During the general strike on January 30, the folks at Fleetwood Fine Goods in the Inner Richmond began offering free “F*ck ICE” screenprints, which was met with huge success, and they’re continuing to offer the service to anyone who brings in or purchases a garment of their choice.

As SFGate reports, Fleetwood Fine Goods announced the offer on social media the day before the general strike, attracting around 200 people who lined up along Clement Street for free screenprints. In addition to the “F*ck ICE” print, a design with the message, “No One Is Illegal on Stolen Land,” was also available.

Per SFGate, the shop workers decided against closing operations during the general strike and instead dedicated the day to offering free screen printing services to the community. They also limited all sales in the shop to cash-only — to keep any funds from going to banks — and donated the proceeds to El Tecolote and the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative, per SFGate.

“We support and stand with the shops who are closed,” the shop wrote on social media. “We love you, Minneapolis. Go support an immigrant-owned small business who can’t afford to close.”

SFGate writes that Fleetwood’s shop sells work from around 150 local artists and artisans in addition to offering custom screenprints on its six-color, four-station press, often referred to as the “octopus.” The free screenprints have enhanced the sense of community that surrounds the shop, which was reflected in a note someone left during the general strike.

“Keeping up with current events lately has been heartbreaking — and then Fleetwood does this and reminds me that I’m part of a community & we are not alone,” the note read, per SFGate. “Thank you for the hope.”

SFGate reports that the store is still offering the two free screenprint designs Tuesday through Thursday, noon to 6 pm. Cotton material is recommended.

Image: Fleetwood Fine Goods

This week: tamales in a Union City parking lot, a rush hour happy hour standby, an urban farm, and a mid-century modern roundhouse. Plus, filling suitcases for foster kids, spotting birds in the city of Richmond, and seeing Berkeley in its heyday through a young artist’s eye.

Where commuters find a bar stool

At the base of San Francisco’s Fourth Street exit, the Hotel Utah Saloon has turned Bay Bridge gridlock into an accidental happy hour, drawing in drivers who decide waiting it out is better with a drink in hand.

The century-old bar and inn still remains affordable, from budget hotel rooms upstairs to food specials that feel almost unreal in 2026. Its $1 Wing Wednesdays, Taco Tuesday deals, and the “Hard Hat Special” keep construction workers, neighbors, and stranded commuters crossing paths. — SFGate

Hidden orchard

Behind a turquoise house in Oakland’s Laurel District, a backyard has grown into a thriving urban garden. Fruit trees, vegetables, bees, and chickens fill the long, sloped lot, which also hosts community gatherings and workshops. The space continues a decades-old vision, blending hands-on urban agriculture with shared meals and seasonal events.

Visitors can learn fruit tree pruning, composting, or other gardening skills while exploring the paths lined with persimmons, papayas, and peppers. Monthly events keep the garden active and open to the neighborhood. — The Oaklandside

Marsh mornings

Richmond’s Dotson Family Marsh drew a record crowd of birders for the city’s fifth annual Christmas Bird Count, despite heavy rain and flood warnings. Volunteers fanned out across the restored shoreline, scanning water and trees for ducks, raptors, and songbirds and spotting rare species like Canvasback ducks and Northern Rough-winged Swallows.

The marsh, protected and nurtured since the 1970s, provides vital habitat that’s slowly bringing back more birds to the area. Citizen scientists kept notes, scopes, and guides close, tracking hundreds of sightings and contributing to a century-old tradition that helps researchers monitor bird populations. The event wrapped with a tally of 178 species across Richmond’s parks and shorelines. — Richmondside

Parking lot tamales

A Bay Area food lover shared a chance lunch stop in Union City, where a couple was selling Guatemalan tamales from a van in a Ross parking lot. Wrapped in banana leaves and made with achiote, they were noticeably larger and heavier than the usual corn husk tamales.

The chicken and pork versions leaned closer to a full meal than a quick bite. A brief conversation placed their roots in Huehuetenango, in Guatemala’s highlands near the Chiapas border. The tamales are $5 each, sold outside the Ross off I-880 in Union City. — Hungry Onion

Color on every block

For decades, Bob Buckter, known around the city as Dr. Color, has shaped how San Francisco looks from the sidewalk up, painting and consulting on thousands of Victorians, churches, and storefronts. His palettes pull out the small architectural details most people pass without noticing, turning facades into layered compositions.

