RETRO FILES / SCENE FROM THE LEFT BANK OF PARIS CIRCA 1895:

Intersection of BoulevardArango and Boulevard de Port Royal (not so many cars and plenty of horse power). 

Boulevard Arago at Port-Royal, about 1895. The junction is already in its present form—broad carriageways, straight sightlines, and rows of evenly spaced trees. A tramcar crosses the tracks at the center of the frame, sharing the street with horse carts and foot traffic. Men in dark coats stand or move at an unhurried pace, some stepping into the roadway without concern. The buildings, recently completed, line the boulevard in a continuous wall of stone, their height and proportions consistent from corner to corner. There is a definite uniformity here, the kind seen in Washington, where design was settled in advance and carried through without much deviation. It stands in contrast to New York, which took more of Chicago’s course—practical, fast, and less concerned with keeping every façade in line. In this Paris scene, electric traction is in service, but horses still handle most of the haulage. There are no motorcars in view. The street was laid out for the future, and it shows—each element in place, doing its work as intended. 

DESIGN/ WHO THE HECK IS P.F. CHANG?

 

In an era when national restaurant brands often flatten into sameness, P.F. Chang's has sustained a visual identity that reads as deliberate rather than formulaic. The architecture and interiors carry a controlled theatricality, one that signals continuity across locations without slipping into repetition. It is a rare balance. You recognize the space immediately, yet it avoids the fatigue that typically accompanies scale. 

 Much of that coherence traces back to Tony Chi and his firm Tonychi Studio. From the beginning, Chi approached the project as a system of design principles rather than a fixed template. The result is a vocabulary that can be adapted to different footprints and cities while maintaining a consistent tone. Materials tend toward dark lacquer, stone, and warm wood. The palette is restrained, anchored in black with calibrated use of red. Lighting is handled with particular care, emphasizing depth and shadow over brightness. 

 

Architecturally, the brand relies on a few defining gestures. The entry sequence is formal, often marked by the now-signature guardian horse statues, which function as both threshold and emblem. Interiors favor height where possible, allowing dining rooms to open upward rather than compress inward. Sightlines are considered, with layered spaces that move from bar to dining room in a measured progression. The effect is not grand in the traditional sense, but it is composed, with a clear sense of arrival and containment. 

 The company itself dates to 1993, founded through the partnership of Paul Fleming and Philip Chiang. What began as a single restaurant in Scottsdale has grown into a global presence, with more than 300 locations across the United States and international markets. That scale makes the consistency of its architectural expression all the more notable. It is one thing to design a compelling flagship. It is another to translate that sensibility hundreds of times without diluting it. 

 As for the name, it continues to carry a certain ambiguity that works in the brand’s favor. “P.F.” refers to Fleming; “Chang” to Chiang. The pairing reads as a single figure, but in reality it represents a collaboration between operational discipline and culinary lineage, a dual authorship that is echoed in the built environment itself. 

 For a design team, the lesson is straightforward and difficult at once. Establish a language. Protect it. Allow it to evolve without losing its grammar. P.F. Chang’s demonstrates that even at scale, architecture can retain a point of view. 

TRAVEL TUESDAY / VANCOUVER WONDERFUL CITY FOR TACONE

GUEST BLOG / By Jennifer Silva Redmond, Author of Honeymoon at Sea.  The next in a series of liveaboard sailboat adventures. 

Who knew Vancouver in summer could be hot and humid? Not us—we'd always pictured Canada as cool, and our first visited Canadian city, Victoria, had been temperate. 

 But now it was the second week in July and our sailboat was tied up in a slip right in the middle of the city as the bright hot sun beat down. It was our first day at Fisherman’s Wharf Marina on False Creek, just south of Granville Island, and there was a lot to get done before it was time to play. 

In the early afternoon, Russel scrubbed the boat and I lugged a bag of recycling up to the marina office. On the way back I spotted Go Fish, a tiny outdoor place that served fish and chips. Their version of a fish taco, called a tacone, is served in a flour tortilla cone with tangy cole slaw on the side. I ordered us both a salmon tacone ($16 each, Canadian) and they were superior. 

The previous night, when we were still anchored in False Creek by Science World’s huge geodesic dome, Russel came back from checking out the marina by dinghy with a pound of fresh lingcod. He’d paid about $20 for it straight from the fishermen and it was some of the best fish I’ve ever eaten; sauteed in butter and garlic, the texture was reminiscent of monkfish (“poor man’s lobster”). 

 After our lunch I headed up to the laundry. What a relief to see that the laundry room wasn’t the tiny closet that so many marinas and yacht clubs have. I put everything into the washers and headed to the showers, then was able to recline on a comfy couch while our clothes got dry. 

 

Granville Island at False Bay

Back at the boat we got dressed in our night-out finery and headed along the waterfront path that led from the marina over to Granville Island, a place we’d been seeing on YouTube videos for months. In fact, it was about the only place we knew about in Vancouver, so we were happy to have found a slip for our boat so close by. 

The waterfront walking/biking path was crowded with people exercising their dogs and zooming by on bikes, we had to carefully look both ways in order to stop and check out a lovely pond covered with lily pads. Granville Island has a vibe that reminded me a bit of Key West and a bit of New Orleans’ French Quarter. 

We went straight to the huge covered Public Market and strolled around, checking out the produce, the bakeries, and the myriad small stalls with every type of food for sale. I got hungry again just smelling the different aromas—Chinese egg rolls, Mexican burritos, and a variety of savory hand pies. 

We noted the location of the renowned Lee’s Donuts and Siegel’s Bagels for future reference, then headed to the Granville Island Brewing Company. We weren’t too enamored by their light-weight IPA, but it was fun to sit and watch servers hustle around the bright space crowded with diners. The pizza smelled good—I was truly hungry by this point—but that sort of a meal wasn’t what we had in mind. We quizzed the bartender about fish restaurants, but he was no help, being from outside the city. Vancouver is extremely expensive so it isn’t surprising that someone making minimum wage can’t afford to live near Granville Island. 

Instead, we strolled back across the island along the main drag, looking into the stores and stopping briefly outside Tony’s Fish and Chips. It looked good but greasy seafood wasn’t quite right either. 

