Vol. I, No. 54 · San Francisco — Friday, October 23, 2026 · Price: early bird, good through December 31
BY INES CALLOWAY, TRANSIT DESK
In February 2023, the police asked San Francisco’s Planning Department whether the parking lot at 350 Second Street could keep its permit. A planner said no, writing that neither the site’s zoning nor the zoning before it allowed a public lot, and that none had been allowed there since June 20, 2020. In July 2025 the department said yes to the same lot. On October 14 another renewal request for it arrived, and it is still open.
Between those two answers, the Board of Supervisors changed the rule. Ordinance 40-25, sponsored by Supervisor Matt Dorsey, lets surface lots stay open to the end of 2026 in two South of Market (SoMa) zoning districts that ban them. Since it took effect, Planning has approved all 14 lots in this count. The reprieve ends December 31, 69 days from now. After that, a lot may stay only with the Planning Commission’s permission, for up to five more years, and none of the 14 has applied for it.
Of the 13 permit reviews Planning decided before the law took effect on May 3, 2025, it recommended denial in 5. It has decided 18 since and approved all 18, at least one for every lot; 16 of them cite the new law. Fourteen is a floor. It counts only lots whose police permits reached Planning since 2023, it leaves out garages, and the file does not record how many spaces each lot holds. The records also do not show whether any of the five denied lots stopped charging after Planning said no. Each came back for a renewal, and each was approved after the law took effect. The law also protects any lot that stopped operating after January 1, 2024 while its renewal was pending.
The two districts are Central SoMa’s office district and the Mixed Use-Residential district. The Board created the first in the Central SoMa Plan in December 2018 and the second in the Eastern Neighborhoods plans in December 2008. Neither allows parking lots. A lot already there may stay for five years and 90 days after its parcel’s zoning changes, so each lot’s deadline depends on when that happened. The law puts the deadlines in early 2024 in the office district, home to nine of the 14 lots. In the residential district, home to four, it says they ran out between 2020 and 2023 and the lots “continued due to administrative oversight.” One lot straddles both. A lot that charges the public also needs a police permit, and each renewal goes to Planning for a zoning check.
Before the law, those checks did not always agree. In August 2023 a planner recommended approval for the lot at 970 Howard Street, in the residential district, writing that it “appears to be legal nonconforming,” the term for a use that predates the rule against it. In July 2024 another review of the same lot found that no public lot had been allowed there since June 20, 2020. In May 2026 it drew a yes again, on a record that does not cite the new law.
The ordinance blames the post-pandemic economy, which it says “stalled many development projects that were previously approved for surface parking lot sites.” The Board passed it in March 2025, 11–0 and then 9–0, with two members absent.
Planning’s project files show what some of these lots were meant to become. At 490 Brannan Street, the Planning Commission approved a 12-story office building with a child care center in September 2021. The lot at 725 Harrison Street is part of the site of a 14-story office project at 725–765 Harrison, approved in 2019 and revised in 2022. Its approval included giving the lot to the city’s housing office for up to 144 affordable homes. A 2023 request to move that gift to another parcel was withdrawn. The file does not say whether the land changed hands. In June 2025, Planning approved the lot’s parking permit renewal under the new law.
The Commission’s permission would come as a conditional use permit, a special approval it grants after a public hearing. It comes with conditions: a car-share space for every 20 parking spaces, bike parking along the sidewalk, and a tree for every five spaces. Planning’s records, queried October 23, show no such application on any of the 14 parcels.
The records are firm on what Planning recommended and when. They do not say what happens on January 1 to a lot that neither applies nor closes. At 350 Second Street, the renewal filed October 14 is for a lot with 69 days left.
Dry Octobers don’t predict dry winters in San Francisco, 149 winters of records show
The weather service’s San Francisco rain gauge has caught nothing since October 1, and none is forecast through the 29th. Rainless Octobers came before both the driest winter in its record, 1850–51, and the wettest, 1861–62.
BY SOL BREGMAN, CONSULTING ACTUARY
In October 1861, by the record kept at the time, no measurable rain fell on San Francisco. The season that followed, October to June, brought 49.25 inches, the most in the city’s record, and the storms that left California’s Central Valley impassable. October 1850 had been dry, too. That season brought 7.09 inches, the least.
This October is dry again. The gauge has measured nothing from October 1 through the 21st, its latest report; its last rain, 0.03 inch, fell on September 3. The weather service calls it San Francisco Downtown, though it stands today on the grounds of the U.S. Mint. The National Weather Service puts the chance of rain at 2 percent or less on every day through Thursday. The question a dry October raises is whether the winter will be dry too. Across 149 complete seasons, October’s rain has said almost nothing about the rain to come.