Working largely by instinct and experience, he helped define the bright, playful look that now feels inseparable from the city’s identity. Buckter now focuses on color consulting and recently released a book, Bob Buckter: Architectural Color Design, documenting his work across San Francisco and beyond. — KQED

A round among rectangles

Tucked into a wooded corner of Piedmont, the Leon Meyer house on Echo Lane curves where most homes draw straight lines. Built in 1972, it uses a circular floor plan to open up light, views, and space on a sloped lot, with rooms radiating outward instead of stacking into boxes.

It’s one of the few remaining round houses by Meyer in the Bay Area, and a clear example of his approach to building on difficult terrain. — Eichler Network

Fragments and echoes

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s work feels impossible to pin down — poetry, performance, film, and visual art all fold into one restless, searching practice. She arrived in Berkeley from South Korea as a teenager and grew up alongside the city’s radical energy in the ’60s and ’70s, letting language, memory, and displacement shape her art.

Multiple Offerings at BAMPFA gathers over a hundred works, including early ceramics and fiber pieces never before seen, alongside newer artists responding to her influence.  The retrospective opens January 24 and runs through April 19, with talks, film screenings, performances, and a full reading of her hybrid literary work, Dictée. — Berkeleyside

Traveling light

In the East Bay, foster children often move with little more than a backpack, but a local volunteer is changing that. Margie Morris and her team pack brand-new suitcases with bedding, toys, and essentials for kids entering or shifting between homes, making each transition a bit steadier.

Over the past five years, hundreds of children in Contra Costa County have received these suitcases, tailored to age and needs. The effort relies on donations and volunteers, and the suitcases are distributed through the county’s social services to children in care, on field trips, or reuniting with family. — KPIX

Top Image: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard, 1978. Gift of the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Memorial Foundation.

Previously: Field Notes: Ferry Concerts, Donkey Appreciation, Public Domain Day, and Celebrating Rave Culture

It looked like the end of an era for Ken Fulk's loft-like office and event space on Seventh Street in SoMa when he put it on the market three years ago. But it has not sold, and Fulk now says he's going to get back to throwing parties there.

Designer Ken Fulk has put his stamp on a number of Bay Area restaurants, wealthy socialites' mansions, and even the ultra-VIP section of Outside Lands. But as the Robb Report noted when it first hit the market in the fall of 2022, his 'Magic Factory' live-work space at 310 Seventh Street "has always been his calling card."

"It’s an epic place to throw a party,” Fulk told the publication. “Much of the building’s legendary status has been forged through the parties and people it’s hosted.”

Fulk also told the Robb Report that he and his design and event-planning firm had "simply outgrown" the building, and he was listing it for sale at $8.9 million.

It was then re-listed last spring at a slightly lower price, $7.7 million, and the asking price was lowered again in September to $7 million.

But, after failing to find a buyer, Fulk tells the SF Business Times this week that he's been inspired to start using the space again.

"That building has become such a part of my identity and has so many memories, and I was trying to find the right steward and had the epiphany that maybe I am the right steward," Fulk tells the paper. "I feel like our city is buzzing and always looking for the best version of itself, and I feel it's time for this place to be ap art of this new conversation too."

The 14,000-square-foot brick-and-timber building, which has living quarters and entertaining space on the upper level and office space below, was the former workshop and showroom of Mr. S Leather, which relocated to its current space at 385 8th Street in the 90s. And Fulk says the space therefore "always sort of had this wink toward San Francisco's slightly naughty side combined with the highbrow work that we do."

Original signage from Mr. S is preserved on the upstairs terrace, as seen below. And the main living and entertaining area is anchored, in part, by a taxidermy ostrich.

Fulk lives with his husband in Clarendon Heights, near Sutro Tower, the pair also have a home in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Fulk has a design studio in New York as well. Recently, his work has taken him to Los Angeles for the first time, where he's working on a full-scale renovation of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

He also bought the Paramour Estate in the Silver Lake neighborhood and restored that into a nine-room, luxury boutique hotel.

