A chimney sweep’s tongue-in-cheek sign offering apprenticeships for under six’s with the chance to meet Dick van Dyke has become an online hit.

In the mock job advert, painted on the side of a van, free gruel is available for successful applicatants.

The amusing offer, the handiwork of Chimney Sweep Surrey , reads: “Six years or under?

“Join us as an apprentice in the exciting world of chimney sweeping.

“Free gruel whilst on duty and a great chance to meet Dick Van Dyke.”

A picture of the van appeared on Facebook , where it has provoked much hilarity.

It was posted under with the legend: “Looks pretty ordinary until you read the small print.”

One person commented: “I have an eight year old that needs to start earning his keep.

“Wonder if they’ll have him…”

Another added: “There used to be a chimney sweep in London whose business vehicle registration was 500T.”

Business boss David Mulligan, who painted the sign more than a year ago, says he has been “overwhelmed by the interest” since the pic appeared online .

It comes after a little boy’s humorous tampon comment in Waitrose caused a Facebook storm .

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To Griffin Dunne, she is Aunt Joan. He received first editions of her books as Christmas presents and, as a teenager, went to her parties where you would find “homicide detectives next to Warren Beatty next to Christopher Isherwood.” She let him drive her banana-yellow Corvette Stingray.

“It was pretty easy to pick up chicks in that thing,” Dunne, 62, tells The Post.

To everyone else, she is Joan Didion, the celebrated author whose memoir of grief, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” won a National Book Award in 2005 and whose essays on California culture, in particular “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” an account of the destructively aimless San Francisco hippie scene, made her a celebrity. Born in Sacramento, the descendant of pioneers who crossed the Donner Pass in the 19th century, she helped redefine journalism in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Dunne, who is also an actor (“After Hours”) and the son of novelist Dominick Dunne (“The Two Mrs. Grenvilles”), convinced his aunt to sit down in her Manhattan apartment and talk about her early successes and devastating late-life tragedies. The result is a moving documentary “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” that debuts Friday on Netflix and will also play at the Metrograph theater.

Harrison Ford helped build this deck at Joan Didion’s home. Also in the photo are Didion’s daughter, Quintana, and husband, John Gregory Dunne.John Bryson/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

Didion’s penchant for the cool observation that cuts to the quick may make her seem like a intimidating subject, but Dunne says she was cooperative.

“Her response to my asking was, ‘Oh, sure, go ahead.’ There was no real arm-twisting,” he says. “Then, I had [this] awesome responsibility: I can’t screw this up.”

As Didion’s nephew (she was married to Dominick’s brother), Dunne had access to everybody who really knows her. Anna Wintour talks about Didion’s tenure at Vogue, where she went to work after winning the magazine’s Prix de Paris writing contest in 1956, during her senior year at UC Berkeley. Didion’s 1961 essay, “On Self-Respect,” first appeared in the fashion magazine and was later included in her “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” collection, published to great acclaim in 1968.

“I was struck at the outpouring of character that came out from this 23-year-old girl, who was a woman in formation,” Dunne says, “and all of the personal choices that she talks about, of being a person you can live with.”

Harrison Ford talks about working as a carpenter for Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, whom she married in 1964 and with whom she wrote five screenplays. They wanted a deck built on their home in a remote part of Malibu, where they moved in 1971 with their adopted daughter Quintana.

“I had a young family, and I became their carpenter for the same reason I became their friend,” Ford says. “I was out of my depth. I didn’t know where I was going. But they always made me feel welcome.”

Griffin Dunne with Didion earlier this month.Getty Images

For Dunne, there was no question that Ford was destined for something much greater than building bookshelves. “I met him when I was 16. He was smoking Marlboro cigarettes. He was the most charismatic guy I ever met,” he says.

Didion and her husband’s early success as the screenwriters of 1971’s “Panic in Needle Park,” created a lucrative revenue stream beyond magazine writing and attracted the likes of Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese to their home.

“They had great dinner parties,” Dunne says. “People would get stoned and drink and that was a harrowing drive home.”

Of all parties Dunne, who grew up in Beverly Hills, was invited to, the one he remembers best was the one for the publication of Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” in 1968 at the Didion-Dunne house in Hollywood. Janis Joplin was on the guest list.

“I was 12 years old and obsessed. I didn’t want Janis to find out I was there with my mother,” he says. “She was doing a concert at the Palladium. I left just before she arrived.”

It was pretty easy for Didion and her nephew to discuss the good times in California, where she lived with her family for 24 years, but she had the wind knocked out of her in 2003, when her husband died of a fatal heart attack at the dinner table in their Upper East Side apartment. At the same time, Quintana was in a medically induced coma after suffering from septic shock during a bout of pneumonia.