I’d spotted the Vancouver Fish Company on our way onto the island and now it was just what we were looking for: a casually elegant setting right on the water, but inside out of the sun. We were seated right away and ordered a Fat Tug IPA on draft for the Wildfire's captain and a festive elderberry mocktail for me. The menu was limited in a good way—I get thrown off by restaurants that offer a five page menu and specialize in nothing. I ordered a seafood linguini which turned out to be tasty and well seasoned, if a bit on the small side. Russel picked the winner this time, a delicious tuna poke bowl with edamame and rice in a tangy sauce, filling and satisfying but not overwhelming. 

 The next morning we went out for a walk after a light breakfast of fresh sesame bagels on the boat. We wandered out of the marina and dropped by the local boat chandlery, then checked out the closest grocery store, called No Frills, which was exactly that. I’d been informed by Alicia, the editor of Womancake Magazine, that we simply had to go to The Naam for a meal, and I consulted my paper map and figured we could make it on foot. It turned out to be a long walk, but worth it. The Naam is a small place, but furnished in a comfortably spare style that made me feel right at home. 

The Naam

Russel ordered the Dragon Bowl which was full of brown rice and tofu and other goodies as well as shredded beets and carrots all dressed in the amazing miso gravy Alicia had told me about. I opted for the Thai Noodles which were perfectly cooked and spiced just right. It was a massive plate for lunch, as the server had warned me, but by leaving aside half of the green peppers (there were a lot of green peppers) I managed to do it justice. 

To get back to the marina we headed over to the water and took a scenic path along a few parks, and continued past so many stunning homes, and along the sparkling inlet to Kitsilanto Pool, and then strolled down the beachfront walkway. 

The beach was set up for the big beach volleyball tournament, and a lot of tanned and fit young people were practicing on the sand courts. There was also a Chi Ball game happening, so we stopped to watch that. Chi Balls are like homemade woven Whiffle Balls and the game is sort of like Hacky Sack. 

The next day we headed out by bus to see downtown Vancouver. We caught a bus near Granville Island and rode it almost to Canada Place, then we got off and walked around, checking out the cruise ship terminal, reading the many historical plaques, and enjoying some prime people watching. Back on the bus, we went to Chinatown, where there was a street festival happening. 

We watched a puppet show, then enjoyed a perfect break in the peaceful Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and public park (above), then walked over to have dim sum at the Jade Dynasty restaurant. The pastry style buns with pork BBQ inside were the best of the three choices, but the steamed pork dumplings were tasty too. I wasn’t a fan of the steamed pumpkin in black bean sauce, since the black bean sauce was just broth with a couple of back beans floating in it. Russel treated himself to a rum and cola, and I had a small glass of Asian Ice Wine, which tasted like cold sherry to me. Refreshing, but not as exotic as I’d hoped. 

That gave us the strength to walk over to the Costco a few blocks away to pick up a couple of small things we couldn’t do without. Our next stop was Gastown, where we planned to be true tourists and see the Gastown Clock strike the hour, so we had to stop and have a drink to kill 40 minutes. 

We were lucky enough to find the perfect cocktail spot—the Pourhouse, a few doors south of the clock. The Pourhouse is the sort of modern, yet old-school watering hole that makes you relax the second you enter it. The bar stools were comfortable and the drinks—a Hurricane for me, and an Old Fashioned for the captain—were mixed and served with suitable panache by a stylish young woman. 

Our last tourist day in Vancouver was just as entertaining and charming but much easier—we were picked up by two local friends who took us touring out the highway to see some colorful portrait murals in a waterfront park whose name I missed, though I snapped a photo. We spent a restful afternoon in their East Vancouver backyard garden, eating seedless watermelon—did I mention it was hot?— sipping Prosecco, snacking on chips and hummus, and telling tales. 

Our eyes mostly stayed focused on a pair of juvenile bald eagles trying their wings from a neighboring tree. The adult eagles flew by with snacks a few times, and every bird in the neighborhood chimed in to comment. Vancouver turned out to be hot in every sense—exciting, diverse, cosmopolitan and yet so scenic. It was more walkable and friendly than we’d thought such a big city would be, and we can’t wait to go back. 

Top of page illustration: F. Stop Fitzgerald, staff illustrator, PillartoPost.org

MEDIA MONDAY / FBI SAID TO HAVE INVESTIGATED NY TIMES REPORTER AFTER HER ARTICLE ON PATEL'S GIRLFRIEND

 

    POSSIBLE GOV'T SNAFU: ALTERNATE REALITY.  Political cartoon by F. Stop Fitzgerald, PillartoPost.org online daily magazine

GUEST BLOG / BY Michael S. Schmidt, Reporter, The New York Times--The F.B.I. began investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation, according to a person briefed on the matter. 

Agents interviewed the girlfriend, queried databases for information on the reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, and recommended moving forward to determine whether Ms. Williamson broke federal stalking laws, the person said. 

Those actions prompted concerns among some Justice Department officials who saw the inquiry as retaliation for an article that Mr. Patel and his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, did not like, and who determined there was no legal basis to proceed with the investigation, according to the person briefed on the matter. 

In response to questions from The Times this week, the F.B.I. said that “while investigators were concerned about how the aggressive reporting techniques crossed lines of stalking,” the F.B.I. is not pursuing a case. 

The scrutiny of Ms. Williamson is an example of the Trump administration examining whether to criminalize routine news gathering practices that are widely considered protected by the First Amendment. 

Journalists are more often caught up in criminal investigations as potential witnesses when the authorities are trying to determine who leaked them classified information. 

In preparing the article about Mr. Patel and Ms. Wilkins, Ms. Williamson followed normal procedures for a journalist working on a story, which typically involve reaching out to the subject and seeking a variety of perspectives. In this case, Ms. Williamson contacted numerous people who had worked with or knew Ms. Wilkins. 

Ms. Williamson had one phone call at the beginning of her reporting process with Ms. Wilkins — Ms. Wilkins insisted that it be off the record — and exchanged emails with her before publication of the article. At that early stage in her reporting, Ms. Williamson asked Ms. Wilkins to provide a list of people she might speak to for the article, but Ms. Wilkins did not respond. 

Ms. Williamson was never in Ms. Wilkins’s presence. 

Joseph Kahn, the executive editor of The Times, criticized the bureau for investigating a reporter for doing her job. 

“The F.B.I.’s attempt to criminalize routine reporting is a blatant violation of Elizabeth’s First Amendment rights and another attempt by this administration to prevent journalists from scrutinizing its actions,” Mr. Kahn said. “It’s alarming. It’s unconstitutional. And it’s wrong.” 

