It\u2019s nearly 2026. That means a chance to renew, refresh, and answer way too many questions about what\u2019s in and what\u2019s out.<\/p>\n
Here at The Standard, we pride ourselves on being on top of the news to keep you informed, or at least make you laugh. But even we have our limits. <\/p>\n
This year, a handful of San Francisco storylines earned breathless coverage that we\u2019re hoping to leave behind in 2025. Our holiday wish is that these narratives will be \u201cout\u201d in the new year. <\/p>\n
(Editor\u2019s note: Max is not allowed to use this list to get out of doing assignments.)<\/p>\n
The Great Highway<\/p>\n
The drama keeps going. The battle over the Great Highway should have ended last year, when voters passed Proposition K, authorizing the conversion of the road to an oceanfront park. <\/p>\n
But neighborhood rage about traffic has a way of sticking around, and residents showed up to protest at the park\u2019s grand opening in April. A few months later, these activists successfully booted their supervisor, Joel Engardio, from office and have been working on a plan to get cars back on the road, which is now the Sunset Dunes park. <\/p>\n
They have an avatar in the form of new District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong, who announced Dec. 19 that he would back a plan to reopen the two-mile stretch of road on weekdays. (Time will tell if he is a true believer or just doing his political due diligence so he can say, \u201cSee? I tried!\u201d)<\/p>\n
Now the city will likely have another chance to vote on the roadway\u2019s fate in 2026. It\u2019s like an electoral do-over. Whatever the outcome, ongoing tension is a safe bet. <\/p>\n
San Francisco\u2019s dead mall<\/p>\n
During peak holiday shopping season, the San Francisco Centre was empty, save for Panda Express. That won\u2019t come as a surprise to anyone who\u2019s been following the sad tale of the 1.2 million-square-foot mall, which in November started telling its few remaining tenants to scram.<\/p>\n
There have been plenty of mile markers on the road to the mall\u2019s collapse, but I fail to see why every single closure at a mall on life support warranted coverage. This year started with Bloomingdale\u2019s \u2014 the sole anchor after Nordstrom left in 2023 \u2014 jumping ship with 20 years still on its lease. Then, lenders couldn\u2019t agree on what to do with the $556 million mortgage, and the mall entered \u201cfinancing hell.\u201d In August, we argued that the citizens of San Francisco should band together to buy it for cheap, and knock it down to make way for \u2026 who knows what. <\/p>\n
But lenders ended up seizing the mall in November, opening the door for a revival. Can we get some hope for once? <\/p>\n
Tech raves<\/p>\n
Between the Zuckerberg rave, the nuclear rave, and an AI billboard promising a night of raving in Berlin, 2025 was another year of tech people insisting they\u2019re actually, like, really cool and fun to party with. <\/p>\n
Maybe this trend has something to do with the modern tech bro, who\u2019s a ripped and swagged-out version of his pencil-necked ancestor. Or maybe it\u2019s propelled more by Gen Z\u2019s obsession with turning internet memes into IRL events. Perhaps founders who look up to Elon Musk are just trying to throw parties so they have an excuse to experiment with ketamine? It\u2019s honestly a mystery.<\/p>\n
Whatever the cause, the local tech scene produced a series of made-to-be-viral parties and will likely continue to do so in 2026. My brave proposition: Let\u2019s stop giving them attention.<\/p>\n
Quotidian autonomous vehicle updates<\/p>\n
Waymos on Market Street, Waymos at the airport, Waymos in the blackout, Waymo\u2019s competitors. These things have been getting way mo\u2019 coverage than any other vehicles in the city. <\/p>\n
I get it \u2014 the cars are an intelligible symbol of the future. They\u2019re novel, especially for people visiting from out of town. And they fit San Francisco\u2019s brand as a hub of innovation. But I don\u2019t really care that they were available at this airport or that airport first. Whatever happened to California\u2019s high-speed rail?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s nearly 2026. That means a chance to renew, refresh, and answer way too many questions about what\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[9386,101,103,102,104,106,105,11515,5987],"class_list":{"0":"post-111245","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-great-highway","9":"tag-san-francisco","10":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","11":"tag-san-francisco-news","12":"tag-sf","13":"tag-sf-headlines","14":"tag-sf-news","15":"tag-shopping","16":"tag-waymo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}