WORRY

SHORT CUTS

Parking Pain

“I still worry,” she retorted. “I worry about you, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren.”

“You mean it never ends!?”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”

For those of us with children, worry is like our brain’s screensaver. It’s always hovering in the background, ready to pop up and cycle through its psychedelic colors. Different fears explode in our mind’s eye depending on the kids’ gender and age: “No friends!”

“Failing math!” “Anger issues!” “Out late-night!” “Driving! While drunk?!”

“Alcoholic?!” “No spouse!” “No job!”

I’d hoped that when my daughter graduated college this year that this tyranny of terror would subside, replaced by a more placid mental screensaver. Puppy’s frolicking, perhaps, or Hello Kitty images. But no. My mom confirmed what a casual survey of those a few steps ahead of me suggested: child worry is forever.

Worry is the empty calories of emotions. You can snack, even binge, on chronic concerns, and get back nothing but sleepless nights, eye bags, and a new crop of wrinkles. Worry’s purpose is to get our attention, to prompt a response to an emerging problem. But we’re largely powerless in the face of whatever worries we have about our children.

It doesn’t start out that way. Babies are full of call and response cares. Wet diaper; change it. Hungry; feed. Sleepy; rock, sing, or cuddle. If it’s broken, we can generally fix it with a warm blanket, bandage, hug, or nutritious snack. During those early years a false narrative worms its way deep into the parental lobe: we’re omnipotent, capable of and responsible for protecting our kid from anything.

But we are not and cannot. There’s little we can do about a lack of friends, undiagnosable learning challenges, or existential dread brought about by pandemics, climate change, or regular encounters with incoherent street behavior. We can try to make the world a better place, join the parent-teacher association, advocate for environmental and social justice, vote. But change is slow, nowhere near as cause and effect

PUBLISHER'S VIEW continues on page 10

Dogpatch, along with Fisherman’s Wharf, is first in line to be subjected to longer metered parking hours. Starting in July, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will extend metered parking hours until 10 p.m. from Monday through Saturday and enforce parking meters from noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays. Cole Valley and a handful of other neighborhoods aren’t scheduled for the same treatment until September. Aside from collecting revenues, meters are intended to keep commerce moving, helping to bring customer traffic into stores and restaurants. But is that really a thing much past twilight for any business other than bars?

I Scream

The hole left by the melting away of Mr. & Mrs. Miscellaneous and Sunday Social at the corner of 22nd and Third streets will soon be filled by Jake Godby’s and Sean Vahey’s Humphry Slocombe. The ice creamery vends such one-of-a-kind flavors as Secret Breakfast – bourbon cream with corn flakes –Olive Oil, Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee, Red Hot Banana, Golden Beet Saffron, Prosciutto, and Peanut Butter Curry. It’ll be Humphry Slocombe’s ninth Bay Area shop…There’s never enough ice cream. Loard’s Ice Cream, founded in Oakland during an unusually sweltering summer in 1950, is moving into the space formerly occupied by Dave’s Food Store, on 20th and Connecticut streets, which shuttered in 2020. It’ll be San

Francisco’s first and only Loard’s. Typically featuring heart-shaped chairs, Formica counters and pink and white vinyl booths, each parlor is a little different. In addition to Oakland, there are Loard’s ice cream parlors in Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley, Moraga, Orinda, Dublin and Livermore.

Office Share

Uber wants to shed office space in one of the four Mission Bay buildings that make up the ride-hailing giant’s headquarters. The company is hoping to sublease 286,548 square feet in its 1725 Third Street building, about a third of its H.Q. area. Uber has never occupied the structure… The move is part of a general transition away from tech, whose property and other taxes helped pay the City and County of San Francisco’s bills in the before times, to health care and biotech, which can be less fiscally lucrative, especially when connected with the University of California, San Francisco, which’s exempt from property and income assessments. Laboratory technicians need a place to work; coders can stay in their jammies and never live the house…

Father’s Day

MANAGER Catie Magee

Hear it directly from Claudia’s clients!

Siegel, Realtor® 415.816.2811 | ClaudiaSiegel.com | DRE 01440745

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