The new Presidio Tunnel Tops food hall gets ready for opening, the new replacement for Cafe Flore in the Castro is softly open, and a former Mina Group chef opens a small new Japanese spot in SoMa, all in This Week in Food.

There's an update on the long-awaited food hall project next to the Presidio Tunnel Tops park, which is being called The Mess Hall, and it's now set to open in June. As the Chronicle reports today, tenants will include Korean restaurant Boda, a seafood spot called Dayboat Seafood, and a sandwich and burger purveyor called Breadwinner. There will also be a cafe and market featuring coffee from Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters. Former chef and partner in The Mess Hall Nate Leonard tells the Chronicle that the aim was to provide more casual dining options in the Presidio than the nearby Dalida and Colibri offer. Evening cocktails will be available, and all the restaurants will be serviced by the same central kitchen, rather than via separate kiosks. And do note that Momofuku alum Peter Serpico is a partner and consulting chef in the business, and Boda will feature his Korean fried chicken and mandu.

Parasol at Flore has opened in the former Cafe Flore / Fisch & Flore space in the Castro. As Hoodline reports, it is a soft opening, currently just offering morning coffee and pastries from 9 am to 2 pm, with expanded hours coming soon. As we learned in January, the new operator is Jacob Paronyan, who also owns Cow Hollow wine bar Roaming Goat, which specializes in Armenian and Georgian wines. Parasol is also expected to feature these wines along with Mediterranean small plates and kebabs.

Tablehopper brings us the word on new SoMa Japanese spot Dining Yamamoto, which softly opened last week. It's the first solo restaurant project of former Mina Group chef Yukinori Yamamoto, and it takes over the former Joint Venture Kitchen at 167 11th Street. The restaurant features nigiri sushi and maki rolls, as well as donburi bowls, and chef Yama-san will be offering an omakase menu at dinner as well.

Marina burger spot Causwells is expanding down the Peninula, with a new location opening this week in Menlo Park's Springline development — also home to Che Fico  Parco Menlo, Burma Love, and sushi spot Robin. As Eater reports, the new location features some New Orleans-inspired items from chef-owner Adam Rosenblum, who spent time cooking in New Orleans. These include a breakfast jambalaya, fried chicken, and a new baked oyster dish, as well as a Sazerac on the cocktail menu.

We got the full list of finalists this week for the 2026 James Beard Awards, and while it wasn't a total shut-out for the Bay Area, we were snubbed in several major cateories. For the big awards, chef Michael Tusk of Quince is nominated for Outstanding Chef; Harrison Cheney of Sons & Daughters and Sarah Cooper and Alan Hsu of Oakland's Sun Moon Studio are nominated in the Best Chef: California category; and Copra and Ettan owners Srijith Gopinathan and Ayesha Thapar are nominated in the Outstanding Restaurateur category.

And the first half of the Chronicle's updated Top 100 dropped earlier this week, which is coming out while primary critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan is out on maternity leave. The full list will land on Monday, and from the looks of it, it will once again be arbitrarily ranked and bizarrely curated, with a lot of apples-to-oranges juxtapositions of fine dining spots and taco stands. Two-Michelin-star Lazy Bear lands at #100 while new entry Patio Filipino in San Bruno (3.5 stars on Yelp) ranks several notches higher. Ernest and Saison just made the cut this year because the critics hadn't even dined there last year and they finally made it there... ugh don't get me started.

For the third time in a little over a week, 11,000 customers on the west side of the city experienced a power outage Sunday evening, which took about two-and-a-half hours to restore. A planned outage was also scheduled to occur at 11 pm Sunday.

As Mission Local reports, customers in the Richmond, Golden Gate Park, and the Presidio lost their power between 7:45 pm and 10:15 pm Sunday. As SFist reported earlier, 6,000 customers in SF’s Golden Gate, Panhandle, and parts of the Sunset lost power for four hours Saturday.

Per NBC Bay Area, PG&E said a planned outage had already been scheduled for some customers at 11 pm in order to transition the Richmond neighborhood from the loud generators back to the grid. Per Mission Local, District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, whose district includes the Richmond, confirmed the planned outage was still planned from 11 p.m. to midnight Sunday.