The Times article, published Feb. 28, described how Ms. Wilkins has a full-time protective detail of Special Weapons and Tactics team members drawn from F.B.I. field offices around the country to accompany her to engagements including singing appearances and a hair appointment. 

The disclosure intensified questions over Mr. Patel’s use of taxpayer-funded resources for personal use, not long after he drew headlines for celebrating in Milan with the U.S. men’s hockey team after its gold medal victory in the Olympics. 

In a statement provided for the Feb. 28 article, a spokesman for the F.B.I. said that active death threats against Ms. Wilkins warranted the level of protection she was receiving, but he did not question the accuracy of Ms. Williamson’s reporting. 

The inquiry into Ms. Williamson played out in the days and weeks following the publication of the article. 

On the day of the article’s publication, Ms. Wilkins received a threatening email from an anonymous sender. Ms. Wilkins forwarded the email the same day to the F.B.I., according to an affidavit later filed in a criminal prosecution of the alleged sender of the email, who was in Boston. According to the affidavit, the sender acknowledged emailing the threat after reading the article by Ms. Williamson. 

Several days later, the F.B.I. interviewed Ms. Wilkins, who told them how the reporting Ms. Williamson had done for the article had left her unnerved and feeling harassed, according to the person familiar with the matter. Ms. Wilkins had raised similar concerns with the F.B.I. as early as January, when Ms. Williamson first contacted her, the person said. 

A lawyer for Ms. Wilkins also wrote to editors of The Times before the article’s publication, saying that extensive reporting by Ms. Williamson “raises troubling questions about proportionality and journalistic purpose.” 

Following the interview with Ms. Wilkins, the F.B.I. combed through the bureau’s databases to determine whether the federal government had any information on Ms. Williamson to help make the argument that she deserved further scrutiny, according to the person familiar with the matter. 

The F.B.I. cited statutes dealing with stalking and with targeting someone with threats to their safety and reputation to justify investigating Ms. Williamson, the person said. 

After that initial stage of inquiry, F.B.I. agents recommended moving forward with a preliminary investigation, the person said. At that point, the F.B.I. appears to have run into obstacles at the Justice Department, where officials determined there was no legal basis to proceed, according to the person briefed on the matter. 

Neither The Times nor Ms. Williamson was informed of the steps taken by the F.B.I. to look into her and her reporting. Ms. Williamson declined to comment. 

Asked about the sequence of events, a spokesman for the F.B.I. said it was “false” that the bureau had ever investigated Ms. Williamson. He said the inquiries were spurred by the threat Ms. Wilkins had received after the publication of the Feb. 28 article. 

“Ms. Wilkins was interviewed by F.B.I. agents in relation to a death threat in Boston, which specifically referenced an article published by Williamson the previous day,” the spokesman said in an emailed reply. “During this questioning, the agents inquired about the related reporting. While investigators were concerned about how the aggressive reporting techniques crossed lines of stalking, no further action regarding Williamson or the reporting was ever pursued by the F.B.I.” The spokesman did not respond to questions about whether Mr. Patel was aware of the inquiry into Ms. Williamson or whether he condoned the use of government resources to examine routine news gathering activities by a reporter. 

In social media posts in January, before the article was published, and in April, as The Times continued to report on Mr. Patel’s use of government resources, Ms. Wilkins accused Ms. Williamson of stalking her, calling her out for conduct that is considered routine for reporting. 

A supervisory agent at the F.B.I.’s headquarters in Washington who oversees violent crime investigations was involved in the early stages of the inquiry into Ms. Williamson, according to the person familiar with the matter. 

The involvement of the bureau’s headquarters is notable. Dating back to the investigations of Hillary Clinton and her use of a private email server and Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, Mr. Trump’s allies have contended that the involvement of F.B.I. officials in Washington, rather than employees from field offices, allows for political influence. 

Mr. Trump’s hostility toward journalists is a hallmark of his time in office, and Mr. Patel shares his adversarial stance. Before becoming F.B.I. director, Mr. Patel equated journalists to the “most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen” in a 2024 speech. 

In January, the F.B.I. searched the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson, a Washington Post reporter, in connection with an investigation into a government contractor’s handling of classified material. It is exceptionally rare for the authorities to search reporters’ homes as part of such an investigation when they are not the focus of the investigation. 

In April, after news organizations reported details about the downing of a U.S. fighter jet in Iran, Mr. Trump promised to go after an unnamed outlet over its coverage. Early last year, the White House punished The Associated Press over its refusal to comply with an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, curtailing its access to press events. 

Mr. Trump is suing The Times and three of its journalists for defamation, saying that a series of articles during the 2024 campaign were intended to damage his candidacy and undercut his reputation as a businessman. 

The Times sued the Pentagon in December, accusing the administration of infringing on the constitutional rights of journalists by imposing a set of restrictions on reporting about the military. A federal judge in March ruled that the limits violated the First Amendment and ordered that parts of the administration’s policy be tossed. The legal battle in that case continues. 

Erik Wemple and Charlie Savage contributed reporting. 

Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations. 

SUNDAY REVIEW / THE LAST MODERNIST

Some art critics called Ken Howard's paintings "too easy on the eye."
In this day and age, what's wrong with that?

By the Staff of PillartoPost.org 

Ken Howard painted like a man who didn’t trust trends and didn’t need them. While much of the art world veered toward abstraction, he stayed stubbornly loyal to what he could see—light falling across a shoulder, a window catching late afternoon, the slow shimmer of Venice. He called himself “the last Impressionist,” not as a slogan, but as a working method. For more than seventy years, he chased light the way some painters chase ideas.   

He was born James Kenneth Howard in 1932, in Neasden, north-west London, the younger of two children. The talent showed up early and didn’t ask permission. He could draw and paint before he could write, which tells you something about how his mind worked—image first, language later. A teacher at Kilburn Grammar spotted it and pushed him forward, and by 1949 he was at Hornsey College of Art, already on a path that didn’t bend much for anyone.   

National service in the mid-1950s didn’t slow him down. If anything, it gave him subjects—portraits of officers’ wives, practical work, the kind that sharpens the hand. After that came the Royal College of Art, where he found himself out of step with the prevailing fashion. Abstract expressionism was the language of the room; Howard wasn’t interested. He kept his eyes outside, in the tradition of plein air painting, with Corot somewhere in the background and light doing most of the talking.   

