“Richmond Buzz” will be a recurring column on changes, tidbits and other news from the Richmond. Got news? Send us tips at tips@missionlocal.com.
Happy New Year. The week of rain is behind us, and there’s a stillness in the frigid air. In this week’s Buzz, a neighbor tips me onto a pattern.
Let’s start with two cafes that appear slated to open along Clement Street, bringing the sum total on the corridor to just shy of a million. Okay, closer to 20, but it sure feels like more.
Renovations inside the storefront at 324 Clement St. are underway. The location, formerly a bubble-tea shop, was registered under local chain Cafe Reveille in 2025, so expect to see buckets of millennial pink paint at 5th Ave. and Clement St. in the near future.
Other Cafe Reveille outposts across town have, for better or for worse, become known as popular hangouts for remote workers. A Reddit thread from February 2025 alleged that the Reveille’s ownership “mass fired their entire staff” at their location at 201 Steiner St. in the Lower Haight, but this hasn’t seemed to deter patronage at that location.
Reveille owner Christopher Newbury said they’re planning to open on Clement “by mid-year,” and did not respond to a request to share his side of the story concerning the Lower Haight location.
Further west, renovations are underway at 2512 Clement St. The storefront was home to Michelin Guide-recommended Dumpling Alley until 2023, when its owners pivoted from black truffle xiao long bao and shrimp donuts to an omakase sushi joint called Serendipity.
That didn’t last long; the business changed hands in 2024 and re-opened as Umami Sushi. That, too, was short-lived; the storefront is currently registered as Hologram, filed under one Soleil Malia LLC.
Here’s where it gets interesting: Soleil Malia LLC also retains ownership of Malama Matcha, a trendy SF-based brand that sells tins of matcha out of stores like the Inner Sunset’s Snowbird Coffee.
Might outer Clement’s Hologram be an extension of the Malama Matcha program? Malama did not respond to requests for comment, but we will update this once we hear.
A few blocks down, at 2140 Clement St, a beloved institution has shuttered. K-Elements BBQ, which drew fans of all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ from near and far, closed in November after more than eight years in business.
“Unfortunately, despite our determination to stay in this community, our landlord has raised the rent to a level we simply cannot sustain,” reads a post on the restaurant’s Instagram.
“I’m really sad to lose them,” said Sydney Peterson, who manages the 4 Star Theater across the street. “It really speaks to how heartbreaking it is that there are so few tenancy protections for small businesses in San Francisco.”
Peterson and the rest of the 4 Star staff will especially miss the $8.50 takeout rice bowls — an unbeatable deal any side of town.
“We definitely subsisted on that pretty frequently,” Peterson said. They’re hopeful that the owners will land on their feet elsewhere.
According to a petition reposted by K-Element’s owners, rent increases from the restaurant’s landlord coincided with interest in the space from a “national franchise.”
Peterson said they also heard rumors of a “high-end, high concept” restaurant group interested in the location. So far, no new business filings have been made for the address, and a “For Lease” sign remains posted.
There seems to be a trend, Peterson added, of larger, better-financed enterprises replacing existing small businesses in the area.
In 2024, after Angie Rando retired and closed Angelina’s at 6000 California St., the space was quietly taken over by David Rio Chai, which closed up shop downtown and headed west.
David Rio, which distributes tea across the country, has kept much of the look and feel of Angelina’s, which opened up shop in 1983.
To that, I’ll add Toy Boat at 401 Clement St., which was taken over by local bakery and cafe chain Jane in 2020.
It’s a small dataset, but something to keep an eye on in the new year. Small businesses appear to be struggling. Chains and distributors appear to be very interested in the Richmond.
Sometimes these bigger operations maintain the aesthetics or stylings of their previous mom-and-pop tenants, but it’s evident that the single-storefront model is facing challenges.
Even regional banks are vanishing: account holders with west coast-based Sterling Bank & Trust will have noticed their neighborhood branches (including that at 5498 Geary Blvd.) recently rebranded under the new ownership of nationwide Everbank (okay, maybe this is not the same as those previous examples). Everbank bought Sterling last year.
But the new year is cause for celebration, not just prediction. At The Internet Archive, the coming of January welcomed a host of new intellectual property into the public domain. This year, classic tunes from 1930, like “Georgia on My Mind” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” as well as books like “The Maltese Falcon” and some of the first Nancy Drew stories, all enter the public domain.
The fine folks at The Archive will host their annual public domain celebration on Jan. 21, both online during the day, and IRL in the evening with a party at their headquarters (a former church) at 300 Funston Ave. They’ve planned a film screening of public-domain “remix” submissions, along with other festivities.
“The public domain is important, because it is culture that belongs to all of us,” said Chris Freeland, The Internet Archive’s director of library services.
He said the celebration is a “cultural statement,” and that the public domain is an important fixture in the archive’s lofty mission of “universal access to all knowledge.”
The nonprofit also operates an online library and the popular Wayback Machine tool. Legal battles over copyright recently decimated the digital library’s offerings.
“Those paywalls and barriers get in the way of that access to all knowledge,” Freeland said. “The public domain helps open up those doors.”
That’s the Buzz for now. We’re in for low temperatures in the mid-40s this weekend. See you on the sunny side of the street.
