Bay area

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 When Eric and Dayna Quanbeck lost their 7-year-old son in a horrific accident at his school in 2019, the San Francisco couple vowed to “channel their grief” into preventing any similar tragedies. Their son Alex was playing football with friends during recess at his San Rafael school when he tried to close a rolling gate so the ball would stay on the playground. The wheels on the gate fell off the rails and the 300 pounds of metal crushed him. His death devastated them. Now, their quest to enhance safety measures and prevent similar accidents has moved forward, after two Marin County cities recently approved adding gate safety rules to their building codes to try to prevent injuries or deaths. The Larkspur City Council on Wednesday approved safeguards for large manual and automatic gates, as well as inspections every five years. Existing gates must be retrofitted by 2025, … [Read more...] about The playground death of a 7-year-old Bay Area boy spurred his parents to push for safety changes. They just won a victory

Perched on the balcony of his floating home — a wood cabin with portholes, tethered to a dock on the Alameda waterfront — Bob Houlihan wore the flinty expression of a man ready for battle. When a new family business bought the dock last year, the fee for Houlihan’s berth jumped from $625 to $1,025 a month. It amounted to a significant increase for Houlihan and his wife, who 12 years ago purchased what they thought was prime affordable real estate on the water. And they weren’t alone. Berthing fees rose across the colony of moored cottages and clapboard houses at Alameda’s Barnhill Marina, founded by a Jack London-type figure in the 1960s, in a boatyard atop the Webster and Posey tubes. Floating homeowners who for decades had paid $550 to $575 to berth in the marina’s 56 slips now saw rates jump — and for one owner, nearly triple — to a new range between $850 and $1,200. Such hikes were necessary to pay for badly needed capital improvements, said Drishti Narang, daughter of … [Read more...] about Rent control for ‘floating homes’? Inside the battle at one Bay Area marina

Despite the sun’s attempts to shine over San Francisco this morning, the city and most of the Bay Area will be shrouded in a sea of thick stratus clouds today. These clouds will gradually moisten as a cold front from the northwest streams into the North Bay right around noon. This robust weather feature will then charge into the rest of the Bay Area, raising strong gusts along the coast and some of the mountain ranges along the bays carving out a path for showers to rain down on the region. Weather models are projecting a wide path for these winds and rains to take as they travel over the Bay Area right around rush hour, making for a commute on roadways and metro lines that will certainly be full of headaches. And depending on where in the Bay Area you happen to be this afternoon, you may even hear a rumble of thunder off in the distance. Winds and rain surfacing today The cold front will quickly dip into Sonoma and Napa counties this morning, ushering 25 to 30 mph gusts to … [Read more...] about Cold front to sweep Northern California this afternoon, bringing rain, winds and a chance of thunder to these Bay Area cities

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 When COVID-19 put musicians out of work, alto saxophonist Andrew Speight opened a club in the living room of his Burlingame home and called it “Live at Five at Andrew Speight’s House of Bop.” Speight would assemble a quintet of revolving players, and he knew just about everyone in the Bay Area jazz community, based on his 20-year tenure as a jazz lecturer at San Francisco State University and 20 summers at the Stanford Jazz Workshop. The concerts were streamed at 5 p.m. on Sundays, with the musicians playing in masks, with the horns only lifting their masks long enough to solo. Speight paid the players, who put on 118 performances during the pandemic, with audience members allowed to attend once the restrictions eased. When the clubs re-opened,Speight was always in demand for the searing intensity of his horn on the uptempo bebop numbers and the lush tone he’d deliver on ballads. … [Read more...] about Andrew Speight, Bay Area sax player and jazz instructor, dies in collision with train at 58

An woman crossing a street near the Plant Shopping Center in San Jose was struck and killed by a sport-utility vehicle Wednesday night, becoming the 61st traffic fatality this year and the 31st pedestrian to die in a traffic incident. Both are records over the past 25 years in San Jose, according to police. The victim, whose name was not immediately released by the Santa Clara County coroner’s office, was struck by a northbound Buick SUV while crossing Little Orchard Street near Perrymont Avenue, outside of a crosswalk, suffering major injuries, police said. Officers rendered life-saving measures but the victim was pronounced dead on the scene. The adult male driver of the SUV remained on the scene and cooperated with investigators, police said. He was not suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, according to a police report. The collision marked the deadliest year for traffic collisions — and for pedestrians fatally struck by cars— since 1997, according to … [Read more...] about This Bay Area city just recorded its worst year for traffic deaths in a quarter century

