asked what happened. 

“Why were officers pointing rifles at a peaceful legal gathering? There were children there after all,” one person asked. “How is this making our community safer?”

Trans March tied to Compton’s Cafeteria 60 years earlier

When Jace Ritchey, one of the marchers at Trans March this year, neared the intersection of Turk and Taylor on June 26, 2026, they were expecting to see dancing. 

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For years, Ritchey has attended the march without fail. This year, there were rumors that something special was going to happen. “There were whispers about it.” Ritchey said. “There was going to be a performance with dancing and music off the side of a building — like a literally off the walls performance.”

In August of 1966, 60 years ago, the Compton’s Cafeteria riots began at that same intersection, changing the course of history in San Francisco. The riots, in response to the harassment and arrest of trans people dining at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria for the crime of “female impersonation,” occurred three years before the Stonewall riots, in what historian Susan Stryker called the “first known instance of collective militant queer resistance to police harassment.” To commemorate the anniversary, march-goers this year were awaiting something special. 

The performance didn’t happen. Instead, as the protest neared its end, SFPD officers entered the crowd in an attempt to detain several people. In the letter, Lew writes that SFPD had identified the people that they sought to arrest through drone footage, but also wrote that the suspects had already discarded the Super Soakers they were using to spray cameras and buildings and tried to melt back into the crowd — meaning that it was unlikely that the crowd knew why SFPD officers had suddenly marched into their midst. 

“I started to hear screaming and shouting,” said Renee Coe, another march goer, at a rally outside of City Hall on Monday. “I saw that a squad car had driven into the crowd. In the middle of the crowd I saw dozens of police officers in full riot gear hitting people.” 

“The arrests in both incidents involved a small number of people out of many thousands who attended these events peacefully,” Lew wrote. 

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But for those attending the march, the distinction didn’t feel quite as clear. 

“People began to flee for their safety and the consensus was that the Trans March was being shut down, and there would be a mass arrest,” Ritchey said. “We were there to learn about and commemorate this event from 60 years ago, and suddenly we were living it.” 

In total, six people were arrested at Trans March for charges of felony vandalism, conspiracy, obstructing a peace officer, and battery on a peace officer. 

The next evening, on Saturday, June 27, a large crowd gathered downtown for the “Stud Alley” party on Kissling Street. The informal gathering had become large and well-known enough that some of the original attendees had tried to cancel it, “We’re starting to feel that the alley has outgrown itself,” they wrote in a post on Indybay. “Each year it gets bigger, more people show up and not all of them share our dreams.” 

The first two arrests occurred around 10 p.m., when two participants were arrested. The party reformed on nearby Washburn Street, which one participant described as “bigger and a lot more energetic.”

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Video footage shows officers forming a line on Howard Street between Ninth and Washburn streets, where the party was allegedly taking place. Many participants allege that they heard no dispersal orders before the line advanced into the alley. 

Nikki Caballero, who was at both locations of the party, says that she did not hear any dispersal orders at the second gathering. “They had given no warning,” Caballero said. “I’ve been to protests and marches before and I know that usually the police will give a dispersal order before they try to do a mass arrest,” Caballero said. 

“I saw people getting swung on,” Caballero recalled. “One young feminine person got thrown to the ground and dragged by her ponytail.”

“I know from the outside it looks like just a dumb street rave, but it really does mean a lot to a lot of people,” another participant said, who preferred to remain anonymous. “That is the most violence I’ve ever seen at one of these parties. That’s the most people I’ve ever seen getting hurt”

SFPD has been accused of heavy-handed policing in situations like this before, including at several anti-ICE protests last summer. But the department’s response has, for some, brought back memories of when police officers openly harassed and arrested queer people. “The minute I saw the press reports, I began thinking of the parallels historically and the ways in which these actions reflect long standing, deep seated institutional challenges with the SFPD,” said Gerard Koskovich, a queer public historian. 

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What stood out particularly, said Koskovich, was the intensity of SFPD’s response to a relatively low-level offense. “Spray painting a building is not going to harm anybody physically, right? It is not an activity that justifies police violence as a response, and police violence includes things like using pepper spray, using nightsticks, physically, violently arresting people.”

Koskovich cited events like the Halloween crackdown of 1979 and the Castro Sweep in 1989, where minor infractions provoked massive police crackdowns. 

“The past isn’t over,” Koskovich said. “It’s still present and reproducing itself.”

A towering 45-foot-tall nude woman that’s been turning heads along San Francisco’s waterfront is officially on the market — but anyone hoping to take her home better have deep pockets.

The massive metal sculpture known as “R-Evolution,” now renamed “I Am,” is up for sale or lease after its high-profile run at Embarcadero Plaza, according to creator Marco Cochrane.

Buying the 13,000-pound artwork won’t come cheap.

While Cochrane hasn’t listed an asking price, the costs are expected to climb well into the six figures. It cost roughly $300,000 just to install the giant sculpture in the city’s Embarcadero Plaza.

The colossal figure was created by Cochrane and modeled after California dancer and singer Deja Solis.

Cochrane said the statue is “up for sale and lease” and encouraged interested buyers to contact him if they want to make the eye-catching landmark their own.

“With this piece, Model Deja Solis explores and expresses what she feels like when she can just be…a whole person… a woman, radiating her energy into the world calm.. just breathing.”

The statue will be disassembled and leave San Francisco in October

The massive female is also known for its “breathing” period every day, when its metal chest expands and contracts. There is also two periods during the day when the statue is lit up.

A spokesperson for Building 180, who works with Cochrane, told SF Gate the statue “is on temporary loan and is available for purchase.” 

“We believe great public artworks shouldn’t return to storage — they deserve to find permanent homes where they can continue to inspire,” said the spokesperson. “Just as importantly, living artists deserve to be celebrated, supported, and paid for creating the work that enriches our communities.”

The huge woman was originally part of a privately funded project called Big Art Loop to bring 100 temporarily installed large-scale sculptures to public spaces in SF over the next few years.

Anyone interested in buying and installing the statue will need a crew to collect its 7 parts and bolt them together with the help of a crane and forklift.

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