Chan said issues with PG&E’s transformers were to blame for the unplanned outage, per Mission Local. PG&E said it was an overhead equipment failure, per KPIX.

“The citywide power outage illustrates how a privatized utility company like PG&E can use its monopoly power to increase out bills, make profit on the backs of working people and still fail in its obligation to deliver power safely and reliably for San Francisco,” Chan wrote on Instagram on December 23.

Prior to Saturday’s and Sunday’s outages, a third of the city was affected by a massive power outage the Saturday before Christmas, which took 48 hours to restore in some areas. As SFist reported earlier this week, PG&E was offering $200 credit for residential customers and a $2,500 credit for businesses affected in this week’s outages. Per Mission Local, the utility company was covering hotel accommodations and $200 in food costs for affected customers.

Image: PG&E/Facebook

Previously:  PG&E, Now In Full Crisis Mode, Offering $200 Credits to SF Residents, $2500 to Businesses for Weekend Outage

A beer festival with a bevy of local brews, live music, and food trucks is descending on the Parade Ground at the Presidio Saturday, and it should be a pretty good time.

It's the third annual iteration of the Parks4All Brewfest, sponsored by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and it's happening Saturday, July 19, from noon to 4pm.

20 local breweries are taking part, including Laughing Monk Brewing, Anderson Valley Brewing Co., and the brewery sponsor, Standard Deviant Brewing. (See the full list below.)

While not as enormous as the annual kickoff event for SF Beer Week, the Parks4All Brewfest is a beer-tasting event, with all the breweries offering tasting pours of their brews. And there will be live music all afternoon from The Soulshake, Sam Johnson, and Combo Tezeta.

There will be food trucks there to help soak up the beer, including Bacon Bacon, Mestizo, and Kabob Trolley — and you're also just a short walk from Colibri Mexican Bistro and focaccia pizza at Il Parco.

Tickets for the fest can be found here, and they are $42.50.

Established in 1981, the Parks Conservancy is the nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, supporting the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) in collaboration with the Presidio Trust. The GGNRA includes Muir Woods National Monument, Fort Point National Historic Site, Alcatraz Island, Crissy Field, Mori Point, Ocean Beach, Lands End, and the Presidio of San Francisco.

The Parks Conservancy regularly hosts ranger talks and other events at the parks.

Here are photos from last years Parks4All Brewfest.

The full list of breweries and vendors participating this year is below.

Breweries

Anderson Valley Brewing Company

Best Day Brewing (non-alcoholic)

CUVER

Del Cielo Brewing Co.

East Brother Beer Co.

Enterprise Brewing Co.

Farmers Brewing Company

Fogbelt Brewing Co.

Fort Point Beer Co.

Great Notion

Headlands Brewing

Lagunitas Brewing Company

Laughing Monk Brewing

Mare Island Brewing Co.

Match Point Brewing

Other Brother Beer Co.

RationAle Brewing (non-alcoholic)

SideTrack Mead

Standard Deviant Brewing

Sugoi Brewing

Vendors

• Alix Clo
• Blue Seal Pottery
• Cody's Cookies and Treats
• Follow The Sun Art
• Henna by Ayesha
• JAK + PHIL
• LB House of Beauty
• Luna's Good Cat and Dog Treats
• S for Sparkle
• S&C Headgear
• SPICED UP
• Stash Candle Co.
• Strawbandchoc
• The Lucky Loot
• The Weekend Store
• Tommy Breeze Art & Apparel

Top image: Photo by Ryan Curran White/Parks Conservancy

The Xerces blue butterfly that used to flutter across SF’s western dunes went extinct 80 years ago, but wildlife experts have identified the closest known relatives of that butterfly, and they just reintroduced a bunch of them in the Presidio.

You may remember a sort of Earth Day prank two years ago when someone put a rogue, unauthorized butterfly statue where the Junipero Serra statue had been torn down during the George Floyd protests.

The SF Arts Commission had the butterfly statue taken down, along with its makeshift plaque reading “Memorial to the extinct Xerces blue butterfly. Driven to extinction by urban development and the destruction of sand dunes of the San Francisco peninsula, the Xerces blue was last seen in the Presidio on March 23, 1943.”