Didion receives the National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2012.Getty Images

“One of the disadvantages, as her relative, was asking her to relive those moments,” says Dunne, who was at his house upstate when it happened. “I got a call in the middle of the night. It was the last thing I saw coming.”

The only way Didion, now 82, survived that experience was to write the book that became her masterpiece, “The Year of Magical Thinking.” Quintana recovered and was well enough to fly to LA in 2004, but fell on the pavement at the airport and suffered a massive hematoma that required a six-hour operation at UCLA hospital and another long recovery. In August 2005, while Didion was on a book tour for “Magical Thinking,” Quintana died at age 39 of acute pancreatitis.

“That was a situation that went from bad to worse,” says Dunne, who was 10 years older than his cousin. “It was a long decline and very sad to see.”

These days, Dunne says, Didion, who was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2012, is “doing very well” with a core group of friends with whom she has dinner several nights a week. “She just got a dog,” Dunne says.

To what does he attribute her strength of character? “She’s made of tough, homesteading stock,” he says. “It’s why she outlived so many of her friends.”

And her husband and daughter.

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NEW YORK — Luis Urias become the first Red Sox player to hit grand slams on consecutive pitches and the first in 80 years to hit slams in consecutive games in leading Boston to an 8-1 victory over the fading Yankees Saturday, sending New York to its seventh straight loss.

Urias cleared the bases in his last at-bat against Washington reliever Robert Garcia on Thursday night and the ninth-place hitter stunned Yankees ace Gerrit Cole in the second inning with a blast to left center.

After allowing the catcher’s seventh homer, Cole (10-4) stared blankly toward right field in disbelief. Cole tied a season high by allowing six runs for the third time and gave up seven hits.

Kutter Crawford (6-6) no-hit New York for 5 1/3 innings until Aaron Judge homered for the second straight game on the right-hander’s 67th pitch. Crawford matched a season-high by pitching six innings. He struck out five, walked two and allowed two baserunners.

ORIOLES 7, ATHLETICS 2, 10 INNINGS

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Ryan Mountcastle singled in Adam Frazier with the go-ahead run as part of a five-run 10th inning, and the AL East-leading Baltimore beat Oakland.

Frazier began the 10th at second base and advanced to third when Adrián Martínez (0-1) threw a wild pitch. Mountcastle’s hit bounced up the middle into center field as Frazier scored for the Orioles. Jordan Westburg added a sacrifice fly and another run was scored on a fielder’s choice grounder by Hays. McCann followed with a two-run single.

Aledmys Díaz homered twice for the last-place A’s, who have lost nine of 11 and own the worst home winning percentage (.295) in the majors.

Felix Bautista (8-2), the fourth of five relievers used by Orioles manager Brandon Hyde, retired three batters for the win.

DODGERS 3, MARLINS 1, GAME 1

DODGERS 3, MARLINS 1, GAME 2

Mookie Betts had a two-run single in the first game and homered twice in the second game to lead Los Angeles to complete a doubleheader sweep.

Miami wasted a terrific performance by Eury Pérez in the first game as the 20-year-old struck out 10 while pitching six innings of two-hit ball.

Ryan Yarbrough (6-5) pitched two perfect innings for the win, and Evan Phillips got three outs for his 19th save.

James Outman drew a one-out walk against David Robertson (4-4) and moved to third on Kiké Hernández’s single. Outman scored the tying run on Austin Barnes’ sacrifice bunt as first baseman Josh Bell’s throw from the side of the mound went past catcher Jacob Stallings.

In the night game, Julio Urías (11-6) allowed just one run — a solo homer to Josh Bell in the first inning — and five hits in seven innings, striking out five. Brusdar Graterol had an eventful ninth, allowing two singles, before getting out of the jam to earn his sixth save.

Braxton Garrett (7-4) allowed three runs and five hits in six innings, striking out six and walking none.

ANGELS 7, RAYS 6, GAME 1

RAYS 18, ANGELS 4, GAME 2

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Harold Ramírez had a career-high four hits, Isaac Paredes added three hits, including a three-run homer in the sixth inning, and Tampa Bay routed Los Angeles for a doubleheader split.

Brandon Drury had three hits, including a solo homer, to help the Angels win the first game 7-6.

Zach Eflin (13-7), the American League wins leader, allowed one run and four hits in six innings.

Tampa Bay had a 2-0 lead before breaking it open with four runs in the fifth. Angels starter Patrick Sandoval (6-10) appeared to retire the Rays in order, but Randy Arozarena’s fly ball popped out of Angels center fielder Jordyn Adams’ glove to extend the inning.

The Rays took advantage with four straight hits, including Paredes’ RBI single, a two-run double by Curtis Mead and Osleivis Basabe’s run-scoring double.

In the earlier game, Randal Grichuk drove in two runs for the Angels, who won for just the fifth time in 17 August games. Grichuk also made a leaping catch at the wall in the second inning to rob Yandy Diaz of a home run.

