Oakland is having its big rally at noon in Frank Ogawa Plaza to celebrate hometown Olympian Alysa Liu, who trained at the Oakland Ice Center and grew up in nearby Richmond.

Various outlets have live feeds of the event (see below) if you don't want to turn on your TV. And Liu herself said she wanted to be surprised and didn't know what to expect at the rally in her honor. But the city just revealed that the celebration will feature a performance by Oakland's own Kehlani.

"I just want to say, I'm such a fan, girl," Mayor Barbara Lee said at a press event before the rally. "To have the first [American] woman in 24 years to win an Olympic gold medal in figure skating — she did it her way: fearless, focused, and fully herself."

From the stage at the press event, Liu said she was blown away by the amount of attention she's gotten across the US. "It's been crazy how much visibility I have right now. I would've never expected that, especially from a figure skater. You know, we don't really blow up like that."

See feeds below from KTVU and KPIX.

Top image: Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu speaks during a press conference celebrating her accomplishments at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics on March 12, 2026 in Oakland, California. Liu won the United States' first gold medal in women's singles figure skating since 2002. (Photo by Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)

• The suspect accused of stealing Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee’s city-issued SUV after squatting for three days in Oakland City Hall has been arrested. Police have not yet named the man, saying only that he is 29 years old, but boy do they need to review security protocols at Oakland City Hall. [NBC Bay Area]
• On the heels of the nine people killed in the back-country ski avalanche near Tahoe, we’re learning that another skier died Wednesday at the Northstar ski resort. The victim is 21-year-old Colin Kang of Fremont, and he’s now the third skier to die at Northstar this winter season alone. [SFGate]
• To prevent yet more winter storm treachery, Yosemite National Park has shut down entirely because of the extreme winter conditions. The park will remain closed until at least midnight on Friday, and possibly longer. [Chronicle]

National:

• President Trump kicked off his “Board of Peace” proceedings by of course threatening to start a war, saying that he might go to war with Iran within 10-15 days, or maybe as soon as this weekend. [CNN]
• The monarch formerly known as Prince Andrew, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was released from police custody after being held for 11 hours, though he was arrested for sharing confidential national security information with Jeffrey Epstein rather than alleged sex crimes. [NY Times]
• Actor Eric Dane, best known as  Dr. Mark “McSteamy” Sloan on the TV series Grey’s Anatomy in the mid-2000s, died from ALS, his family announced Thursday. He was 53. [Deadline]

Video:

• Here it is, the full video of Richmond figure skater Alysa Liu’s gold medal-winning performance in Thursday’s Women's Single Skating at the Olympics, a performance that is guaranteed to pack the Oakland Ice Center where she practiced growing up all this weekend long and likely for months to come.

Alysa Liu caps off an all time great comeback with a Gold medal winning free skate in the Winter Olympics 2026
by u/Yujin-Ha in sports

Image: MILAN, ITALY - FEBRUARY 19: Gold medalist Alysa Liu of Team United States poses for a photo during the medal ceremony for the Women's Single Skating on day thirteen of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games at Milano Ice Skating Arena on February 19, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

San Francisco-born Olympian Eileen Gu, now competing in her second Olympic Games at age 22, reveals in a new interview that she has faced harassment and even death threats over her choice to ski for China instead of the US.

It was clear after the 2022 Beijing Olympics that freestyle skier Eileen Gu would likely be a star of these Olympics as well. And while she's American-born to an American father and Chinese mother, she opted to begin skiing for her mother's home country in 2019, and has ever since.

At this year's games, she has so far notched two silver medals for China, one in Freeski Slopestyle and one in Big Air — the latter of which she won a gold medal for in 2022.

In a new interview with The Athletic, Gu says, "I’ve gone through some things as a 22-year-old that I really think no one should ever have to endure, ever."

Gu began attending Stanford after the 2022 Olympic Games, and after she had already achieved some international fame. She talks about the petition that was started by other Chinese American students and parents of prospective students to keep her from being enrolled at the school — which is her mother's alma mater, and where she was actually accepted in December 2020, via early admission.

Gu says that while at Stanford, police had to be called after she was "physically assaulted on the street." And, she adds, "I’ve had death threats. I’ve had my dorm robbed."

Stanford's public safety department has not commented on the matter or confirmed any details.

