In City Hall, a spooky homage to S.F.’s undead political careers

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If you go up the Grand Staircase to the second floor of San Francisco City Hall and then make a right, you will find a graveyard outside the office of District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan.

Each tombstone is marked with a Halloweeny riff on the name of a former district supervisor.

Is it an homage? Is it a threat? 

“There’s a lot of stuff going on, so it’s nice to have a little levity,” said Robyn Burke, one of Chan’s legislative aides. Another aide, Frances Hsieh, came up with the project, Burke said. Devising eerie nicknames for the graveyard of former supervisors, though? That was a team effort. 

If you’ve seen the credits to one of “The Simpsons’” Treehouse of Horror Halloween episodes, you’re familiar with the genre.

Among the names: Sean Elsbernd (District 7 supervisor from 2004 to 2013) is now “Sean Hells Burn” with a skull. Dean Preston (District 5, 2019-2025) is “Doom Preston.” Hillary Ronen, (District 9, 2017-2025) is “Hell-ary Ronen” and Scott Wiener (District 8, 2011-2016, but now a state senator) is “Rot Wiener.” 

Not all former board members get to be honored this way — a lot depends on having a name that rhymes with something creepy — and on having left the board recently enough to be easily remembered.

“It’s not always easy to come up with names for all of them,” Burke said. “We kind of brainstorm together.” 

Burke said the team came up with the designs by doing an image search for “tombstone.” The greatest variation on the theme is the zombie emerging from a tombstone memorializing Aaron Peskin‘s (sorry, AAAH-ron Peskin’s) stint as District 3 supervisor.

Peskin was honored with a zombie, Burke explains, because he, too, came back from the dead. After serving eight years from 2001 to 2009, he was elected again in 2015, and served another eight years on the board until he termed out in January 2025. “Who knows if he’s going to come back again?” Burke said.  

On Burke’s personal undead supervisorial leaderboard: “David Compost” (a few flies surrounding the tombstone for David Campos (District 9, 2008-2017). It makes her laugh every time she looks like it. 

Also: “Mark Feral” — a tombstone accompanied by a black cat, a crescent moon, and two bats to represent the tenure of Mark Farrell (District 2, 2011-2018). 

“There’s no direct attack on any one person or anything. This is just our former colleagues,” Burke said. “Nothing about this is about any work they’ve done or whatever.”

But “Gavin Gruesome” — for former District 2 supervisor and now California Governor Gavin Newsom — did make Burke nervous at first.

As the only former supervisor currently engaged in a meme war with a current U.S. president (a war that is, reportedly, also ghostwritten by youthful staffers), Newsom has already racked up a few scary nicknames. 

“I had the moment the other day where I’m like, ‘Oh my god, are we calling him what Trump calls him?’” A quick fact-check revealed that Trump’s nickname for Newsom is the significantly less scary “Newscum.”

Burke said the District 1 office takes Halloween very seriously. Not only are they usually one of the first to put up decorations, they also organize a yearly Halloween potluck and invite people from throughout the building to celebrate. 

Conspicuously absent from the wall is Joel Engardio, who tenure as supervisor (District 4, 2022-2025) is almost at an end. The recently recalled supe will leave his post next week. 

There appears to be no urgency to add Engardio’s three-year run to the ranks of the undead; it is still too soon, too soon. “We’ll see. Stay tuned for that,” Burke said. “If you think of a good name, let us know!”