He said it plainly: light was the point. Not metaphor, not theory—light. And London, for all its energy, began to feel wrong for that pursuit. So in 1958 he took a British Council scholarship to Florence. That move mattered. Italy, and Venice in particular, gave him what London couldn’t—a different kind of light, softer and more elusive, something you had to work for. He kept going back, year after year, until it became less a destination than a second home.   

Critics early on could be dismissive, the usual complaint—too pretty, too traditional, not enough edge. The public didn’t care. They saw something honest in the work, and they stayed with him. He had a run at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition that most painters would envy, and he knew it. At one point he quipped that he probably had more paintings on people’s walls than anyone else alive. It sounds like bravado, but there’s a quiet truth in it.   

By the 1960s and 1970s he wasn’t just succeeding—he was defining a lane. Eventually he became one of the steady hands of British painting, elected to the Royal Academy in 1991 and later serving as Professor of Perspective. An OBE followed, which says more about his consistency than any single canvas. He also led the New English Art Club and supported Turner’s House Trust, shaping younger painters whether they agreed with him or not.   

Howard spent most of his life working in London, always returning to it even as Italy pulled at him. He died in September 2022. What he left behind isn’t complicated: a long, disciplined conversation with light, carried out in paint, without apology and without drift.   

Ken Howard, left, painted what he could see and trusted that to be enough. While others chased abstraction, he stayed with light—on skin, on stone, on water—and let it do the work. He called himself “the last Impressionist,” not as a pose, but as a statement of method. For more than seventy years, he returned to the same question: how light behaves, and what it reveals.   

He was born James Kenneth Howard in 1932 in Neasden, north-west London, the younger of two children. The ability came early. He could draw and paint before he could write, which set the order of things for the rest of his life. A teacher at Kilburn Grammar School recognized it and nudged him forward. By 1949 he was at Hornsey College of Art, already moving with purpose.   

National service gave him steady work—portraits, close observation, repetition. Afterward, at the Royal College of Art, he found himself at odds with the prevailing taste. Abstract expressionism dominated; Howard stayed with direct observation. He worked in the tradition of plein air painting, with Corot somewhere behind him and his attention fixed on what was in front of him.   

“Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth—depicting a Royal Navy destroyer, 1982.

Light was his subject, plain and simple. London began to feel restrictive, so in 1958 he took a British Council scholarship to Florence. That shift mattered. Italy, and especially Venice, gave him a different register of light—softer, more fugitive, never quite holding still. He returned often, working there for long stretches, building the body of work for which he is best known.   

Some critics early on dismissed the paintings as too easy on the eye. The public saw something else and stayed with him. His success at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition became a fixture, and he once remarked, not entirely joking, that he probably had more pictures on people’s walls than any other living painter.   

“Venice (Santa Maria della Salute)” —Untitled plein-air study

By the 1960s and 1970s, he had secured his place. Over time he became a steady presence in British painting, elected to the Royal Academy in 1991 and later serving as Professor of Perspective. He was appointed OBE. He led the New English Art Club and supported Turner’s House Trust, influencing younger painters by example as much as instruction.   

Howard lived and worked mostly in London, with Italy always in the background. He died in September 2022. What remains is a long record of looking closely and painting what was there, without deviation. 

Master painter Ken Howard, Order of the British Empire recepient

Ken Howard's many nudes seldom disturb. If you approach them as paintings of light that happen to include a pretty nude, they’re excellent.

The Red Scarf, one of a series of studio nudes

Oil, "Florence" 2004

COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / PAKISTAN'S TOP NOTCH CAFE SCENE

Stylish Coffee Houses of Islamabad

Islamabad’s coffee scene is still developing, but these three cafés show a clear direction. Operators are investing in design as much as product, using space, materials, and layout to differentiate themselves in a competitive market. (a) Native emphasizes function and craft, (b) Praha trades on atmosphere and scale, and (c) Flow focuses on clarity and efficiency. Together, they reflect a market that is moving beyond utility toward experience, without losing sight of the fundamentals. 

Native

NATIVE SPECIALTY COFFEE & EATERY 

Address: Ground Floor, Mosaic District, I-8 Markaz, Islamabad 

 Hours: Daily 8:00 AM – Midnight (later on weekends) 

Native feels like Islamabad stepping confidently into the global third-wave coffee movement. The architecture leans minimalist industrial—clean concrete, warm wood accents, and thoughtful lighting that softens what could otherwise feel austere. The space breathes. It invites conversation without noise, work without distraction. The bar is central and intentional, a stage rather than a counter, reinforcing that coffee here is craft, not commodity. Patrons linger, laptops open, conversations unhurried. It is a place designed not just to serve coffee, but to host time. 

Native Scene (above)

Caffe Praha

Address: Ground Floor, Plot 18, Agha Khan Rd, F-6 Markaz, Islamabad 

 Hours: Daily 8:00 AM 

Late night (near midnight or later weekends) If Native is restraint, Praha is indulgence. This café is theatrical—European café culture translated through Islamabad’s lens. High ceilings, chandeliers, patterned floors, and a deliberate layering of textures give the space a sense of narrative. It is one of the few cafés in the city where architecture competes with the menu for attention. 

And yet, it works. The bustle, the density, the visual richness—all reinforce its identity as a social salon. It is where Islamabad goes to see and be seen, without apology. Designed by the architecture firm ORAD, the café features a vibrant green spiral staircase, a lattice façade, and double-height ceilings that enhance spaciousness. Industrial elements such as exposed concrete and textured finishes contrast with warm lighting and organic color accents, producing a balance between rugged modernism and comfort. 

***

Flow Specialty Coffee

FLOW SPECIALTY COFFEE Address: Beverly Centre, F-6/1, Islamabad Hours: Daily 8:00 AM – Midnight (later weekends) Review: Flow sits at the intersection of precision and calm. Its design language is modern but softened—glass, light wood, and open sightlines create an atmosphere that feels almost Scandinavian in restraint. The café avoids excess. No clutter, no overstatement. Instead, it offers clarity—of space, of purpose, of flavor. The architecture mirrors the coffee itself: clean, deliberate, and quietly confident. A place for those who prefer focus over spectacle. 

More Flow

SAN DIEGO BOOK CRAWL THIS WEEKEND

What is a Book Crawl? 