Gu explains that her decision to ski for China, when she was only 15, was not made out of any consideration for the financial support she might receive from Chinese companies. She said that as an athlete growing up in America, "I had so many idols to look up to... But in China, I feel like there are a lot fewer of those. I’d have a much greater impact in China than in the U.S., and that’s ultimately why I made my decision."

And, she tells The Athletic, "My biggest goal has always been to bring the sport to more young people, especially girls."

But many still question the purity of her motives.

Chinese fans call her The Snow Princess, and her fame is undeniable, likely eclipsing most of her Olympic peers — something that has led to her raking in around $23 million a year in sponsorships and modeling gigs. As The Athletic puts it, "With a footprint in two of the world’s most populous countries, Gu is a sports marketer’s dream."

Gu, who already has five medals, more than any other freeskier ever, has one more shot at gold on Saturday night in the women's halfpipe event.

Top image: Silver medalist Ailing Eileen Gu of Team Republic of China is seen during the medal ceremony for the Women's Freeski Big Air on day ten of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games at Livigno Snow Park on February 16, 2026 in Livigno, Italy (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

Clovis-born Alysa Liu, who now hails from Richmond and who went to high school in Oakland, skated in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing at the age of 16. After briefly retiring, she is back and just made Team USA once again at the US Championships on Sunday.

20-year-old Alysa Liu made headlines at a young age, being the youngest-ever women's national champion at age 13, and last March she became the first US woman in 19 years to win the World Figure Skating Championship.

After competing in Beijing as the youngest member of Team USA four years ago, Liu briefly "retired" from figure skating to attend college at UCLA — she graduated high school at age 15 — but has gotten back to the sport in a big way. And as NBC Bay Area reports, she "wowed" the crowd at the national championships in St. Louis on Sunday before donning her Team USA jersey.

"Well I'm not the youngest this time," Liu joked after the event. "I'm feeling older... not really, I'm really, really good!"

As USA Today reports, Sunday's event still belonged to three-time national champion Amber Glenn, 26, who thrilled the audience and became the first woman to win three back-to-back national championships since Michelle Kwan.

Liu came in a close second to Glenn, and Isabeau Levito third, rounding out the women's team. The trio looks well positioned to represent America well in Milan-Cortina in the very popular, highly competitive realm of figure skating.

As Liu told USA Today, "Everyone's telling me it was fun to watch. I'm like, I agree. Watching Amber was really fun for me."

Previously: Richmond’s Alysa Liu Wins Gold at Women’s World Figure Skating Championships, the First US Winner In 19 Years

Top image: Alysa Liu skates in Making the Team: Presented by Xfinity, an exhibition after the 2026 United States Figure Skating Championships at the Enterprise Center on January 11, 2026 in St Louis, Missouri. ( (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

• Anthropic AI has agreed to pay $1.5 billion in a copyright settlement over a lawsuit alleging the company illegally pirated almost half a million books. The plaintiffs — a group of authors and publishers — will be awarded $3,000 for each publication listed in the case. [Associated Press]
• Thirty inmates were involved in a fight at Maguire Correctional Facility in San Mateo County Friday morning, and deputies reportedly used gas to break it up. Six officers had minor injuries, and six inmates were hospitalized, three of whom have since been sent back to jail and the others in stable condition. [KTVU]
• Caltrans is replacing a misspelled sign on southbound 101 in Novato/Petaluma. The sign, which should read “San Marin Drive” instead of the currently incorrect “San Martin Drive,” is scheduled to arrive in a couple weeks — at no extra cost to taxpayers. [KGO]

• Oakland-born world figure skating champion Alysa Liu told the Associated Press she’s replacing the d4vd song she’d planned to use for one of her programs in the Milan Olympics due to the artist’s potential involvement in the death of Celeste Rivas Hernandez. [Associated Press]

National:

• Elon Musk is listed in a newly released Epstein document, along with Steve Banon, Peter Thiel, and Prince Andrew. The file, released Friday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, contains portions of Epstein’s daily schedule from 2014, 2017 and 2019, as well as a flight manifest from 2000. [USA Today]
• Black Panther and Black Liberation activist Assata Shakur, who had been living in Cuba under political asylum for the past several decades, has died. Shakur was given a life sentence in 1977 in the killing of a New Jersey state trooper and was rescued by members of the Black Liberation Army during a jail break in 1979. [Associated Press]
• In a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Amazon agreed to pay its customers $1.5 billion in refunds — in addition to a $1 billion civil penalty — over its “deceptive Prime enrollment practices.” [CBS News]
• Sinclair Broadcasting and Nexstar Media Group, which boycotted the airing of Jimmy Kimmel Live! this week, announced Friday they’ll both be airing the show again on all 38 and 33 of their ABC affiliate stations effective immediately. [CBS News]

Video of the Day:

• This Bay Area couple had a wedding to remember with Vallejo’s own E-40 as their wedding officiant. Big congrats, to the Kinders!

