What can Mayor Daniel Lurie do for you?

Wagner, who was selling dates at the farmers market across from city hall, now lives between Market Street and 6th Street with her homeschooled son. She’d like Lurie to create more clean recreation areas for kids in their neighborhood.

“Our children can’t even enjoy the park, Wagner said. “My son barely comes outside.”

This, Wager said, is because her neighborhood sticks out like a “sore thumb” compared to other areas of the city.

“That neighborhood doesn’t have homeless, this does,” Wagner continued. “That neighborhood doesn’t have poop and pee, this does.”

When there’s an event or a visitor, Wagner said, the city “cleans up real good.”

“I need them to use their money to clean the whole city, not just some parts when they want,” she sighed. “It’s making me feel like because of the color of my skin you’re putting me over here and I’m supposed to live in a feces-infested neighborhood and it’s not fair.”

Brown’s son, Aubrey Abrakasa, had just turned 17 when he was shot and killed at the intersection of Grove and Baker Streets in 2006. Brown accepted his high school diploma on his behalf. 

“I refuse to let my son’s existence be a statistic,” Brown said. After nearly two decades of advocacy, she still wants the mayor of San Francisco to “solve unsolved homicide and cold cases.” 

Brown hopes Lurie will keep San Francisco police chief William Scott “for mothers who are tired of going through different DAs and mayors.” A new chief, she said, would force them to restart the traumatic process of investigating their childrens’ death.

A retired kindergarten teacher with grandchildren at Yick Woo and Frank McCoppin Elementary Schools, Morrill would like Lurie to abolish San Francisco’s public school lottery system and guarantee children a place at their local school. 

She’s passionate about providing “places for kids to go” — from public parks to city-funded after school programs.

Booth, an “advocate for elders,” hopes to join the city’s Commission on the Aging advisory council. 

Booth is optimistic about Lurie’s selection of staff “oriented towards data.” She would like them to release regular data showing where food and housing insecure elders are in the city, and what’s being done to help them.

Jurie, seated to watch Lurie’s inauguration with her best friend Katie Morales and dog, Felix, has a simple request of the mayor: more garbage cans. 

Maybe, she suggested, the bins can even be tied to bus stops — as they are in Barcelona — so they can’t be tipped over.

Samuels wants to see more inclusive programming introduced for kids with disabilities. Lurie, who she described as “so inclusive,” could be the man for the job. 

Her husband, psychiatrist Richard Atkins, thinks Lurie’s most daunting task will be to “get San Franicscans to stop complaining and do something.” 

“Stop sending things to neighborhood blogs and do it yourself,” Atkins said. “Help homeless people when you find them.”

“Anything that makes people feel safer on the streets is top of mind,” said Leninger, who lives in Noe Valley.

For Leininger, that includes pedestrian and cyclist safety. She sold her bike this year, because she didn’t feel safe riding it. Now, she primarily takes Muni. “There’s a real antagonism from drivers towards pedestrians and cyclists,” she said — and regarding traffic laws, “there seems to be no enforcement.” 

“I’m always conscious of the lack of enforcement,” said Hannah, a retired carpenter who lives in the Castro. Generally, he feels comfortable with what the police department is doing, but noticed that many drivers aren’t ticketed for speeding or driving through stop signs, he said. 

Beyond that, Hannah said he would like to see Lurie bring cars back to Market Street — a street he frequently cycles along. “It kind of became a dead zone,” Hannah said.

Wong, a retired editorial assistant who lives in Fort Mason, said she is most concerned about street conditions. “The usual – public safety, cleanlxiness,” she said.  

But instead of waiting on the new administration to step in, Wong has taken charge in her own neighborhood by picking up trash (two full bags) every other day by her house. 

“People put too much demand on the government.” said Wong. “We have to pull ourselves up.”

“I want everyone who lives in the city to do more.”

Byers, a 28-year-old engineer, hopes to see more police officers on 6th and 7th Streets. A lot of encampments have popped up south of Civic Center, and drug activity has moved that way also, he said. 

“It’s really made it difficult to even go out and enjoy the parks that are a block away [from his house],” Byers said. He takes his Bernedoodle, Noodle, out for walks nearby. “The terrifying part is crossing 6th Street.”

