wonderful thing. you are watching san francisco rising with chris manor. today's special guest is sarah phillips. >> hi, i'm chris manors and you are watching san francisco rising the show about restarting rebuilding and eare imagineing the city. the guest today is sarah phillips the executive director of economic workforce development. welcome to the show. >> thank you for having me. let's talk about the city economic plan and specifically the city's road map to san francisco future. can you give a brief overview and update on progress? >> absolute e.

in february 2023 mayor breed released the roadmap comprised to 9 strategies to move the city forward understanding there was structural and lang lasting changing by the covid impact. 134 were shorter term impacts how people using transit downtown and coming out and are using small businesses, some of them remember long-term structural impacts. the way we work. how often we are in an office and how much office space companies who had headquartered in san francisco need. some of those were structural impacts how we stop. there has been a long-term change as online shopping takes up a greater share how we performs and covid-19 took a shift that would probably take 10 to 15 years happen and collapse what happened ofern the timeframe to 2 years so saw structural impacts how people

shop. we have seen a lot of progress rchlt we are 9 months in and significant things we have seen is efforts creating permitinant services and homes for people experiencing homelessness is dramatic. we increased the number of shelter beds dramatically and take-up of the beds dramatically, and there is more work to do. on the safety side there are exciting things that happened. we increased our police pay among the highest in the bay area which is a important thing for recruitment. police recruitment across the country is down so recruiting the best we can means we need to give a high pay set. august the highsh return in graduates. we see 75 decrease in retail

theft and 50 percent reduction in car break ins which is quality of life crime san francisco experienced so there is real progresses we are seeing on clean and safe sides. one thing important in the mayor roadmap we are not trying to get back to 2020 vision. i think covid showed having a downtown with people sitting at offices isn't the best downtown it can be. i think it is a opportunity to bring 24 hour life use downtown. >> music and concerts is a great way to bring people to a specific location. golden gate park we had lots of events in plazas throughout the city. can you talk about those and if there is upcoming events too? >> i think you touched on something key to the mayor road map. for san francisco and particularly san francisco

downtown to move forward and be successful as a great american city, it is about bringing people together because they want to be together not because they center to be together and music is a strong part that. the planet concert sear ries coming up and happening throughout the city not just golden gate park but downtown locations are a great example. there are smaller examples as well. the landing at--is a new plaza we constructed in the mayor roadmap where two streets come together akwraisant to a couple restaurants closed to cars in daytime, chairs and seating and throughout the week they have lunch time and evening music to bring people together after work. they participate in that. something we are working on setting up for next year which is really exciting is our sf live program and that will bring a full 2024 concert

series where we match local venues bringing their work and partnership to useian square, music center plaza and embark cadero. we will be able to announce concert series through the sf- >> you mentioned vacant to vibrant, that program has a lot of attention lately. can you talk generally what exactly that program is? >> yeah. so, we opened a program where we put out a call for landlords willing to offer groundfloor space for free for 3 to 6 month jz small business or storefront operators who had a proposal what they would do for 3 to 6 months. it is pilot. we had a incredible amount of

interest. we had--i'm forgetting the number of landlords, but more then we expected because we are in a place where commercial real estate understands they need to come to the table to help make our groundfloor lively and resulting in a transition where the groundfloor is seen less as a money making operation, but more as a leader to lease upper floors. if you have a active ground floor yields better on the other 80 percent of the building you are trying to lease. that was great, a lot of cooperation scr over 700 small business or operators responded to that call. it is pop up. there is no intention this would result in forever small businesses, but there is certainly a hope and i think what we are hearing, i don't have the final data, but there are 17 activators in 9 different spaces, some are colocated, which is why the difference, and out of those 9 spaces that are being leased for free, now 7 of them are in

discussions for long-term leases so the spaces continue. it is the program. we are hopeful to have a second and third traunch and hoping to pilot in other neighborhoods with other partners. it is not an inexpensive program because there is a lot of capital that goes into popping up for short amount of time but what we are seen is they visit the businesses, the businesses are successful and san francisco want to support this activation so hopeful to expand it. >> that's great. can you talk a bit about why piloting programs and testing things is so important? >> absolutely. you know, i would say not only the important generally but important in san francisco specifically. the benefit of pilot programs in the reasons they are really important here is, it allows us to try something and say, there may be consequence but let's understand those in real time rather then waiting to start a

strategy while we think about them on paper and if they are too great we can modify the program as we go. mta has absorbed the strategy whether a bike lane or other to figure how best to use the street? is this working? is it working for bikes and cars and buses? maybe not, let's switch it around and pilots have been important to oewd to our office particularly because we tend to have the ability and the mayor's support through the budget process to pilot things through request for proposals or rfp process where we can put out a small amount of funding, try activation and small public plaza, see if it works and i think the benefit there is, if it doesn't work we tried it and had the benefit of seeing real time and when it does work, we are able to uplift that and

