SFPD officers kicked off San Francisco's Pride festivities by arresting five protesters for alleged acts of paint-related vandalism following Friday's Trans March. Eyewitnesses say one detainee was dragged along the ground by an officer and that another was forcibly pinned to the ground.

On-the-ground reporting from Mission Local details how the march quickly transformed into a protest once it kicked off from its usual starting point at Dolores Park:

This was not spontaneous. Young organizers from several groups darted through the crowd, pointing out logistics and discussing next steps. A member of PSL Bay Area held a sign high, while an Antifascist Action organizer waved a flag overhead.

A young person dressed in black bloc, a balaclava covering their face, dragged a red wagon filled with cans of spray paint. A speaker inside the wagon boomed chants over the crowd.

Mission Local notes that masked protesters also utilized paint-filled water guns to cover the lenses of security cameras they encountered "in splatters of pink and blue." Chants taken up by the crowd during this time reportedly included "Free Palestine" and "Blue Lives Murder" as well as criticism directed at local and statewide elected officials.

SF Mayor Daniel Lurie and Gov. Gavin Newsom were both called out by name in chants, while State Sen. Scott Weiner — who is currently vying with SF District 1 Sup. Connie Chan to fill Nancy Pelosi's coveted CA-11 seat in this fall's election — was filmed by bystanders being forcibly booed from Dolores Park after attempting to join the event.

Mission Local reports that Chan was also present on Friday, marching seemingly without incident alongside the San Francisco Labor Council.

The arrest of five protesters came around 7:40pm as the march hit the end of Market Street. According to eyewitnesses, one person was pinned to the ground as part of their arrest while another was reportedly "dragged along the ground" towards an officer's vehicle.

In a statement issued Saturday morning and published by KRON4, the SFPD confirmed the five arrests: three for assault and vandalism, two for obstructing an investigation. SFPD alleges that a protester “assaulted and sprayed paint on a person" before officers were subsequently "obstructed" by marchers while attempting to detain the suspect.

Mission Local has published bystander footage documenting the arrests.

San Francisco's Pride festivities continue today. As NBC Bay Area reports, organizers anticipate more than a million people to turn out over the weekend.

Related: Buster Posey Refuses to Deal With Pride Night Controversy, Fans Protest at Game

Image: @war24182236/X

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

• New findings by a civil grand jury reveal that San Francisco jails are alarmingly overcrowded, understaffed, and generally neglected. The damning new 50-page report authored by 19 jurors warns that city jails have reached "a breaking point." [Mission Local]
• Authorities have identified two people who were found dead in a parking garage last month in San Jose University as residents of Monterey County. Per the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner’s Office, the deceased individuals have been confirmed as Angelo Henry, 36, and Deziree Auelua-Misa, 30. A cause of death has yet to be announced. [Chronicle]
• Bay Area businesses like Arepas Latin Cuisine are banding together to collect donations to support those affected by two massive earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday. As of Friday, over 900 people were confirmed dead in the disaster. [KRON4]

National:

• The U.S. struck Iran on Friday, providing a swift response to yesterday's drone-assisted projectile attack against a container ship off the coast of Oman. President Trump claimed in a subsequent presser that Iran's attack on Thursday violated the current terms of the ceasefire. [ABC 7]
• The judge overseeing the trial of Tyler Robinson, the man charged with murdering Charlie Kirk last fall, held prosecutors in contempt on Friday over comments made about the defendant. Robinson has yet to enter a plea on his charge of aggravated murder. [Politico]
• The Texas education board has approved a "broad new statewide reading list" that will require more than 5 million public school students to read passages from the Bible. The reading list changes, if unchallenged, are expected to begin by 2030. [Guardian]

Video:

• Disgruntled San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk — who does not play for the Washington Commanders — posted a video on his Instagram in which he encourages his followers to catch him "back on tour" by purchasing tickets to the Commanders' 2026-2027 season. The move follows previous antics like Aiyuk driving 100mph around Levi's Stadium last December.

Image: Joe Kukura/SFist

After publishing a memoir last year about her time as an executive at Meta, whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams is suing the company, saying they’ve taken extreme measures to silence her, and she claims the gag order she signed is invalid.