Independent bookstores around San Diego have teamed up to encourage readers to visit as many participating bookstores as possible in one weekend! You can visit one or all fifteen, but the more bookstores you visit, the more prizes you can earn. The San Diego Book Crawl is an opportunity for readers to explore the diversity of San Diego's indie bookstores, shop local, and most of all have fun while hopefully discovering a new favorite read along the way! Follow us on Instagram (@sdbookcrawl) for updates, tips, and more! 

FOLLY FRIDAY / MAYOR'S "PRETTY" EXPENSIVE BIKE PROGRAM CUT

GUEST BLOG / By Paul Krueger, Career Journalist and Community Activist-- After ignoring criticism for years, Mayor Gloria has finally acknowledged the overwhelming lack of public support for bike lanes. 

His decision to eliminate his bike lane team is a welcome reversal of a policy that deprived neighborhoods of much-needed parking and hurt struggling small businesses. 

And to what end? 

From City Heights to Clairemont, and Talmadge to Kearny Mesa, residents go weeks without seeing a single cyclist on those bike paths. And the placement of some lanes was incomprehensible. The 30th Street lanes could have easily been moved a few blocks west, with much less disruption of traffic and parking. Same for the Convoy Street lanes. 

Both were vehemently opposed by business owners and residents. But the mayor dismissed those valid community concerns. It’s unfortunate that it took a budget crisis to force the mayor’s hand, but many of us welcome the result. 

This opinion piece first appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Ocean Beach Rag.

Paul Kruger

PUBLIC HOUSE REVIEW / A LITTLE HORSE RACING, NO PROHIBITION AND A NIGHT ON THE TOWN

 

WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE: TIJUANA, BAJA CALIFORNIA IN THE ROARIN' 20s

DESIGN / OUR EMPEROR'S GILDED AGE

GILDY AS CHARGED!

Your eye isn’t playing tricks on you—that look is not traditional Oval Office décor, and you’re catching a very specific, very recent phase. 

Here’s what actually happened. The gold trim and embellishments you’re seeing were added in 2025, after Donald Trump returned to office. Over the course of that year, the Oval Office underwent what even sympathetic coverage has called a “gilded makeover.” 

Gold detailing was added to crown molding, door frames, ceiling elements, and decorative features. At the same time, a number of smaller gold accents appeared—urns, frames, coasters, and other objects—replacing more restrained décor from the prior administrations. Now, the piece that really caught your attention: The gold script sign reading “The Oval Office” is even newer. 

• A temporary version showed up in November 2025. 

 • A permanent gold-lettered version was installed in December 2025 just outside the entrance. That signage had never been part of Oval Office tradition before. Historically, the entrance was unmarked—no label, no decorative scrip, a true departure from the restrained, Anglo-American neoclassical tone that has defined the room since its 1934 design.

How embarrassing.

Hoc consilium horrendum est

THE LONGEST MALE HAIR LOSS ARTICLE IN THE WORLD JUST APPEARED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

A pill to cure baldness is changing the way men age — and how they see themselves. [Wait until you read down at the part where a couple of men would choose hair if they had to decide what to lose: hair or penis.]

 GUEST BLOG / By Susan Dominus, The New York Times Magazine Writer-- For most of his 20s, Elliot Connors did not think a lot about his hair. He was losing some of it, maybe — but so what? This was what happened to men. He was funny and sharp; he had a girlfriend. 

 He began to worry only after he and some friends from graduate school in New York started a group chat last summer. In it, they talked about their classes and sports and joked about their love lives, and the thread frequently digressed into a series of semiserious conversations about hair loss: whether their hairlines were staying the same or, God forbid, receding; which products to apply, which medications to take; how much they did or didn’t care. 

 Several of Connors’s friends were taking a drug called finasteride, which is remarkably effective — the research shows that it significantly slows hair loss in most men for at least 10 years (with many men reporting effectiveness well beyond that); studies have found that it stimulates at least some renewed hair growth in a majority of men. 

 Connors’s friends kept close track of their progress from week to week. Dermatologists commonly recognize seven stages of hair loss, which were refined and popularized in the 1970s by O’Tar Norwood, a dermatologist and pioneer of hair-transplant surgery. Many of Connors’s friends, young men in their 20s, were a Norwood 2 or even a Norwood 3, displaying the beginnings of a creeping V on both sides of the forehead. (When you reach a Norwood 6, you may be “cooked,” in the online discourse of hair loss: too far gone for help.) 

 Before too long, Connors began inspecting his hands after washing his hair. Was more of it falling out than usual? He examined old photos of himself and compared them with his reflection in the mirror, looking for signs of change. He grew increasingly observant of other men’s hair: He noticed whose hairline was receding, and who was so young that he took his lush mane for granted, blissfully ignorant of the hair loss that was most likely in his future. He started to think he had no choice if he wanted to keep up: He’d better start taking finasteride. 

 He had read that finasteride could cause worrisome side effects — low libido, for example, or depression — and he would come to feel conflicted about the popularity of the drug. “We could all just not be on any of this stuff, and then our relative appearances would be the same,” he said. “But now we all have to be on it just to keep up with everyone else who’s on it. It’s like a nuclear arms race.” 

 Losing your hair, for men, was once largely inevitable and nearly universal. Two-thirds of American men will experience hair thinning by their mid-30s, and 85 percent will experience significant hair loss by 50, according to the American Hair Loss Association. “People used to say, ‘Losing your hair is just part of life — accept it,’” said Marc Avram, a dermatologist in New York who specializes in treating hair loss. In earlier eras, Hollywood’s leading men — Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Willis — played romantic leads long after their hairlines started to recede. Fathers and uncles counseled the young men in their lives to come to terms with the changes as part of the journey into adulthood. “There was literally no other option,” Avram said, “other than plugs.” 

 Today that’s no longer true. Celebrities and others who can afford it shell out up to $20,000 to get hair transplants, which have become harder to detect and ever more precise. Surgeons can now extract individual healthy follicles from abundant areas of their patients’ heads and implant them, one by one, into the scalps’ hair deserts. This more expensive, newer approach promises a more natural hairline, although those who know what to look for can still tell when someone has had the procedure. “If an actor has a full head of hair sticking straight up from his forehead and he’s over 30, he’s probably had one,” said Leah Ansell, a dermatologist in Rye, N.Y., who says she likes to point them out to her husband during awards shows. “They’ve all had one. All of them.” 