San Francisco’s Airtable will lay off 254 employees, about 20% of the company, CEO Howie Liu told employees in an email Thursday , as tech job cuts continue across the Bay Area tech industry. The company’s software allows businesses to put together databases and spreadsheets on the cloud without using code. Liu said the company would go from serving teams at companies of different sizes to refocusing on large enterprise clients, a business area he said was growing strongly. Enterprise clients make up a majority of the company’s revenue, which is growing at 100% year over year, Liu wrote. “Although we are fortunate to be well-capitalized and have strong enterprise revenue growth with low churn and high rates of expansion, being a lean organization becomes doubly important in times of economic uncertainty,” he said. The private company was most recently valued at $11 billion, according to CNBC , and counts Salesforce and Michael Dell among its investors. In a … [Read more...] about Bay Area tech layoffs continue: S.F.’s Airtable to cut employees

Those who followed Friday's release of the "Twitter Files" — a series of emails concerning Twitter's decision to suppress a New York Post story on Hunter Biden just prior to the 2020 presidential election — were treated to a surprise guest appearance from Bay Area Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents Silicon Valley. Journalist Matt Taibbi shared screenshots of the emails in a drawn-out Twitter thread, and one such email was sent by Khanna to former Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde. In that email, Khanna said Twitter's decision violated freedom of speech principles, and that Twitter made the Biden story a "bigger deal than it would have been" otherwise. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Monday , Khanna reiterated these concerns, arguing, "Although Twitter is a private actor not legally bound by the First Amendment ... Twitter has a responsibility to the public to allow the free exchange of ideas and open debate." In a phone call with SFGATE, Khanna said he did not … [Read more...] about Bay Area Rep. Ro Khanna talks Elon Musk’s Twitter, Kevin McCarthy, more

FRIDAY COLLEGE BASKETBALL Men 4p Grambling at Vanderbilt SEC Net COLLEGE FOOTBALL FCS quarterfinals 4p Samford at North Dakota State ESPN2 7:15p William & Mary at Montana State ESPN2 GOLF 10a PGA: QBE Shootout GOLF 2a Sat. DP World Tour: Alfred Dunhill Championship GOLF NBA 4:30p L.A. Lakers at Philadelphia ESPN 7p Milwaukee at Dallas ESPN 7p G League: South Bay at Santa Cruz NBCSBA NHL 7p Sharks at Anaheim ESPN+ (streaming) SOCCER 7a World Cup quarterfinal: Croatia vs. Brazil Channel 2 Channel 40 Channel 48 11a World Cup quarterfinal: Netherlands vs. Argentina Channel 2 Channel 40 Channel 48 3p Men’s College Cup: Syracuse vs. Creighton ESPNU 5:30p Men’s College Cup: Pittsburgh vs. Indiana ESPNU SATURDAY BOXING 6p Lightweights: Teofimo Lopez vs. Sandor … [Read more...] about Bay Area sports calendar, Dec. 9-11

LATEST May 13, 2:30 p.m. Bay to Breakers will now award nonbinary runners during Sunday's footrace, acknowledging that organizers "made a large oversight in our awards plan," the race's parent company confirmed to SFGATE a day after this story was first published. Charlie Mercer, the CEO of Bay to Breakers' parent company Capstone Event Group, told SFGATE in a followup statement that they will be issuing awards for the top nonbinary runners in the race. "As an organization passionate about encouraging communities to come together, and with Bay to Breakers specifically being about a celebration of the personality of San Francisco, it’s important we acknowledge that we made a large oversight in our awards plan," Mercer said in a statement to SFGATE. "We consider ourselves stewards of great events for the communities we serve. To that end, we’ve previously looked at the blueprint of other races in a community to guide our own efforts. We realize that was not enough, and we’re … [Read more...] about San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers will now give awards to nonbinary runners after outcry

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 Bay Area sports figures joined the celebration created Thursday morning when Brittney Griner was released from her detainment in Russia. Griner was freed from a penal colony after the United States made a prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner had been arrested in February on drug charges and sentenced to nine years of hard labor following her conviction. “I was thrilled to hear the news this morning that Brittney is finally coming home after being detained for 294 days,” Cal head coach Charmin Smith told The Chronicle in a statement. “I wish it didn’t take this long but it goes to show the power of (Griner’s wife) Cherelle’s efforts and support the collective basketball community put behind them during this ordeal.” Cal was one of several women’s programs that had set up letter-writing stations to Griner and showed additional support through merchandise and … [Read more...] about Brittney Griner’s release a cause for celebration for Bay Area teams