Carlos Herrera, a Venezuelan “saxofonista,” was packing up at the Civic Center Bart Station exit leading to City Hall around 10 a.m. 

For the past eight months, he has been playing saxophone at downtown BART stations. Today, his 51st birthday, he has been there since 7 a.m.  

“I make music on the streets,” he said in Spanish. He hasn’t had any problems doing that, but didn’t know if the new administration would bring new rules or permits for street musicians like him. 

“We ask the mayor to continue to support music, art and street musicians who have been making good music to enhance San Francisco,” Herrera said. “I think it’s best, because this is a tourist city, and we reinforce tourism with music art.” 

Outside Civic Center BART station, Marion Carr, 76, an Urban Alchemy worker, was on a brief break around 10. He wore a reflective vest and a walkie-talkie that announced, almost non-stop, important figures who just arrived at the inauguration.

Commute cost is top of his concern. Living in Rio Vista, a riverside city north of Antioch, his commute costs $7 to cross the Antioch bridge, and $9.10 to take BART from Antioch to Civic Center. He earns $25 an hour.

“A lot of working people have to cross these bridges every day, or catch these buses, but they are raising the bridge tolls and transit fares,” he said. “The mayor, he’s rich. He doesn’t have experience taking transit to work. It doesn’t matter to him.” 

While the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency just raised bus fares this January and more service cuts may happen with the agency’s budget deficit, what the mayor can do, Carr said, is to “assess who are using the bus lines.” In richer neighborhoods, people may not use the bus as often, but in places like Potrero Hill or Chinatown, “People need a bus.”

Sitting at the steps of the Simón Bolívar Statue near Hyde Street, Edwards Kienoski was taking a break from his job as a bike messenger. 

For the new administration, he said he doesn’t have a lot of expectations. “Just do something different,” he said. 

Although bike infrastructures may not be the battles he chooses, he believes the new administration could do other things. For example, there could be less policing and better ways to tackle homelessness, he added. The homeless sweeps ahead of the 2023 APEC and last August, to him, were “temporary efforts.”

“If you can mobilize that many cops to sweep, you can make them do more beneficial things,” he said.

He also hopes the new administration will change the zoning restrictions, especially in the Sunset, loosening the heights limits. T“Sunset is big, and imagine having another Sunset on top of the Sunset,” he said. “It’s literally double the amount of housing.” 

“Habitat,” Alix Marduel said bluntly, when asked what she wants from the mayor. More places to live, she added. 

Marduel, a 40-year San Francisco resident, said “there is always one thing or another to prevent building new housing.” She wasn’t sure where specifically the developments will be, “I’m not an urban planner,” she said. But she knows, “if we don’t build more housing, people will die.”  

“You have to be a dynamic city, not a museum,” she said. “There are moments when you need to progress. Preventing neighborhoods to have anything new is not a good thing.”

“Whatever the mayor could do to pick up business,” said Allan Quiton, a retired fisherman selling crabs at the Civic Center farmers’ market. “We need SF to be booming again.”

For Quiton, one thing the mayor could do is to bring cars back to Market Street, so people can stop and spend money downtown.   

He is hopeful about the coming administration. “I see he’s cleaning up, picking up trash,” Quiton said. “Let’s just get business going.” 

Ricquel Thomas owner of Cali Sweet Cakes at the Civic Center farmers’ market, wants “San Francisco to come alive again.” 

She gave the example of the Westfield mall near Powell Street. “The mall used to be so vibrant,” she said. “But it’s just a food court at this point.” 

“I hope with the new mayor comes new change,” she said. 

She wants the new administration to continue funding programs like La Cocina, or Urban Alchemy, where formerly incarcerated people are given job opportunities.

Thomas had been supported by La Cocina, a Mission-based program to help low-income food entrepreneurs to build their businesses. She has been selling cookies made from her mom and aunt’s recipes for a little over a year. 

In the near future, Thomas dreams about opening a brick-and-mortar in San Francisco, where her dad grew up.

“If everything goes well, both San Francisco and Oakland,” she smiled.