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• Former Team USA swimmer Catherine Breed plans to swim the entire 900-mile California coast in stages next year—from the border of Oregon to the Mexican border—to raise awareness and funds for Sea Dreamers, a nonprofit supporting women in ocean activities and conservation. Her journey will be tracked live with educational storytelling highlighting the diverse and challenging coastline. [Swimming World Magazine, NBC Bay Area]

• A 3.2-magnitude earthquake struck south of Concord, causing light shaking but no damage in the quietly active Concord-Green Valley Fault zone, which moves about 5 mm per year. (This author felt it in SF.) A 3.7-magnitude earthquake occurred along the same fault in January near Pleasant Hill.  [Chronicle]
• The Pink Triangle installation on Twin Peaks, which is set to return next week, marks its 30th anniversary this Pride Month as a powerful symbol of LGBTQ+ history and ongoing struggles. Created by Patrick Carney and volunteers, the display links its origins as a Nazi prison badge to today’s focus on transgender rights and discrimination. [Hoodline]
• A state appeals court has rejected Scott's Peterson's petition to overturn his murder conviction in the 2002 killings of his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son. [Bay Area News Group]
• After 103 years in San Francisco, KNBR officially moved its studios to Daly City on Thursday. [SFGate]

National:

• Residents of Starbase, Texas—the newly incorporated company town centered around Elon Musk’s SpaceX facility—have been warned they may lose the right to use their property as currently zoned under a proposed “Mixed Use District” ordinance. City officials, who are current and former SpaceX employees, will hold a public hearing on June 23 to vote on the plan. [CNBC]
• Joy Reid, recently ousted from MSNBC, is launching a thrice-weekly podcast starting June 9 called The Joy Reid Show. Streaming on YouTube and podcast platforms, the show promises unfiltered commentary, high-profile guests, and deeper conversations than cable TV allowed. [Variety]
• As anti-LGBTQ+ policies attempt to erase queer history, Queer History 101—a monthly virtual book club co-led by Miss Peppermint of RuPaul‘s Drag Race fame and historian Hugh Ryan—is pushing back by spotlighting stories of queer resistance and fostering community online. The project evolved from an earlier indie book club launched by Eric Cervini and Adam Powell to pay and promote queer authors, now reimagined with a broader, more accessible approach to history beyond academia. [Wired]
• Thirteen-year-old Faizan Zaki from Allen, Texas, won the 100th Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, triumphing after a tense final round by correctly spelling "éclaircissement" and earning over $50,000 in prizes. [CBS News]
• Loretta Swit, the Emmy-winning actress best known as Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on the classic 1970s TV series M.A.S.H., has died at age 87. [KRON4]

Video of the Day:

• A group of tourists were put to work recently as they helped push a broken-down cable car out of a busy Union Square intersection:

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Still Making Weekend Plans?

Check out Last Week, This Week for a few weekend events we featured on Sunday. Plus, some additions:

• Head to Union Street and North Beach for a couple weekend-long street festivals.
• San Francisco’s Helen Dance Academy celebrates AAPI Month with an afternoon dance performance at Salesforce Park on Saturday.
• Enjoy arts, crafts, complimentary snacks, and face-painting at SoMa Blooms Community Garden Party on Sunday.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Image: PARIS, FRANCE - AUGUST 08: Stephen Curry #4 of Team USA reacts after his team's victory against Team Serbia during a Men's basketball semifinals match between Team USA and Team Serbia on day thirteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Bercy Arena on August 08, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)

20-year-old Walnut Creek product Amit Elor just became the youngest American ever — man or woman— to win an Olympic Gold Medal in wrestling, after Tuesday’s gold medal win was her 41st consecutive victory.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the 2024 Olympics in Paris, the US just powered past China for the most gold medals won of any country at this year’s Olympics thus far. And it was a 20-year-old from the Contra Costa County town of Walnut Creek that pushed the US ahead.

