While Cydney's well-earned vacation continues, the rest of the Gazetteer SF team was around this week, mainlining IRL events and URL content to bring you the latest trends, rumors, spottings, and discourse from the internet and beyond. This week: Mayor Lurie’s failed fireworks, a Chronicle fact-check, and SF’s fixation on lookalike contests.
July gloom deadens the booms
Mayor Daniel Lurie wanted San Francisco to celebrate in historic fashion on the Fourth of July with Golden Gate Bridge fireworks for all to see. Unfortunately, a little known meteorological condition called fog rolled in to turn those fireworks into weak orbs of fuzzy light — an inauspicious conclusion to what was just the third fireworks show in the bridge’s 90-year history. On one hand, who could really blame Lurie? It’s not like he’s Zeus controlling the clouds. Then again, what the hell was Lurie thinking? The Golden Gate Bridge randomly disappears into fog all the damn time. (Clearly, an atmospheric expert should’ve been consulted.) Fireworks on the Bay Bridge would’ve been the superior choice, but there’s no use crying over spilt cordite. The mass failure of the transit system, on the other hand… —Eddie Kim
Phony Yubamania has bitten the dust
When my phone finally came back to life on the drive home Sunday evening, I opened Instagram to a photo of a familiar location. The San Francisco Chronicle had reported “a slew of problems — traffic pileups, dangerous highway walking and overcrowding” in the South Yuba area, exactly where we had just spent three days camping and swimming. Somehow my companions and I had missed all of that: plenty of river spots to go around, zero traffic, and nothing feeling blown. This was consistent with what we had been told by the region’s Bureau of Land Management, which I nervously called ahead of the holiday weekend to gauge the craziness. (The music festival in neighboring Grass Valley would be a much hotter destination.) As we arrived at our cars Sunday evening after a blissful day at a swimming hole near Hoyt’s crossing, the focus of the Chronicle story, we saw the first and only officer of the weekend ticketing a couple cars that weren’t parked far enough in the shoulder. “No Parking” signs were abundant and respected, and in our three long days, the only piece of litter we saw was a pair of goggles on a rock. People kept their speakers at a polite volume. Compared to my experience in Guerneville, this “party river” was wonderfully mellow. Turns out, people know how to behave sometimes! – Olivia Peluso
I Love the 2024s
It has been about 25 months since the fateful day that YouTuber Anthony Po unleashed a sickness unto New York’s Washington Square Park, and, later, the world: the celebrity lookalike contest. That one, held on October 27, 2024, was Timothée Chalamet-themed. There have been a few hundred thousand more since, and by this point, the broader world has moved on.
Not San Francisco!
As part of their long-running Love Island USA watch parties, 620 Jones hosted a Rob Rausch lookalike contest this weekend that looked very well-attended. Rausch, if you are not destroying your brain on Love Island like I am, is just A Guy who just happens to make for incredibly good reality TV. (He was on the sixth season of Love Island and won the victor of the last Traitors season.) But if you passed by him on the street, you probably would not look twice. To bookend the month, the Fridays on Front Street Block party is hosting a Brat-themed Charli XCX lookalike party. Brat Summer, like lookalike contests, is perhaps another thing we should have left behind in 2024. —Joshua Bote
Spilling his guts
The venture capitalist and biohacker Bryan Johnson announced last week that he has been diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis, a chronic condition that can cause stomach pain, bloating, and vitamin deficiencies. In a nearly 2,000-word essay (!?!) on X, Johnson explained his belief the condition arose due to a childhood full of crappy junk food and stress related to fatherhood and entrepreneurship. That triggered a wave of incredulous reactions from the AIG community, including Australian gastroenterologist and professor Rupert Leong, who suggested that Johnson’s obsession with bio-hacking — which includes questionable supplements, transfusions of his teen son's blood, and dick-shock therapy — could be equally to blame. “He’s tried to spin this to his activities in childhood, but that’s because it can affect his brand,” Leong told Australia’s Financial Review.
Naturally, all manner of experts are now offering Johnson help, including “carnivore diet” weirdos and cutting-edge medical researchers. A commenter on Reddit pointed out the implication: “Good news for everyone else suffering from the same disease, the best way to get a cure is for some eccentric billionaire to get it.” Johnson, for the record, a mere centimillionaire. —E.K.
Our obligatory Taylor Swift wedding acknowledgment
We are not in the business of reporting on nuptials, even that of a pop star-slash-business conglomerate, but it is very funny that the once-fearsome “Twitter power broker” Yashar Ali has been reduced to rage-baiting people about Taylor Swift’s wedding. On Friday, Ali tweeted: “I am not suggesting that Gwen Stefani has to follow some set of rules about when she celebrates her wedding anniversary. But I am fascinated by her choice to post this while Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding was taking place.” So, if you got married on July 3, you can no longer celebrate your wedding anniversary. Or your birthday. Or the birth of the American empire. Or any major life milestone. Everything is Taylor Swift. Congrats to the happy couple. —J.B.
The week ahead: World Cup. More goddamn World Cup.