And it is true that the development of the west side of town wiped out these butterflies’ habitat and caused their extinction, and the Xerces blue would be the first butterfly species to go extinct in North America.

But last year, KGO reported that wildlife experts were sequencing the genome of the extinct Xerces blue butterfly in order to find the closest possible genetic relative, in hopes of replacing the butterfly. They discovered that relative was a species called the Silvery blue butterfly. And now the Chronicle informs us that seven Silvery blue butterflies were released in the Presidio on Tuesday, in an effort to restore native species to that park.  

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“This isn’t a Jurassic Park-style de-extinction project, but it will have a major impact. The Silvery blue will act as an ecological ‘stand-in’ for the Xerces blue, performing the same ecosystem functions as both a pollinator and a critical member of the food web,” California Academy of Sciences lead researcher Dr. Durrell Kapan said in a press release. “To ensure a successful reintroduction, we needed to identify a subpopulation that shared genetic and ecological similarities with the Xerces blue: a sand dune specialist that is well-adapted to the cool, foggy climate of San Francisco and relies on the same host plant, deerweed."

According to the Chronicle, while seven of the new butterflies were released in the Presidio this week, 27 were introduced last week. And they are expected to start laying eggs quickly. This is important, because part of this “restoring of the ecosystem” is that some of these butterflies will serve as food for lizards and birds.

And as the Chronicle notes, after the butterflies were released, Dr. Kapan “added, under his breath, ‘Super happy we didn't see a swallow.’”

Related: California’s Monarch Butterfly Population Plummets to Second-Lowest Ever in Latest Annual Count [SFist]

Image: Gayle Laird, California Academy of Sciences

The SFFILM festival is rolling into the Presidio Friday night with a free screening of John Carpenter’s classic 80s horror film The Fog, which was filmed in Marin County. The show is free, but you do have to RSVP in advance.

San Franciscans love our tradition of free outdoor movies in the parks, which generally run all summer long. These are presented by the SF Parks Alliance, who have not yet announced their Summer 2025 schedule of movie screenings. They usually announce these at some point in April, but they haven’t yet, so we’re still in the dark about that.

But being in the dark will be a hell of a lot of fun on Friday night, when the SFFILM festival hosts a free outdoor screening of John Carpenter’s The Fog. Showtime is 8 pm in the Presidio’s Civil War Parade Ground, which is accessible by the 43-Masonic Muni line.

The show is free, but an RSVP is required to attend this screening. Just click on the RSVP link on the movie’s SFFILM description page.

The film was largely shot in Marin County’s Point Reyes and Bodega Bay (though the movie claims to be set in the fictional “Antonio Bay”), and there are plenty of recognizable Marin County landmarks. Though as with most Hollywood movies, the interior scenes were shot in an LA movie studio.

John Carpenter's The Fog also has the distinction of being the first movie wherein Jamie Lee Curtis appears with her mother, Janet Leigh, who is best known for the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho. (The two would also appear together in 1998’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later.) It’s also the first feature film for 80s bombshell star Adrienne Barbeau, who happened to be director John Carpenter's wife at the time.

Okay, fair warning: there’s a chance of rain Friday night. Right now there’s a 10% chance of rain up until 9 pm, and a 20% chance of rain after 9 pm. The screening  is expected to last until 9:30 or 9:45. Those chance-of-precipitation percentages have been changing all week, so it’s probably best to be prepared for some sprinkles.

This is the final weekend of the 2025 SFFILM festival, with highlights including Sunday’s Closing Night screening of the SF-set Outerlands (6 pm, Marina Theatre).

Related: SFFILM Festival Film Relives When ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ Got Invaded by the Proud Boys [SFist]

Image: AVCO Embassy Pictures

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• San Joaquin police seized 16,500 fentanyl pills and 72 pounds of methamphetamine last week after a month-long investigation in collaboration with Stockton and Tracy police departments. [NBC Bay Area]

Image: Oasis, SoMa; Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Another night in Washington and another executive order from Trump, this one ordering the elimination of four specific federal entities, including the Presidio Trust in San Francisco, declaring them examples of "waste and abuse."

