“Sunset Buzz” is a recurring column on changes, tidbits and other news from the Sunset. Got news? Send us tips at junyao@missionlocal.com.
For years, the yellow campaign signs with black text that covered the Sunset were synonymous with the fight to reopen the Great Highway to cars.
That was the design for materials to open the Great Highway through a lawsuit aiming to overturn Prop. K, which closed the roadway in exchange for Sunset Dunes park, and for the recall of former Supervisor Joel Engardio who advocated for the park in 2025.
But this year’s campaign for Prop. G, the latest ballot measure to bring cars back to the Great Highway on weekdays, has ditched its signature black and yellow. In its place, advocates for Prop. G opted for what resembles a pedestrian crossing sign and reads “Safe streets & great parks, SF needs both.”
But pedestrian safety advocates at the nonprofit Walk SF, which opposes Prop. G, said they were “frankly horrified” when they saw the new signs, calling them “deceptive tactics.”
“This is a complete misappropriation of pedestrian safety symbolism,” said Marta Lindsey, the communications director at Walk SF. “In what world does adding vehicle traffic to a road make pedestrians safer?”
The Yes on G campaign claimed that “traffic injuries rose 34 percent in the Sunset,” and “accidents increased when Great Highway commuters were routed through neighborhoods.”
But city data shows that there has been no increase of traffic injuries in District 4 since the road closure.
Jamie Hughes, the spokesperson for the Yes on G campaign, argued that reopening the roadway would make the neighborhood streets safer by decreasing the number of “frustrated” drivers speeding down the avenues after sitting in traffic.
“This isn’t about ‘I wanna drive my car all the time,’” Hughes said. “If you have to get to your job in Daly City that starts at 8:30 in the morning and drop off your kids at school on the way, driving is the only viable option.”
After the 11-year-old Mediterranean restaurant LaLe closed last November in the Inner Sunset, its doors remained shut, its parklet empty, until recently. Construction is underway at the former space of LaLe, and a new restaurant offering similar cuisine, Istanbul Kebab & Gyros, will open in its place, according to business filings.
The new owner, Hayri Kabulantok, also runs Mesopotamia Kitchen, another Mediterranean restaurant in Noe Valley on 24th Street.
This is the newest addition to a thriving Mediterranean cuisine scene in the Inner Sunset that includes Lavash, Mezze and Moore II and Park Gyros.
It feels like in every Sunset Buzz, there’s a coffee shop opening.
This time, it’s a new cafe that may be coming to the vacant space at 725 Lincoln Way near Ninth Avenue as soon as next year. A new building permit filed on Tuesday indicated “proposed tenant improvement for a coffee shop” at the site.
The owner wants to open a grab-and-go cafe serving coffee, tea, salad and perhaps sushi for park-goers to bring across the street to Golden Gate Park, said Jefferson Jin, a designer helping the building owner with permitting. The details haven’t been finalized, he said.
The space was occupied for over 60 years by Cuschieri’s Cabinet Shop, run by Paul Cuschieri, a veteran who made custom furniture.
Jackie, an employee at the neighboring Sip Tea Room, remembered “an old man” who had been doing woodwork in that space for almost all his life.
“There were these beautiful woodwork pieces all over the place,” he recalled.
The storefront windows were covered by wooden frames, soldiers and chess boards.
Cuschieri died in 2020 and the building was sold in 2024. The new owner has been doing “construction nonstop,” Jackie said.
For a while, residents who frequent Irving Subs in the Inner Sunset could sit down and eat their Dutch crunch at an additional dining area a few doors down at 1046 Irving St. The sandwich shop itself has very limited seating, just a public bench in the front.
But Irving Subs owner Frankie Lee recently shuttered that dining area and said he is thinking of different projects for the space.
“It was not really necessary. It was always empty,” Lee said of that space.
When he first leased the spot a couple of years ago — it was too good of a deal to miss — he planned to open a vegan spot, but that didn’t pan out.
“Stuff with the city. Too much going on,” he explained. He hasn’t decided what to do with the space yet, but if anything were to come to fruition, it would be around the holiday season, he said.
Mission Local is acting as stegonographer for lies and not even bothering to report the facts of the situation. “If you have to get to your job in Daly City that starts at 8:30 in the morning and drop off your kids at school on the way, driving is the only viable option.” This quote is false, and it should be identified as such.
The southern Great Highway extension is closed to southbound cars. It will close completely soon, because of coastal erosion and constant sand encroachment. Even if Prop G passes, there will be NO WAY to get to Daly City via Sunset Dunes. Why is Mission Local not highlighting this obvious omission and bias by Prop G supporters?
If people are driving like assholes due to “frustration” then those drivers are the problem. Catering to people who are driving aggressively on residential streets because we turned upper great highway into a park is like, excuse the comparison, hiding in your room and trying to be quiet so your drunken father won’t beat you. Noisy kids are not the problem in that imaginary case and sunset dunes park is not the problem in the putative case of people driving too fast in the sunset (which may not even be happening as the article explains)
Just one more freeway in SF — that will finally solve traffic forever!
“In what world does adding vehicle traffic to a road make pedestrians safer?” Asks Marta Lindsey of Walk SF. Answer: Sometimes in the real world. For example, in the far far outerland world of the inexplicably park hating car crazy Outer Sunset. When the Great Highway was closed for the “park”, speeding traffic and stop sign rolling picked up noticeably on certain streets. Many drivers now favor cutting across the neighborhood on 42nd, 44th, and 45th Avenues as well as the Lower Great Highway. Why? Because the city’s preferred detour of Sunset Blvd. was deemed unappealing by these drivers. Some may ask, wasn’t the Great Highway dangerous? Or Why should we reopen a dangerous highway? Answer: No. When the Great Highway was open, dangerous cross traffic was not a major issue in the neighborhood. The highway itself was very safe records show. I credit the timed traffic signals that rewarded drivers with green lights when they obeyed the speed limit.