move into a permanent strategy and that is where our agency turns over something we piloted to another agency because it is part of the city operating procedure. pilots also give people hope. when we have the short-term whether it is physical public plaza or activation that shows change is possible and allows them to vote for what they like. >> lastly, in lith light of the current ai boom, do you think there is a way to leverage those new changes to take a bunch of san francisco's status as a tech hub? >> i do, i think they work together. san francisco right now has a strong vacancy problem in our office space. and there is a back-story to that. our zoning downtown has not prevented other uses, in terms

of permitting uses of the multi-story building has been open including allowing residential but we put other barriers, cost and code barriers et cetera and what happened also during the height of our preevious boom is that, the amount that tech companies were willing to pay for office space bid everything out so we-without intentionally zoning a single use downtown, we de facto became a single use downtown and thereat is the opportunity you are pointing out. now because downtown was so convertible from work from home, particularly as tech based downtown was and how much companies put at the market in the office spaces we are seeing high vacancy now, all most 30 percent so there is lot of square feet but that presents a lot of opportunity. we have the ability to absorb expansion of the tech industry we are so strong at.

we have seen over 800 thousand square feet of ai space leased just in 2023 alone and there is still more demand out in the market, more ai companies looking for space so that is a growth spot absorbing some of the vac ancy. the opportunity too is prices for downtown lease s have also dropped and that opens up a breath of opportunity to a breath of companies that were priced out in 2018, 2019, 2020. san francisco has always been great at starting companies and allowing them to grow here. when our prices are too high it prevents that growth so now we are a super fertile ground for more start ups and invasion on the smaller end of the sector because they can come and enter our market and we have the space to offer. to talk about san francisco's assets and the leveraging that, we sit at the epicenter of really great university and educational institutions.

we are between uc berkeley and stanford. the graduates produced just from those institutions alone stay in the bay area and want to rise up and work here, provide a real opportunity for the start ups to build their companies and companies to grow here so we confident we will absorb a certain amount of office space with ai tech. with that, we are interested in increasing our human capital growing graduates. downtown university is something the mayor is open to pursuing and we are in conversations with uc berkeley we love to have as a partner in our downtown and then residential conversions are a great partner to that. as we build back the office space, people will want to live downtown again and we have a number buildings that can be converted to residential. the costs are high. mayor breed and her partners on the board made significant changes to reduce the costs. we waived fees for change of

uses in the downtown area. there are code changes that will make the conversions easier. there is a ballot measure on the march ballot that will attempt to reduce costs for those as well. it is ongoing process and none of those changes we talked about absent ai growth downtown, but institutional growth downtown, arts growth downtown and residential conversions downtown are long-term changes so one thing i want to say recollect i do think there is a opportunity per your question, but we also need to be patient because what we are talking about is is a real shift to the make-up of the downtown since from the growth it has been starting at since the turn of the century so that isn't a 2 year change, that is a 10 year change and we center to watch as it goes. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate you spending the time here today and your creative vision and positivity, so thank you so much. >> thanks so much for having me and hope you all downtown and shop. >> that is it for this episode.

for sfgovtv i'm chris manors, thanks

♪♪ >> san francisco! ♪♪ >> this is an exhibition across departments highlighting different artworks from our

collection. gender is an important part of the dialogue. in many ways, this exhibition is contemporary. all of this artwork is from the 9th century and spans all the way to the 21st century. the exhibition is organized into seven different groupings or themes such as activities, symbolism, transformation and others. it's not by culture or time period, but different affinities between the artwork. activities, for example, looks at the role of gender and how certain activities are placed as feminine or masculine. we have a print by uharo that looks at different activities that derisionly performed by men. it's looking at the theme of music. we have three women playing traditional japanese instruments

that would otherwise be played by men at that time. we have pairings so that is looking within the context of gender in relationships. also with how people are questioning the whole idea of pairing in the first place. we have three from three different cultures, tibet, china and japan. this is sell vanity stot relevar has been fluid in different time periods in cultures. sometimes being female in china but often male and evoking features associated with gender binaries and sometimes in between. it's a lovely way of tying all the themes together in this collection. gender and sexuality, speaking

from my culture specifically, is something at that hasn't been recently widely discussed. this exhibition shows that it's gender and sexuality are actually have been considered and complicated by dialogue through the work of artists and thinking specifically, a sculpture we have of the hindu deities because it's half pee male and half male. it turns into a different theme in a way and is a beautiful representation of how gender hasn't been seen as one thing or a binary. we see that it isn't a modest concept. in a way, i feel we have a lot of historical references and touch points throughout all the ages and in asian cultures. i believe san francisco has

close to 40% asian. it's a huge representation here in the bay area. it's important that we awk abouk about this and open up the discussion around gender. what we've learned from organizing this exhibition at the museum is that gender has been something that has come up in all of these cultures through all the time periods as something that is important and relevant. especially here in the san francisco bay area we feel that it's relevant to the conversations that people are having today. we hope that people can carry that outside of the museum into their daily lives.

when i shoot chinatown, i shoot the architecture that people not just events, i shoot what's going on in daily life and everything changes. murals, graffiti, store opening. store closing. the bakery. i shoot anything and everything in chinatown. i shoot daily life. i'm a crazy animal. i'm shooting for fun. that's what i love.

