San Francisco, CA
Curbside EV charging in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO – New curbside chargers for electric vehicles are in place in San Francisco, as part of a program to bring innovators to San Francisco called Yes SF.
Pilot Program
What we know:
On Friday, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the cutting-edge technology took place at 55 Fillmore Street near Duboce Park.
“I’m really happy to be the first one to use this service,” Mario Landau-Holdsworth, a San Francisco EV owner, said as he plugged in a cable to charge his Chevy Volt.
The two chargers in the pilot program are built by the Brooklyn-based company It’s Electric. The company provides people with their own cable for their EV to plug into a curbside charger. That is an important piece of infrastructure for EV owners who don’t have a garage.
“I was an EV early adopter, but the challenge is if you don’t have a garage, you can’t charge your car at home,” Landau-Holdsworth said.
“I’ve been emailing SFMTA trying to get these installed and finally, after five years, it’s happened,” Adam Gill, another San Francisco EV owner, said as he plugged in his Tesla.
“The goal right now is to see what works in San Francisco and then the long-term goal is to scale by the hundreds,” Tyrone Jue, Director of the San Francisco Environment Department, said.
Grant money
This pilot program is part of Yes SF, a larger citywide public-private partnership which offered 14 innovation grants in 2023. The Yes SF program aims to pave the way for environmental start-up entrepreneurs to bring their green technology solutions to San Francisco.
Tiya Gordon, Co-Founder & COO of It’s Electric received one of the grants.
“They helped us move through all the right doors of all the right offices to speak to the right people. They really held our hand,” Gordon said.
The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce opened a Yes SF headquarters earlier this year at 220 Montgomery with a workspace and café.
“It’s a partnership between the Chamber of Commerce, Deloitte, Salesforce, Citibank. We work very closely with the city of San Francisco on this,” Emily Abraham, the SF Chamber of Commerce Yes SF Director, said.
Abraham says eleven of the 14 innovators have deployed their products in the city over the past year.
This week, Yes SF announced a second round of awards, with one dozen more innovators sharing in a $1-million fund.
“The hope is that they’ll use price-funding to hire up, open space, expand in San Francisco. And that’s a big point of this location here too,” Abraham said.
Successful model
The World Economic Forum is also a partner and says Yes SF is so successful, they want to replicate the model in other cities and countries.
“It’s exceeded expectations,” said Jeff Merritt, World Economic Forum Urban Transformation Director. “We’ve now built out a sustainable innovators network so that we can provide a lot of support to entrepreneurs from around the world who want to come to San Francisco to not only set up shop but deploy their sustainability solutions.”
“We announced in January this year in Davos at the World Economic Forum to scale this globally,” Merritt said, noting the plan is to expand the Yes SF model to a Yes Cities program in Bangalore, India and a city on the East Coast within the coming years.
San Francisco, CA
Holiday travel at San Francisco airport being affected by winter weather
With rain and wind in the forecast, it may make some people’s holiday travel a little more difficult.
At San Francisco International Airport, more than 400 flights have been delayed. Maggie Nelson’s was delayed coming into the airport.
“It seemed like everyone was in a panic or a hurry to get anywhere,” said Nelson. “The plane was crowded. There was a lot of turbulence.”
Nelson flew in from Redmond, Oregon, usually a quick flight to SFO, just under two hours, but she ended up being delayed nearly that long.
“Originally, we were supposed to take off at 2 p.m. and then our flight got delayed to 2:50 p.m., and then it got delayed again,” Nelson explained. “I don’t think we took off until 3:30 p.m. because of high winds or something.”
California is in the middle of an intense storm period. Two systems bringing heavy rain and strong winds, and Nelson could feel all of it.
“The turbulence was pretty bad,” said Nelson. “There was a point where I got nauseous. I was like ‘Are we there yet? Is this over?’”
While she’s grateful to be on solid ground, Shon Alkaslasi was about to take off or at least try to.
“United sent a text that wind might affect operations,” said Alkaslasi.
He arrived early, just in case of holiday traffic, now he’s anticipating he may be delayed. He’s travelling home to Los Angeles, another area in the middle of the storms.
