Who Will Make the Inner Sunset A Great Neighborhood Again?
Now that we’re part of District 7 — Help!
• • • • • • • • March 2025 • • • • • • • •
The Inner Sunset used to be a remarkable place—a small town in the heart of San Francisco. Back in the ‘60s, residents could spend a day visiting the institutions in the park—all were free! Rents were affordable, and the neighborhood was accordingly diverse. Various small businesses flourished, and we could enjoy inexpensive fruits and vegetables and mom-and-pop-style dollar stores. All that has vanished.
How did this happen? It all began with the 1978 assassination of George Moscone by a right-wing ex-cop, ex-veteran, and homophobe who considered himself a devout Catholic. The new mayor, closeted Republican Diane Feinstein, privatized the museums. But the neighborhood still held on to much of its character through the ‘90s. The Inner Sunset Park Neighbors, a group of conservative middle-class homeowners, and the Inner Sunset Merchants Association (ISMA), a group of well-heeled merchants, stood against a RiteAid drug store coming to the neighborhood. (A chain seafood restaurant is currently in that proposed spot). Even the neighborhood beat cop (yes, there actually was such a person!) came down to City Hall to protest. A wide coalition of neighbors also fought, unsuccessfully, the Walter Wong-manipulated City departments who covertly helped bring a Burger King to the site of what had been an immigrant Chinese food shop. Our beat cop once more turned up at City Hall to protest. As did neighbors. All in vain. Because in San Francisco corruption knows no bounds, and developers know no decency. The same thing happened when the arrogant Molinari brothers opened a brewery next to the parking lot. It’s a storefront that stands empty to this day.
The Inner Sunset represents, in microcosm, both the failure of the educational system and the deliberate shutting out of residents when it comes to decision-making ... where well-heeled elites have gerrymandered the process to achieve the outcomes they desire. ”
The decline began in earnest when, at the turn of the century, Starbucks opened at 9th and Irving. Corporate interests took over ISMA; at one point, both the haughty Academy of Science and the behemoth University of San Francisco (UCSF) Hospital were members. ISMA did not represent immigrant-owned hair salons, small food stores, etc. Without any discussion, gentrifiers with the Inner Sunset Park Neighbors collaborated to start an overpriced farmers’ resale market in a parking lot on the one day it was free to park there. The organic food store closed shortly thereafter. Curiously, right before Independence High School on 7th Avenue reopened its doors under a new format — one which catered to disadvantaged youth — racist flyers from an anonymous source appeared in our mailboxes. One can only guess the source.
The Park Farmers Market, run by the Hings, a friendly Korean immigrant family, was replaced by a sterile, overpriced medical chain. Man Hing, again, found no support from those associations. What did find support between the most arrogant officials to ever sit on the Board of Supervisors — London Breed and her designated heir, Vallie Brown (appointed by Breed July 16, 2018 – December 16, 2019 and successfully defeated by Dean Preston) was rampant development. Neither held a community meeting, and both strongly supported every gentrification initiative — such as the blatantly ludicrous “MUNI Forward” project, which squandered tens of millions of our bond money on hideous rusting steel “parklets.”
Protests did stop an idiotic “Green Benefits District” in its tracks, but that did not occasion even a tad bit of self-reflection on the part of those entitled elitists. After also being shot down on a nonsensical plan to close Irving between 9th & 10th Avenue, they moved on to institutionalize an outsider’s monthly “flea market,” an event that benefits only the financial interests behind it. We lost a lovely mortuary building with a badly needed parking lot to developers who now own a huge retail space. It has hosted two failed chains but has stood empty for years and now will host a high-end sandwich and grocery shop. Greedy landlords even threaten Green Apple Books, who see that the chain arriving in the T-Mobile space across the street can pay more rent. This will not end well!
Indignities inflicted on Golden Gate Park, once an integral part of the Inner Sunset, would require another long essay to describe. However, one of the most insulting changes has been the installation of “art” along JFK, which has, unsurprisingly, become a target for taggers, leading to the introduction of security cameras at enormous cost.
Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who was gifted to our neighborhood courtesy of the late Reverend Arnold Townsend’s morally debauched Redistricting Task Force process, has never held an open community meeting to discuss what type of neighborhood we want. Instead, she gives elites exactly what they want without affording residents any opportunity for meaningful community input. She has formed secret committees working to bring in surveillance cameras, again without any discussion, to 9th and Irving, as well as many gentrification initiatives. Her support for the elitist closures of JFK and Upper Great Highway have also been quite revealing. As was her (and the ISPN’s and ISMA’s) support for that anti-environmental Ferris wheel, views of which now disgrace both North Beach and Chinatown.
As of this year, we have a “mural” on Irving Street. It appeared without any discussion — created by someone who does not live in our neighborhood — funded mysteriously, and which, in addition to the kitschy cartoon fantasy figures portrayed, depicts immigrant vendors — individuals who could not afford our currently atrocious rents. Not much is represented here that has anything to do with our neighborhood. Yet more unnecessary visual clutter.
ISMA, which represents none of our struggling immigrant businesses, has the notorious San Francisco Botanical Garden Society as one of its members. I witnessed how they shamefully persecuted the late Abraham Siliezar, a Salvadorian immigrant and USMC veteran who has PTSD. The former Strybing Arboretum Society, which has been granted hegemony over the 55 acres (as well as the Tea Garden and Conservatory of Flowers), has been taken over by heartless corporate YIMBYs. These plant haters have cut down many trees and put up new fences — all without community discussion but not without bilking taxpayers for these undesired implementations.
Corporate conservatives with advanced degrees from institutions such as Harvard and Yale have foisted all of these changes on us. Many come from the tech industry. Others—such as Scott Wiener and David Chiu—have Harvard Law School degrees. Shockingly, arch-YIMBY Joel Engardio has a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government!
The Inner Sunset represents, in microcosm, both the failure of the educational system and the deliberate shutting out of residents when it comes to decision-making. If this city believes in the democratic process and promoting the good of all, it has not been evident here in the Inner Sunset, where well-heeled elites have gerrymandered the process to achieve the outcomes they desire. Without major changes in the process (such as mandatory public meetings and reining in rogue “nonprofits”), social equity will decline even further.
Harry S. Pariser Westside Resident
March 2025