Former Meta executive and whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of trying to silence her following the release of her memoir Careless People last year, as the Associated Press reports. In the book, Wynn-Williams describes CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives as fostering a toxic workplace culture and alleges Zuckerberg went to extraordinary lengths to curry favor with Chinese officials.

According to the Guardian, Wynn-Williams is asking a federal court in California to throw out both the arbitration order and the severance agreement she signed after being fired by Facebook in 2017. Her lawsuit argues she accepted the agreement under financial pressure because losing her job also meant losing critical benefits and income.

Meta reportedly obtained an emergency arbitration order earlier this year barring Wynn-Williams from promoting or publicly criticizing the company, claiming she violated non-disparagement provisions in her severance agreement. The AP reports that Meta is seeking $50,000 each time it believes she violates those terms.

Wynn-Williams’ suit also reportedly accuses Meta of conducting "coercive surveillance," alleging company representatives have attended Wynn-Williams's public appearances for more than a year, photographing and documenting events even when she said nothing about either Meta or her book. The complaint says Meta even objected to her appearance at the Hay literary festival in Wales, where she sat on a panel alongside critics of the company but remained silent on legal advice.

"Meta is pursuing Ms. Wynn-Williams at the expense of free speech," the lawsuit states.

Meta pushed back in a statement, saying its former employee is attempting to "use the legal process to sell books" after an arbitrator already determined she had violated the agreement she signed in exchange for a "large severance payment." The company also maintains that Careless People contains false and misleading claims about executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Related: Mass Layoffs at Meta Begin With 8,000 Let Go; 6,000 Roles Frozen

Image: Sarah Wynn-Williams, former Director of Global Public Policy at Facebook, arrives to testify during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on April 09, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The time is fast approaching for the infamous 45-foot nude woman to leave her post at SF’s Embarcadero Plaza, as the 32,000-pound art piece has been put up for sale and will be disassembled in October.

R-Evolution, the 45-foot nude sculpture that has loomed over Embarcadero Plaza since April 2025, has been put up for sale or lease ahead of its scheduled removal in October, as SFGate reports. The steel-and-mesh work by Northern California artist Marco Cochrane was slated to be removed this April, but the San Francisco Arts Commission voted earlier this year to extend its stay through the fall.

As SFist reported previously, the sculpture, originally created for Burning Man in 2015, made stops in Petaluma, Miami Beach, and Las Vegas before landing in San Francisco. The sculpture was originally intended for installation in Union Square, which fell through over concerns about its size and weight.

Sponsored by the Sijbrandij Foundation and produced by Building 180 as part of the Big Art Loop initiative, the installation reportedly cost about $300,000 to bring to the waterfront.

Since its unveiling, R-Evolution has sparked an ongoing debate over everything from artistic merit and public input to whether privately funded organizations should have so much influence over what appears in San Francisco's civic spaces.

As KQED and Frieze have reported, critics of the Big Art Loop initiative argue that privately funded projects are increasingly driving decisions about public art, while many local artists, particularly those from underrepresented communities, continue to struggle for visibility and support.

Supporters of Big Art Loop contend that the program has succeeded in activating public spaces and bringing new audiences to contemporary art.

Based on Cochrane's published specifications, relocating R-Evolution is no small task: the sculpture arrives in seven pieces that are bolted together on-site and requires a crane and heavy equipment to install. The sculpture and its anchoring system weigh roughly 32,000 pounds combined.

According to SFGate, other temporary Big Art Loop installations have also been sold to private buyers, including Steelhead on the Embarcadero and The Giraffes at Sunset Dunes.

As previously reported, Embarcadero Plaza is about to get a $40 million makeover, along with the adjacent Sue Bierman Park, half of which is being funded by local billionaires. Additionally, another highly debated sculpture at the Embarcadero, the Vaillancourt Fountain, was removed last month.

Previously: 45-Foot Statue of Nude Woman Not Coming to Union Square After All, But Might End Up at Embarcadero Plaza

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

New Michelin stars get announced, a new food hall opens in South SF, and a local brewery expands into Mission Bay, all in This Week In Food.