He now says his focus is shifting back to San Francisco, and he recently threw a 200-person party with Architectural Digest at the old Magic Factory. (Fulk is an AD100 designer, and was profiled by the magazine in 2023.)

As he tells the Business Times, "We are going to have cool events and programing and welcoming people back into the space that I think has a vibration — it's like that building has a soul."

He adds, "I think there is an inclination for us in 2025... people want to be together and we live in such a hyperdigital world ... I think as a counterbalance to that we want to be truly connected."

So, be on the lookout for your party invite I guess.

Top image: Photo by Douglas Friedman

Muni is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its beloved “Worm” logo, designed by Walter Landor of the esteemed Landor Associates. Landor also worked with big name clients such as Levi’s, Fed Ex, and Coca-Cola.  

The Muni Store website describes the design details of the Worm logo:

The intertwined "M" and arrow, rendered in distinctive red orange, cleverly symbolize movement and interconnectedness. Many look at this mark as a symbolic reference to the streets, hills and valleys of San Francisco.

According to SFMTA's blog, prior to the Worm, the logo underwent several transformations over the past century. According to the earliest design featured “Municipal Railway” in gold lettering on streetcars in 1913. In 1919, the first true logo, the circular “O’Shaughnessy” badge was introduced, featuring “S.F.” and “Municipal Railway,” which lasted for nearly 50 years with variations in color schemes.

The blog writes that following the SFMTA’s formation in 1999, there was debate over replacing the “Worm” with a new MTA logo, but the classic design prevailed. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

Previously: Muni Launches Online Store Full of Muni-Branded T-Shirts, Hats, Hoodies, Mugs, and More

Is that … a sign we might actually get some of the long-promised, never-delivered high-speed rail within the decade?

A design studio contracted through the state of California released some new images of what some of the stations along the California high-speed rail could look like.

If you forgot where we were in the state’s high-speed rail saga — and who can blame you, after all these years of back-and-forth — here’s a reminder: California got its federal funding back in 2021, after it was canceled under Trump, and last year, politicians started to get some official plans inked. Last year, the approved state budget included spending the remaining $4.2 billion of high-speed rail bond funding on the rail system — to connect Bakersfield to Merced with high-speed train service in about eight years, covering a 171-mile portion of the larger project.

Apparently, some of that funding has gone to L.A.-based design studio Kilograph, which was hired by the British architecture companies Foster + Partners and ARUP as part of the $35.3 million contract awarded to the two to conduct preliminary site planning, as the Fresno Bee reported.

Kilograph created new designs for the stations in Fresno, Merced, Hanford and Bakersfield, the initial four stops along the proposed California High-Speed Rail Authority's interim operating line.

The design “to visualize the California High-Speed Rail station design and tell the story of how the rail system will connect Californians and improve travel throughout the state,” according to Kilograph's website.

Of course, the first stage of the design contract runs until the spring of 2025 — so we have to assume construction on the interim high speed rail is starting after that.

The renderings feature structures characterized by fluid curves, elevated greenery, and a terminal housing a variety of dining and shopping options. (Check out those AI-generated people.)

Regardless, these designs look pretty futuristic, too.

Let's see if/when it comes to fruition — maybe one day we'll be able to get from San Francisco to L.A. by train within an hour.

Feature image via Kilograph.

Getting the right 469 trees to plant in the Transbay Transit Center's crowning rooftop park has been a difficult task, and in part, Apple is to blame. The long-awaited San Francisco development project, which opens late this year, has reportedly been competing for ideal tree specimen with the Silicon Valley titan's enormous doughnut-shaped campus. That, of course,
is Apple Park, which opens this month, and sought 3,000 new trees for its central green space. The Transbay Center's landscape architect Adam Greenspan and contractor Patrick Trollip explained what it was like to scouri tree nurseries to the Chronicle. From the paper:

Buying trees is a surprisingly cutthroat business. And it’s been especially challenging to locate desirable specimens because Apple has been buying up 3,000 trees for its new Cupertino headquarters. When Greenspan and Trollip found a tree they fancied they would “tag it” with a locking yellow tag, so that nobody else — like Apple — could get it. Eventually all the tagged trees were moved to a nursery in Sunol, where the Transbay project team leased 4 acres.

