By Joel P. Engardio -- There isn’t a millennial or hoodie in sight at GemShare. The app is great, but what really stands out is that most employees of the startup are over 40 and women lead them.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- What if a startup helped single moms find social services as easily as you pick a restaurant on Yelp? Rey Faustino is building an app to prove that San Francisco’s tech boom doesn’t just benefit the rich. "If Yelp was anything like the websites that poor people rely on for assistance, everyone would be up in arms about the crappy service,” he said.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- The new Central Subway will inexplicably end in Chinatown without going two more stops to North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf. When it's completed in 2019, disappointed riders will wonder why it was built with such tunnel vision.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Supervisor Katy Tang's approach to San Francisco's housing crisis is very different from her colleagues who are focused on stricter tenant protections without addressing the underlying supply problem. "I don't need to introduce quick-fix legislation five times a week," she said. "I'm trying to offer a different solution that addresses root causes."
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Keith Baraka left his family in Ohio for an easier gay life, but he said nothing was tougher than the decade he spent being a gay firefighter in San Francisco's Station 6.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Supervisor Scott Wiener and I agree that Americans drink too much high-calorie soda, which contributes to our obesity epidemic and rising health care costs. So what’s the debate? We differ on how to persuade people to drink less.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- A tree war in the little-known San Francisco neighborhoods of Forest Knolls and Miraloma Park – out of sight and mind on the foggy Westside – could get citywide attention in a tight California Assembly race between David Campos and David Chiu.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- We have a reactionary housing policy that plays whack-a-mole every time rent control creates another market distortion. Our gut always says, “Tighten rent control!” Perhaps it’s time to try a counterintuitive solution, like steering into the skid to avert a crash.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Few people live to see a section of interstate freeway named after them, so Quentin Kopp doesn’t need to be reminded that he’s a San Francisco legend. But I wanted to know what battles remain for the 85-year-old, why he keeps going to his office every day and how he feels when the Chronicle dismisses him as “everybody’s favorite crank.”
“I’m old school and I’m going to articulate old-school criteria,” Kopp said in a raised voice as he banged his fist on the desk for effect. “It might just be in 20 years that people will agree with me.”
Yet Kopp admitted he's out of touch with younger generations, saying his 14-year-old granddaughter is “going to do things differently.”
“I do need to keep up, otherwise I’m totally mystified by what I see,” he said. “Don’t ask me what Justin Bieber does or why he’s successful.”
By Joel P. Engardio -- Ask any parent remaining in San Francisco (a city with more dogs than kids) to describe the process of applying for public school and you'll often hear "nightmare."
"I was willing to excuse some of the negative stories -- the anger, the frustration, families leaving San Francisco -- because our crazy system had a bigger goal of better outcomes," said School Board Commissioner Matt Haney. "Now I question if it is all worth it. If the system isn't accomplishing its goals, then what's the point?"
By Joel P. Engardio -- While Cher and Elton John debated the best way to protest Russia’s anti-gay laws (she wouldn’t sing there and he was willing), my stand for LGBT equality in Russia was limited to likes on Facebook posts. Then I received a surprise email from a Russian television channel. They wanted permission to broadcast a documentary I made for PBS. Now I had to decide: Be like Cher and refuse to do business with a country that discriminates? Or follow Elton John’s example and be a gay man who supports gay Russians by trying to engage the nation?
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- Students of history know that “Nixon in China” is a metaphor for difficult change that requires a push from an unexpected advocate. Maybe “Seniors on the Westside” will become a similar catch phrase for solving one of San Francisco’s most vexing problems -- not enough housing for everyone who wants to live here.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- While city voters yawned through this month's low-turnout election, Supervisor Mark Farrell managed to do something unthinkable in San Francisco: He got a proposition approved with the support of both the Republican Party and those on the firebrand left. Farrell's initiative won big with nearly 70 percent of the vote and the support of every labor union -- except one. Why did activists from SEIU Local 1021 follow Farrell across a parking lot, screaming at him every step of the way?
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By Joel P. Engardio -- If you fear romping dogs and poop on your shoe, then beware of a U.S. National Park Service plan that will overrun your neighborhood parks with thousands more dogs.
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Joel Engardio introduces first-ever meeting of the Alice B. Tolkas LGBT Democratic Club on San Francisco's historically conservative Westside. October 7, 2013.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- When you see the words "unfunded liability" please think of cat videos, sex or any other Internet obsession. Don't click away because "unfunded liability" is boring. The future of San Francisco needs you to crave this topic like it's a cronut.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Based on the venture capital dollars flowing into San Francisco, we’re already being called the “new” Silicon Valley. But we deserve a unique name. Welcome to the Cloud Corridor.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- It’s easy to romanticize the Barbary Coast because that was historic debauchery. But what about today’s sin and sizzle on Broadway? Consider the dive bar with a porn shop next door and an illegal brothel upstairs. An 88-year-old woman living in Hawaii currently holds the title, which made it easy for tenants to trash the property. When her grandson Jordan Angle found out, the 34-year-old made it his mission to save his family's building -- and Broadway along with it.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- You know it's a slow election year when a vote on a condo development along The Embarcadero becomes a referendum on all that is good and evil in San Francisco.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- When French writer Alexis de Tocqueville studied democracy by traveling across America in the 1830s, he encountered people like Todd David -- a New Jersey native who came to San Francisco in 1998. David embodies the can-do DNA that impressed Tocqueville about early Americans: How they formed their own groups to solve problems rather than rely on a government solution that might never come.
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