The big food news this week was, of course, the announcement of new Michelin stars on Wednesday night, at a ceremony in San Diego. Sonoma County now has more total stars (8) than Napa (6) for the first time ever, with the elevation of Enclos to three stars, and San Francisco is now home to the first-ever Michelin three-star Mexican restaurant, Californios. Chef-owner Val Cantú tells the Chronicle he had been aiming for a three-star elevation ever since his restaurant got its second star. "You definitely have to keep going for three because you’re in the fight for it. Every year is that chance," he said. SF's Wolfsbane and Restaurant Naides each earned their first stars, too.

A 50,000-square-foot food hall and market has opened at BioMed Realty’s South San Francisco campus, which is open to the public, called Omakase World Market, from the Omakase Restaurant Group. As Eater reports, the place includes six restaurants: The Butcher Shop by Niku, an Italian restaurant called Campo, a French bistro called Cuisinett, a new location of Dumpling Time, a Japanese restaurant Ichiba by Omakase, and a cafe and bakery called Kyoto Senses. The restaurant group says that BioMed Realty wanted "to get away from it feeling like a corporate cafeteria," so instead it is a public-facing food hall that's open daily from 7 am to 7 pm, with a cocktail bar that's open from 3 pm to 7 pm.

Taking over the former Seven Stills brewery/distillery space at 100 Hooper Street in Mission Bay is San Francisco Brewing Co., which had previously been based at Ghirardelli Square. The nearly 19,000-square-foot space is coming alive again three and a half years after Seven Stills called it quits, with 20 beers on tap, along with a cocktail bar, extensive food menu, and a performance space. As the Chronicle reports, San Francisco Brewing Co. was founded in 2012 by former Salesforce employee Josh Leavy, who said the turnkey brewery space with a 30-barrel brewing system was "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I couldn’t pass up." The place opens today, June 26, but the website still only shows the Ghirardelli location.

Frenchy Gourmet, the maker of decadent, Tunisian-inspired kefir yogurts flavored with fruit, is opening a kiosk in the Ferry Building next week, down near Gott's Roadside. As the Chronicle reports, yogurt maker Muhammad Ali has been selling his products at farmers' markets for a while, and now will be open daily just across from the popular Parachute Bakery from 10 am to 3 or 4 pm.

There was sad news impacting around 300 employees this week as Vine Hospitality, the restaurant group behind Left Bank Brasserie and LB Steak locations in Marin, the East Bay, and South Bay, said it was ceasing operations after 32 years. CEO Alistair Levine, the son of cofounder Ed Levine, said the decision was partly due to the "challenging operating environment" around the Bay.

And a 100-year-old local restaurant, The Townhouse in Emeryville, shut its doors last week. The unofficial outpost of the town's figurehead mayor back in Emeryville's wild and lawless Prohibition era (Emeryville's port had a long association with the local Italian mafia), and the center of a local bootlegging operation, the bar/restaurant has been in its current iteration, under the ownership of Dan Seng, for 36 years. As the E'ville Eye reports, the place has been listed for sale for about two years for $2.2 million.

Top image: Photo via Californios/Instagram

While 17-year-old Australian actress Catherine Laga'aia is playing the lead character in Disney's live-action remake of Moana, 11-year-old Amaya Masoli of Daly City was cast as her younger self.

Young actress Amaya Masoli and her mom, both residents of Daly City, sat down for an interview with KRON4 Friday morning, two weeks ahead of the July 10 nationwide opening of Moana, the live action version — which also stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Maui, the shape-shifting demigod he provided the voice for in the 2016 animated film and its 2024 sequel.

When asked about the experience of booking this job to play Young Moana, Masoli says, "That was one of my earliest auditions and it was so cool for them actually to get back to me."

Masoli talks about a moment on the last day of shooting when she felt something on her back and she wasn't sure if it was her itchy costume, only to find out afterward that she had a fire ant crawling on her and biting her.

And as for this first moment in the spotlight, Masoli says she's "very much" ready to start getting recognized by the public once the movie comes out.

An intense road-rage incident occurred Tuesday in SF's Richmond District, and was caught on camera by bystanders.