Griffin Canning (7-5) got the win and Reynaldo Lopez pitched a scoreless ninth for his sixth save.

Rays starter Tyler Glasnow (6-4) took the loss.

BREWERS 6, RANGERS 1

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Willy Adames was 4 for 4 with two RBIs and Carlos Santana homered for the second consecutive day to lead Milwaukee over Texas.

After striking out five consecutive Rangers in the first two innings, Brewers starter Freddy Peralta (10-8) threw 40 pitches during a hectic third in which he allowed a run on two singles and two walks.

Rangers starter Dane Dunning (9-5) allowed three runs on seven hits and a walk in five innings. He struck out four.

Martin Perez replaced Dunning and the Brewers greeted him with a double and RBI single by Andruw Monasterio to build a 4-1 lead. Perez allowed three runs on eight hits and two walks over four innings of relief.

MARINERS 10, ASTROS 3

HOUSTON (AP) — Julio Rodríguez set a major league record with his 17th hit in four games, Dylan Moore homered twice, Logan Gilbert registered his 14th quality start of the season and Seattle won its fifth straight.

Gilbert (11-5) surrendered just two runs on eight hits, struck out three and walked one in six innings.

Jose Altuve in the fifth inning became the newest member of the 2,000-hit club. Altuve lined a 2-2 pitch from Gilbert into the left field corner.

Rodriguez, with a single to left field in the seventh inning, broke a major league record set in 1925 by Milt Stock of the Brooklyn Robins. The previous record was 16 hits in four games. Rodriguez finished 4 for 6, giving him his fourth-consecutive four-plus hit game.

Houston starter Framber Valdez (9-9) gave up six runs on 10 hits, striking out five and walking two in five innings.

The Astros three runs came off solo homers by Alex Bregman, his 20th of the season, Yainer Diaz and Mauricio Dubón.

BLUE JAYS 4, REDS 3

CINCINNATI (AP) — Davis Schneider hit a tiebreaking solo homer and Jordan Romano worked out of a jam in the ninth inning, sending Toronto over Elly De La Cruz and Cincinnati.

Chris Bassitt pitched six efficient innings as Toronto rebounded from a stretch of five losses in seven games. All-Star Bo Bichette hit an RBI single in his first big league game since July 31.

Schneider went deep against Brandon Williamson (4-3) with one out in the fifth, giving Toronto a 4-3 lead. It was Schneider’s third homer of the season.

Bassitt (12-6) was charged with three runs, two earned, and three hits. He struck out six and walked one.

PHILLIES 12, NATIONALS 3

WASHINGTON (AP) — Trea Turner hit two home runs in an eight-run eighth inning and Philadelphia went deep five times, rallying past Washington.

Nick Castellanos, Jake Cave and Bryson Stott also homered for Philadelphia, which had lost four of five.

Riley Adams drove in two runs for Washington, which had won six of its last seven overall and 15 of 18 at home since July 8.

Cory Abbott (1-2), pitching for the first time since Aug. 11, took the loss.

Seranthony Domínguez (3-3) pitched a scoreless seventh and earned the win. He allowed three runs, two earned, in six innings while striking out five.

BRAVES 6, GIANTS 5

ATLANTA (AP) — Eddie Rosario had four hits, including a go-ahead, two-run homer in the eighth inning, and Atlanta Braves earned its fifth straight win.

Marcell Ozuna hit a two-out single off Tyler Rogers (4-5) in the eighth. Rosario followed with his 19th homer, a first-pitch blast that carried 441 feet to center field.

LaMonte Wade Jr. had two hits, including a homer on the game’s first pitch, but the Giants were handed their third straight loss.

Logan Webb allowed four runs on nine hits in six innings for San Francisco.

Kirby Yates (7-0) pitched a scoreless eighth. Raisel Iglesias earned his 23rd save with a perfect ninth.

PIRATES 7, TWINS 4

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Mitch Keller pitched six strong innings and Pittsburgh broke through late against Sonny Gray to beat Minnesota.

Gray (6-6) was perfect through five innings before Liover Peguero had an infield single with one out in the sixth. Andrew McCutchen had a two-run single as part of a three-run sixth for Pittsburgh and added a three-run homer in the ninth.

Keller (10-8) gave the offense time to solve Gray with another quality start. He gave up two runs and seven hits and struck out 12 — one short of matching a career high he set earlier this season.

David Bednar surrendered a run but got the last four outs for his 26th save.

CUBS 6, ROYALS 4

CHICAGO (AP) — Cody Bellinger homered twice and Justin Steele pitched six effective innings, helping Chicago beat Kansas City.

Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki each hit a sacrifice fly for Chicago, which had dropped three of four. The Cubs are fighting for playoff positioning in the crowded NL standings.

