• [Update] About 100 firefighters were called to a fire in SF’s North Beach neighborhood Friday evening. The fire, which was located on the top floor of an apartment building on Montgomery Street near Vallejo Street, also damaged two neighboring buildings, but no injuries were reported. [Chronicle]

• San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman is proposing a revision to Proposition E, a 2022 law implemented to prevent corruption within the city government. The revision would allow supervisors to publicly request a waiver from the rest of the Board in order to solicit funds from people or organizations that have existing city contracts. [Mission Local]
• Surfers from far and wide enjoyed 40-foot waves on opening day of the season in the acclaimed Mavericks, California near Half Moon Bay Thursday. [Chronicle]
• The Oakland Zoo’s annual Glowfari lantern festival opens Friday evening and runs through January 25. [NBC Bay Area]

• After expanding beyond its core mission, the Sierra Club has been weakened by financial turmoil, internal conflict, and declining support just as Trump’s administration rolls back environmental protections. [New York Times]
• Head on over to Powell Station in San Francisco at 2 pm Saturday — help local rapper Yung Phil’s hyphy dance video go viral! [Yung Phil]

National:

• When someone fainted on stage during a press conference at the Oval Office Thursday, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared to abruptly leave the scene as Dr. Oz, and others, assisted the man. A “source” later claimed RFK Jr. was fetching a chair for the man, which is reportedly what someone else said they were doing. [People]
• The Trump administration is reversing part of a bill that Trump signed into law during his first term that required manufacturers to reduce the use of harmful greenhouse gases in refrigerators and air conditioners. [Associated Press]
• Military families living in a privatized housing development near Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida were told they weren’t allowed to put up Christmas decorations no sooner than 30 days before December 25. [Task & Purpose]

Video of the Day:

Speaking of hyphy, harpist GEO, who’s Bay Area born and raised, quickly rose to fame this year after posting a series of reels of her mesmerizing accompaniments to various hyphy classics, including Keak da Sneak’s “Super Hyphy.”

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

The most dangerous surfing conditions of the year are also the most beloved surfing conditions of the year for the world’s most elite surfers, who’ve descended on Half Moon Bay for the legendary, unscheduled Mavericks surfing festivities.

We noted earlier this morning that high surf and flood warnings are in effect today for pretty much the entire Bay Area coast. The Chronicle points out that massively dangerous waves are making the ocean incredibly dangerous and deadly to go into, or even near. “We really want to hammer home that beaches will be very dangerous,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Nicole Sarment told the Chronicle. “People should really not even go.”

But that is music to the ears of surfers who converge from around the world to participate in the Mavericks surfing festival in Half Moon Bay. They started arriving around Christmas, but Thursday is the day they’re expecting the biggest waves, with KGO reporting via the National Weather Service that the waves are expected to be as high as 30 feet. (The Chronicle notes that the notorious break at Mavericks, in these conditions, can see waves of 50 feet or higher.) Mavericks does not have a set calendar date, it can generally happen anytime between November 1-March 31, whenever those tasty waves hit their highest highs — no matter how dangerous the conditions.

"I mean they're deadly waves,” Mavericks Rescue Team member Drake Stanley tells KGO. “A few people have passed away here at Mavericks." Indeed, Stanley has saved surfers’ lives on his jet-ski, not only saving them from the enormous, deadly waves, but also from great white sharks.

Mavericks is no longer a surfing competition. It used to be, once known as Titans of Mavericks and at one point sponsored by Red Bull. But Titans of Mavericks went bankrupt in 2017, and canceled the competition that year. So now it is simply an informal event, but the top big-wave surfers from around the world still descend on Half Moon Bay for what are considered some of the best and most challenging surfing conditions on earth.

"We spend our lives to be here for these moments, and all the training and the work and the practice and the backup safety networks that we create are all for these moments,” Stanley said to KGO. “And it's amazing when we get to experience that."

If you want to watch the Mavericks surfers, you’re free to head to Half Moon Bay and do so, but you’d better take some binoculars. Regular civilians are not allowed too close to the beach because of the dangerous conditions — and the break actually occurs quite a distance offshore, requiring jet skis to get to it. But if you want to scope out a spot to watch, it’s actually a little north of Half Moon Bay near Pillar Point Harbor in a village called Princeton-by-the-Sea. (If you need a landmark, look for the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company.)