The situation went down Tuesday afternoon around 2 pm in the area of California Street and Parker Avenue, as KRON4 reports, and a bystander began filming after what may have been some sort of fender-bender incident. An angry man can be seen hitting a black SUV, throwing things, ripping a rearview mirror, and yelling at the vehicle's driver, as the SUV attempts to make a three-point turn and flee the area.

A bystander can be heard saying, "He's running him over," and then later, "Call 911!"

The man can be seen holding on to the half-open passenger-side window and hanging on as the car tries to speed away, his feet dangling just off the ground. The car speeds around the corner and goes out of sight, and it's unclear if the man remained unscathed.

The SFPD responded to the incident and spoke to both the male driver of the SUV and the man on the video, who has been identified as 49-year-old Alfredo Salvio Orozco.

Per KRON4, police say that they believe Salvio Orozco was the aggressor, and that he vandalized the victim's SUV without provocation.

Salvio Orozco was booked on suspicion of vandalism, making criminal threats, and throwing an object at a vehicle with intent to cause great bodily injury.

While an arrest has been made, this is still an active investigation. Anyone with information is asked to call the SFPD tip line at 415-575-4444, or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with “SFPD.” Tipsters can remain anonymous.

The proposed 790-unit Marina Safeway redevelopment was granted fast-track status under a state housing law, but opponents argue the project may not actually qualify because the law requires that the majority of the surrounding land already be developed for "urban uses."

The latest challenge to the proposed 25-story Marina Safeway redevelopment centers on whether the project should have been allowed to bypass a full environmental review, as the Chronicle reports. In a letter signed by several neighborhood groups, Marina Supervisor Stephen Sherrill argues the project does not qualify for streamlining under Assembly Bill 2011 because the law reportedly requires at least 75% of adjoining parcels to already be developed for "urban uses."

Sherrill contends the requirement isn't met because much of the property surrounding the Safeway site consists of parks and open space, including Marina Green, the Marina Yacht Harbor, and nearby land managed by SF Recreation and Park or the National Park Service at Fort Mason.

As SFist reported back in December, developer Align Real Estate proposed replacing the existing Safeway at 15 Marina Blvd. with a 790-unit housing development, including 86 below-market-rate units, topped by a 25-story tower.

The project, which would also include a larger Safeway store and hundreds of parking spaces, received conditional approval from the Planning Department and remains on a state-mandated review timeline that requires the city to complete design review by August 1.

According to the Chronicle, if city officials ultimately determine that the project does not qualify under AB 2011, Align could be forced to undergo a full environmental review process that could add years to the timeline, or pursue another streamlining program that would likely result in a shorter building with fewer units.

Supporters of the project argue that revisiting the development's eligibility after it has already advanced through the approval process is emblematic of San Francisco's often tortuous housing politics, where even projects that comply with state law can face new obstacles late in the game.

Mayor Daniel Lurie's office said Thursday that it is reviewing the concerns raised in Sherrill's letter — and Lurie, who has pushed for greater housing density, has seemed to be on the side of the angry neighbors when it comes to this project's scale. Align reportedly declined to comment.

Previously: Marina Safeway Also on the Redevelopment Docket With Plans For 790 Units In 25-Story Complex

Image: Arquitectonica and Align Real Estate

While it's billed as a rare event every time it happens, the blooming of one of the Conservatory of Flowers' five "corpse flowers" happens nearly every year at this point, but you wouldn't know that from the news coverage.

Yes, last year around this time, one of the SF Conservatory of Flowers’ famed "corpse flowers" went into bloom, and as happens with every one of these blooms, it was widely covered in the local news, giving the Conservatory some free publicity and drawing long lines of curious people wanting to smell the thing.

That specimen of Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum), named Chanel, bloomed the first week in July. And here we are a year later, with a different plant, named Scarlet, fully in bloom this week. KRON4 covered the blooming event on Thursday, KQED breathlessly covered it earlier this week, with each report calling the bloom rare and suggesting you'd better hurry over there because it only lasts a few days. But you'll notice in the coverage that it all seems to suggest that the Conservatory of Flowers only owns one of these plants, and ignores the fact that we just did this last year — and you'll probably get another chance to smell one of these things next year if not sooner, if you missed this one.