Steele (14-3) allowed two runs and six hits. He struck out seven and walked none while improving to 5-0 in his last six starts. Adbert Alzolay worked the ninth for his 17th save in 18 chances.

Bobby Witt Jr. had three hits for Kansas City, and Salvador Perez went 2 for 3 and scored two runs. Brady Singer (8-9) was charged with six runs — four earned — and nine hits in 3 2/3 innings.

DIAMONDBACKS 6, PADRES 4, GAME 1

DIAMONDBACKS 8, PADRES 1, GAME 2

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Gabriel Moreno hit a grand slam and drove in five runs to lead Arizona over San Diego for a sweep of a day-night doubleheader.

Tommy Pham hit a two-run homer and tripled to lead the Diamondbacks to a 6-4 victory in the opener.

Padres ace Yu Darvish (8-9) took the loss in the second game, going five innings and giving up three runs and nine hits while striking out seven. It was Darvish’s ninth outing this season throwing 100 or more pitches.

Diamondbacks starter Scott McGough made it 2 1/3 innings and was removed in favor of reliever Bryce Jarvis (1-0), who made his third appearance of the season. Jarvis pitched 3 2/3 innings, giving up one run and two hits.

In the first game, Diamondbacks starter Merrill Kelly (10-5) gave up three runs and five hits in 5 1/3 innings for the win. Paul Sewald earned his 26th save by blanking the Padres in the ninth despite giving up two walks and hitting a batter.

The Padres recalled knuckleballer Matt Waldron (0-2) from Triple-A El Paso to make a spot start. It was Waldron’s second career big league appearance. He lasted five innings, giving up five runs, five hits and striking out five.

TIGERS 4, GUARDIANS 3

CLEVELAND (AP) — Kerry Carpenter hit a three-run homer and Javier Báez had a solo shot as Detroit handed Cleveland rookie Tanner Bibee his first loss in more than two months.

Carpenter connected in the first inning off Bibee (9-3), who had won his previous seven decisions and was unbeaten since June 13. Báez homered in the seventh off Nick Sandlin to put the Tigers ahead 4-2.

Matt Manning (5-4) held the Guardians to one run and five hits in six innings. The right-hander came in 0-2 with a 17.61 ERA in two previous outings at Progressive Field.

Cleveland had its chances.

Detroit’s Alex Lange worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the seventh, Andrew Vasquez escaped a mess in the eighth and Jason Foley retired the Guardians’ 1-2-3 hitters in the ninth for his seventh save.

METS 13, CARDINALS 2

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Francisco Lindor had four hits and stole home, Daniel Vogelbach hit a grand slam and New York won its fourth straight game.

DJ Stewart and Pete Alonso also homered. Kodai Senga (10-6) allowed one run on two hits, walked two and struck out five batters in seven innings to become the first rookie in the major leagues this season to win 10 games.

Nolan Arenado hit his 26th home run of the season in the bottom of the fourth, and Miles Mikolas (6-9) allowed seven runs on seven hits and walked two batters in 4 2/3 innings as the Cardinals dropped their fourth straight game.

ROCKIES 11, WHITE SOX 5

DENVER (AP) — Kyle Freeland pitched five innings for his first win in three months, and Colorado earned its second straight win.

Elehuris Montero had three hits and four RBIs, and Brendan Rodgers and Nolan Jones also had three hits apiece.

Freeland (5-13) was charged with four runs and eight hits in his first win since May 14 against Philadelphia. The veteran left-hander went 0-9 with a 6.19 ERA in his previous 14 starts.

Luis Robert Jr. hit his 33rd homer for the White Sox, who have dropped six of seven. Elvis Andrus continued his hot stretch with two hits and a steal of home in the first inning.

Colorado scored three runs in the first and two more in the second off Jesse Scholtens (1-6).

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The pews are increasingly empty at historically Black churches in San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood, once called the “Harlem of the West” because of its bustling Black community. 

Places of worship once visited by some of the country’s most influential Black leaders, such as W.E.B. Dubois and Martin Luther King Jr., have lost hundreds of members in recent years. As rising costs of living have kept many former Black residents away from a neighborhood they once helped build, many of the historic religious institutions that grew alongside them are on life support. 

The 80-year-old Jones Memorial United Methodist Church on Post Street recently cut one of its Sunday sermons as its membership declined from roughly 200 people to 40, if you’re counting the choir members. Yulanda Williams, a lay minister at the church, said the congregation was forced to cut back programs for the sick and elderly as well as rehabilitation services for people leaving prison. 

Sandy Lewis attends the Sunday service at Jones Memorial United Methodist on Sept. 10, 2023. | Source: Justin Katigbak/The Standard

At the historic 171-year-old Third Baptist Church on McAllister Street, which supports after-school programs for Black youth and food for the hungry, attendance has dropped from over 1,000 people in the 1970s to as low as 200 people now, said the Rev. Amos Brown. 

