By Joel P. Engardio -- Tech bros get a lot of bad press for self-absorbed and jerky behavior. How did they become our best hope against the superbugs that threaten to kill 10 million people a year?
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Grandma’s old sayings were riddles I solved while trying to finish a double-scoop ice cream sundae (“Your eyes are bigger than your stomach”) or discovering the taxes in my first paycheck as a steakhouse bus boy (“Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched”). But there was one idiom I never fully understood until moving to San Francisco: “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.”
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Nick Josefowitz took a simple message -- Clean up BART -- and changed San Francisco politics. "We don’t have to accept that the crony insider is always going to win. We should live in a city where if we feel things aren’t working we can change them.”
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By Joel P. Engardio -- To understand how a sleepy suburb spawned start-ups like YouTube and food truck restaurants like Curry Up Now, it helps to know where San Mateo’s economic development manager learned about cities. Marcus Clarke lived in San Francisco -- branded by SF Weekly as “The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.” He knows what not to do when it comes to planning San Mateo’s future.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- Thanks to California’s system of direct democracy, get enough signatures and voters can decide anything. But why bother electing representatives if we’re going to determine everything by popular vote?
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Seoul mayor Park Won-soon leads a city of 10 million people and has a good chance to become South Korea's next president. His staff invited me to meet with him during his recent San Francisco visit. I asked about his views on LGBT rights and Park made news in the exclusive interview.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- My favorite Muppets are Statler and Waldorf, the cantankerous yet lovable old men shouting wisecracks and hard truths from the balcony. I get to see them regularly because I go to a lot of neighborhood meetings in San Francisco, where there’s never a lack of Statlers and Waldorfs in the audience.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- A transportation system that serves the public well doesn’t greet riders with the stench of urine or ask them to climb broken escalators short-circuited by human feces. And it doesn’t paralyze an entire region by going on strike. Will voters hold BART accountable? Meet the two BART board candidates in an epic battle to represent riders.
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Joel Engardio speech on why moderates are the true progressives in San Francisco. Engardio was the guest speaker at the Golden Gate Breakfast Club in August 2014.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Consider how Detroit went from being the nation’s most innovative boomtown a century ago – much like San Francisco and Silicon Valley today – to the bankrupt, abandoned shell of itself now. And what cautionary tales we can learn.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- Is San Francisco segregated when a quarter of public schools have a supermajority of a single non-white race? Nearly half of San Francisco is white, but only 12 percent of public school students are. Where are the white students?
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- Lots of San Francisco voters skip school board elections. Maybe it’s because just 16 percent of The City’s households have kids. Nationally, the number is 44 percent. All of San Francisco's non-parents might care if they knew how much school board policies affect everyone.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- The short walk from Twitter's headquarters to Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu's office might as well be light years. Consider the 204,562 paper files that represent San Francisco's 204,562 properties. Keeping track of that many physical files means Chu never knows if the day will end in comedy, frustration or disaster.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- If we fear wealthy newcomers who drive up rents and alter neighborhood character, can we keep them out of San Francisco by making it difficult to build more housing? The problem with that strategy is that rich people, like water, always find their way. Without new housing supply, we risk losing residents like Brian Lee, 33, who grew up here and is married with a baby on the way. He's moving to San Mateo.
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Joel Engardio speaks about LGBT rights in relation to Title VII and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) at a panel hosted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in San Francisco. This was part of a celebration of 50 years of the Civil Rights Act. June 2014.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- There must be others like me in San Francisco who embrace liberal values but also crave a city that runs on common sense. Forward-thinkers who believe in progress and aren’t afraid of change. True progressives.
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By Joel P. Engardio -- For seven years, 64-year-old Janet Kessler has been voluntarily observing and photographing urban coyote behavior throughout San Francisco’s parks. She regularly logs six hours a day, taking up to 600 pictures. “People think coyotes are vermin, dangerous or the big bad wolf,” Kessler said. “But they’re wonderful animals we can live with if we treat them with respect and take the right precautions.”
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By Joel P. Engardio -- For a town full of original hippies and 1970s liberals, it’s amazing how many San Franciscans in their golden years have adopted William F. Buckley Jr.’s conservative mantra to “stand athwart history, yelling stop!”
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By Joel P. Engardio -- Elementary school graduations are cute, yet they hardly match the hat tossing euphoria of the U.S. Naval Academy or the pomp of an Ivy League procession. But don't tell that to the first-ever graduates of the Chinese Immersion School at De Avila this month. With the mythological phoenix as their mascot, they deserve a celebration fit for rising from the ashes of public education in San Francisco.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- There are forces against change at the waterfront, especially projects that would increase height limits. But the fight over waterfront development shouldn’t derail E-line plans.
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