The Chronicle ran a Monday profile of Walnut Creek’s Amit Elor (pronounced eh-MEET eh-LOR), who was born in Walnut Creek, went on to attend College Park High, and college at Pleasant Hill’s Diablo Valley College. Elor was at that point heading into Tuesday's gold medal match, after beating North Korea’s Pak Sol in a one-sided semifinal match that lasted all of 44 seconds.

And on Tuesday, Elor defeated Kyrgyzstan’s Meerim Zhumanazarova to win the women’s wrestling gold medal in the 68-kilogram (150 pound) category, according to USA Today. Elor is now the youngest American ever to win a gold medal in wrestling, in either the men’s or women’s category.

USA Today also points out that Elor has now won 41 consecutive matches, a streak that dates back to 2019. This is her eighth world championship in some category or another of women's wrestling, but her first Olympics gold medal.

So Elor is now the youngest American gold medal-winning wrestler ever, but not by much. She’s only two months younger than American Kyle Snyder was when he won gold at the 2016 Olympics. And if you really want to get deep in the reeds, Elor is also now the first Jewish American wrestler to win a gold medal since Henry Wittenberg at the 1948 Olympics in London.

Related: 20-Year-Old From SF Will Be First Tongan Woman To Compete In Weightlifting at the Olympics [SFist]

Image: Team USA Wrestling

Top image: Gold medallist Ailing Eileen Gu of Team China celebrates with their medal during the Women's Freestyle Skiing Freeski Big Air medal ceremony on Day 4 of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games at Beijing Medal Plaza on February 08, 2022 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

Kuinini "Nini" Manumua, who started lifting weights at age 13 at San Francisco's Lincoln High School, will be representing her family's home country of Tonga in the sport of weightlifting at the Tokyo Olympics — the first woman ever to represent Tonga in the sport.

The 20-year-old resident of Hunters Point tells KTVU that she's always loved weightlifting. "It's very empowering for a girl to do lifting," she says. "It makes me feel strong."

The Chronicle first reported on Manumua qualifying for the Olympics over the weekend, noting that her name became something of a cause celebre in the right-wing media — ironic given that she's a San Franciscan!! — because she was initially denied a spot representing the generally underrepresented country of Tonga, while transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand made the cut. (For example, the conservative Washington Examiner used the example of Hubbard's inclusion at Manumua's expense to blare the headline "The Tokyo Olympics marks the beginning of the end for the integrity of women's sports.")

But Manumua ended up qualifying after all, receiving a tripartite invitation on July 1, which is sort of a wild-card slot for underrepresented countries. She tells the Chronicle, "I was crying I was so happy."

Manumua was born to a Mormon Tongan family on American Samoa, and her family later relocated to Tonga and then to San Francisco, where she says she's grown up in housing projects in Bayview-Hunters Point. Her brother, who was a standout football player at Lincoln High, per the Chronicle, is now on his Mormon mission in Alaska, and Manumua says she's still trying to decide whether to go on one herself after the Olympics.

Also a volleyball player in school, Manumua won a bronze medal at the youth world weightlifting championship at the age of 17 in 2017, and it was later that her coach realized her best path to the Olympics might be to represent Tonga.

She currently is trying to get her clean and jerk weight record above the 300-pound mark. Weighing 240 pounds herself, she can snatch above her weight, at 242 pounds.

Her coach, Ben Hwa, who'll be traveling with her to the Olympics, tells KTVU, "To have the background that she has, to make it to the Olympics, I don't know what better story there is."

And as Manumua herself tells the station of her story, she hopes it will give hope to others. "A lot of people may say you can't do it where you're not coming from the best circumstances. You find a way to do it," she says.

Photo via YouTube

Photo: Bryan Turner

What's left to conquer when you already have 28 Olympic medals? How about Silicon Valley? That seems to be the thinking of Michael Phelps, who the Associated Press reports is planning on leveraging both his considerable star power and wealth to get in on the venture capital game.

“I would love to get involved, whether it’s in a couple little startups here and there, take a little risk, have some fun and see where it goes,” Phelps explained at an Intuit software conference in San Jose. “I am getting my feet wet," he added. "2017 will be a big year.”

Just what does that mean? Will we soon have a Phelps-backed weed vaporizer? The star isn't saying for now, but has acknowledged meeting with venture capitalists and various Silicon Valley investors.

