Editor:
In a move that does nothing to promote the businesses of struggling Taraval merchants and will harm homeowners and renters who live along the Lower Great Highway and 48th Avenue, Joel Engardio solicited and received approval from SFMTA to close both lanes of the Lower Great Highway between Ulloa and Santiago on Saturday, Sept. 21, and Oct. 19, for 15 hours – 9 a.m. to midnight – to hold night markets. He is staging this not only on the four lanes of the Upper Great Highway, which is closed to vehicles on Saturday, but also on the two Lower Great Highway lanes, prohibiting drivers from there as well.
Residents who live in the area pleaded with their District 4 supervisor not to do this because of the traffic dangers, noise intrusion and the fact that no businesses exist on the Lower or Upper Great Highway, but he ignored his own constituents. The SFMTA Special Events Committee likewise ignored the 29 written objections that were sent to them by the impacted public and made part of the permanent record at the hearing of this matter. There were no written comments in favor of it.
Let’s for a moment picture the traffic jams from six closed lanes, and imagine delays caused to everyone driving, including emergency responders to whom every second matters and may be the difference between someone’s life or death.
“Why wouldn’t Engardio hold the Night Market on a commercial corridor, like on Taraval east of Sunset Boulevard, or by 19th Avenue, in front of our businesses, so we merchants might benefit from it?” a shop owner asked. Outer Sunset merchants unanimously objected to an extension of the three-month Pilot Project allowing food trucks on the Great Highway in the past; Rec. and Park received 90 written objections to that idea. This upcoming night market will have food trucks and serve alcohol, taking business away from local restaurants, cafes and bars. It will have amplified music late into the night.
Citizens living in this residential area have a right to not be exposed to unnecessary and dangerous traffic. They have a right to a peaceful evening, and a safe place to walk, park and drive. Why must they be forced to listen to amplified music all day and night being blasted from the street right in front of their homes?
Why won’t Engardio continue to hold night markets on commercial corridors and leave our beautiful, natural beach alone? Could this possibly have something to do with his secret filing of Proposition K to permanently close the Upper Great Highway 24/7 after Election Day, rather than allowing the pilot project to continue as mandated through Dec. 31, 2025?
Contrary to his campaign representations, it appears he is determined to destroy the peace achieved among westside neighbors, most of whom have accepted the compromise that allows drivers to share the road weekdays while a car-free highway is open for recreation every weekend and holiday. Most of us were hoping the supervisors would allow that situation to continue beyond Dec. 31, 2025. Engardio doesn’t want to take that chance.
He uses the unusual numbers of attendees on the highway for special weekend events to add to his baseless argument that the highway has “lost its utility” to be anything other than a party venue all day every day including weekdays. He denies the nonstop two-mile drive between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard is safer and a helpful time-saver to thousands of drivers, who by using it avoid 15 dangerous intersections and travel fewer miles. It is, in fact, still the easiest, fastest, safest way to get to Daly City from the Richmond District, even when the southern extension is closed. His claim that the Highway’s closure adds only a three-minute delay to all drivers is not the experience of anyone I know who regularly drives the route.
RESIDENTS DENIED ORAL COMMENTS AT HEARING
Impacted residents did not receive proper notice to attend the hearing on this matter. This was advertised by signs on poles that invited the public to comment and attend a hearing by phone at 9 a.m., Thursday, Aug. 22, by dialing a number and then entering a code. The code was incorrect, so no one other than insiders from Joel Engardio’s office were able give oral public comments at the hearing. All impacted residents should have received notice in the mail at their home addresses long before the hearing date. Who walks around expecting to receive important information by reading signs taped to poles?
SFMTA should hold another properly noticed hearing on this matter before Sept. 21. The City is willfully creating a dangerous traffic situation for its own residents by allowing a night market in this location. And Engardio has received approval for a second one, same hours, in the same location on Oct. 19.
We don’t want dangerous congested streets or markets on the Great Highway. Save our merchants. Save our neighborhood. Save our compromise. VOTE NO ON PROP K.
Judi Gorski
D4 Resident 45+ years
Categories: letter to the editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
I agree with Ms Gorski. I’m not sure why Supervisor Engardio believes that the only way to create “joy” is to turn our quiet little neighborhoods into playgrounds. I wish he understood that most of his constituents are perfectly content with the joy – as well as the peace and calm – that comes from living in quiet neighborhoods close to our beautiful Ocean Beach. We really don’t need much more than that, and we certainly don’t need noisy and crowded night markets in an area almost completely devoid of the intended beneficiaries – merchants.
Move this event east of Sunset, where merchants are still struggling from the detrimental effects of both the pandemic and the L Taraval Improvement Project. If Engardio cared about his constituents one bit, this is exactly what he would do.
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They don’t care what longtime local residents think, or they’d have pulled their sham ballot initiative already. Engardio sold out his district and needs recalled ASAP.
We are not represented on the west side if a mere 5 supes can sell our district out to the whims of Breed’s self-serving faux-futurism PR-stunt lackeys, almost all of whom are directly on the payroll from 501c4-c3 real estate Billionaire dark money amid a total lack of investigation or enforcement by City Atty Chiu.
Someone should sue for an emergency injunction against this corrupt, dishonest, dis-information based ballot measure that was intentionally sprung on residents and voters in this manner to “sneak it through” – with public safety and resident’s concerns a non-extant afterthought at best.