 Men with more modest means can find packages that fly them to Turkey and deliver the same procedure for around $3,000 — or they can start with the cheapest option of all, which is going on finasteride. Prescriptions for the drug in the United States tripled between 2017 and 2024, a time when telehealth companies were taking off, just as men started spending hours a day staring at their hairlines on Zoom. 

 Feeding that anxiety is a mass-marketing campaign teaching men the same brutal self-scrutiny that women have long been trained to perform. A typical male in his 20s or 30s is likely to receive a flood of ads and shout-outs on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and the livestreaming platform Twitch for hair-growth products that appeal to men their age: not just the usual tablets but chewable pills and sleek black bottles of “Mane Spray.” 

 Young men have also been encouraged to care deeply about their appearance by their country’s own commander in chief, whose highest praise for various appointees includes comments about their good looks. He’s “central casting,” President Trump said of his new pick for the chair of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh — a man in his 50s, it must be noted, who has a full head of hair. (Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, is more like a Norwood 2.) Trump seems to have a particular obsession with hair, talking at one campaign rally about all the best products he douses his head with in the shower, and famously asking a young woman at another event to come up and inspect his hair to verify that it was all his own (and not, as one radio personality was suggesting, a toupee). 

 Young men who have come of age in the time of the manosphere are prime audiences for endless reels from influencers — some of them exceptionally buff, some of them funny, some of them with millions of followers — who are trying various treatments in the hope of regaining a full head of hair. The hair-loss influencer (it’s a category unto itself) Zeph Sanders has over one million TikTok followers tracking his “hair journey.” Typical content: “POV: You spent the last year falling in love with yourself,” reads the text introducing a quick montage of all the steps he has taken over the past 12 months to improve his hair (starting with a hair transplant). The ubiquity of this kind of content makes losing one’s hair no longer seem inevitable; going bald can now feel like a choice — a conscious decision. 

 Frequently the advertising and those influencers are conveying the message to young men that they should start taking finasteride young — in their early 20s — so that they don’t lose their hair in the first place. Andrew Dudum, a co-founder of Hims & Hers, one of the main telehealth companies selling hair-loss medication, said in a 2017 interview that its goal was to market those treatments to a younger audience, adding that while he was in college, he and his friends could have benefited from products that protected their hairlines. The approach fits into the broader “prejuvenation” trend, in which young men and women are using lasers, fillers and products like Botox to fend off signs of aging before they start, rather than doing damage control when degradation is already well underway. Ansell said she has had parents come in asking about finasteride for their teenage sons, looking to make sure they get “all the best they can have in order to succeed in life.” Young men are also coming in on their own for help keeping their hair. “More of them are really anxious about it,” 

Ansell said. “There’s no new epidemic of hair loss, but there is an epidemic of men freaking out about it.” Before there was finasteride, there was rosemary oil, there was sunlight-exposure therapy, there were hair plugs, there were comb-overs, there were toupees. 

Before there was hair-loss medication prescribed by online pharmacies in elegantly designed, minimalist, earth-toned packaging, there was the exclusive-sounding Hair Club for Men, a business created by Sy Sperling, a former pool salesman who collaborated with a hair stylist to offer weaves that blended a man’s own remaining hair with color-matched hair on a nylon mesh. “I’m not only the Hair Club president,” Sperling says in a commercial from 1984, displaying a full head of chestnut brown hair, “but I’m also a client.” 

 In the 1970s, doctors studying minoxidil for its effects on blood pressure noticed in early trials that it caused men’s hair to grow. It was later brought to market for hair loss under the name Rogaine. The drug, which seems to make it easier for blood, oxygen and nutrients to reach hair follicle cells, has been wildly popular ever since, but only in about half of men will minoxidil trigger the kind of enzyme activity required for the drug to be effective. A majority of men who use it do find that it thickens their hair and slows the hair-loss process — but it seems to delay hair loss, not prevent it altogether. 

 Finasteride, by contrast, tends to yield better results for men hoping to hold on to their hair and to promote new growth. Researchers first noticed its effects on hair in the early ’90s, when the drug was being administered in a trial to treat men with enlarged prostates. The drug inhibits the conversion of testosterone into a hormone known as DHT, which is crucial in the development of male characteristics. In adult men, DHT is also associated with hair growth on their bodies and hair loss on their heads. Why hair follicles respond to DHT so differently depending on where they are on the body is one of the hormone’s mysteries. Doctors don’t even understand why men tend to lose the hair above their temples first, but they do know that finasteride is especially effective in bringing back hair on the top and toward the back of the head. Once an area of the scalp is shiny smooth, that means that the hair follicles in that area may be too shriveled to be revitalized. 

 First brought to market for hair loss by Merck as Propecia in 1997, the pill became available in generic form in 2013. By the time the pandemic hit and telemedicine took off, it was already cheap; now men could access it privately, in some states, simply by uploading a few photos and answering a few questions online. Also available at big-box-store pharmacies for as little as $5 a month — less than the cost of a single day’s latte fix — the drug is nonetheless a lifelong commitment, at least for men who continue to care about their hairlines. When men go off the drug, their hair loss resumes in about six months. 

 Finasteride, many dermatologists think, is one of the great cosmetic cures of the 20th century. And yet there is a catch: As many as one in 20 men who take the drug orally will experience a side effect — erectile dysfunction, low libido or, occasionally, low sperm count or depression. A vast majority of the time, those symptoms resolve in a few weeks after men go off finasteride (and sometimes even when they stay on it), according to studies of the drug. But in rare instances, men have reported debilitating symptoms that continue even after they stop taking the drug. 

 In addition to erectile dysfunction, low libido and depression, some men have also reported symptoms such as genital numbness, cognitive difficulties, a shrinking of the penis and even suicidal ideation. Having one or more of these ongoing symptoms is known among some researchers and patients as post-finasteride syndrome, which is poorly understood and a topic of considerable debate in the field. 

 Well-conducted research from a randomized controlled study published in 2021 found that using finasteride topically — applying a spray or a gel on the head — reduces the likelihood of serious side effects and is almost as effective as the oral version. And new drugs, including one that stimulates hair follicles’ mitochondria, are expected to come on the market in the next few years and reportedly have no side effects. But for now, most dermatologists still prescribe oral finasteride, which has been studied the longest. Topical versions, which are still not approved by the F.D.A., typically cost more and have to come from a compounding pharmacy. Many men also grow frustrated with regularly applying serums or gels because the products mat their hair during the day or leave their pillow greasy at night. Doctors worry about finasteride coming into close contact with women who are pregnant (or may become pregnant), given that DHT plays a significant role in a developing male fetus. And although finasteride itself won’t cause hair growth on, say, a girlfriend’s cheek, it’s often compounded with minoxidil, which might. 