Alongside the disappearance of Black churches, Black businesses have struggled to survive. Arnold Townsend, the pastor at Without Walls Ministries on Steiner Street, said he must drive to the East Bay after church every Sunday to find authentic soul food.

“To see these institutions disappear, you have to understand what it does to the emotional psyche of Black people,” Townsend said. “We have no identifiers in our town anymore.”

The struggles of San Francisco’s Black churches coincide with declining religious participation across the country. Some local religious leaders say it’s time for the institutions to reinvent themselves. Others blame city officials for failing to provide affordable housing for their members as well as protection from property crime and social issues like homelessness that plague San Francisco. 

The Sunday service is sparsely attended at Jones Memorial United Methodist in San Francisco on Sept. 10, 2023. | Source: Justin Katigbak/The Standard

Some longtime members of Black churches in the Fillmore make lengthy commutes from other parts of the Bay Area, but many have found churches near their new homes or stopped attending church altogether. Some members have simply grown too old to attend, and the churches are struggling to attract younger congregants. 

For Andrea Patton-Housley, a 30-year member of Jones United Methodist Church, the declining church membership has intensified her obligation to commute from the East Bay to the Fillmore every Sunday. Patton-Housley grew up in San Francisco and attended church here, but she moved to the East Bay in 2006 to buy a home because the city was unaffordable. 

“The church is like my family,” Patton-Housely said. “There’s not that many African Americans left in the Bay Area.”

A Difficult Balance

San Francisco’s Black population decreased from 13.4% of the city’s total population in 1970 to 5.7% in 2021. The drug and housing crises have hit Black residents particularly hard, with Black people making up 38% of the city’s homeless population and 32% of overdose deaths, according to the most recent data available. 

These disparities, some community leaders say, are symptomatic of the city’s failure to support Black institutions that were largely expected to address the crises. 

“The church has been a lifeline to keep people from getting into trouble,” Williams said. “But how long are we expected to try and resolve issues that go far beyond our reach?” 

Pastors say they’re faced with balancing spiritual obligations to help those in need and coming to terms with their own vulnerabilities. In response to a rise in break-ins, some churches in the Fillmore have moved away from open-door policies and have installed high-tech security systems. 

A composite image shows a congregant paging through Ecclesiastes in the Bible, left, during a Sunday service at Third Baptist Church and a locked gate, right, along the exterior of Third Baptist Church on Sept. 7, 2023. | Source: Don Feria for The Standard; Justin Katigbak/The Standard

Brown, pastor of Third Baptist Church, said he’s spent upward of $75,000 to repair damaged property and install fences and cameras, expenses that have added to the financial woes presented by declining membership. 

This year, thieves stole catalytic converters from vehicles in the church’s gated lot—one of three break-ins the church endured over the past six months. 

Brown, who studied under Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and is the president of San Francisco’s NAACP chapter, said he wants to see the law enforced evenly rather than not at all. He said he thinks the city fosters a climate that’s conducive to crime, placing undue burden on churches and businesses.

“The Black community is under siege,” Brown said. “The leadership of the city needs to step up and stop debating in ideological scum-fights.”

The Rev. Amos Brown stands among the pews for a portrait after services at the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco on Sept. 3, 2023. | Source: Don Feria for the Standard

Third Baptist operated a homeless shelter until its plumbing system was clogged by hypodermic needles, a problem that cost $50,000 to repair, Brown said. First Friendship Baptist on Steiner Street also ran a homeless shelter until declining membership made the operation unsustainable, according to Townsend. 

Other churches in the area say they’ve struggled with increasing homelessness without having the resources to help. Between 2019 and 2022, the unsheltered homeless population in the Fillmore’s supervisorial district rose by roughly 160 people, though it remained much lower than in other areas of the city, according to a one-night count in February 2022. 

Williams said the smell of urine has seeped into her church from homeless encampments on the adjacent sidewalk. Yul Dorn, pastor of Emmanuel Church-God in Christ on Hayes Street, said he’s caught people sneaking onto the church’s roof, using drugs and even sleeping there. 

“I’ve never seen churches desecrated to the extent that I’m seeing today,” Williams said. 

In the Tenderloin, the epicenter of the city’s homelessness crisis, Glide Church—a hub for social justice in the neighborhood—is no stranger to the issues described by ministries of the Fillmore. 

A composite image of the exterior of Glide Memorial Church, left, and Minister of Celebration Marvin K. White, right, at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco on Thursday, September 21, 2023. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard

“It gets wild at Glide. I mean, yesterday, someone came in and threatened to kill everybody,” Senior Minister Marvin K. White said on Wednesday. “We acknowledge that it is a thing, but we also know that bringing folks together is part of the solution.”

