Any denizen of the Bay Area is annoyingly familiar with fleets of autonomous vehicles crisscrossing our dilapidated roadways. Big players in the race toward the distant driverless future continue to throw millions of dollars (and press emails) toward vying to monopolize this tech sector that may not truly come to fruition for many decades.

Joining Cruise, Voyage, and others already operating in San Francisco, Waymo—a subsidy of Alphabet Inc., whose parent company is Google—recently announced the launch of a fleet of its autonomous taxis in San Francisco, with employee volunteers behind the wheel. …

Two months ago, police in Antioch — a midsized city in the East Bay—reportedly kneeled on the neck of Angelo Quinto, a 30-year-old Navy veteran, for five minutes after responding to a call to his home, according to his family. The controversial police tactic (now illegal in California) left him unresponsive, and he died three days later.

This is the same knee-on-neck hold that police used to kill George Floyd in Minneapolis last summer, setting off a national conversation around police brutality and social injustice, and what led California to ban this type of carotid restraint last year.

And yet…

The Bay Snapshot

“The Bay Snapshot” is a series from The Bold Italic that showcases the current mood of the Bay Area in a picture. If you have a tip for a future post in the series, email us or DM us on Twitter or Instagram.

Nowhere in the country can you rent a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment while living on federal minimum wage, which still sits at an abysmal $7.25 an hour. Here in San Francisco, where the minimum wage is set at $16.07 an hour, it still falls short of what experts believe is a “living wage.” That figure is $24.66, …

The Bay Snapshot

“The Bay Snapshot” is a TBI series that showcases the current mood of the Bay Area in a picture or series of pictures. If you have a tip for a future post in the series, email us or DM us on Twitter or Instagram.

If a picture’s truly worth a thousand words, then this recent Reddit upload from u/Maxposure of a surfer tackling a gnarly wave underneath the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point is a whole-ass Zadie Smith novel.

The image wows not just because of the great composition, light, and timing — but because it makes you go…

Ever wonder how much the tenants before you paid for rent — and how much you’re being screwed over by your landlord? If you’ve lived in the Bay Area — or any gentrifying city — in the past decade, then the answer is yes.

Well, a Canada-based initiative, My Old Apartment, is helping Canadians fight rent increases in the most creative way we’ve seen: via good old-fashioned “snail mail.”

The idea is that people send cards to their former rental addresses to let the new tenants know how much they were charged in rent and if what the new…

Hate crimes against Asian Americans, particularly the elderly, have increased since the pandemic began — a topic our vice president addressed last week. Physical and verbal abuse against Asian Americans were fueled by former President Trump’s rhetoric around Covid-19, calling it on more than one occasion the “Chinese virus” and blaming the Chinese government for failing to contain the coronavirus’s spread.

Sadly, as of late, the violence has worsened in the Bay Area. Earlier this month, three Asian American seniors were assaulted in Oakland’s Chinatown. There have been more than two dozen incidents in total in the Bay Area recently…

The Weekend Wind-Down

“The Weekend Wind-Down” is a series from The Bold Italic highlighting ways to explore the Bay Area and wind down from your stressful week. If you have an idea or tip, email us, or DM us on Twitter or Instagram.

The seven-by-seven never ceases to delight with quirky gems that sit in broad daylight. One such spectacle is located in McNab Lake, a shallow, human-made lake in the Excelsior that’s a bastion for waddling ducks and the odd red-eared slider turtle. It’s designed in a figure-eight (with a small island in the middle populated by the aforementioned fauna) and continues…

Construction is an incredibly male-dominated industry. The idea of cladding together wood, steel, and cement still sits in the minds of many as a “man’s job,” never mind the fact that women working in construction trades is at its highest point in 20 years. Now, one of San Francisco’s newest large-scale land projects — Presidio Tunnel Tops—is helmed by an all-female team.

The Presidio Tunnel Tops project — deemed essential and on track for a debut this fall — will comprise 14 acres of new national parkland inside the Presidio. Described by the team as a soon-to-be “iconic must-see” San…