>> i'm frank jane. i'm a community photographer for the last i think about 20 years. i joined the chinese historical society. it was a way i could practice my society and i can give the community memories. i've been practicing and get to know everybody and everybody knew me pretty much documenting the history i don't just shoot events. i'm telling a story in whatever photos that i post on facebook, it's just like being there from front to end, i do a good job and i take hundreds and hundreds of photos. and i was specializing in

chinese american history. i want to cover what's happening in chinatown. what's happening in my community. i shoot a lot of government officials. i probably have thousands of photos of mayor lee and all the dignitaries. but they treat me like one of the family members because they see me all the time. they appreciate me. even the local cops, the firemen, you know, i feel at home. i was born in chinese hospital 1954. we grew up dirt poor. our family was lucky to grew up. when i was in junior high, i had a degree in hotel management restaurant. i was working in the restaurant business for probably about 15 years. i started when i was 12 years old. when i got married, my wife had an import business.

i figured, the restaurant business, i got tired of it. i said come work for the family business. i said, okay. it's going to be interesting and so interesting i lasted for 30 years. i'm married i have one daughter. she's a registered nurse. she lives in los angeles now. and two grandsons. we have fun. i got into photography when i was in junior high and high school. shooting cameras. the black and white days, i was able to process my own film. i wasn't really that good because you know color film and processing was expensive and i kind of left it alone for about 30 years. i was doing product photography for advertising. and kind of got back into it.

everybody said, oh, digital photography, the year 2000. it was a ghost town in chinatown. i figured it's time to shoot chinatown store front nobody. everybody on grand avenue. there was not a soul out walking around chinatown. a new asia restaurant, it used to be the biggest restaurant in chinatown. it can hold about a 1,000 people and i had been shooting events there for many years. it turned into a supermarket. and i got in. i shot the supermarket. you know, and its

transformation. even the owner of the restaurant the restaurant, it's 50 years old. i said, yeah. it looks awful. history. because i'm shooting history. and it's impressive because it's history because you can't repeat. it's gone it's gone. >> you stick with her, she'll teach you everything. >> cellphone photography, that's going to be the generation. i think cellphones in the next two, three years, the big cameras are obsolete already. mirrorless camera is going to take over market and the cellphone is going to be better. but nobody's going to archive it. nobody's going to keep good history. everybody's going to take

snapshots, but nobody's going to catalog. they don't care. >> i want to see you. >> it's not a keepsake. there's no memories behind it. everybody's sticking in the cloud. they lose it, who cares. but, you know, i care. >> last september of 2020, i had a minor stroke, and my daughter caught it on zoom. i was having a zoom call for my grand kids. and my daughter and my these little kids said, hey, you sound strange. yeah. i said i'm not able to speak properly. they said what happened. my wife was taking a nap and my daughter, she called home and

said he's having a stroke. get him to the hospital. five minutes later, you know, the ambulance came and took me away and i was at i.c.u. for four days. i have hundreds of messages wishing me get well soon. everybody wished that i'm okay and back to normal. you know, i was up and kicking two weeks after my hospital stay. it was a wake-up call. i needed to get my life in order and try to organize things especially organize my photos. >> probably took two million photos in the last 20 years. i want to donate to an organization that's going to use it.

i'm just doing it from the heart. i enjoy doing it to give back to the community. that's the most important. give back to the community. >> it's a lot for the community. >> i was a born hustler. i'm too busy to slow down. i love what i'm doing. i love to be busy. i go nuts when i'm not doing anything. i'm 67 this year. i figured 70 i'm ready to retire. i'm wishing to train a couple for photographers to take over my place. the younger generation, they have a passion, to document the history because it's going to be forgotten in ten years, 20 years, maybe i will be forgotten when i'm gone in a couple years but i want to be

remembered for my work and, you know, photographs will be a remembrance. i'm frank jane. i'm a community photographer. this is my story. >> when you're not looking, frank's there. he'll snap that and then he'll send me an e-mail or two and they're always the best. >> these are all my p p p p p p

>> good afternoon. everybody. i'm san francisco mayor london breed and i'm so excited to be swearing in janet tarlov to the mta board with her family, her friends, people from the merchant's association and so many folks that she's had an opportunity to develop relationships with to the council of district merchants and so many of our communities. the glenn park community. food is a unify