San Francisco, CA
Pain at the pump: One gas station in S. San Francisco near $7 a gallon
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – You’re not dreaming. Gas prices really are that high.
National average $4 a gallon, California $6
In fact, at the Shell station at 248 S. Airport Boulevard in South San Francisco, regular gas was going for $6.89 a gallon on Tuesday, about four weeks after the United States and Israel started a war in Iran.
Most people didn’t even stop to fill up; instead, drivers seemed to just pass the station by.
Juan Buenrostro did stop, though, and said it costs him about $300 to fill up his truck. He lives in Santa Cruz and had to drive to the Marina in San Francisco.
“It’s been crazy, man,” he said. “I have to work extra hours to make extra income. We’ve been struggling.”
That price is roughly double what the national average is. AAA said the average price of gas was $3.97 a gallon as of Tuesday, and the average price in California was $5.82.
Prices are so high that the state’s petroleum watchdog, the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight, has launched an investigation into possible price gouging, specifically at gas stations charging $7 or $8 a gallon.
A Chevron in downtown Los Angeles was selling gas for $8.71 a gallon this week.
Gas was selling for $8.71 a gallon at a downtown Los Angeles Chevron station. Photo: Fox11. March 23, 2026
Kate Gordon, CEO of California Forward and a former senior adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy, said $10 gas is not out of the question under certain conditions.
“Can you imagine a world where we’re paying $10 a gallon? … Yes, I can,” Gordon said.
Gas prices on March 24, 2026. Source: AAA
Last year, prices lower
A year ago, the average price in the United States was $3.13 a gallon, and the average price in California was $4.64 a gallon, according to AAA.
The highest average price for gas in California ever recorded was $6.44 on June 14, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
War in Iran
Regular gas was selling for $6.89 a gallon at a Shell gas station in S. San Francisco. March 24, 2026
Oil and gas prices have been soaring since the war in Iran began a month ago, and when Iran began retaliating against the United States by choking off the Strait of Hormuz – a critical oil passageway.
Gas prices are likely to remain elevated for some time, even if the war ends soon, because shipping and production have been disrupted and will take time to recover. Economists now expect slower growth this spring and for the year as a whole, as dollars that are spent on gas are less likely to be used for restaurant meals, new clothes, or entertainment.
Lower income households bearing the brunt
Lower and middle-income households are likely to be hit particularly hard, because they receive lower refunds, while spending a greater proportion of their earnings on gas.
Neale Mahoney, director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, calculates that gas prices nationwide could peak in May at $4.36 a gallon, based on oil price forecasts by Goldman Sachs, followed by slow declines for the rest of the year. The notion that gas prices decline much more slowly than they rise is so ingrained among economists that they refer to it as the “rocket and feathers” phenomenon.
In that scenario, the average household would pay $740 more in gas this year, nearly equal to the $748 increase in refunds that the Tax Foundation has estimated the average household will receive.
And it’s only worse in California.
The impact will likely worsen the “K-shaped” narrative around the U.S. economy, analysts said, in which higher income households have fared better than lower-income households. The bottom 10% of earners spend nearly 4% of their incomes on gasoline, Pantheon Macroeconomics estimates, while the top 10% spend just 1.5%.
San Francisco, CA
18-year-old dies in crash on I-80 near SoMa district
(KRON)– An 18-year-old is dead, and several others are injured after an early morning crash on eastbound I-80, near the 7th street off ramp in San Francisco’s SoMa district, according to California Highway Patrol San Francisco (CHP SF).
The crash occurred around 1:00 a.m. between a tractor-trailer, a Recology truck semi, and a grey Chevrolet Camaro, according to CHP officials.
Police said the Camaro was traveling eastbound just west of 7th Street when it made an illegal lane change to the right, colliding with the tractor-trailer as it was approaching the off-ramp.
Both vehicles crashed into the sand barrels at the top of the 7th Street off-ramp, officials said. The tractor-trailer continued onto the offramp, where it came to a stop, blocking all lanes.
After hitting the sand barrels, the Camaro continued, launching over the off-ramp bridge railing, where it dropped 25 feet and landed in the San Francisco Police Department Impound parking lot beneath the off-ramp and hitting several vehicles in the impound yard, police said. The Camaro landed upside down on top of another car.