White said two types of congregants come to his church on Sundays: One group attends for the sermon, while others attend for a free meal. He said he believes bringing those groups together should remain at the core of the church’s mission. 

“Those who are privileged need to look at those people in the face who are suffering, and we all need to see each other,” White said. 

Decades in the Making

The challenges for the Fillmore’s Black churches started well before the city’s current drug and homelessness crises. 

In the 1960s, the Fillmore neighborhood was the focus of a federally authorized “urban renewal” project, which ostensibly aimed to improve struggling urban areas by building new housing and storefronts but forced an exodus from the area. 

Homes and businesses line Fillmore Street at Sutter Street in October 1963. In the 1960s, the Fillmore neighborhood was the focus of a federally authorized “urban renewal” project, which ostensibly aimed to improve struggling urban areas by building new housing and storefronts but forced an exodus from the area. | Source: Courtesy OpenSFHistory

The Board of Supervisors is weighing recommendations set forth by a reparations committee, which is proposing investments in education and health for Black children and mothers, strategies to employ more Black teachers, psychiatric help for people growing up in underserved neighborhoods as well as cash payments for Black San Franciscans. But next steps for the proposals remain unclear. 

Declining church attendance is hardly unique to Black churches or to San Francisco. Across the country, religious participation in churches has fallen over the past decade. The share of people who identify as Christian in the U.S. declined from 78% to 63% between 2007 and 2021, and only a quarter of people say they attend church at least once a week, according to a study by Pew Research. 

The Bethel A.M.E. Church choir poses for a group portrait in San Francisco in 1929. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, located in the Fillmore District, was founded in 1852 and was one of the earliest African American churches on the West Coast. | Source: Courtesy African American Museum & Library at Oakland

White, of Glide Church, said he’s begun to move away from the Bible in some of his sermons as a growing number of people separate themselves from religion. White said the church’s evolution will require meeting people where they are in their beliefs and working together with other ministries. 

“I’m like Oprah. You get a theology. You get a theology. You get a theology,” he said.  “I think part of my job as a minister. … Is to remove these barriers created by these dead white theologians.”

Minister of Celebration Marvin K. White at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco on Thursday, September 21, 2023. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard

Bobby Sisk, a steward of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, said he considers his church one of the lucky ones, though attendance has decreased by roughly 60% since the 1970s. Sisk said he believes churches need to evolve and learn how to attract more diverse crowds and younger members in order to survive in San Francisco. 

“The churches were thriving. These were packed houses to capacity. Now, in some cases, you have some that are on life support,” Sisk said. “The churches themselves have to start to think differently.” 

Others say the city needs to provide more support to these institutions before Black people disappear entirely from the fabric of San Francisco. 

“In 10 years, it’s quite possible that we could have more Black San Franciscans unhoused than housed,” Townsend said. “But it seems like mostly they want to ignore it and pretend that it’s not happening.” 

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• Residents in San Francisco’s Millennium Tower have been slapped with bills as high as $14,000 each following a project to stabilize the leaning building 
• One resident – who was not even living in the building when he received his bill due to sewage backup in his condo – received a bill for $14,000 over the summer
• Prior to the stabilization process, the tower leaned 29 inches 

Residents within the luxury Millennium Tower – dubbed the ‘leaning tower of San Francisco’ – are being slapped with bills up to $14,000 to fix the building’s issues which include raw sewage in their sinks and pipes.

Homeowners and renters have been shocked to receive the bills, which puts an estimated $6.8 million of the overall $20 million in overrun fixes on residents.

Mehrdad Mostafavi, who owns a condo on the third floor of the building, recently received a bill for $14,000, which amounts to $10 per square foot of the apartment.

‘It’s a luxurious building and famous building, but unfortunately it is not like this for me as an owner,’ Mostafavi told NBC Bay Area. ‘I am really suffering.’

To make matters worse, Mostafavi was not living in the building when he got the bill as he was dealing with a sewage backup purportedly caused by the tower’s tilt.

The Millennium Tower – designed by Gary Handel and Handel Architects – is still tilting at 29 inches but the sinking has stopped following a stabilization project.

Residents within the luxury Millennium Tower – dubbed the ‘leaning tower of San Francisco ‘ – are being slapped with bills up to $14,000 to fix the building’s issues Sewage overfill from the tilt Sewage overflow from the tilt inside the building

Mostafavi was just one of a number of residents to find a bill from the Tower owners’ association and asked to pay it by October 1.

He told the Bay Area outlet it may be the final nail in the coffin for him.

‘I don’t know what to do with this place, because it is costly – I cannot live in it,’ said Mostafavi.

The San Francisco resident had already moved out in June after a sewage backup in his kitchen sink, which some engineers had warned could happen due to the tilt.

