{"id":193987,"date":"2026-02-26T01:21:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T01:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193987\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T01:21:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T01:21:06","slug":"a-note-to-our-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193987\/","title":{"rendered":"A note to our readers."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday I received two emails telling me there is no Alta Vista Park in San Francisco. That’s because in a list of quiet places culled by Hunter Pence<\/a>, we had meant to write about Alta Plaza<\/a> as one of them. <\/p>\n

About a week ago I published\u2014for the second time, actually\u2014my favorite places to eat in Inner Sunset<\/a>. Someone replied to tell me that Holy Gelato was no longer with us.<\/p>\n

We also recently published a list of all the great coffee shops in San Francisco<\/a>. This, too, was inspired by a user comment on Threads. After it published, someone commented on the page to say, “You missed Simple Pleasures – but they aren’t a chain. That explains why.” (Which inspired a follow-up story we’ll release soon on solo operating coffee shops in SF.)<\/p>\n

Our presence is very small but mighty. Sometimes I send these emails, social media posts, and stories online into the ether and think no one saw any of it. But you’re often still here and engaged, and I know it’s probably cloying and hard to believe, but I just want to say thank you.<\/p>\n

The Bold Italic is now independently owned. By me. I joined in 2023 as its editor in chief and had a good run with its publishers at the time. But I was more than happy to take the reins two years later when they were ready to move on. I became its owner in August last year, and I\u2019ve been quietly overhauling operations, moving us off of Medium, filing stories, and breathing a little life into the brand.<\/p>\n

I moved to San Francisco just after TBI\u2019s founding in 2009, and I have watched its sunrise and sunset with Gannett and IDEO, and its later iterations with three different owners. It was an edgy online magazine that, to me, spoke to the cynical Millennial blogger in the Bay Area, often through amazing illustrations and layouts by one Ms. Jessica Saia<\/a>. They had a fancy office in Hayes Valley, and, I’ve learned recently, generated half their revenue as an early adopter<\/a> of a publication that hosted events.<\/p>\n

It’s been a long road since then. Many different publishers had their own motivations. I personally just want to stay true to the original TBI, to celebrate San Francisco and support its businesses, artists, and residents of all stripes \u2014 and to stay a bit edgy. I don’t know how else to put this, but I don’t have the balls to put out a video titled “Actual Food Porn” that is, in fact, a banana fucking a bell pepper.<\/a> But I try to put out a hot take occasionally<\/a> when it warrants it, even if it costs me some subscribers.<\/p>\n

We live in a land of perpetual newsletters and echo chambers. People love this, hate that, question this, etc.; there’s often very little nuance in it, or in-between thoughts. I carry a little fear with me every time I publish something because it’s not the take you wanted. (Which also is why you’re seeing more “best of SF” type content lately \u2014 it’s safe!) But I want to keep this publication going because I think it meant something to the young generation of San Franciscans at the time. And maybe it can for the current one, or the next one. Maybe it’s just worth keeping this weirdly affected living history of the 2010s, and now 2020s.<\/p>\n

If you want to support this journey\u2014and I insist, only if you want to\u2014there are several ways to donate and keep us afloat. For a little cost breakdown of what it’s taking to keep the lights on:<\/p>\n

We pay about $1700 annual to Ghost just to have this site and send its newsletter.I’d estimate another $500-$800 for domain renewals, and email and cloud archive hosting.$500 in business registration fees and another ~$599 to certify us as LGBTQ+-owned with the NGLCC<\/a> (which will open us up to more grant opportunities)Probably another $1,000 annual in photo editing and other tools necessary to publish polished content.<\/p>\n

It is a skeleton budget that no longer includes freelancers because I can\u2019t pay them yet, and I don\u2019t believe in people working for free, even though they\u2019ve offered. In the land of massive expensiveness, and SF is its queen, my poor writers will tell me they\u2019ll file me a review in exchange to just go and see the play, the concert; to stand on a red carpet. But time has always been money for any creator to me, my time included. <\/p>\n

Right now I am in active pursuit of grants via our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsorship with Independent Arts & Media<\/a>. I\u2019m also meeting with very prominent arts organizations to get some ad deals going. I am activating a Mediavine partnership with the website that will display ads, but I\u2019ll keep them off our homepage, its stories, and newsletter sends. And\u2014as a longtime event producer myself\u2014I am in discussions with friends, venues, and performance arts groups about restarting that arm of The Bold Italic.<\/p>\n

I think we will survive this time and continue to pay others to tell their stories about the lived experience here in San Francisco. If you want to contribute, we\u2019re now over on Mazlo and can accept one-time or recurring donations, big or small. The lowest tier begins at $50 but if you want to literally put it in the tip cup at $5, you can type that in.<\/p>\n

You can also simply become a paid newsletter subscriber now via Ghost on this sign-up page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A donation on Mazlo will be tax deductible thanks to our 501(c)(3) partnership: tbi.fyi\/donate<\/a><\/p>\n

We can also accept DAF via Independent Arts & Media. Email me at saul@thebolditalic.com<\/a> to set that up.<\/p>\n

Or you can Venmo me (I guess?): The user handle there is @Saul-Sugarman<\/p>\n

Thank you again just for reading and your support. It has not gone unnoticed. I appreciate you. And I look forward to covering life in San Francisco for many years to come.<\/p>\n

Saul Sugarman is editor in chief and owner of The Bold Italic.<\/p>\n

The Bold Italic is a not-for-profit media organization, and we publish first-person perspectives based in San Francisco and the Bay Area. We operate under a fiscal sponsorship of a 501(c)(3).\u00a0Learn more about us.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday I received two emails telling me there is no Alta Vista Park in San Francisco. That’s because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-193987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-san-francisco","9":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","10":"tag-san-francisco-news","11":"tag-sf","12":"tag-sf-headlines","13":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193987","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=193987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}