We have seen blooms of Titan Arum flowers at the Conservatory of Flowers in 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2024, in addition to last year, because the five specimens bloom on different cycles. Younger plants reportedly bloom every seven to ten years, while more mature specimens bloom every three to five years. With five plants, that means the Conservatory may even have two of these blooms happen in a single year, as happened in the summer of 2018.

Chanel, the one that bloomed last year, seems to be on a three-year cycle, and previously bloomed in 2022.

The plants, native to Sumatra, shoot up a five-foot-high spadix surrounded by a skirt or spathe that slowly unfurls over weeks, giving off a putrid odor, similar to rotting flesh, in order to attract polinators. As seen in the life cycle diagram below, after the flowering period, the spathe produces berry-like fruits which contain seeds, and which birds eat and help disperse the seeds.

Scarlet appeared to be in full stinky bloom on Thursday, and tickets to get in to see her in the muggy West Gallery of the Conservatory of Flowers were sold out. But there are still timed tickets left for this afternoon and Saturday.

Like last year, there is a livestream from the West Gallery, which has no Smell-o-Vision so it isn't very exciting.

Previously: One of the Conservatory of Flowers' Corpse Flowers Is Now In Bloom

About 90% of the funding cuts proposed in SF Mayor Daniel Lurie’s original city budget plan were reversed in a deal negotiated by the Board of Supes’ budget committee Thursday, with much of the credit going toward Supervisor Connie Chan.

Supervisors wrapped up negotiations on the city's $16.9 billion budget Thursday, reaching a deal weeks earlier than usual and restoring $28.5 million in proposed cuts to social programs over the next two years, as the Chronicle reports. Board President Rafael Mandelman said it was the earliest budget agreement he'd seen in his eight years on the board, crediting Budget Chair Connie Chan's negotiating skills.

Mandelman highlighted Chan's “ability to both terrorize people at the right moment and also negotiate and cajole and bring colleagues together and figure out what different folks need, in their districts.”

According to Mission Local, Mandelman also noted there was simply "less to fight about" after years of previous cuts and Mayor Daniel Lurie's decision to lay off 127 city workers in April rather than hash out layoffs during budget season.

The restored funding includes $5.6 million to keep Free City College at its current level, preserving cash grants that help thousands of low-income students cover books, transportation, and other basic expenses while attending school, per the Chronicle. Chan, a member of the Free City College Oversight Committe, shared a reel celebrating Thursday's win.

Supervisors also reinstated funding for HIV prevention programs, LGBTQ+ services, and the Workers' Rights Community Collaborative, which provides wage-theft and labor-law assistance in more than a dozen languages.

Advocates and nonprofit leaders celebrated the agreement. Anya Worley-Ziegmann, coordinator of the People’s Budget Coalition, which advocates against cuts to nonprofit funding, called the final deal a major victory.

“Given the context of it being one of the worst budget years when we were starting out, now it’s one of the best that we’ve ever seen,” Worley-Ziegmann said, speaking to Mission Local. “We got back 90 percent of what we were fighting for.”

As SFist reported last month, the People's Budget Coalition and several other groups hand-delivered 1,500 handwritten postcards to Mayor Lurie, urging him to reverse the cuts.

Supervisors reportedly trimmed spending elsewhere in Lurie's proposal to accommodate the restorations, including reducing funding set aside for city pickup trucks after learning they could be purchased for less.

“During this budget process, we worked to protect our most vulnerable populations,” said Chan, per the Chronicle, “reversing cuts to direct services and community support collectively with everyone in this room and also those who have been outside on the streets fighting for it.”

The full Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on the budget July 21 before it heads to Mayor Daniel Lurie for final approval.

