SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco no longer has a Denny’s presence, after the dining chain’s remaining restaurant in the city closed its doors earlier this month. 

The longstanding diner, located on Mission Street near Union Square, poured its final cups of coffee and served its final orders of pancakes and “slam” menu items on August 1.

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The closure of the San Francisco franchise came after 25 years at the site, Denny’s officials told KTVU. 

The company said that it does not comment on the closure of its franchise locations. 

But franchise owner Chris Haque told SFGATE that crime, including dining and ditching, was a driving force behind the decision to end operations at the site. 

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“The cost of doing business is tremendous. There’s vandalism, and people come and eat and walk away, and there’s no one to stop them,” Haque said.

He was also critical of city leaders for not doing enough to make San Francisco a business-friendly environment. 

In addition, Haque explained that the decline in the number of conventions hosted in the city in recent years led to less foot traffic in the area and a drop in business. 

The shuttering followed another Denny’s closure earlier this year of the chain’s only Oakland location.

The restaurant was located along troubled Hegenberger Road, an area that has received a lot of attention for rampant criminal activity. 

The situation has led to other businesses, including In-N-Out Burger, to make the decision to cease operations along that corridor.

In response to its Oakland closure, Denny’s said, “Closing a restaurant location is never an easy decision or one taken lightly. However, the safety and well-being of Denny’s team members and valued guests is our top priority.”

Denny’s officials said there are still 40 locations open for business across the Bay Area.

Protesters blocked traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge in mid-April to call attention to the war in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinian civilians whose cities were being bombarded.

Now, authorities in San Francisco are prosecuting them for trapping people in their cars on the bridge for hours. The San Francisco Public Defender countered that officials were “weaponizing the law” against protesters; he wants the charges dropped.

The San Francisco district attorney’s office announced in a news release Monday that arrest warrants were issued for the 26 people who participated in the April 15 protest. All 26 surrendered to law enforcement, according to the California Highway Patrol, but they have not appeared in court or been assigned legal representation.

“While we must protect avenues for free speech, the exercise of free speech can not compromise public safety,” Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins said in a statement. “The demonstration on the Golden Gate Bridge caused a level of safety risk, including extreme threats to the health and welfare of those trapped, that we as a society cannot ignore or allow.”

The group, dubbed the “Golden Gate 26” by their supporters, could be represented by the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, which blasted the charges and cited a higher moral authority for the protest.

“The protestors are opposing American tax dollars being used to fund ongoing attacks on the people in Gaza, which the International Criminal Court has deemed crimes against humanity,” San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju said in a statement. “Our attorneys intend to vehemently defend any individuals we are appointed to represent.”

The district attorney’s office charged the 26 with trespassing to interfere with a business, obstruction of a thoroughfare, unlawful assembly, refusal to disperse at a riot, failure to obey the orders of police and 38 counts of false imprisonment. Eight of the defendants also face a felony conspiracy charge, and the rest face a misdemeanor conspiracy charge.

Protests in opposition to the war in Gaza have taken over highways, college campuses and city streets since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, where militants killed 1,200 Israelis and took about 250 hostages, roughly 115 of whom are still missing. Since then, Israeli forces have killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health officials in Gaza, who include both Hamas forces and civilians in their casualty counts.

The protesters gathered shortly before 8 a.m. on April 15 on the Golden Gate Bridge, where they abandoned their vehicles and chained their bodies together while holding up signs. The group’s members were warned repeatedly by police and other officials that they would be arrested if they did not move, but the group ignored them, according to the D.A.’s office.

A protester later identified as Sara Cantor told police that the protesters would not resist arrest, but the demonstrators who were interlocked between vehicles with a large metal tube would not voluntarily comply with authorities, the D.A.’s office said. All of the protesters were arrested and removed from the bridge, and the traffic lanes were reopened by 12:20 p.m.

Roughly 12,000 vehicles travel south and 8,000 vehicles travel north on the bridge between the hours of 8 a.m. and noon, according to the Golden Gate Bridge District, which the D.A.’s office claims lost more than $162,000 in revenue due to the protest.

Jenkins took to social media following the protest to ask for anyone stuck on the Golden Gate Bridge to come forward, because they could be entitled to restitution and have other rights guaranteed under state’s law.

The D.A.’s office said several hundred people were held against their will at the mercy of the protest. According to court documents, people caught in the middle of stopped traffic missed work and important medical appointments, and a mother with her baby did not have water for the infant formula.

Despite recent signs that San Francisco is on a path to economic recovery, condos in the city are yet to make a comeback, as several sellers are still slashing their asking prices to try to attract reluctant buyers.

As of Tuesday morning, there were a total of 687 condos listed for sale on real estate marketplace Zillow in San Francisco. Of these, 87 had price reduction—over 12 percent of all listings. Vacation rental investor Rohin Dhar, who often shares Zillow listings with dramatic price cuts on social media, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, about a one-bedroom condo unit in downtown San Francisco; it was recently sold for $680,000, down from the sum of $825,000 it fetched when it was purchased in 2015.

“As condo prices have declined in downtown San Francisco, one bedroom condos have been hit particularly hard,” Dhar wrote on the social-media platform. “Are you generally just better off renting than buying a one bedroom apartment?”

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The Zillow listing shows that the asking price for the property, which was sold on August 7, was reduced four times by the seller since the property was put up for sale in May this year for an initial asking price of $750,000—already much less than its 2015 price. The condo was built in 2009, and homeowner association (HOA) fees are $707 per month.

Dhar shared the listing for another one-bedroom condo unit in downtown San Francisco, which is now being sold for less than it fetched in 2005—about two decades ago. The 618 square feet condo at 260 King Street was sold for $505,000 in November 2005; 10 years later, in June 2015, it was sold again for a higher sum, $615,000; and in 2018, it was purchased for an even higher $670,000.

Now the condo’s seller is trying to get significantly less for the unit. The condo was listed in February for $579,000, and since then, has seen three different price cuts. On August 1, the asking price was lowered to $498,000, but the unit remains unsold. The condo was built in 2004—which means it is 20 years old—and HOA fees are $980 per month.

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Condo prices in San Francisco have seen significant drops since the pandemic, as the city faced a mass exodus of workers, especially in downtown, as well as office and retailers’ closures. Between February 2020 and February 2024, San Francisco’s condo values plunged by 12.8 percent, according to Zillow data, from $1.14 million to $997,000.

While some condo owners are still slashing listed prices and office buildings remain vacant, there have been reports that the situation is starting to change in San Francisco.

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Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst at Compass, recently told the San Francisco Chronicle that the city’s condo market will face a significant rebound this year, pointing at his company’s data showing that the median price of a condo rose by 5.6 percent between December 2023 and February 2024 compared to the same stretch of time in 2022-23.