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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Fresh out of Stanford University, a young AI founder wanted to take the next step in the hallowed San Francisco startup playbook: purchase a so-called hacker house, fill it with his small team, and buckle down to build a company. He set his sights on Potrero Hill, a quiet, suburbanesque neighborhood that has experienced a breathless glow-up after OpenAI established its headquarters in the adjacent Mission Bay three years ago.

For his first-choice home, the founder wanted to come in strong. He bid 30% over asking, all cash. It wasn’t enough. He didn’t want to take any chances on the next home he found, so offered 50% over the list price, all cash, no contingencies.

“I thought we got it for sure,” the founder’s real estate agent, Milan Jezdimirovic, told The Real Deal. Jezdimirovic had attended every open house for the property, and made it clear to the seller his client was willing to be aggressive in purchasing the home. To go 50 percent over asking, all-cash, in the relatively modest Potrero Hill felt like a home run. Yet, they were outbid again. 

Welcome to Area AI.

“I was speechless,” he said. “We did everything we could. It’s incredible what the ceiling is, I mean, there is no ceiling.”

As the artificial intelligence industry announces itself as the latest California gold rush, it has resuscitated San Francisco in ways old and new. Long desirable neighborhoods such as Presidio Heights, Cow Hollow and Jackson Square have seen their fortunes return from a pandemic lull. Yet, the city’s southeastern district, a paved bayside paradise known for loading docks, warehouses, and wide streets has seen a surprising surge in demand as major artificial intelligence companies and their battalions of one-percenter employees continue to plant their flags.

The moniker developed around 2023, when OpenAI relocated to 1515 Third St in Mission Bay, the neighborhood just south of McCovey Cove, the channel most famous as a landing spot for the home runs of Giants legend Barry Bonds.

Although divorced from the hubbub of the Financial District, Mission Bay attracted its own share of heavy hitters from the last tech boom. Now, much of that space is occupied by OpenAI, which took over nearly a million square feet previously occupied by names such as DropBox, Uber and Old Navy. Companies such as chipmaker Nvidia and crypto-exchange platform Coinbase have also expanded into the neighborhood. While the rest of the city continues to struggle with office vacancy rates, Mission Bay is nearly out of room, according to JLL.

That energy has had a gravitational pull. The University of California San Francisco recently spent nearly a billion dollars to expand its school of dentistry in Mission Bay, and the San Francisco Unified School District is preparing to open Mission Bay Elementary in August, its first new public school in decades.

“That whole area of the city is up and coming,” said Derek Daniels, San Francisco research lead for Colliers.

Mission Bay’s rise wasn’t random. The San Francisco Giants organization had been eyeing a redevelopment of Mission Rock – a northern carve out of the Mission Bay neighborhood — as far back as the early 2000s. The Giants, with developer Tishman Speyer, completed the first of the four-phase, 28-acre, $2.5 billion megaproject in 2024. It included two new office towers — with tenants such as Visa’s global headquarters, the Golden State Warriors and Blue Bottle — more than 500 housing units, 550,000 square feet of new office space, and 52,000 square feet of retail. Phase 2 doesn’t have a start date, but is slated to begin soon. 

The effect has spilled into the residential market. The AI Boom has brought a flood of employees making base salaries around $500,000 who want to live near their offices, and the competition for Mission Bay’s apartments and condos has gotten fierce, with bidding wars pushing rents up sometimes by $1,000 or more, and condos going for well above asking price.

“For apartments, we will email the top five applicants and ask if there is anything else they can provide to help them stand out, and then they just start bidding against each other,” Jezdimirovic said. A recent rental hit the market for $7,890 and eventually leased for $8,700, while a recent three-bedroom rented for $15,000, he said. Over the last 12 months, the median prices for studios in Mission Bay have jumped 37 percent, two-bedrooms jumped 44 percent and one-bedrooms saw a 15 percent rise, according to Zumper.

The median price for a condo rose 13.2 percent over the last year, to $1.2 million, according to Compass. Jezdimirovic expects that number to continue to rise. He recently listed a 970 square-foot, one-bedroom condo for $1.2 million and eventually sold for $150,000 over asking.

“Today is not even comparable to 10 years ago,” Jezdimirovic said of Mission Bay. “Even just within the last two or three years, we’ve finally seen the full establishment of the neighborhood.”

The spillover effect has been dramatic for areas such as Potrero Hill. The neighborhood’s elevated views, easy highway access, and uniquely sunny weather have long made it a desirable landing place for young families. But over the last three years, it’s taken on a new role: as both a hot spot for hacker houses — homes essentially turned into dorms for tech entrepreneurs to live and work alongside one another— as well as the migration point for AI employees looking to settle down into family life or quieter living. In other words: Area AI’s suburb.

The median price for a single-family home rose 16 percent over the last year, reaching more than $2 million, according to compass. On average, homes are selling for 42 percent above asking, one of the highest rates of overpay in the city.

Jerry Rice Jr, (yes, son of that Jerry Rice), has worked as an agent in the area for 10 years and said he really began to see it surge around January. The area already has limited supply and few sellers — only 40 homes sold over the last 12 months — pressure that Rice said the AI wealth has only exacerbated.

“It’s been hot all year,” Rice said. “In Potrero Hill, you have all the benefits of the city without living in the city. The clients are largely family-oriented, with AI jobs and have a lot of liquid wealth. We’re seeing big cash offers.”

Rice said the nearby Dogpatch neighborhood, long characterized by warehouses and dilapidated buildings, is going to be the next beneficiary of the Area AI effect. The residential market has already started to creep up. The median price for a condo rose 7.3 percent over the last year, to $1.1 million, and total condo sales are up 15.2 percent, according to Compass.

The blue-chip startup accelerator Y Combinator, once led by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, relocated to the Dogpatch in 2023. Earlier this week, developer Brookfield, who has proposed a mega redevelopment of Pier 70 that would bring about 2 million square feet of commercial space and more than 2,000 new homes, requested adding 600 more units to the plan, bringing the total to 2,750. 

“About 15 years ago, people told me the Dogpatch was nothing,” Rice said. “The Dogpatch is going to look totally different in five to 10 years. If I were an investor, I would start looking in that area, because that’s a hidden gem with a lot of upside.”

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Forget the glass towers. SF’s AI boom finds a home in a 19th-century neighborhood.