The slashing of programs and firing of employees continues in Trump's chaotic first hundred days back in office, and one of the targets in a Wednesday night executive order is close to home here in SF. It was clearly a hastily made order, complete with a mispelling in the header: "Commencing the Reduction of Federal Bureaucracy Ecexutive [sic] order," and in it Trump ordered the "elimination" or dissolution of four entities: the Presidio Trust, the Inter-American Foundation, the United States African Development Foundation, and the United States Institute of Peace.

The latter three are all in Washington, DC, with only the Presidio Trust being the outlier in San Francisco. The US African Development Foundation was established by Congress in 1980 to invest in individual entrepreneurs and grassroots African enterprises — another soft-power sort of agency along the lines of US AID, which was Elon Musk and company's first target for elimination.

The US Institute of Peace was established in 1984 by Congress as "a nonpartisan, independent organization dedicated to protecting U.S. interests by helping to prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflicts abroad," in order to prevent such conflicts from becoming larger wars. It is similarly aligned with US AID, and critics have pointed out that ever since the War on Terror began over two decades ago, the institute's work has been somewhat moot.

But the Presidio Trust is not a foreign investment or foreign policy group or soft-power initiative. It is essentially a real estate management entity that has not taken annual funding from Congress since 2013, which collects rent on federally owned properties in the Presidio, and oversees their maintenance. The Trust was established by Congress in 1996 in order to take care of, refurbish, and manage the large number of structures on the former military base, and to oversee the development of things like the Letterman Digital Arts Center. And the non-profit largely sustains itself through this leasing revenue.

This order technically instructs these "unnecessary" government entities to reduce staffing and activities "to the minimum presence and function required by law."

The Trust issued a statement suggesting that it does not foresee any impacts on its activities, and it plans to submit a report showing the new administration how all of its activities are "statutory."

"We do this, as required by the Trust Act, through an innovative public/private partnership that minimizes cost to the United States Treasury and makes efficient use of private sector resources," said Lisa Petrie, the Trust's PR lead, in a statement to the Chronicle.

"In 1996, the Presidio Trust Act was passed in a bipartisan way when Republicans held the majority in Congress, and has retained bipartisan support ever since," House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. "The Presidio Trust is statutory and it has been protected from assaults over time by its statutory strength."

State Senator Scott Wiener took to Xitter last night, saying, "Trump is now trying to kill off the Presidio Trust in SF — a national treasure that’s transformed the Presidio into a self-sustaining, world-class park."

Wiener added, "Trump is so vile that he can’t tolerate success if it doesn’t benefit him personally."

This latest move comes shortly after the Presidio Trust figured into a lengthy draft document circulating among Congressional Republicans, which sought to claw back $200 million that was granted to the Trust in 2023 for infrastructure needs. Petrie said of the grant that it "is completely obligated and we’re making progress on the infrastructure projects it is funding."

In the first what are sure to many, many middle-finger gestures in the direction of San Francisco and California generally, wrathful Republicans high on Trump's secret sauce are trying to take back $200 million that was granted to the Presidio, which is federal park land, to address the deferred maintenance needs of its buildings.

Republicans in Congress now need to make a show of how they plan to pay for the absurd and impractical things Donald Trump has been promising his supporters, including the mass deportation of immigrants. And now the Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee has compiled a 50-page wish list of new taxes, tariffs, and funding cuts they want to make — with a view toward not impacting the deficit too much, which will anger hardline budget-hawk House members.

As the New York Times reports, the list includes a litany of longtime Republican priorities, like cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and imposing a work requirement on able-bodied Medicaid recipients. They also want to roll back climate initiatives launched under the Biden Administration, including tax credits that were part of the Inflation Reduction Act, saying they could recoup $800 billion that way.

They also want to start taxing non-profit hospitals by eliminating their non-profit status, which is estimated to bring in $260 billion over 10 years. And they want to eliminate Head of Household status for unmarried taxpayers who have children, taking away that tax savings for middle-class Americans in order pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

The list includes plenty of things that will cost the government money, like extending Trump's 2017 tax cut, and ending the estate tax for the wealthy ($370 billion in costs over 10 years). In a nod to one campaign promise that was made by both Harris and Trump, they suggest eliminating the tax on tips — though many critics have point out this could lead to abuse, like via the definition of "tips."