What’s next, turn Castro street into a park? Grant, Stockton? Pac Heights?
Just imagine the pushback from the “connected” city family if those areas were impacted – they have 100% representation in Breed’s circus, and we do not.
Case in point, PUC tried to spring a Chinatown bike lane on merchants and residents similarly without any notice, planning or common sense, much like Prop K albeit without a citywide vote – and Breed, sensing her corrupt political future was imperiled by the loss of public support she has been pretending to court all along, immediately stepped in to top-down cull the project for “more study” etc.
If she thinks Chinatown is where all her voters are, Sunset/Richmond should send her the message – ignore us at your political peril and we will not forget your lies come November.
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Thank you!! Vote NO on Prop K!! Vote no on Melgar, Dorsey and Mandleman. Recall Engardio!!
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I’m glad so many people are enjoying the markets, and I hope businesses are helped too. Why isn’t this market on a merchant corridor, in front of the businesses themselves and away from our homes?!
On a personal note, I live on a street that will be greatly impacted by road closures and this particular market. Each market day I have to travel down the peninsula and back for some work – one of them ironically at a festival on an actual merchant corridor. Getting to and from these gigs with a huge party between destinations is going to be chaotic and time consuming. Once I’m home there will be no peace because of the noise of amplified music.
We were blindsided by this bare bones announcement ( tiny printed fliers on a few poles ) of a market on the Lower Great Highway. A successful outer sunset market is a good thing – just keep it away from our homes and move it to where it makes sense!!!
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Totally agree with the comments against Prop K and the I’ll-conceived location for the LGH night market planned for September. “Hey Ho!, Hey Ho! Joel and Breed we do not need! Hey Ho!, Hey Ho!, Joel Engardio must go!”
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Ms Gorski is absolutely correct about Engardio’s ill-conceived night market in a residential area far from Taraval businesses on the Lower Great Hwy while the UGH is also closed. It will be chaotic dangerous day from 9am to midnight, 15 hours, for residents and drivers alike. Engardio does not care. This supervisor continues to demonstrate time and time again that he is beholden only to pro bike special interest groups. When this idea first was revealed, I begged him in an email to put this market on the 21st of Sept. on a merchant corridor on Taraval where merchants could increase foot traffic, but he said “the fire dept wouldn’t let me.” He always has some excuse. Always. I have lost all trust in anything he says. He is clever. He obviously is not “dancing with the date that brought him.” Not worthy of elected office. We who voted for him deeply regret it. And an Oct 19 repeat of same hours of closure has already been approved and is on the SFMTA website. We deserve better for our safety and quality of life than Joel Engardio.
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As an Outer Sunset/D4 resident, I’ve loved the addition of the night markets. Yes, our neighborhood is usually peaceful and quiet – AND, the opportunity for spending time with neighbors, dancing, and listening to music by the ocean for a few evenings a years sounds fun! It’s a way to meet new neighbors and enjoy this beautiful city we get to call home. To the author of this letter, and to the 90 residents referenced who wrote letters opposing this, I’m sorry that they will feel annoyed/inconvenienced. That’s a frustrating feeling. But/and, when considered alongside the thousands of people expected to attend who are happy about the event, it shifts the perspective. I’m excited and grateful to have some events in the neighborhood that spark joy, that get us outside spending time with our neighbors and building community, and help us enjoy our beautiful city in new ways. And grateful to have a space to do that – vote YES on K!
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Except prop K isn’t at all about the night markets! Way to try to sneak that by, par.
For the record you can go to Ocean Beach RIGHT NOW. Organize public or private events, get a permit for a fire pit, picnic, volleyball, windsurf, fish, take over as much of the beach as your 3d space can. Right now, you can do that without political pandering or dishonestly enabling graft, “non-profit” dark money from Billionaires who don’t live here. You don’t need an MBA from Michigan to come in and make that possible, it’s possible right now and has been all along. Where have you been?
Just as your neighborhood(s) can organize actually grassroots block parties, close off individual blocks, rent local resources for neighbors to meet and greet. You could be doing that right now. Those events happen all the time. It already exists just like the UGH exists, Ocean Beach “Park” exists, but you’d rather a corrupt deficit-quintupling fraud-ministration just “take care of it for you” (and put their photo up doing so, no mention of cost until after the election right?) – all RIGHT leading into election season where they’re underwater and deficit-treading, at best. None of that even registers to you?
This is the transplant naivete – vociferously not paying attention, fervently virtue signaling. They just “want 1-2 things” and anyone who gives it to them, (or just makes the promises for their short-term support as seen so many times), owns them. But just where have you been living this entire time to believe them now?
And can’t we organize parties for ourselves instead of having Billionaires do it for you? You can’t go to the beach, you have to make the entire outer Sunset district less safe with much, much more traffic instead, because you… just want it? (Something something existing beach isn’t called a park, #fauxenvironmentalism?)
So enjoy the 1-2 things, no matter how you get them, nor who paid for your (automated) endorsement, of course intentionally forgetting to care who REALLY pays the price in the end – actual outer Sunset residents, working families and children with the most transparently fraudulent representation from their corrupt local government.
(Alternatively, if you DO live here, you could just Recall Engardio and Fire Breed, then simply enjoy OB and the amazing LACK of fraudulent development going on there despite the most monied developer dark money efforts, right now! If.)
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