At the time that he received the bill, he was already in the middle of trying to figure out who should pay to clean up the sewage mess in his place.

He also told NBC that he had already had to tap into his retirement savings to cover the costs of the kitchen issues.

‘I’m really having a hard time seeing how can I leave for the retirement – how to get out of this apartment and do my retirement’ Mostafavi said. It is very costly.’

‘They keep asking for more money and this is not acceptable for me,’ he said.

DailyMail.com reached out to management for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

According to Harry Poulos, a tall building expert, efforts to stop the building from sinking were successful but the tilt has not been fixed.

‘Their objective of correcting that tilt to a significant extent – I fear that expectation has not been met,’ Poulos told NBC in September.

‘I don’t know what to do with this place, because it is costly ¿ I cannot live in it,’ said third floor condo owner Mehrdad Mostafavi in an interview with NBC Bay Area Workers repair crumbling walls that have been the result of leaking water in the garage of the Millennium Tower in San Francisco A stress gauge is seen on a wall with floor-to-ceiling cracks in the parking garage of the Millennium Tower

Overall, residents of the building have been saddled with $6.8 million of the roughly $20 million extra the project ended up costing over the original budget.

It had originally been calculated as costing some $100 million.

During construction, however, the tower experienced more sinking and leaning.

Along with the bills sent to homeowners, the Tower owners’ association included a letter that said residents are being compensated for lost property value.

In total, the association was allotted  $150 million to pay for securing the high-rise, pay for legal bills, restore reserves and pay for other expected costs.

It ended up costing more than that, the association said.

‘The delays and the city’s heightened requirements resulted in significant unforeseen project cost increases,’ the association’s letter to residents said.

The Millennium Tower was designed by Gary Handel and Handel Architects By 2016, the building (to the right of the tallest building) had sunk nearly a foot-and-a-half into the soft soil and landfill upon which it was built. Residents of the building subsequently sued the developer and designers

Earlier this year, lead engineer of the project, Ron Hamburger, told NBC data taken from rooftop measurements regarding the lean are prone to weather fluctuations.

He also said that and that data on the building’s foundation was more reliable.

That data indicated that the tilt was more significant than previously noted, only by about of a quarter of an inch, however.

Hamburger at the time claimed the number was ‘negligible.’

‘We are fully confident that following transfer of the remaining design load to the piles,’ said Hamburger, adding that ‘there will be no further … movement of the roof to the west,’ he said.

The luxury 58-story tower opened in 2009 and quickly sold out its 419 apartments, with buyers including former San Francisco 49er Joe Montana and former Giants outfielder Hunter Pence.

By 2016, the building had sunk nearly a foot-and-a-half into the soft soil and landfill upon which it was built in San Francisco’s financial district.

It was also leaning, creating a two-inch tilt at the base, and a 6-inch lean at the top. Residents of the building subsequently sued the developer and designers.

A confidential settlement reached several years ago included $100 million to install 52 concrete, 140,000-pound piles to anchor the building to bedrock located 250 feet below ground, with the idea that the piles would provide foundational support to the leaning, sinking tower.

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A couple of weeks ago, as San Francisco emergency responders attempted to pull away from a scene where a man had been seriously injured, a pair of Cruise robotaxis allegedly loitered in the ambulance’s path, not understanding that they were required to get out of the way. The man died not long afterward. It didn’t take long for the autonomous vehicles to be blamed for the man’s death.

Cops Pull Over Self-Driving Car

Tensions between SF locals and the robotaxi population have been notably high since a state-level decision several weeks back unleashed hundreds of the automated vehicles onto Bay Area roads, and this episode seemed to confirm residents’ worst fears. The fact that the cars had obstructed an emergency vehicle—with fatal results—seemed to confirm worst suspicions. Worse still, a much-publicized public safety report showed that emergency responders tied to the incident had specifically blamed Cruise’s cars for their slowed response. A flurry of press stories blaming the robotaxis for the incident followed.

It’s now become apparent, however, that the story is more complicated than that. For one thing, city officials have now clarified—weeks later—that Cruise was specifically not at fault for the man’s death. For another thing, it’s been revealed that the man was actually fatally struck by a city bus, meaning that, while emergency responders partially blamed the self-driving cars for the deadly outcome, a human-operated city vehicle wounded the victim in the first place.

How the crash actually happened

This week, the San Francisco Standard reported that the victim in question, 69-year-old Sammy Davis, was a homeless man who, on August 14th, fell to the ground behind a city bus and was subsequently struck and seriously injured. Neither the bus driver nor passengers appeared to notice that Davis had been struck. Not long after the incident, emergency responders showed up and, after loading the man into their ambulance, had their unfortunate encounter with Cruise’s vehicles. In an initial Fire Department report that was acquired by Forbes via a public information request, emergency responders were clearly fuming about the role that the self-driving cars had played in the incident. The memo reads:

“The patient was packaged for transport with life-threatening injuries, but we were unable to leave the scene initially due to the Cruise vehicles not moving,” the report says. “This delay, no matter how minimal, contributed to a poor patient outcome…The fact that Cruise autonomous vehicles continue to block ingress and egress to critical 911 calls is unacceptable.”