Previously: Hundreds Hand-Deliver Postcards to City Hall Urging Lurie to Stop Budget Cuts

Image: Connie Chan/Facebook

Top image: Photo courtesy of Jennifer Raymond

• A hacker wrote a post on the Sacramento Fire Department’s X account Thursday, falsely claiming a "mass casualty incident" occurred near Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara and the World Cup game was being moved to a different stadium, which disappeared within a few seconds. [KPIX]
• The driver of a California State Parks lifeguard vehicle struck a 20-year-old beachgoer on Kelly State Beach in Half Moon Bay Wednesday who is expected to survive. [NBC Bay Area]
• Apple shares fell 6.12% after the company raised prices on its MacBook Neo, MacBook Air, iMac, and iPad lines by up to $200 to offset soaring memory costs tied to AI-driven supply shortages. [NBC News]

National:

• As per usual, former President Barack Obama provided some gems when it comes to President Donald Trump’s “obsession” with him, joking that he occupies “a suite” inside Trump’s head. [New York Times]
• Dusty Ray Spencer, 44, of Florida, who was convicted of fatally stabbing his wife in 1992, was executed by lethal injection Thursday, making him the oldest person executed in the state’s modern history, and another 74-year-old inmate is scheduled for execution next month. [Associated Press]
• After two days of deliberations in the federal arson trial tied to the deadly 2025 Palisades Fire in Los Angeles, jurors told the court they remain split on all charges against Jonathan Rinderknecht and cannot reach a unanimous decision, prompting attorneys to consider their next move. [Associated Press]

Video:

• SF’s Muttville Dog Rescue now has a resident cat on staff named Little Dude. The organization says one of the most common adoption questions it gets is whether its dogs are cat-friendly, and Little Dude helps provide a quick read, usually by watching each dog closely — out of the corner of his eye — and offering the occasional playful swat of his paw. [KPIX]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Several women say local nonprofit HomeRise ignored complaints spanning at least two years while a high-profile case manager repeatedly harassed and sexually assaulted them at its supportive housing complexes in SoMa and on Treasure Island.

As the Chronicle reports, former residents and employees allege that Salesh Prasad — a formerly incarcerated case manager known as “Sal” who became something of a local success story after avoiding deportation and landing a job with HomeRise — routinely sexually harassed, propositioned, and in some cases sexually assaulted residents and co-workers while working at the nonprofit.

Prasad had previously drawn widespread local media attention after immigration authorities detained him upon his release from prison in 2021 and attempted to deport him to Fiji, where he had not lived since childhood. The bisexual former inmate became a high-profile cause in San Francisco and was featured by numerous Bay Area media outlets before ultimately winning his fight to remain in the US.

Women who lived and worked at HomeRise properties told the Chronicle that a very different picture emerged when Prasad began working as a case manager. At least five former employees and three residents told the Chronicle they reported Prasad’s alleged behavior to supervisors between 2023 and 2025, both verbally and in writing, but say little or nothing was done.

Former staff members said HomeRise ignored their complaints until a resident accused Prasad of raping her at the nonprofit’s Treasure Island housing in 2023, prompting his transfer to Jazzie Collins Apartments.

“This is a person who is inappropriate,” one employee said she thought to herself upon first meeting Prasad at Jazzie Collins. “I need to keep my eye out to protect the population of the building.”

The allegations finally prompted an internal investigation last fall after a Jazzie Collins resident reported that Prasad had sexually assaulted her. According to city records reviewed by the Chronicle, HomeRise staff delayed filing mandatory reports for nearly two weeks, and Prasad was allowed to continue working in the building for days after the investigation began. He resigned in October 2025.

Residents told the Chronicle that Prasad often served as the only case manager available in the nearly 100-unit building, leaving tenants with few alternatives if they wanted help accessing services or avoiding eviction. One resident said she feared being alone with him, while another said he repeatedly pressured her for sex until she eventually relented.

In a text message to the Chronicle, Prasad denied all of the allegations, calling them “all false” and saying he had always treated residents and colleagues with respect.

“I am proud of my work as a case manager, helping people who are formerly homeless or who struggle with substance use, mental health, and severe trauma,” Prasad continued. “I met every challenge with professionalism, treated the people I served and my colleagues with respect, and left HomeRise on good terms.”

The allegations come as HomeRise, one of the city's largest supportive housing providers, remains under heightened city scrutiny. Much of that scrutiny has been driven by Aisha McCain, whose brother Eric McCain was found dead and decomposing in his room at Jazzie Collins last year after staff failed to conduct required wellness checks, according to city investigators, as the Chronicle reported in March.