Fifteen of the 167 complete Octobers since 1849 brought no measurable rain, and 20 reached the 29th without any; this one is on course to be the 21st. Six of the 15 came before 1871, in the record’s first 21 complete Octobers, a rate nearly five times what followed. Since then, about one October in 16 has been rainless. In half of all years the gauge caught a measurable amount by October 10, and a tenth of an inch in a single day by October 21.
Sort the seasons into thirds by October rain. After the driest third, the rest of the season brought a median of 20.36 inches; after the wettest third, 19.22. The 12 seasons after rainless Octobers with full records split evenly: six wetter than the median season, six drier. Their median, 17.25 inches after October, sits below the 19.66 of all seasons, but any 12 seasons drawn at random come out that low about one time in five. Drop the years before 1871, and the six rainless Octobers since split the same way, three wetter and three drier. The 12 include both ends of the record.
The last rainless October, in 2022, came before a season of 33.76 inches, the 14th wettest of 149, with 5.46 on December 31 alone.
Four of the last 13 Octobers reached the 29th without rain, against about one in 13 from 1871 to 2012. That is too few years, in a window that happens to open on a dry one, to call a trend. The readings from before 1871 are the least certain, and their six rainless Octobers are half of the 12 with full seasons. A day with only a trace of rain counts here as dry. The finding rests on 149 seasons, and it holds without the doubtful years.
In 1861 the first rain fell on November 10. In 1850 it fell on November 19.
ON THE CALENDAR
VibeCon SF 2026. A weekend contest, run by Emergent and AI Valley at Y Combinator’s San Francisco office, to build products by instructing AI tools, no coding required; the winner gets $10,000 and an interview for the startup investor’s program. By 2:02 a.m. Thursday, 798 people had registered on Luma, up from 8 when the page appeared on October 8. The page says 175 builders will be picked and sends people to Y Combinator’s own site to request a spot, so the count reads more like a line of applicants than a head count.
Saturday, October 24, 8 a.m., through Sunday at 6:30 p.m. · Y Combinator’s San Francisco office · free; request a spot at events.ycombinator.com/VibeCon26 · lu.ma/q5v9a6ak
From the desk’s calendar: public Luma pages, counts as of 2:02 a.m. October 22. Tell the desk about the gathering it missed.
SOURCES & RECEIPTS
1. DataSF y673-d69b (Planning records), queried October 23, 2026: police and ABC referrals for parking lots on 14 parcels in the CMUO and MUR districts (zoning from DataSF acdm-wktn: 9 CMUO, 4 MUR, 1 both), 2023–2026, by date closed. Decided before May 3, 2025: 13 reviews, 5 recommended denials. Since: 18 approvals covering all 14 lots, 16 citing Ordinance 40-25; no denials; 2 pending, filed October 14, 2026. No conditional use filing on the 14 parcels. 2. Ordinance No. 40-25, Board File 241173 (sfbos.org), Sections 2, 156, 184; votes of March 18 and 25, 2025; effective May 3, 2025 (Planning case 2024-011417PCA). Supervisor Matt Dorsey, District 6 (sf.gov). 3. Legistar Web API (webapi.legistar.com), files 180184 (Central SoMa Plan, passed December 4, 2018; sponsors Supervisor Jane Kim and the Mayor) and 081153 (Eastern Neighborhoods, Ordinance 298-08). 4. DataSF qvu5-m3a2: 2020-005610PRJ (490 Brannan); 2023-002967PRJ (725 Harrison, block 3762 lot 149; Motions 20597 and 21128); y673-d69b 2005.0759ENX-02 (725–765 Harrison, 14 stories). Queries in receipts.json.
2. NOAA daily records via the Applied Climate Information System (data.rcc-acis.org), station USW00023272, San Francisco Downtown, October 1849 to October 21, 2026, queried October 23, 2026. Season: October 1 to June 30; 167 Octobers and 149 seasons with no missing days (a day whose rain was logged on a later day counts as missing); a trace counts as zero. Rainless Octobers: 1850, 1855, 1861, 1863, 1866, 1870, 1887, 1890, 1905, 1917, 1959, 1978, 2013, 2015, 2022; since 1871 with full seasons, 1905, 2015 and 2022 ended wetter than the median season and 1917, 1959 and 2013 drier. Station coordinates 37.7705, −122.4269 (ACIS StnMeta), on the U.S. Mint grounds per OpenStreetMap. 6. U.S. Geological Survey, ARkStorm scenario, Open-File Report 2010-1312. 7. National Weather Service forecast, api.weather.gov gridpoint MTR 84,105, issued 11:27 p.m. October 22, 2026. Queries in receipts.json.
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