60 trees have been delivered to the Transbay Transit Center so far — they began arriving in January — and the 5.4-acre rooftop garden is beginning to take shape, the tops of trees now visible from the street. “I think there is going to be a tree for everyone,” Greenspan told the Chronicle. “We have grand and stately trees, and we also have weird trees, quirky ones.”

Transbay Transit Center Project via Facebook

“This is going to be one of the great parks of San Francisco, and it’s going to be a public space unlike anything else we have,” said Gabriel Metcalf, president of the urban think tank SPUR. He's far from alone in that opinion, which is shared by the architect Cesar Pelli: The Chronicle's critic John King visited Pelli at his firm in New Haven this week, and after King commended Pelli on 560 Mission, his "favorite San Francisco tower of the past 15 years," Pelli responded with praise for the Transbay project.

“I’m very proud of 560 Mission, but the transit center with the tower is much better — more important... The wonderful thing about those big projects is that they have a large impact on the city.” Pelli added, “That impact, if you plan and design it carefully, can be very much for the good.”

Pelli is an interesting figure for King to invoke right now, since last week, the critic quoted the complaints of Stanley Saitowitz, an architect critical of SF Planning. "Planning wants textbook replicas," Saitowitz lamented. The department had no appreciation — or understanding — for architecture, he asserted.

That lead Curbed to seek a rebuttal from John Rahaim, SF's Planning Director. Rahaim outlined an ethos of "preventing really egregious architecture," the kind of stuff that looks like "crap" in five years. "You can’t create great architecture through zoning and review," he said.

In the late 1980s, Pelli himself designed a building for San Francisco that might not have stood the test of time: A 400-foot tower for Market Street that would have been crowned with a 120-foot lattice. But Pelli, who was the dean of Yale's school of architecture before founding his firm in 1977, is an example of a designer who's made peace with the difference between academic and actual architecture. Hey, if it's planning departments who prevent things like this vision of a future San Francisco, dug up by the Redditors of r/retrofuturism, then maybe we ought to thank them.

via Reddit

Of course, these flying saucers on the Embarcadero could be sort of cool, now that I think about it. What if we planted some trees on them?

Related: Apple's Spaceship Doughnut Campus, Officially Named Apple Park, To Open In April

Instagram сменил дизайн на чёрно‑белый#эфир https://t.co/HPbevQcl4M pic.twitter.com/TC6aPAKKlc

— The Village (@villagemsk) April 27, 2016

Your Insta might look a little different soon, according to a leaked redesign seen by a select few users that shows the app abandoning the blue header and the black background on the photo editing pages. Instead it will be all white white white, as the NY Post notes. The Instagram team confirmed that testing is underway with a small number of users (some of them in Russia, obviously) as they put the finishing touches on the redesign, and it will be rolling out for everyone "as soon as possible."

The Verge got those first screenshots from user Anton Abramov, and they conclude "The result is a design that feels more modern, but also perhaps less distinctive than the current version of the app."

Instagram, owned by Facebook, has been one of the slower-to-evolve social media apps, though they did add a few new photo filters last year, and last month for the first time moved to an algorithmic prioritizing of its feed order from the traditional chronological view — something you may not have seen yet if you haven't updated the app in the last month, like I hadn't. That change already ruffled a lot of feathers among users who did not necessarily want the app to "show the moments [it believes] you will care about the most." And the change, of course, has ruined the lives of some Instagram celebrities, who may not be as popular this month as they were before. It could be, if there's enough of a revolt, that later iterations of the app will allow users to opt out and go back to chronological ordering, but I'm just spitballing here.

Previously: Instagram Celebs Panic As Algorithmic Feed Reordering Looms

Your Britta water filter, if I may, is vile. Little back specks. Green algae forming around the bottom. The plastic-ness of it all. Gross. Which is why San Franciscan and innovator Mike Del Ponte went about to create a minimal, sleeker water carafe and filter. And what a beauty it is. It's called Soma (not to be confused with the neighborhood) and it does more than just clean your drinking water.