 “I, for one, would never take the medication,” said Jonathan Clavell, a urologist in Houston. “Because if I were one of the unlucky few who turns out to get the syndrome, I know I’d regret it.” While the dermatologists I spoke with said they’ve never seen a patient who suffered from ongoing symptoms, Clavell is one of five urologists I interviewed who said they had. He even suspects that the number of people reporting those serious problems could be artificially low, because so many men secretly suffer in shame with erectile dysfunction and never seek a diagnosis or help. And men suffering from depression or brain fog might not make the connection — Clavell has seen some patients who have no idea, until he asks them for a list of the drugs they’ve taken, that finasteride might be associated with those symptoms. 

 Clavell has tremendous sympathy for his patients — earlier in his 40s, he himself was a quickly balding man who was tempted to do anything he could to keep his hair (for years he relied on minoxidil, which eventually stopped working). “I believe there’s a very big misconception that only women care about their appearance,” he said. “And it’s not true. Men just don’t talk about it with our friends. But secretly, behind closed doors, we are trying to keep our younger selves for as long as we can.” Maybe it is some kind of machismo, he mused, that makes men so likely to compare their own hair with others’. “When you watch TV and movies and all these actors,” Clavell said, “they have beautiful, long hair. You’re like, ‘Man, how are they able to keep all that volume?’” 

 Clavell’s wife, Mildred Lopez Pineiro, a dermatologist with a thriving practice in Houston, regularly prescribes finasteride once she’s alerted patients to the possible side effects. “If they’re informed and willing to take the risk, why not?” she said. But she has assured her husband that she does not feel as if he needs it and supports whatever choices he makes about his hair. Clavell recently gave up on salvaging it and shaved his head, as have many balding men, some of whom are active on dedicated forums or proudly serving as social media cheerleaders for the look. He has been at peace with his choice, even when his 5-year-old daughter commented on the change. “Daddy,” she said to him, “you don’t have hair anymore!” 

 The social media universe expends so much energy on the topic of male hair loss that meta conversations online can assume viewers’ familiarity with the obsession. “What would you rather lose: a finger or your hair?” the comedian Hannah Berner asked a series of men on her Instagram feed last December. “Finger,” answered her fellow comic Erik Scott. “Fingers!” When the comedian Adam Friedland filmed an episode of his show with the influencer Clavicular, a steroid-loving, status-chasing champion of a classically handsome aesthetic, he asked a question that made it clear how ubiquitous concerns are about finasteride’s side effects: Would you rather lose your hair or your penis? Friedland and Clavicular agreed: They’d want to keep their hair. 

 The dilemma over the drug’s trade-offs is a perennial topic of debate on one of the more popular men’s health subreddits on Reddit, r/tressless, a space where men have been discussing hair loss and treatment since 2011. The subreddit saw a huge spike in traffic during the pandemic and now has about 413,000 weekly visitors (roughly four times the number of weekly visitors to r/WegovyWeightLoss, for example, a popular subreddit devoted to that GLP-1). Men share pictures of triumphant hair regrowth, seek reassurance, pour out their hearts, vent their frustrations about the women who reject them and get into vicious debates about whether or not the drug actually poses a real risk. “Doctors tell me to avoid finasteride” is the name of one thread; “Finasteride changed my life for the better” starts another. 

 The discourse veers from admissions of profound insecurity to signs of real mental health struggles. “I hate hairloss to my core,” one poster wrote three months ago. “I’m literally gonna cry bro.” He couldn’t even lead a normal life, he wrote, with his hair thinning starting so young. Another man said going bald was so awful for him that he was wondering whether anyone else was reconsidering having children, given that hair loss is genetic. 

 After I posted a request on Reddit for men to share their thoughts about finasteride and hair loss, Kieran (his middle name), a project manager in London, reached out to me in the spirit of making a public service announcement: He worried that needless fears of rare side effects were keeping men from leading happier lives. He was so concerned about his hair loss, which started in his 20s, that his anxiety seemed akin to what experts call hair loss dysmorphic disorder. When he socialized, he always wore a cap; he was embarrassed when he met up with his old friends from high school because of the jokes they made about his skull. He became convinced that his social status had plummeted. He had a girlfriend, but he felt insecure in the relationship. 

 He started on finasteride and was seeing results — but the reports on Reddit unnerved him and he went off the drug for several years, until he felt his hair loss was intolerable enough that it was worth taking whatever small risk was involved. “My relationship got better because I felt so much more confident,” he told me. “I volunteer for things I never would have done. I’m competing in a CrossFit competition. I’m doing more public speaking at work.” 

He was convinced that men with more hair who look younger are treated differently. “People make quick judgment calls,” he said. “They might see someone whose hair is thinning and think they’re a stressed-out person who doesn’t look after themselves.” 

 Another man who responded to me was a 27-year-old lawyer in New Jersey who had also become somewhat obsessed with his balding crown. He felt shame about his hair, and maybe even more shame about how much he cared. “On a distress scale of 1 to 10, I was at about an 8,” he said.and was unsure which worried him more: the stories of so many men who claimed that hair loss tanked their dating opportunities or the ones who said the drug tanked their sex lives. Finally, more persuaded by all the positive comments he was reading, he decided to go on the drug — and quickly observed a troubling change in his sex life: He was producing more watery semen, a rare but known side effect of the drug’s tendency to shrink the prostate. His erections were also not as hard. 

 From everything the lawyer read, his symptoms would resolve as soon as he stopped taking finasteride — which he knew some posters saw as an argument to persist, at least until he had a girlfriend. “But it felt weird to be taking a medication that would do that to me and somehow say, ‘That’s OK,’” he said. “I just felt like I couldn’t be sure that this wouldn’t somehow have long-lasting effects.” He went off the drug. The symptoms did quickly resolve, and he looks back at that period of misery as wasted energy. Now happily married, he responded to me to urge men to stay off the message boards. “They’re an echo chamber of anxiety,” he said. 

