May 26, 2025
Five years ago in Oakland. 📸 by Brandon Tauszik for SF Chronicle
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Five years ago in Oakland. 📸 by Brandon Tauszik for SF Chronicle
not to be a graphic design nerd but I love every word of this
When most people encounter a San Francisco streetcar, they see their commute to work or a ride home.
Emily Sneddon saw poetic beauty. More specifically, the designer fell for the Dijon-colored destination display on Muni’s recently retired Breda trains. She calls the typeface “raw and functional and mechanical,” then in the next breath describes the lettering like it’s a Michelangelo fresco.
“And yet there are curves,” she says, “and a unique counter thickness, that make you think, ‘A human hand has definitely touched this.’”
This passion sent the 31-year-old Australia native on a journey, first to a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency maintenance yard, then to find the lettering’s original designer. Her quest ended with a new Muni-inspired font, which she called Fran Sans and describes as a thank you note to San Francisco.
“I saw how genuinely people within San Francisco wanted to know about this piece of history, no matter how small it is,” Sneddon says. “I started to realize, this could almost be a gift back to the city for my time here.”
When the Italian Breda streetcar prototype was first unveiled in the Chronicle on Feb. 15, 1995, there was no mention of the lettering, which was set on backlit liquid crystal displays. The breaking news was the silver, red and gray color scheme — replacing Muni’s malfunctioning orange vehicles — and the cost.
“At $2 million per car, the vehicles are among the most expensive streetcars ever built,” the Chronicle reported.
Those Breda cars were near the end of their life in 2021 when Sneddon joined the Collins design firm in downtown San Francisco. They were replaced by hundreds of Siemens cars with less unique dot-matrix destination displays in a $1.2 billion overhaul. (The last Breda train ended service this year on Nov. 12.)
Sneddon, who had no car, took the N-Judah and J-Church streetcars from her Duboce Park home to work and to explore the Sunset District on weekends.
During these trips she was drawn to the lettering, built in geometric grids on 7-inch-high blocks, with chunky letters with swooping curves that looked like the typeface in an early 1980s arcade game.
“They have this warm yellow glow that feels like it has an analog quality, even though it’s not,” she said. “They’re only 26 years old, but feel like they came from a different time and place.”
Sneddon decided to start researching to create a Muni-themed font.
She arranged a visit to the SFMTA electronics shop at Balboa Park, where technicians showed her the LCD panels that display the line name and destination. A serial number in the display led her to the sign manufacturer: Trans-Lite Inc. of Milford, Conn., where sleuthing on Facebook and Reddit pages revealed engineer Gary Wallberg as the display’s original designer.
“It was proven through research that an engineer created this and not a font designer,” Sneddon said.
For a font designer, that was an important, and potentially challenging, obstacle. It wasn’t as simple as typing letters into a system. If the letters didn’t appear on any streetcar route — X and Q for example — then they didn’t exist.
Each letter had its own 5-by-3 grid, which lacked the flexibility most font designers covet. Creating an “$” and “@” symbol seemed impossible, but was crucial to complete the font.
Sneddon stayed within the “rules” of the grid, breaking the letters into modules, then “using them like Legos” to build the set. Fran Sans has no lowercase (yet) because it would require breaking the grid rules. But Sneddon created three versions of the typeface: solid black; a “tile” option that shows the geometric breaks; and white-on-black “panel,” which looks most like the Breda streetcar displays.
Fran Sans is part of a recent surge in love-letter-to-San Francisco fonts.
Designer Ben Zotto in 2021 created Fog City Gothic, an homage to San Francisco’s vintage street signs, then quickly followed with the Cow Palace-inspired Moonjumper Alpha. SFMTA officials have had fun trying new things with the lettering of the Muni worm logo.
Sneddon, in town this month to visit friends, has since moved back to Australia. But she hopes to return to San Francisco some day. As much as the views and good food, the designer lauded the curiosity and open-mindedness of citizens. (“When you’re pursuing something of niche interest, people really rally around you.”)
And she’s leaving something behind for the city. Sneddon said Fran Sans will remain free. Font and Muni fans can contact her through her site, where the detailed story of her design is waiting.