Soma formed a partnership with charity: water to provide clean and safe drinking water worldwide (i.e., for the "the 'bottom billion' who live in slums and impoverished rural areas and survive without access to safe drinking water"). And seeing as how tomorrow, March 22, is World Wide Water Day, this might be the perfect time to change that nasty thing you call a water filter.

"When we first started to design the Soma carafe we absolutely knew we had to make it from glass," Ponte tells SFist. "Anything else would have been a compromise we were not willing to make."

If you buy Soma this week, which you really should because it's downright gorgeous, they'll donate an extra $5 to charity: water. The carafe and filters (100% compostable, by the way) come to your door.

Find a plan that works for you here. Learn more here.

Continuing with San Francisco's unyielding love of reclaimed wood, Twitter will install log cabins at their Mid-Market headquarters. Two homestead cabins, dating back to the late 1800s, will soon become a place where employees can hang out, eat, and reenact favorite scenes from The Evil Dead.

"You can see the hand of the original craftsmen who built them," Olle Lundberg of Lundberg Design, the firm that helped hone the tech company's forest-themed decor, tells Marin Independent Journal. "It's kind of cool that cabins that were built sometime in the 1800s have now reappeared. The guys who built them are long dead, of course, but are sort of still here. I kind of like that."

The old cabins were put up for sale on Craigslist by Novato contractor Karl Beckmann, who scored them from ranches in several Montana towns, which is where Lundberg found them.

For Beckmann, owner of Beckmann Engineering and Design and Beckmann Construction in Novato, the story of the cabins began several years ago, when he was approached about buying them from someone in Montana who learned of the company's sideline business in salvaged wood. That's when Beckmann put the ad for them on Craigslist, thinking that nothing would come of it until Lundberg, who had filed the ad away on the off chance he might need some old log cabins some day, finally answered it last summer.

"At first I was concerned it was a scam," Beckmann said. "How often does it happen that you get a call to install two log cabins inside a building? This is a once-in-a-lifetime-type job."

Once he was convinced that Lundberg was for real, he had the cabins taken apart in Montana and shipped to a company yard in Vallejo, where they were put back together. When some of the logs turned out to be too rotten to reuse, new ones were milled on the site out of the same kind of lodge pole pine as the originals.

The cabins were then taken apart again and trucked to Twitter's new office on three floors of 1355 Market St., in what has been a seedy downtown area known as the "Mid-Market" neighborhood.

Twitter, who moved into the art deco Western Furniture Exchange and Merchandise Mart building on Mid-Market amid some controversy, hopes their use of reclaimed wood will help "humanize" the company to anti-tech zealots.

You can buy a great piece of design like an iPhone," Jim Prosser, PR for Twitter, told Marin IJ. "And yet that doesn't in any way define us. But when you have these one-of-a-kind things, they really do begin to say who you are. And hopefully this does that for Twitter, that it makes them a little different than any other tech company."

The social media company's (admittedly gorgeous) headquarters already feature an artisan food court, yoga studio, rooftop garden, beer bar, and an arcade. And now, however indirectly, they will pay homage to the horror genre with old cabins to remind them of Friday the 13th, Cabin in the Woods, Wrong Turn, Pumpkin Head, and The Evil Dead. (Genius.)

[Marin IJ]

Get out of my head, Muni! (Photo: Gerard Livernois)

While some might argue that the modern design doesn't necessarily match the building, we are swooning over Twitter's new signage outside their headquarters. You like? Well, we do. So sleek, so fresh, so lowercase.

Doug Bowman, creative director at Twitter, says of the new sign, "The new @twitter HQ sign is an homage to the civic importance of its predecessor." Indeed. Twitter, if you recall, moved from SoMa to MidMarket last year taking over the old SF Mart spot.

To check out the sign yourself, head over to 1355 Market (at Ninth).

[h/t Kevin Montgomery]

The Renoir Hotel at 7th and Market — which over the last year was home to A Temporary Offering, which included the cool but temporary Rio Grande bar from the Trick Dog team that closed last month — was purchased in 2012 by the Kor Group. Kor is known for the Viceroy brand of hotels, designed in high, maximalist style by Kelly Wearstler, who happens to be the wife of Kor developer Brad Korzen, and a onetime Playboy Playmate. And now the Business Times confirms that, with some investment from China, the renovation is underway with design from Wearstler in the works.