 One young man told me he first ordered finasteride from a telehealth platform when he was 23. He was new to a relationship and got nervous when he started experiencing sexual side effects. He went to another online provider and ordered a pill that treats erectile dysfunction, rather than lose more of his hair. Rachel Rubin, a urologist who specializes in sexual medicine in the Washington, D.C., area, told me that some patients who come to her for sexual problems refuse to go off finasteride, even after she has explained that the drug could well be causing or exacerbating the issue. It worries her that they prioritize their hair, even as their sex lives might suffer, making their search for intimacy that much harder. Finasteride might be the ultimate drug for a generation of young men who have never been more focused on optimizing their looks — and yet have never been less connected, romantically or socially. Social media not only feeds men self-improvement content on their phones but also encourages them to curate images of themselves for others to scrutinize. Plenty of men in their 50s might be hard-pressed to find more than a few dozen photos of themselves from their 20s — but a typical 20-something guy might post that many in just a few months, putting himself out there to be appraised and judged. 

 Psychologists have known for years that women who are especially preoccupied with their physical appearance tend to have more difficulty with anxiety and sexual satisfaction. “Women have had this kind of thing to deal with for so many years,” said Ryan, one of the friends in Elliot Connors’s group chat. “While it’s awful that this is now happening to men, there is also a kind of a poetic justice to it.” 

 Connors and a few friends from the chat group had agreed to join me at a restaurant in SoHo in March to talk about their hairlines. Ryan, who asked to use only his first name so he could speak frankly about something so personal, described how he became fixated on his hair loss right after graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The town was full of young students, who made him all the more self-conscious; at home during the pandemic, he had far too much time on his hands to watch social media and then stare at his receding hairline in the mirror. He had been taking finasteride since 2023 and was relieved by the volume he’d recaptured. 

 Ryan didn’t have any side effects from the medication, which Alex, a young man sitting next to him, was also taking. Only when I posed the question directly to the gathering did Alex mention that he, in fact, had experienced a dip in his sex drive when he went on the medication. This was news to the group. “You didn’t text the group chat,” Connors said. “You have to tell us!” 

 Alex (who also asked that only his first name be used) defended himself — this was before the group chat started. At the time, he was unprepared for this possibility; the doctor who offered him the prescription did not mention anything about low libido. He went off as soon as he noticed — but then all the hair that had filled in started noticeably thinning. He decided he would try the drug once more. “If it happens again, then I’ll go off it for good,” he told himself. The second time around, he said, the issue seemed to resolve. He was relieved by how much his hair had filled in since then. 

 Connors himself started taking finasteride last fall. At first, he thought he’d made a mistake. He was rattled: He kept worrying about potential side effects he’d read about on Reddit. He couldn’t remember precisely if some depressive symptoms he started feeling had come on soon after he first took the drug — but to be safe, after a few weeks, he went off it. When his low mood persisted, he kept up a running joke with his friends: He definitely had post-finasteride syndrome! Then again, maybe he was just feeling depressed because he knew he was no longer helping his hairline. 

 Eventually, having chalked up that previous dark mood to a stressful time in his life rather than to the finasteride, he went back on the drug. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if at some point he returns to perseverating and second-guessing his decision, but for now, about three months into his second effort, he feels fine and is hopeful that he’s had some hair regrowth. Lately he’s even been thinking he should talk to his brother, who’s three years younger. Get started now, he’d tell him. Before it’s too late. 

 Susan Dominus has been a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine since 2011. She is not bald. 

CITY HALL WATCH / WHAT'S ON CITY & PLANNING AGENDAS THIS WEEK

Community Coalition Bulletin: This Week at City Hall 

 The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members informed about important Council and Planning Commission hearings and other city public meetings. 

Monday, April 20: City Council, 10 am Closed Session 

Agenda: 

 https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2026-04/cs-4-20-2026.pdf 

 Item CS-3: Class action case alleges the City violated Proposition 218 by charging tiered water rates to single family residential water customers and seeks refunds. City Attorney’s Office will update Mayor and City Council on status and seek direction. 

 Why it matters: “Recent court rulings on tiered water rates are creating confusion and uncertainty at water agencies across California, including in San Diego, where one ruling will mean rate hikes for most single-family homes.” [Union-Tribune, March 13] 

Item CS-4: The Council will meet with its negotiator on price and payment terms for potential long-term ground leases with Midway Rising, LLC, to redevelop the City-owned real property. 

Why it matters: The state Court of Appeal ruled that the city failed to perform an adequate environmental review of the Midway-Pacific Highway area around the proposed project. The Supreme Court agreed and declined to hear the city’s appeal. 

So why is the city moving ahead to negotiate price and payment terms for the project without analyzing the environmental impacts and the scope of the court’s ruling? 

Tuesday, April 21: City Council 10 am 

 Agenda: https://sandiego.hylandcloud.com/211agendaonlinecouncil/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=6943&doctype=1&site=council 

Items 104/105: Settlements of Edward Fields/Jacob Triska vs. City of San Diego 

Why it matters: These settlements are for personal injuries from a bicycle accident caused by raised asphalt and a skateboard accident caused by cracked concrete. The two payouts total $400,000. 

[When will the city learn that deferred maintenance is more costly than regular maintenance?]     

Wednesday, April 22: Rules Committee, 9 am. 

 Agenda: https://sandiego.hylandcloud.com/211agendaonlinecomm/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=6969&doctype=1&site=comm 

 Item 3: Initial Committee Review of a Ballot Measure proposed by Council President Pro Tem Kent Lee to Advance a Large-Portfolio Homeownership Speculation Tax. 

Why it matters: “The speculative investment activities of Large-Portfolio Owners prevent residents from buying homes, as they are often forced to compete with Large-Portfolio Owners’ cash offers. When Large-Portfolio Owners are allowed to dominate the market in this way, the already constrained inventory of homes available for purchase is even further reduced.” 

 Thursday, April 23: Active Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, 1 pm 

Agenda: https://sandiego.hylandcloud.com/211agendaonlinecomm/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=6946&doctype=1&site=comm 

 Item 6: Amendment to the Municipal Code to Increase the Work Limit by City Forces on Public Works Projects to be consistent with current requirements for private contracting. 

 Why it matters: This ordinance would hike the cost threshold for use of City Forces on public works projects with Council approval from $500,000 to $30 million. That’s an increase of 5,900% or 60 times. The rationale is “cost savings and greater efficiency over contracting.” 

 In-person: City Council Chambers, 202 C St. Downtown San Diego.

 To participate via Zoom and submit written comments, click on the meeting agenda and look for the links.