“I would say I’m not the biggest fan of turbulence so I am a little bit nervous about that,” Alkaslaski detailed. “But if they say it’s totally safe to travel, I’m not usually concerned but the feeling of bumps on a plane is just not the most comfortable and I’ll have to deal with it.”
Airport Duty Manager Crystal David said overall things haven’t been too bad, but West Coast flights, like Alkaslasi’s and Nelson’s, are the ones most likely to be impacted.
“SFO is on a ground delay program throughout the night, through midnight and so right now it’s about 127 minutes because of winds,” said David. “Mostly it’s the west coast flights are that are being affected right now with delays of up to 35 minutes for the west coast traffic.”
She said the delays could continue into the morning, when even stronger winds are expected. She recommends travelers check in with their airlines.
But for Nelson, she’s just glad she made it home.
“I used to live a lot closer so it’s a lot harder to come home now so when I do get to come home, I try to take advantage of that and appreciate it,” said Nelson.
San Francisco, CA
Executive chef of new buzzy San Francisco restaurant Bourbon Steak visits ABC7
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — ABC7 got in the holiday spirit Monday with the executive chef of San Francisco’s buzziest restaurants that just opened in October — to a lot of fanfare.
We’re talking about Bourbon Steak, inside the Westin St. Francis Hotel.
Legendary celebrity chef Michael Mina’s latest opening brings him back to San Francisco, and everyone came to celebrate: a cable car, Mayor Daniel Lurie, and Warriors superstar Stephen Curry — a partner in this venture who created the bourbon bar Eighth Rule inside the restaurant.
But they’re not just about style. They are first and foremost about steaks.
Because they are on the menu for so many holiday gatherings, we are delighted that Bourbon Steak executive chef Kevin Schantz joined us on ABC7’s “Midday Live.”
Watch the full interview in the player above.
If you’re on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live
Copyright © 2025 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.
San Francisco, CA
Thousands in one San Francisco neighborhood heading into another day without power
While many people in San Francisco have their power back, there are still thousands without it.
At a press conference Monday afternoon, Mayor Daniel Lurie said 4,000 PG&E customers in the Civic Center area are still in the dark. One of them is Parvathy Menon.
“We haven’t been able to take showers or use the bathroom,” said Menon. “Our electricity is out. I think all our food started rotting about a day in.”
She lives at 100 Van Ness. She said she’s grateful she’s going out of town tomorrow, but even that’s posing some problems.
“I actually have to pack for a trip tonight, and we’re doing it in full darkness,” Menon explained. “We are using our phone lights, we are using our laptops to charge our phones.”
Her apartment is pitch black, except for the small amount of streetlight coming through the windows. She said the apartment complex has been doing all they can to help, like providing some food and water.
They have a small generator to power some lights in the lobby and one elevator for the nearly 30-story apartment building.
Menon said she is most upset about the lack of communication from PG&E.
“Initially, when this started, we were supposed to get power back within the day, then it went to the next day and now they just stopped calling us completely,” said Menon.
San Francisco City Hall was closed for the day because of the outage, but Mayor Daniel Lurie held a press conference with Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Bilal Mahmood.
Lurie said what residents have gone through is unacceptable, and he’s lost trust in PG&E’s estimated times for repair.
“They gave us a timeline that they believe in, but it’s not one that I can have confidence in any longer,” Lurie said. “So, we don’t have full faith that 6 a.m. is the time tomorrow.”
“Shame on PG&E for having this happen,” said District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey. “This is a company that has had a lot of reliability issues and the jury is out on what happened, but if this is negligence, I think it’s going to be really important for people to understand they have rights as customers.”
Leaders encourage everyone who lost anything to file a claim with PG&E; they could be eligible for reimbursements. Mahmood is calling for a hearing after the new year to get some answers for PG&E.
“What went wrong, why weren’t they able to address it this weekend and what steps are they taking to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” said Mahmood about the question he has for the utility company.
PG&E said the outage happened after a fire at its Mission Street substation left significant damage, but the cause is still under investigation.
Meanwhile, Menon has been refreshing social media looking for good news, but she’s starting to lose faith.
“They’re really doing nothing to help us here, so I’m losing hope,” said Menon.
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