The nonprofit has also spent much of the past two-and-a-half years on the city's watch list for organizations with serious fiscal or programmatic concerns, while the City Attorney’s Office is also investigating the organization over unrelated issues. HomeRise interim CEO Leo Levenson told the Chronicle the allegations surrounding Prasad are “extremely concerning” and said the nonprofit is looking into what happened and what changes are needed to better protect residents and staff.

The Chronicle also reports that after leaving HomeRise, Prasad was hired by East Bay supportive housing provider Bay Area Community Services. The organization said it was unaware of the allegations during the hiring process and fired him in May after learning about the city's findings.

Despite the allegations, Prasad continued to receive public recognition. A short documentary about his life, Off the Record: Sal, reportedly premiered at the Roxie Theater in December and later screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival. The film's producers, who partnered with the San Francisco Public Defender's Office on the project, told the Chronicle they were unaware of the allegations against Prasad while making the film.

Related: SF Supervisor Says Drug-Free Supportive Housing Would Allow Relapses If They Don’t Disrupt Others’ Sobriety

Image: Google Maps

The team behind Solano County's theoretically marvelous but pragmatically very complicated new city from scratch, known as California Forever, has enlisted some help from two people who can probably whisper in the ear of the governor to help accomplish their agenda.

Last we heard, the billionaire-backed California Forever crew was working with state and federal agencies to establish a Maritime Prosperity Zone in what is now the tiny unincorporated town of Collinsville, on the Delta. They are hoping that the Trump administration, in its desire to revive the American shipbuilding industry, will look kindly on their plans and add an economic engine to their still unnamed city from whole cloth, the majority of which will actually be about 15 miles north in southeastern Solano County.

Also, last fall, California Forever CEO Jan Sramek confirmed the group's plan, which was first reported last June, to become an "extension" of nearby Suisun City — something that, in practice, may end up being complicated, but which theoretically will exempt them from needing to override a county growth ordinance, after a scathing report by county officials caused them to withdraw a ballot measure they'd been pushing in 2024.

Now, as the Chronicle reports, California Forever has brought on former state legislative leaders Darrell Steinberg (also a former mayor of Sacramento and a close ally of Governor Gavin Newsom) and Bob Hertzberg (a former Assembly speaker) in the role of special counsel to the project. Both had been working with California forever for free before being added to the payroll in April, the Chronicle reports, and it seems the hope is that they will help get some legislation passed in Sacramento that will help the project get around local opposition and CEQA lawsuits, both of which are inevitable.

Rewinding a bit, this project, which seems to largely be Sramek's vision but which has gotten the financial backing of a cabal of local billionaires, including Marc Andreesen, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Michael Moritz, aims to build a new Bay Area city of around 400,000 residents from the ground up, seemingly because the group doesn't believe that existing Bay Area cities can be saved. The billionaires funded the covert purchase of around 50,000 acres of farmland, to the tune of $900 million, near Travis Air Force Base — leading to some intrigue the summer of 2023 before the project was publicly exposed.

Similar to other billionaire-backed ideas of the past two decades, like seasteading and Elon Musk's talk (going back a full 20 years) about colonizing Mars, the crux of the project is an elitist belief that the world as we know it is screwed and we need to start fresh, rather than coming up with ideas and funding projects to improve the cities and countries we have.

AI-generated renderings that California Forever created to try to sell county voters on their idea depict a sun-dappled, European-styled, walkable village of brownstones and charming plazas, where of course there are none of the ills of real cities like poor people, drugs, or crime. They referred to it, sort of wildly, as a "city of yesterday."

The influential environmental group, the Solano Land Trust, weighed in on the project back in June 2024, saying that they opposed it because it "would drastically increase the current population of Solano County... [and] a development of this magnitude will have a detrimental impact on Solano County’s water resources, air quality, traffic, farmland, and natural environment."

So that's just a taste of what to come as this "extension" of Suisun City, which will take a fairly sleepy town of 29,000 and add 400,000 new residents as well as industrial and commercial traffic to the area, moves ahead.

Previously: California Forever Group Petitions Feds to Turn the Delta Into a Maritime Prosperity Zone