If he was so inclined, Phelps could put some of the reported approximately $75 million he's earned over the years from endorsement deals directly into whatever SF startup that's hoping to be the next Niantic. He wouldn't be the first celebrity to drop cash into the startup scene — think Ashton Kutcher's investment in Uber — and already has some experience in the business world. Specifically, his MP-branded line of swimwear and clothing. More broadly, Silicon Valley has lately become the dumping ground for extremely accomplished semi-retired people, with some musing that President Obama might even make his way west after the completion of his second term.

Following his retirement from competitive swimming after the Rio games, the obviously hyper-competitive Phelps may just looking for the next challenge. If the startup thing doesn't work out, perhaps he could have a go at competitive bong ripping?

Related: Does President Obama Have A Future In Silicon Valley?

Matthew Porter, the armorer of the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team in Rio, returned home to California this week to find that the new home he and his wife had just purchased in Lower Lake had been destroyed in the Clayton Fire. KRON 4 reports the news, with head fencing coach Greg Massialas explaining that Porter is the guy who "made sure our weapons were in absolutely top shape and was critical in making sure that we did not miss a single point due to our equipment."

Porter, a three-time U.S. Olympic armorer, had apparently just purchased the home, in cash, days before leaving for the Olympics in Rio, and arrived back to find it gone. Apparently his wife Karen stayed behind at home, and she was only able to escape the flames Karen "with little more than their dogs," according to a GoFundMe page that has been set up for the Porters.

It has already reached 25 percent of its $100,000 goal.

The Clayton Fire, which we now know began as an act of arson, broke out Saturday evening, August 13, and quickly grew to several thousand acres. Nearly a week in, it is now 65 percent contained, after having destroyed 300 structures, at least 175 of those homes — and all this destruction happened in Lake County which was already hit with three major wildfires last summer, including the devastating Valley Fire.

As the LA Times discusses in a new piece today, "Blessed with natural beauty, Lake County is also bedeviled by pervasive poverty." The poverty rate in the town of Clearlake is 34 percent, more than double the national average, and twenty percent of the population is disabled. According to one local, of the many homes that were destroyed by fire in the county in the last two years, only about 10 percent are in the process of being rebuilt, because the vast majority of people couldn't afford to rebuild.

Previously: Lake County Police Arrest Suspected Arsonist Behind Growing Clayton Fire, And Possibly Others

In Rio on Friday two Bay Area swimmers took home gold medals, including Stanford's own Katie Ledecky, who took home her fourth gold in these Olympic games. 23-year-old Maya Dirado of San Francisco, also a Stanford alum, took home a gold medal in the 200-meter backstroke, as KRON 4 reports.

Ledecky's fourth medal came in the 800-meter freestyle, making her just the second woman in Olympic history to sweep the three longest freestyle races, the 200, the 400, and the 800, the first being Debbie Meyer in Mexico City in 1968.

As the Chronicle notes, Ledecky also broke her second world record. She also joins Amy Van Dyken and Missy Franklin among the only American women to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.

In other Olympic news, per ABC 7, "Venus Williams is one victory away from her record-tying fifth Olympic tennis medal — and she got there by beating the woman who halted her sister's bid for a calendar-year Grand Slam."

"Simone Manuel Wins First Individual Olympic Gold In Swimming For African-American Woman." That's one way to cover history, which the 20-year-old Manuel made in Rio when she took joint first place in the 100-meter freestyle with Canada’s Penny Oleksiak.

San Jose's Mercury News, unfortunately, saw fit to elide Manuel's win with her race so completely as to omit her name, further overshadowing her accomplishments with those of a well-celebrated white man. Like this:

“Michael Phelps shares historic night with African-American," the web headline and tweet read, as the Huffington Post recorded. Internet observers were rankled, and even Mercury News staffers spoke out against it.

The tweet has since been deleted, and the story, which is here, includes an editor's note: "The original headline on this story was insensitive and has been updated to acknowledge the historic gold medal wins by both Simone Manuel and Michael Phelps. We apologize for the original headline. The story has also been updated."

Manuel spoke, following her victory, about the meaning of her accomplishment as an African- American athlete. “It means a lot, especially with what is going on in the world today, some of the issues of police brutality,” USA Today quotes Manuel “This win hopefully brings hope and change to some of the issues that are going on. My color just comes with the territory.”

“Coming into the race I tried to take weight of the black community off my shoulders," Manuel also said. "It’s something I carry with me. I want to be an inspiration, but I would like there to be a day when it is not ‘Simone the black swimmer.’"

Previously: At Rio Olympics, SF Native Ends 32-Year Fencing Medal Drought With Silver