The unnamed hotel will be unlike the Viceroy, apparently, and "very different from anything she has designed before." Rest assured, though, it will be rad. And the planned 4,500-square foot rooftop bar will, undoubtedly, become a hot spot in no time. It will boast panoramic views of the city from the eight-story-high roof, adjacent to U.N. Plaza.

The Kor Group also recently revamped the former Milano Hotel on Fifth Street, transforming it into the Hotel Zetta, with another designer at the helm. Both of these projects are part of their Urban Retreats portfolio.

The 130-room, $40 million Renoir revamp does not yet have an opening date (it will be in 2014), and the Renoir was just closed down a month ago to begin the renovation process. Kor raised money for the project in part through the EB-5 program that allows well off immigrants to basically purchase temporary residency status in the U.S. by investing at least $500,000 in an American business.

The project will be a major boon for a struggling piece of the Mid-Market corridor, disconnected as it is by several blocks from the Market Square project where the Twitter headquarters is located and which has been the subject of much buzz surrounding the redevelopment of the area. Along with that egregious Nema apartment project two blocks up, the renovation of the Strand Theater as a new black box for A.C.T. across the street, and the construction of the Market Street Place (formerly called CityPlace) discount mall project between 5th and 6th, major change is finally afoot for the area.

Market Street Place, by the way, is just beginning demolition now on those buildings including the former St. Francis Cinema and the former Social Security building, with a projected opening in 2015.

[Biz Times]
[Curbed]
Previously: Downtown Hotel Boom: Two to Three New Hotels Heading to SoMa/Mid-Market
CityPlace To Move Forward Again On Market Street With JCPenney As Anchor

After nearly a century and a half of presenting themselves with a perfectly academic-looking Victorian seal, the University of California School system has supplanted the open book and shining star motif with a new, more "modern" and "user-friendly" logo. Unfortunately, no one seems to like it.

The logo was quietlyintroduced last month as part of the 10-school system's ongoing "Onward California" re-branding effort. Although no one on the campus of U.C. Berkeley had apparently heard about the effort last week, the new slogan boldly announces: "Whether you know it or not, the University of California, or a UC grad, has probably played a part in your day." The campaign hopes to raise awareness of the UC system's impact outside of academic settings and in everyday environments.

As any user-friendly design should, the new logo comes in an array of colors — one for each of the UC Schools. The design itself was created by an in-house team and is designed to look better when used in digital and print materials. As one representative from of UC's Office of the President (now proudly sporting the logo on its website) explained: the UC system needed a fresh new look because, "there's nothing static about an excellent university." To show they're serious about the logo update, the University of California even made a promo commercial that looks like it could also be promoting a new line of hybrid cars:

Naturally, outrage over the new design hit the Internet where some wondered what could possess the UC System to create a logo that looks like a toilet down which their tuition dollars are being flushed:

Hmm, wonder how much the University of California spent on "image consultants" to come up with this ugly new logo... fb.me/yuwVQscR

— FrumpyMom (@FrumpyMom) December 10, 2012

As it turns out, the in-house team worked at no extra cost to the University system, which might say more about the logo than a thousand angry tweets. Still, no less than four Facebook groups have already popped up, opposing the new design and a Change.org petition imploring the University of California to stop the new UC logo has already gathered over 40,000 supporters.

For their part, the administration says the new logo is not intended to completely replace the 144-year-old seal, which will still find life on diplomas and other official documents. Rather, it should be viewed as visible trademark that extends the school's presence into the real world, reminding people of the school's importance and ultimately bringing in more fundraising dollars. UC Marketing Director Jason Simon even responded to the haters on the Change.org page by appealing to every Californian's casual sense superiority: "The new mark was created as a part of our broader efforts to build awareness and support for all the things that UC does to make California (and by extension the world) better."

However, as the East Bay Express accurately points out: It's not just the new logo that should bristle UC students and alums everywhere, but the corporate feel that the logo suggests. Which is a much bigger issue to deal with than an unpopular brandmark.

[MercuryNews]
[LATimes]
[EBX]