Introducing The Times’s New San Francisco Bureau Chief

Many San Franciscans know the feeling, that moment when it hits you: “I live here, and I’m lucky.”

I had one of those moments the other night at an outdoor dance class in Dolores Park. The class, “Roryography,” led by the choreographer Rory Davis, used to take place in a traditional dance studio but moved to the park during the coronavirus pandemic. It has stayed there ever since.

As we danced to “Jump” by the Pointer Sisters, guys playing basketball joined in. So did families with little kids. A colorful streetcar rumbled past as the setting sun cast a golden glow on the clouds in front of Sutro Tower.

As a longtime reporter and columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, I wrote a lot about the city’s crises: fentanyl overdoses, homelessness, property crime, a hollowed-out downtown and exorbitant housing costs that have squeezed out the middle class. But I also wrote and recorded podcasts about the city’s beauty, parks, hikes, independent bookstores and movie houses, and incredibly creative people.

Now, as the new San Francisco bureau chief for The New York Times, I plan to continue shining a light on both sides of the city — the good and the bad. I’m excited to bring the full picture of San Francisco to a national audience and, hopefully, cover the beginnings of a recovery for the city I’ve called home for 24 years.

My dance friends were abuzz about my first byline in The Times. I had written about how frustrating, and just plain silly, it was to be constantly asked by outsiders: “You live in San Francisco? Are you OK?” One dancer said she had just returned from the Czech Republic where she was asked the same.

My story about San Francisco’s increasingly terrible reputation received plenty of other responses. One San Franciscan said she had just called a New Jersey flower shop to order a bouquet for a friend there, and the florist, upon hearing where she lived, asked if she was safe. Another recently traveled to Santa Barbara, where people reacted to his living in San Francisco as if he had told them that his dog died.

Since moving with her wife to Portland, Maine, over the summer, Ashley Kirzinger said she had been quizzed about San Francisco from just about everyone she encountered.

“They’re like: ‘Oh, San Francisco! I can see why you left there,’” she told me over the phone, mimicking the sound of disgust. “Everyone’s like: ‘The homelessness! The drugs! The crime!’”

All that is there, Kirzinger said — but so is the walkability, the beautiful parks, the great restaurant scene, the acceptance of L.G.B.T.Q. couples and the fun of swimming in the bay with the South End Rowing Club.

“I even liked taking BART!” she said with a laugh, referring to the region’s love-it-or-hate-it public transit system.

She and her wife moved to Maine because they could afford a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house there near the beach. In the Bay Area, they would have remained renters forever.

Still, she misses San Francisco. “I just think it’s magic,” she said.

I do, too, and I look forward to telling you its story.

For more:

The rest of the news

• The state’s education chief, Tony Thurmond, has announced that he is running for governor in 2026, The Associated Press reports.

• After a drop during the pandemic, community college enrollment in California is up — but students between 20 and 30 are lagging behind, CalMatters reports.

Southern California

• An Orange County doctor who specializes in treating L.G.B.T.Q. people has been charged with sexually assaulting nine patients, The Los Angeles Times reports.

• Dexter White, who was shot by Los Angeles police officers after they mistook his cellphone for a gun, was awarded $2.35 million in damages, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Central California

• Employees at Yosemite National Park worry that a government shutdown could threaten the tourism business that keeps them afloat, The Fresno Bee reports.

Northern California

• Mayor London Breed of San Francisco wants the city to require all recipients of county-funded welfare to undergo drug screening in order to be eligible for cash assistance, Politico reports.

• Four people were arrested for allegedly stealing $1,400 in contraceptive pills, medicine and other merchandise from a Target in San Mateo, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

• Cities across Northern California are turning to A.I. chatbots to answer residents’ questions and take in service requests about issues like potholes and graffiti, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Where we’re traveling

Today’s tip comes from Carolyn Coleman, who lives in Santa Cruz. Carolyn recommends seeing mosaic murals in Watsonville, along the Central Coast:

“The small agricultural community of Watsonville is becoming the ‘Barcelona of California’ thanks to an amazing mosaic art installation, led by the visionary creative Kathleen Crocetti of Community Arts & Empowerment, covering a downtown six-story parking garage adjacent to the courthouse, library and City Hall.

There are four 60-feet-tall vertical mosaic murals designed by the San Francisco artist and social activist Juan R. Fuentes, who grew up in the agricultural labor camps outside of Watsonville and was the first in his family to go to college.

Now the horizontal sections of the garage are being covered by smaller mosaic pieces with symbols and designs representing the various heritages of Watsonville’s people; 120 have been identified, including Indigenous, Latino, Asian, European, African and Polynesian.

The project involves the community in generating ideas for the pieces, with young people working as interns and volunteers to create the mosaics. The project is expected to be completed by the end of next year.”

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to [email protected]. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

Tell us

Our California playlist is ever evolving, based on your recommendations of songs that best represent the Golden State.

You can email us your choices at [email protected]. Please include your full name, the city where you live and a few sentences about why your song deserves inclusion.

And before you go, some good news

Though the Disneyland park in Anaheim is best known for its kid-friendly amusements, in 1961 — six years after it opened its gilded gates — the theme park dreamed up a new kind of Disney experience for its older patrons: an all-night prom.

The prom received little coverage and many details of the evening are not widely known. But a series of never-published photographs from Life magazine’s archives gives viewers a window into the evening’s antics. Replete with poodle skirts and trolley rides, the images, now available online as part of the magazine’s tribute issue to Disney parks, tell the story of romance, adolescence and that singular Disneyland magic.

See the photographs and read more about the evening here.

Thanks for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword.

Soumya Karlamangla, Maia Coleman and Briana Scalia contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.