But buried in this barage of attacks on Democrat-championed programs and various things that benefit the poor and elderly, most of which are being measured in the billions or trillions of dollars, is one line item that is just a blatant fuck you to San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi. They want to claw back $200 million that was promised two years ago to the Presidio Trust as part of the Inflation Reduction Act to address the needs of the park's aging infrastructure.

As the Chronicle reports, the Presidio has previously estimated its deferred maintenance needs around $500 million, so this federal grant only covers a portion of the total need. And as Presidio Trust CEO Jean Fraser said at the time of the grant, "We have a lot of very old stuff. If we had to rely on our own [funding] resources, systems would fail before we could get to them."

Pelosi announced the funding in 2023, saying, "This critical federal funding will ensure the Presidio’s spectacular front window to the Bay is maintained by renewing and replacing aged utilities and their infrastructure... [and it] will preserve the beauty and accessibility of the Presidio — now and into the future."

Now, the House Ways and Means Committee document states, how the funding was granted "was not consistent with standard agency practices for selecting priority deferred maintenance projects." If this makes it into the final package of cuts and spending that Republicans want to get passed through reconciliation, via their very slim majorities in the House and Senate, the transfer of funds to the Presidio — which apparently hasn't happened in the last year and a half — will be canceled.

Oh, and by the way, Trump's border wall is back in play on the list too. The Homeland Committee says it wants around $25 billion to construct 734 miles of 33-foot-high concrete fencing, in addition to replacing legacy fencing. That $200 million from the Presidio funding will sure help with that.

Photo via Presidio.gov

DNA tests determined that it was one single coyote who’d killed three dogs at Crissy Field and the Presidio since September 15, so National Park officials killed that coyote Sunday, as it had been getting pretty aggressive with people too.

The coyote attacks on dogs in San Francisco parks have seemed a little more frequent than usual this summer and early autumn, and three dogs were killed by coyotes at Crissy Field in the month of September alone. And while this may not be perfect overlap of the same three dogs, DNA testing by National Park Service (NPS) biologists connected one single coyote to having killed two dogs killed at the Presidio since September 15. Those same biologists strongly believe that same coyote also killed a third dog attacked there since then.

And how did NPS biologists get that coyote's DNA sample? They shot him. SFGate reports the NPS officials killed the male coyote on Sunday, after determining with high likelihood that this was the coyote behind three fatal dog attacks. This coyote had a distinctive scar that made it easy to recognize.

“In keeping with established wildlife management practices, NPS and Presidio Trust biologists made the difficult decision to lethally remove the animal in consultation with state and local authorities,” Golden Gate National Recreation Area spokesperson Julian Espinoza said in a statement to SFGate.

And the male coyote in question had rung up quite a recent history. On Tuesday, October 1, park officials had received a “half dozen” reports of incidents of that same coyote charging dogs, and even charging a person, while also coming uncomfortably close to a group of people. These are not typical coyote behaviors.

Park officials say that people had been feeding the coyote, and even encouraging unleashed dogs to go near it. This is likely what tempered the coyote’s natural resistance to interacting. And while much of Crissy Field is a designated off-leash area for dogs, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should leave your dog off-leash in coyote-populated areas.  

“Even if your animal is distracted by seeing a coyote, it means it will return to you, and reliably,” Presidio Trust wildlife ecologist Phoebe Parker-Shames told SFGate. “And if it can’t do that then you shouldn’t have (your dog) off-leash.”

Related: Coyotes Have Killed Three Off-Leash Dogs at Crissy Field So Far This Month [SFist]

Image: @presidiosf via Twitter

A large restaurant space in the Presidio Tunnel Tops park that has been sitting empty has found a taker, and it's an alum from the acclaimed Momofuku restaurant group.

