I was standing in front of what looked like a semi-vacant office building. I re-checked my maps app — it looked like I had the correct address for the Planned Parenthood clinic. If only this woman would stop shouting about killing babies, maybe I could think.Read more »

On a sunny Thursday afternoon, the sound of whirring power tools floats down to Market and Golden Gate as office renovations surge ahead in the building next to the Warfield, which looks as if it had been shrink-wrapped in white plastic to control the dust. Before long, several tech startups and a venture capital firm will occupy three floors there.Read more »

tredmond@sfbg.com

It was supposed to be part of Ed Harrington's legacy, and the chief of the city's Public Utilities Commission delayed his retirement to make sure it happened.

But six months after the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to move forward with CleanPowerSF, the plan is under attack from all sides. Pacific Gas & Electric Company's house union is spending big chunks of money to shoot it down. The press is loaded with accounts of how expensive it's going to be for customers. Advocates on the left are blasting it as too limited.Read more »

steve@sfbg.com

Teresa Molina faced abusive, belittling treatment on the job.

The 52-year-old immigrant from Sinaloa, Mexico, says she was paid $500 a month to provide 24-hour, live-in care to a girl in a wheelchair and her family. She wasn't allowed regular breaks. She couldn't eat what she wanted. Even her sleep was disrupted.Read more »

In 1974, Charles Garfield was working in the acute care facility of the newly founded UCSF Cancer Center. A psychologist, Garfield had a patient named Jim Dees who had been diagnosed with Guillain Barré Syndrome. Dees' body was rapidly deteriorating, and his prognosis was uncertain.

Garfield met with Dees for an evaluation. He quickly realized that Dees had no pathologies, no phobias -- nothing for a mental-health professional to treat. He was simply "an extraordinarily aware man facing an ugly death," Garfield later wrote.Read more »

It's no coincidence that the California Nurses Association has been the most active and effective union in fighting for a broad social and economic justice agenda, one that seeks to give greater value to caring and caregiving. Unlike many unions that fight mostly for their members' interests, CNA is an extension of the nursing ethos itself.Read more »

rebecca@sfbg.com

Muni switchbacks — that annoying practice where trains force all the passengers off well before the end of the line — have been in the news lately, with new Supervisor Katy Tang making switchbacks her first political priority.

But when you zero in on who bears the brunt of these service disruptions, it becomes clear that not all transit passengers are created equal. In fact, Muni data shows that the vast majority of switchbacks were concentrated in just three locations this past January.Read more »

[UPDATE 3/22: Airbnb owes nearly $1.8 million to the city. Why is Mayor Lee silent?]

steve@sfbg.com

Despite a widely watched ruling last year by the San Francisco Treasurer/Tax Collector's Office that Internet-based "shared housing" companies must pay the city's hotel tax, the high-profile local outfit Airbnb and its hosts aren't routinely charging guests that 14 percent tax.Read more »

EDITOR'S NOTES Way back in the early 1980s, when I had a lot more hair and it wasn't so grey, I got a tip that the San Francisco school district had a serious problem with asbestos contamination. My colleague Jim Balderston and I checked it out, and yes indeed — the toxic stuff was in so many classrooms that thousands of students were at risk.

After we broke that news, and the district started scrambling to clean up the mess, we asked ourselves: How were things allowed to get to that point? Who screwed up? Who let it happen?Read more »

steve@sfbg.com

When Mayor Ed Lee came to the Board of Supervisors for his monthly "question time" appearance Feb. 12, Sup. David Chiu tried to get some sense of where the mayor stood on a controversial piece of legislation that would allow more condominium conversions.

Chiu explained the complexities and implications of an issue where the two sides have dug in and appear to have little common ground, and he asked the mayor for some guidance.Read more »