Related: Jet Skier Saves Mavericks Surfers From Enormous Great White Shark [SFist]

Image: HALF MOON BAY, CA - JANUARY 24: Tyler Fox rides a wave during the second heat of round one of Mavericks Invitational on January 24, 2014 in Half Moon Bay, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

A professional surf rescuer managed to scare off a very large great white shark near Half Moon Bay on Sunday just as it was approaching a group of surfers.

"It was definitely the biggest shark I’ve ever seen," Drake Stanley tells NBC Bay Area. He estimates it was 16 to 18 feet long, and a photo that Stanley shot before the shark swam off does indeed show an extremely enormous fish.

"I was sitting on my ski watching the surf when from the corner of my eye, I see something huge rising up from below," Stanley says, and he explains that as he saw the shark approaching a surfer, he zoomed up to it on his ski and the shark turned around and swam away. He then went about giving the surfers rides back to shore, one by one, just to be safe.

As Stanley narrates to SFGate, "As it came up, it rolled over on its side to look at me with its giant, dark eye. And I could see scars and cuts all down its body, like teeth scars. From all my 'Shark Week' watching expertise, I knew that it was a female." The detail there, per SFGate, is that females often end up with such scarring while mating, because the marine animal kingdom is brutal.

Stanley adds, "The trippiest thing about the whole encounter was the way it was looking at me. It looked into my eyes. We made eye contact."

The Mavericks surf competition looks to be not happening for the third year in a row, but that doesn't mean the surfing hasn't been good at the famous break.

Waves have been seen at the break near Pillar Point as high as 50 or 60 feet, though recent surf heights have reportedly been smaller than that, and today they're peaking at around 10 feet, according to Surfline.

Mavericks came close to happening on December 17 but got pushed back when a storm moved in and caused the waves to get too massive. There was talk of an impending contest again around March 11, but organizers shut that down as the swell started tapering off.

The last time the Mavericks competition happened was in February 2016, and since then organizers have announced there will be a women's heat for the very first time — though that's yet to be a reality because the competition hasn't happened yet.

Previously: Mavericks Wrap-Up: Nic Lamb Of Santa Cruz Takes Home Top Surfing Prize

∙ The window for the Mavericks big-wave surf competition is closing at the end of March, and it looks like this is the third year in a row that it isn't happening. Female surfers are going to be competing in their own heat for the first time, but that's yet to happen because the contest hasn't occurred since Feb. 2016. [NBC Bay Area]

∙ Beto O'Rourke is running for president. The three-term Texas legislator doesn't yet have a signature policy proposal, but he may have the youth, energy, and name recognition to help him stand out in a large Democratic field. [New York Times]

∙ Both Sen. Kamala Harris and the New York Times Editorial Board came out in support of Gov. Gavin Newsom's moratorium on the death penalty. The Times says "this act of executive mercy recognizes the extreme failures of the death penalty." [New York Times]

∙ Facebook still hasn't said what caused it and Instagram to go down all day Wednesday. The outage lasted some 22 hours, it also impacted WhatsApp, and it may mean that the company will have to refund lots of money to advertisers. [Wall Street Journal]

∙ A woman who was struck by a car while in a crosswalk in the Tenderloin on March 5 has died. 58-year-old Janice Higashi succumbed to her injuries on Sunday. [Chronicle]

∙ The lead prosecutor in the Ghost Ship fire case, David Lim, just resigned from the Alameda County DA's office, weeks before that trial is set to start. [ABC 7]

∙ 22-year-old Shiheim Johnson of Vallejo was convicted Wednesday in the 2015 murder of 17-year-old Torian Hughes — who was considered a grandson to Oakland City Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, whose son was just killed in Los Angeles last weekend. [CBS SF]

∙ An oily sheen spotted on the surface of Oakland's Lake Merritt Wednesday evening prompted a hazmat response. [Bay City News]

∙ The Warriors managed to eke out a 116-114 win against the Houston Rockets last night without the help of Kevin Durant. [CBS SF]

As you know, the Mavericks surf competition is going on right freakin' now. Even if you didn't have to work, it would be hard to watch it in person, as your only option is to watch from binoculars from a distance.

Or you can watch it online, here or below! (Update: According to an email sent to SFist by Raechel Ball with Red Bull Media House, "There was a momentary glitch in the player that allowed the embed code to be unlocked for a short time period." So, apparently, you'll have to go to their site to watch it.)

As previously reported, there are inbound swells predicted of 16 feet or higher, but the unique topography of the oceanfloor at Mavericks could push waves up to 25 to 30 feet, with the occasional breaker topping the 35-foot mark. (Commentators, though, are saying this year's waves aren't the biggest they've ever seen, and are kind of modest in size.)