Police said four people were inside the Camaro. The driver, an 18-year-old man, had moderate injuries and managed to get himself out of the car, police said. The right front passenger, a 17-year-old male, suffered moderate injuries as well.
The two rear passengers, both 18-year-old men, suffered major injuries. One is being treated at a local hospital, and the other was pronounced dead at 1:50 a.m. at the scene of the crash, police said.
The other three passengers in the Camaro were wearing seatbelts, and the 18-year-old who died was not wearing a seatbelt.
CHP SF officials do not believe alcohol or drugs were a factor in this crash.
San Francisco, CA
A 1906 fire burned 200,000 books. More than a century later, one was returned | CNN
Inside a charred book, pages dotted in soot stains tell the story of how San Francisco rose to the epicenter of a gold rush. Barely escaping the 1906 earthquake, this book should’ve burned completely.
The city’s oldest continually operating library presumed it did. After all, almost 200,000 volumes inside the Mechanics’ Institute did. That was until Randall Schwed donated the book to the library in December. Fumbling around an online marketplace, Schwed found “Echoes of the Foot-Hills” listed for $35.
“What’s interesting about this book is that it’s a survivor,” Schwed told CNN. “I needed to send it home.”
Fires heavily damaged the city during the 1906 earthquake and other fires followed. While no one knows which fire the book survived, here’s what we know about the mystery around it.
Library Manager Myles Cooper has been racking his brain for an explanation of how the book found its way home. In a fire after the earthquake that destroyed 200,000 volumes, how could this book emerge more than a century later?
Was it checked out? Was it rescued from the rubble of another fire? Was it hidden somewhere?
Cooper is certain the book is from the institute in San Francisco, evident by a stamp and a date: Dec. 10, 1874. Schwed, a collector, said his first instinct was to research the owner.
Agnes Quigley is inked at the top of the book’s first page.
In 1898, a woman by the name Agnes Quigley posted an advertisement in the San Francisco Call and Post newspaper, Schwed said.
The advertisement is about a young woman and reads, “From East, wishes situation as chambermaid and carer of children.”
There’s no way to prove whether the two Quigleys are the same person, Schwed said. But he has two theories as to how Quigley could have gotten hold of the book. She could have checked the book out. Or Quigley somehow stumbled upon the charred book and inscribed her name inside.
Both theories are plausible, Cooper agreed. He added another theory: There was a “lot of looting in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake.”
“Echoes of the Foot-Hills” isn’t the sole survivor, though. Other volumes, like archival and reference materials, were in a safe at another location during the earthquake, Cooper said. Another book, “Marriages, Rights, Customs and Ceremonies,” survived and was in circulation until 2001.
Now, the soot-spotted book is unavailable for checkout. It is locked in a display case beneath an 1854 map of San Francisco that also survived the earthquake. Nearby, an oversize atlas bears drawings of the earthquake’s activity created by pendulums.
“It’s really kind of like a library fantasy,” Cooper said. “It’s really magical.”
In San Francisco’s Financial District, the Mechanics’ Institute stands two stories tall. The membership organization is home to the nation’s longest-running chess club, writers’ groups and classes.
In the 1850s, the institute was established to provide gold miners with an education. Decades later, in January 1906, the institute merged with the Mercantile Library to form what was the city’s largest library. Three months later, the Institute lost that title.
“Our library was destroyed in ways that many other buildings were not. I mean, it completely fell down,” Cooper said. “There’s only one remaining wall and really only one brick story left, and everything was burned.”
The institute, like San Francisco, began discussing a plan to rebuild, Cooper said. They collected thousands of dollars and books in donations. Many of those books are related to architecture, mining and railroads – the things San Francisco needed to rebuild.
“It’s definitely part of the DNA of San Francisco to rebuild and rethink things, and that we always have a place to save history, and people’s stories won’t be lost,” Cooper said. “We will be a place that can have the capacity to contain those stories.”
As a longtime San Franciscan, Cooper said the earthquake’s story is kept alive through word-of-mouth. Today, no witnesses of the earthquake and fire are alive.
The institute plans to put acid-free cardstock inside the book to explain its story. It’s common practice for an owner to write their name inside an old book. “Echoes of the Foot-Hills” has had three owners in its more than 150-year lifespan: Quigley, Schwed and the institute.
San Francisco, CA
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