“I think some of the best design objects come from people making something that they just instinctively love,” Sneddon said.
and a shout-out to the journalist:
Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle's culture critic and co-founder of Total SF. The Bay Area native, a former Chronicle paperboy, has worked at The Chronicle since 2000.
He covers Bay Area culture, co-hosts the Total SF podcast and writes the archive-based Our SF local history column. Hartlaub and columnist Heather Knight co-created the Total SF podcast and event series, engaging with locals to explore and find new ways to celebrate San Francisco and the Bay Area.
On Pride Night, four San Francisco Giants pitchers on this woebegone team opted to either deface their official uniform or ignore it altoget
The San Francisco Giants have enough problems this season that you wouldn’t expect the players to actively try to alienate their fans. Fourteen games below .500, fourth place in the division, the second worst record in the National League. With numbers like that, you’d think they might do everything in their power to persuade the paying customers that they’re worth cheering for.
Yet some of the snowflakes on the Giants, the pitching staff specifically, decided to say a giant F-you to a good chunk of their fan base. On a night that was supposed to be about inclusion, they hijacked the event for their own purposes. In the name of Christianity, they took a decidedly un-Christian stance of exclusion and judgment.
To recap, on Pride Night last Friday at Oracle Park, four pitchers on this woebegone team opted to either deface the official uniform or ignore it altogether. Landen Roupp, who got rocked for four earned runs in 4⅔ innings, JT Brubaker, whose scrawl on his cap resembled bathroom-stall graffiti, and deposed closer Ryan Walker, who shouldn’t try to draw any more ire, all wrote a Bible verse on their official game cap. Sam Hentges opted not to wear the hat at all.
“It’s just something that I feel like I was forced to support,” said Hentges, who became the first Giants player to refuse to wear the Pride Night gear, “when I don’t morally support it.”
What about the people who support him, and his team? What about the city whose name is on the front of his uniform, a city that fully backs his team?
Is that not important to him and his band of homophobic brothers?
What about the gay teammates that he’s almost certainly had? The gay employees of the Giants team who work hard to give him a first-class experience and have his every need catered to? The gay media members who tell his story? Let alone all the straight teammates, employees, fans and broadcasters who have gay best friends, gay children, gay loved ones?
“I think that you have the right as a player to believe and say whatever you want,” said the team’s beloved broadcaster Mike Krukow. “But you have to take a broader look at the city you’re playing in. What makes San Francisco so great is the acceptance of others — ethnicities, opinions, cultures — and that extends to the gay community.
“I would just hope they would understand the demographic of San Francisco and respect people for who they are. What you do to your uniform, that has weight to it. You can offend people. And why would you do that?”
Pride is an issue close to Krukow’s heart. His son Wes is gay and is married to his partner, Ted. Wes, a dancer, is currently performing in Phantom of the Opera at the Orpheum.
“I’m so proud of him,” Krukow said. “I’ve seen gay life through my son’s eyes. The culture and the community is so beautiful.”
...
All living creatures would include everybody, including LGBTQ people, a group of people who have been excluded and persecuted, who have been murdered — including in San Francisco — for simply existing, have found a measure of welcome and inclusion in small efforts like Pride Nights. Hentges talked big about his freedom of choice, saying “Just like they have their choices, too.” As though being gay is a choice.
The pitchers’ inability to wear the team uniform for a few hours on a night meant to give a large group of their fans a sense of welcome forced the Giants to issue a statement. It noted that, “Baseball should be a place where everyone feels welcome, respected and valued” but also paid lip service to individual choice.
“We understand the choice by individual players has caused pain and anger to many in the LGBTQ+ community and we are sorry for that,” the statement read, while going on to reiterate the team’s commitment to an inclusive environment.
But those words rang hollow to some fans whose sense of welcome was damaged by a parade of players to the mound who couldn’t handle a rainbow symbol on their uniform, who signaled that many of the people in the stands were not worthy of their support.
“They wanted to express their antagonistic and homophobic views while weaponizing their Christianity,” fan Josh Jensen wrote in an email to the team that he copied to the Chronicle.