This is the 10th time the competition will be held since its founding in 1999. When it's called, as it was on Tuesday, professional surfers from around the world drop everything and fly to the Bay Area to participate.

Previously: Mavericks Is On This Friday
Photos: Big Waves, Big Wipeouts At Mavericks

We mentioned Friday that the Mavericks big-wave surf competition, now known as Titans of Mavericks, could get called any time in the next few weeks — according to the four-color alert legend on the site, we're currently at swell level orange. Some big-wave surfers have already congregated near Half Moon Bay and have gone out to practice on some huge inbound El Nino waves in the last week, and one of them, Garrrett “GMAC” McNamara, was injured in a crazy wipeout that was caught on camera Thursday.

ABC 7 shows us the video several times over during the news segment above, and in it you can see the tiny figure of McNamara plummet down the face of the 50-foot wave, hitting the water three time before getting pummeled by the crashing wave. He broke his arm and also injured his shoulder in the fall, but the 48-year-old surfing legend says, "Surfing is my life. It's my passion. It's what I love to do. And, I will never stop surfing."

Mavericks, the invitation-only competition, will almost definitely have its tenth outing this season, it's just a matter of when. The contest only gets called after organizers observe a worthy swell over several days at the break. In the 16 years that the competition has been running, it has only been called nine previous times.

Previously: Mavericks Waves Hit 50 Feet, Surf Competition Could Be Called Any Day

The tenth edition of the famed, invitation-only Mavericks surf competition, now dubbed Titans of Mavericks, will most definitely happen during this stormy El Nino winter, it's just a matter of when as organizers closely watch the swells arriving off the coast of Half Moon Bay. The competition doesn't happen every year and is dependent on the way the waves shape up — there hasn't been one since 2014, given how quiet and dry a winter we had last year. But as organizers presaged via Instagram last week, and as the Chronicle reports, waves have been hitting 50 feet at Mavericks this week and seasoned big-wave surfers are already out there practicing on them. Though the gnarly factor is, reportedly, very high.

In fact, as the Chron reported this morning, one surfer has already been injured.

Garrrett “GMAC” McNamara, 48, wiped out massively on Thursday and had to undergo emergency surgery, from which he's now recovering.

The big waves occur around a break that's two miles off the Northern California coast at Pillar Point, and they form during the rough winter season due to a unique geological formation under the water — a ramp that slopes upwards on the ocean floor and creates unusually massive waves at this spot that can be as high as 80 feet, in a V- or U-formation.

The contest was founded long before Apple named an operating system update after it, back in 1999, though professional surfers had been making pilgrimages to the break since the mid-90s — locals had known about it, and surfed it, as early as the 1960s, but the prevailing wisdom for decades was that California didn't have any big waves. Each year organizers plan for it between November and March, and the competition only gets called when the swells are deemed perfect. Thus it's only happened nine times over 16 years. 24 surfers are invited to participate, and the last winner in 2014 was South African surfer Grant Baker who had previously won in 2006.

The one-day competition gets called with only 24 to 48 hours notice, in which competitors fly in from wherever they may be around the globe, and fans rush to watch. Like last time, it should be broadcast on a big screen at AT&T Park when it happens.

Two people have died surfing Mavericks: Mark Foo in 1994, and Sion Milosky, an accomplished big-wave surfer who drowned after a two-wave hold down in 2011, during a year when no contest was held.

Previously: Photos: Big Waves, Big Wipeouts At Mavericks

Not wanting to get thrown around on the boat that was about to get knocked with a huge wave, surfer Mark Healey — who is also a stunt man — took a flying leap off the deck and into the wave, as you can see in the video above.

As Fox News notes, the video was shot in December at Mavericks, the famed surf break near Half Moon Bay, and recently uploaded to Facebook. Healey explained to Fox and Friends that he was on the fishing boat and "didn't feel like getting smashed around like an ice cube in a shaker," as the wave approached. "So I looked to my friends to the left and right of me and just told them, 'I don't know about you guys, but I'm jumping.'"

He added, "My friends on the jet skis who picked me up were like basically crying laughing at me. I came up pretty much dying laughing, and then I checked to make sure everybody was OK on the boat. There was some damaged equipment - soaked cameras - but everybody was pretty much in good shape."

The Mavericks big wave surfing competition did not happen this year for lack of ideal conditions. Here are photos from the last one, in January 2014.