It's going to be called The Mess Hall, an appropriate name for a food hall that is moving to what was formerly a military base, and the guy behind it is chef Peter Serpico. The food hall will include a fast-casual sit-down restaurant, but the Mess Hall Group says in a release that will include "multiple and distinctive food concepts" serving takeout items, grab-and-go meals, picnic items, and retail products. There will also be a bar helmed by Zach Negin, who owns Tabula Rasa Bar and Shop LA, Silverlake Lounge LA, and Dolores Deluxe, the corner store at Dolores and 22nd Street in SF.

Serpico was a sous chef and chef de cuisine at David Chang's Momofuku Noodle Bar and Momofuku Ko, and later became director of culinary operations for the whole restaurant group. (Momofuku Ko notably won a James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2009, under Serpico's tenure.)

Serpico moved on to Philadelphia, where he had a successful partnership with restaurateur Stephen Starr. They debuted one of the city's hottest spots, for several years at least, called Serpico in 2013. As Philadelphia Magazine recalls, "Serpico opened as a Very Serious Restaurant, even if, over time, its menu items fell into a more playful and familiar territory. It was tweezer food and fine dining service in a neighborhood and on a street known, at least from a culinary perspective, for cheesesteaks."

After its newness and hotness faded, the restaurant's fate, as Philadelphia Mag writes, was later " left up to regular ol’ Philadelphians looking for a place to eat on weekends," and it was ultimately undone by pandemic closures and restrictions, like so many restaurants were. A follow-up takeout concept called Pete's Place, operating out of Serpico's kitchen, returned in part to Chef Serpico's Korean-American roots, and that was followed by a well-received 2022 cookbook titled Learning Korean.

The 6,000-square-foot space at Building 201 (201 Hallek Street) that will be home to The Mess Hall is the final component to be filled in the Tunnel Tops complex, after the park itself debuted in July 2022. It was first put out with an RFP (request for proposals) in mid-2022. Since then, a fast-casual focaccia pizzeria and lunch spot, Il Parco, has opened in the former Transit Cafe space — that opened in January. And full-service restaurant Dalida has been raking in raves since its opening last year in the former Commissary space nearby. (Its co-chef, Laura Ozyilmaz, recently made it to the final four on Top Chef, and SFist named it a best new restaurant of the year for 2023.)

The space also boasts a 2,700-square-foot patio overlooking the Golden Gate.

Berkeley architecture firm Studio KDA, which has worked on designs for Lazy Bear and Liholiho Yacht Club in San Francisco, is behind the design for the space.

Mess Hall Group is the project of local restaurateurs Rob Gaon of Mill Valley and Nate Israel, a former restaurant cook and farm owner. They tell the Chronicle this week that they've been in talks for the 201 Hallek space since 2022. Goan says in a release, "Being a part of this lauded San Francisco destination is a dream come true."

When it opens next year, The Mess Hall will be open from 8 am to 8 pm daily. A provisional website is here, and the Instagram is here.

A 20,000-square-foot warehouse near the Golden Gate Bridge will be transformed into a gigantic disco roller rink for the Church of 8 Wheels’ first-ever Skate Week in July, and wait ‘til you see the faux stained-glass windows they’ll be decorating the place with.

The Church of 8 Wheels and its founder David “Godfather of Skate” Miles have really been on a roll lately. Their former church building on Fillmore Street just got landmark status in March, and they recently started renting out skates at Golden Gate Park’s Skatin’ Place for their famed weekend skate-downs. They’ll be celebrating these and other accomplishments at SF’s first-ever Skate Week (July 16-21), and the big attraction is that they're renting out a huge aviation warehouse in the Presidio and turning it into a massive 20,000 square-foot roller rink.

The warehouse will not have the former church's stained glass windows you’re used to seeing at the Church of 8 Wheels. But get a load of these “Saints of Funk and Disco” faux stained-glass windows that they will have, featuring the likes of Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and George Clinton.

“A roller skating rink at the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the most famous landmarks in the world? This is like a dream come true!,” the Church of 8 Wheels says in their announcement. “From July 16 through July 20, Building 937 in San Francisco's Presidio will be transformed into the Church of 8 Wheels Golden Gate. This is all part of Skate Week San Francisco, a celebration of 45 years of roller skating and inline skating in San Francisco.”