On Monday, OutSports reported that the players who defaced their uniforms had been issued warnings by Major League Baseball.
“The writing on the cap violates our rules and consistent with normal practice we have warned the players about future violations,” Pat Courtney, the league’s chief communications officer, told OutSports in a statement.
But why did it take the league to issue the warning? Why didn’t the Giants react more strongly to having their uniform defaced? Why didn’t the team make it clear to every player that they were expected to participate, that it is part of their big-league, highly compensated obligation?
Was manager Tony Vitello complicit in the protest? His starter, Roupp, wore a defaced cap. And then, in the bullpen parade of another disastrous game, every pitcher he turned to save one (Erik Miller) was also part of the Pride Night protest. Seems like a weird coincidence.
The Giants have a long history of supporting the gay community, dating to the groundbreaking Until There’s A Cure night, launched in 1996 to acknowledge the pain and tragedy of the AIDS epidemic. At that event, one player, Mark Dewey, turned his red ribbon sideways in protest, to resemble the Christian fish. That’s his legacy as a Giants player, a clown who denigrated an important day.
Over the years, far more important and accomplished managers and players than the men on this team have willingly participated in the Giants’ Pride celebrations. They managed to win division titles and World Series and lifelong love and respect in San Francisco without alienating a huge segment of fans and community.
This whole disastrous season has raised the question of whether this team is lacking some sort of fundamental character or leadership.
On Pride Night, when a rainbow was front and center, the Giants’ true colors came through.
🎶😀😎⚡️☀️Music for your forever summertime www.n1m.com/bristolkids
The United States has Really Been Pulled into a 10th Crusade between Europe, Canada, Jewish Israelis, Lebanon with Hezbollah, Palestine with Hamas, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Others in the 20th and 21st Centuries. The News is Just Not Calling the War in the Middle East Between Israel and Palestine Another Crusade, but that is What These Stupid Wars for that Shitty Sand and Dust of a Man They Chose to Crucify on their Cross to Begin With, and Continue to Practice Eating Jesus's Flesh as "Holy Bread" and Jesus's Blood as "Wine" on Catholic Sundays! I Get It! You All Want to Beat, Torture and Kill Jesus Again if He Ever Comes Back to Life! Study Holy People Who Haven't Been Crucified, like Buddha! Zen Buddhism of Japan that Originated in Ancient India is a REALLY Peaceful Religion! Just Drink Green Tea to Lower Your Blood Pressure and Relax! 🌳🧘🏻♂️🌳🧘🏻♀️🌳🧘🏻🌳🧘🏿♂️🌳🧘🏾♀️🌳🧘🏽♂️🌳🧘🏼♀️🌳🧘♀️🌳🧘♂️🌳🧘🏼♂️🌳🌏🌎🌍🌤️🪐✨
Joan Baez: Activist reads original poems targeting President Trump in exclusive video
The legendary songwriter, now 84, says writing poetry acts as a ‘bulwark against a creeping feeling of despondency’
by Joan Baez
Lately, the more I read the daily news, the more I’ve felt compelled to write again. Lining up words into sentences that attempt to make sense of the chaos is my bulwark against a creeping feeling of despondency.
I haven’t sat down to deliberately write poems in many years. But when I unearthed my older poems to put together my recent collection “When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance,” I found myself revising and rewriting for about a year. It felt like strengthening a muscle that I’d allowed to atrophy for too long.
Two of the pieces published here are prose poems: “Pony Up” and “Reasons to Stop Using the Word Unprecedented.” They both arrived in such a rush that I couldn’t be bothered to think about something like line-breaks. But they’re poetic to me — furious but poetic, nonetheless. In the third poem, “Falling Rocks,” I wanted to try to give a voice to children who are being silenced.
Watch the videos
California’s summer COVID wave arrives early. How to stay safe
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/california-s-summer-covid-wave-arrives-early-19539429.php
Bono spray paints the Vaillancourt Fountain
Justin Herman Plaza / Embarcadero
San Francisco, CA (11/11/87)
Photo by Fred Larson / SF Chronicle