Helvetica Now has a font system like Apple’s San Francisco

Apple fixed Helvetica for screens with San Francisco (in Display, Text, Compact, and UI versions).

Monotype responds to San Francisco Pro with Helvetica Now (in Display, Text, and Micro versions).

Related: Public Sans is a free typeface developed by the United States Web Design System. Hey, who knew we had a web design system?

The Dirtiest Block in San Francisco

Over at The New York Times, Thomas Fuller reports on the 300 block of Hyde Street, the dirtiest block in San Francisco:

Just a 15-minute walk away are the offices of Twitter and Uber, two companies that along with other nameplate technology giants have helped push the median price of a home in San Francisco well beyond $1 million.

This dichotomy of street crime and world-changing technology, of luxury condominiums and grinding, persistent homelessness, and the dehumanizing effects for those forced to live on the streets provoke outrage among the city’s residents. For many who live here it’s difficult to reconcile San Francisco’s liberal politics with the misery that surrounds them.

I live in San Francisco and the income gap is staggering.

I’ll concede that the 300 block of Hyde Street is the dirtiest in the city, but there are many neighborhoods covered by entire lengths of sidewalk full of pitched tents, with homeless people staggering about.

For years I’ve darkly joked living in San Francisco feels like I’m in an episode of The Walking Dead. It’s hardly a hyperbolic statement.

Update: This Times article has over 1,000 comments. Here’s one from Patrick Ecker:

There’s an app the city has for reporting homeless encampments and
other quality of life issues, called 311.

In the month of August ALONE, I reported about 600 encampments. SIX
HUNDRED. And on September 1, there was ZERO noticeable difference. I
emailed the mayor, my police captain (Gaetano Caltagirone), and my
supervisor (Rafael Mandelman). I heard back from Rafael (who is
generally very responsive), but not the mayor’s office or the police.

I have a wife and son, and I worry every day for their safety.

Million Dollar Fixer-Uppers

The average ‘fixer-upper’ in S.F. is now $920,000:

In San Francisco, homes labeled “fixer-uppers” sold at an average of 15 percent above the list price in 2016, with a median sale price of $920,000, according to a new year-end report from Paragon Real Estate. Though the price is high, it is a substantial discount from the 2016 median sales price of all S.F. single-families: $1,325,000.

Paragon looked at several other “special circumstances” in 2016 home sales, including the median home price for a home wth an elevator ($4,869,000), a view of the Golden Gate Bridge ($2,569,000) and a wine cellar ($3,050,000). It also looked at factors that could lower home prices, including a lack of parking ($1,150,000) and probate sales ($952,500). The only factor that lowered prices more than the “fixer-upper” designation was marketing a home as “tenant-occupied,” which sold at “a big discount” of $838,000, due to tenant protection measures, among other things, according to Paragon.

The real estate market in San Francisco, where I live, has been insane for quite some time now.

Categories:

Community, Finance

Doze Off

Eat a Scooby snack and take disco nap
Because I’m shopping at Sears, cause I don’t buy at the Gap

Alright Hear This, Beastie Boys

You know when you’re fading off at work because you’re tired? If you’re like me, you don’t have any safe, comfortable place to go to take a disco nap so you can power through the rest of your day.

If you work in downtown SF like me, now you do.

My friend (and former coworker) Brandon quit his job and launched his own business here in San Francisco called Doze.

How it works:

  • book a sleeping pod
  • put on a pair of Bose, noise-cancelling headphones (or use your own)
  • recline to your desired position
  • close your weary eyes and recharge
  • pay what you want (for the Basic level)

When your time is up, the interior of the pod ‘dome’ slowly glows brighter and brighter and returns you to an upright position. I test drove one myself and it was great.

Oh, and the first time is free.

I’m really proud of Brandon because he did this all on his own without any investors or backers. It all came out of his own pocket. That takes balls. I also love that he’s he solving a problem he’s had himself. Those are always make the best projects and businesses.

So check it out.

Affordability in San Francisco

Gabriel Metcalf on San Francisco’s serious lack of affordability:

But for cities like San Francisco that now have 35 years of growth behind them, the urban problems of today are utterly different from what they were a generation or two ago. Instead of disinvestment, blight and stagnation, we are dealing with the problems of rapid change and the stresses of growth: congestion and, most especially, high housing costs.

When more people want to live in a city, it drives up the cost of housing—unless a commensurate amount of places to live are added. By the early 1990s it was clear that San Francisco had a fateful choice to make: Reverse course on its development attitudes, or watch America’s rekindled desire for city life overwhelm the openness and diversity that had made the city so special.

When San Francisco should have been building at least 5,000 new housing units a year to deal with the growing demand to live here, it instead averaged only about 1,500 a year over the course of several decades. In a world where we have the ability to control the supply of housing locally, but people still have the freedom to move where they want, all of this has played out in predictable ways.

Things have to change. San Francisco is a port city. Prime real estate. Barring an earthquake that swallows the city (actually likely) people are not moving out.