Above we see the interior of this Building 937 in the Presidio, which is clearly just dying to be transformed into a roller rink. They’ll be holding “skate sessions for the public every day with different themes and DJs” for five days and nights in July, which they’re calling Church of 8 Wheels Golden Gate.

Each of these days has a theme, as follows:

• Tuesday, July 16 - Red and White Ball
• Wednesday, July 17 - House Night
• Thursday, July 18 - Goth Night
• Friday, July 19 - Disco Night
• Saturday, July 20 - Funk HipHop Night

Sessions run from 11 am into the evening on all of the above dates. Tickets are $25 for adults, and $15 for kids 12 and under. Skate rentals are available for $10 a pair, with additional safety gear rentals available for $5.

It’s all part of the larger event Skate Week. “This event celebrates 45 years since the birth of the Golden Gate Park Skate Patrol which was formed to keep roller skating from being banned in Golden Gate Park,” organizers say. “We are inviting skaters from far and wide to come to San Francisco and experience our fun, exciting and unique skating culture that sets the trends that others around the world are following today. Indoors and outdoors, inline and quad. Disco, hip hop and even goth. One nation under a groove.”

Skate Week is Tuesday, July 16-Sunday, July 21, and there are more Skate Week activities listed here.

Church of 8 Wheels Golden Gate is Tuesday, July 16-Saturday, July 20 at 937 Mason Street. Tickets here

Related: Golden Gate Park Roller Skating Area Will Start Renting Out Skates This Weekend [SFist]

Image via Loopnet

A very troubled and pretty clearly unmedicated man with a long history of mental illness, addiction, and criminal activity across San Francisco, has been in jail the past three months following an especially creepy incident in the Presidio.

James Durgin, a 55-year-old former English teacher and fitness instructor, apparently suffered a severe mental breakdown about two decades ago. According to a friend and coworker at the time, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Chronicle, Durgin "unraveled" and ultimately lost his job and apartment, and became addicted to drugs.

Fast forward over ten years, and Durgin became a denizen of the woods in the Presidio, very often setting up camp, according to residents, near the apartment complexes uphill from Baker Beach. There he was known to stalk and generally creep out multiple women over the years, and he was nicknamed the "boogeyman of the Presidio" and called "The Man in the Woods" in a 2022 NBC Bay Area docu-series called "Saving San Francisco."

Durgin was used as a central subject in NBC's (somewhat sensational) series because he was an example of a person who consistently slipped through the net of local services and law enforcement, frequently running afoul of the latter while also obviously needing serious help and generally menacing those around him.

Addicted to meth and subject to violent mood swings, Durgin was seen as a threat to the safety of women living in the Presidio, especially those who live alone. Several spoke to NBC for the docu-series, and one, Laura Strazzo, filed the November 2023 complaint with Presidio Park Police that landed Durgin in jail this latest time.

Strazzo was one of several residents who woke up one morning in November to find that Durgin had scrawled something creepy on their apartment door — in Strazzo's case it was the phrase "She's my love" — in magic marker. Strazzo produced Ring camera footage of the vandalism in progress, and Durgin was ultimately brought up on federal misdemeanor vandalism charges.

Strazzo called Durgin a "nuisance," and a sometimes menacing one.

But clearly this case isn't going to keep in jail long, and this will just add to the 60-plus arrests on Durgin's record, including 54 felony charges and 103 misdemeanors, with multiple convictions for theft and violence. He's also had 16 restraining orders taken out against him, including one by Ann Ray, the Presidio resident who appears in the opening of "Saving San Francisco," seen above.

Ray had video of Durgin showing up on her front stoop naked in the middle of the night and ringing her doorbell. Durgin also scrawled messages in chalk on stairs near her door saying "I [heart] u" over and over with "wink wink wink" repeated.

"I worry when I go to sleep at night if he'll bust the windows and make it up to my bedroom," Ray said. "I sleep with a Taser and a single-blade knife by my bed."

Durgin has multiple times been ordered into drug-treatment programs and mental health treatment. And just last August, a few months before the latest Presidio incident, NBC Bay Area reported that he was back in jail for a probation violation, stemming from an earlier conviction and probation release.

He seems clearly like a candidate for San Francisco's CARE Court, which was set up to help compel repeat offenders and the severely mentally ill into in-patient treatment. That CARE Court launched last October, but at the moment, Durgin is in the federal court system and is in custody in SF County Jail, ever since December 19. It's not clear if the outcome in this case will be any different than the others.

Still apparently able-bodied and living independently unhoused, it's not clear if Durgin would qualify for CARE Court — which requires that individuals be "unlikely to survive safely" on their own or likely to suffer a relapse that could put them in "grave disability or serious harm." A judge or family member would need to make that determination to petition for Durgin to be remanded to CARE Court.

Previously: Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court Program Starts Today, Can Force Severely Mentally Ill People Into Treatment

A new cafe, with pizza, cocktails, beer and wine, is opening January 15 in the former Transit cafe space at the Presidio Transit Center (215 Lincoln Blvd.), right at the entry of the Presidio Tunnel Tops.

It's called Il Parco (The Park), and it's an Italian-style cafe and pizzeria from the restaurant group behind nearby Mexican restaurant Colibri, and restaurateur Eduardo Rallo. It's a counter-service operation, like the former cafe called Transit that occupied the space until 2019, with a large adjacent patio full of seating that has views of the Tunnel Tops park, the Bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

We first heard that Rallo and his group would be opening a second, casual restaurant in the Presidio two years ago, when we first learned he was taking over the former Arguello space to relocate his former Union Square Mexican restuarant Colibri. Colibri opened in May 2022, and now Il Parco is coming along a year and a half later.

The menu will feature focaccia-style pizza, salads, and sandwiches in the afternoon and evening, as well as Italian-inspired pastry and other breakfast items with coffee in the mornings. They are also touting wine and "handcrafted cocktails," and there appears to be a separate outdoor bar area, but some of those might also come in cans for taking to the Tunnel Tops.

The handsome interior, with new marble counters, was designed by Design Opera Architects.

The outdoor seating now has a new patio cover structure and heat lamps, and more seating than the previous cafe.

For pizza, we know there will be a soppresatta and honey pie, as well as a potato-rosemary one, and the one pictured below appears to be straight-up pepperoni.

The restaurant's Instagram also features some lovely picnic spreads, for taking out to the park.

Il Parco will be softly opening January 15, with a grand opening happening on January 18. We don't yet know what the exact hours will be, but Il Parco will be open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Il Parco - 215 Lincoln Blvd. in the Presidio — Opening January 15

There's a project that's about two years out to convert part of the current Sports Basement parking lot next to Crissy Field into an extension of the 14-acre Presidio Tunnel Tops park.

The Presidio Tunnel Tops has been a popular destination since the park first opened one year ago, transforming a section of the Presidio with a pretty waterfront view into the city's newest public amenity. Now, as the Chronicle's John King reports, the Presidio Trust has a plan to extend the park to the west, taking over a portion of the parking lot next to Sports Basement, and installing some new trees as a buffer.

It's called the Outpost Meadow, and it will add lawn and picnic areas to left of the existing playground and kids' educational center dubbed The Outpost.

The Presidio is engaged again with the landscape architecture firm that designed the Tunnel Tops park, James Corner Field Operations, and the Chronicle reports that the new area should be complete in two years. Total estimated cost: $23 million.

A southern portion of the Sports Basement parking lot will remain, and it will apparently be re-striped so as to preserve about as many spaces as are there currently. And a tree border around the meadow should serve to shield it from both this and the 101 freeway just beyond.

Michael Boland, planning director for the Presidio Trust, tells the Chronicle, "Going forward, we want to find these small moments to make everything feel connected."

The Presidio Tunnel Tops Park was delayed by the pandemic, and opened with great fanfare in July 2022, about two years behind schedule. The project broke ground in 2019 after years of planning and design, at a cost of $98 million, raised through a capital campaign.

James Corner Field Operations is the same firm responsible for The High Line in Manhattan.

The full map below shows the parking lot at left where the new project will arise.

Previously: Photos: Presidio Tunnel Tops Park Finally Opens to the Public