Cruise previously denied that its vehicles had anything to do with Davis’s death, claiming that only 90 seconds elapsed between the time when he was put on a stretcher and when the man left the scene.

This week, officials released a statement that clarified that Cruise had not officially been blamed for Davis’s death. “The San Francisco Fire Chief has not attributed this pedestrian death to Cruise AVs,” a joint statement by the Fire Chief and the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency reads. The statement goes on to partially blame press reports which relied “on an internal report from an SFFD staff member on the scene” for the perception that Cruise was to blame for the man’s death. “The city sends our deepest condolences to [the] family and friends of the victim,” the statement concludes.

In response to the update from city officials, Cruise provided Gizmodo with the following statement: “Nothing lessens the tragedy of a lost life, but we appreciate the Fire Chief’s clarification that they have not attributed this to Cruise. We look forward to continued and increased collaboration with SFFD on our shared goal of road safety.”

San Francisco’s Robotaxi Infestation

Whether Cruise was at fault for this particular incident or not, it seems clear that San Francisco is in for some turbulent times, as the automated driving industry uses the city as a giant testing ground for its robotaxi experiment. Under such circumstances, it only stands to reason that locals would feel annoyed, if not outright alarmed. More relevantly, the tension between the city’s public safety officials and the robotaxi industry don’t really seem like they’re going away anytime soon. City officials are notably wary of a new, arguably experimental technology that has the potential to clog traffic and cause dangerous accidents. Only time will tell whether that wariness is justified or not.

UPDATE: This story originally stated that the public safety report detailing the incident involving Cruise’s vehicles had been leaked to Forbes. The documents were actually acquired via a public information request. We regret the error.

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Unlike the defaults during the Financial Crisis, this default cycle is structural, in addition to being financial.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The delinquency rate of commercial real estate mortgages on office properties that had been securitized into Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) spiked to 5.0% by loan balance in July, up from a delinquency rate of 2.8% in April, having now spiked by 2.2 percentage points in three months, by far the biggest three-month spike in the data going back to 2000, and by 3.4 percentage points so far this year, by far the biggest seven-month spike, according to Trepp, which tracks and analyzes CMBS.

This office-mortgage default cycle is outrunning the cycle during the Financial Crisis with ease, and it just started. The cycle during the Financial Crisis, as horrible as it was, started more slowly and proceeded more slowly than this cycle; it eventually topped out four years later with a delinquency rate of over 10% in 2012 and 2013. We’re already halfway there in seven months, on mortgages that were mostly written in 2014 and later.

Unlike the massive default cycle during the Financial Crisis, this default cycle is structural, in addition to being financial: No one knows what to do with all this vacant office space in older office towers. And cutting the rents to fill the properties – if it’s even possible to fill older office towers – won’t work because those much lower rents wouldn’t pay for the mortgage payments and expenses.

The default cycle is also financial in that CRE mortgage rates have more than doubled, which is a killer when on variable-rate mortgages and/or when a maturing mortgage needs to be refinanced. And at these mortgage payments, older office towers with a high vacancy rate doesn’t make economic sense anymore.

We have watched with fascination how mortgages on big office properties became delinquent, how landlords – giant landlords such as private equity firm Blackstone and private equity firm Brookfield – walked away from properties to let lenders take the losses, and this is happening from Houston to Chicago, from San Francisco to Manhattan, and all over the middle of the country.

And we have watched with amazement how the office market has un-frozen a little, finally, and some older office towers had actually sold, at huge discounts of 50% in Manhattan, of over 70% in San Francisco, of over 80% in Houston, and in one case, the largest office tower in St. Louis, it sold for so little in a foreclosure sale that all the proceeds were eaten up by fees and expenses, and lenders got zilch.

What all these big cases that came across our desk over the past 18 months had in common was that banks were not the lenders, that banks were not on the hook for losses on these big CRE loans, but that global investors ate those losses, because banks had securitized the mortgages and sold the CMBS to investors, or had sold the loans directly to private lenders, commercial mortgage REITs, and others.

This has espoused a perfectly logical theory around here that banks had kept the less risky office mortgages on their books, and sold their riskiest stuff to investors, and that smaller banks that piled into CRE lending mostly stayed away from refinancing big older office towers since 2014 – the kind that is now causing these mega-problems. The theory is that bank-held office loans would also face delinquencies and losses, but maybe not as badly as the stuff investors ended up with.

So some initial data on bank-held office loans going bad. The delinquency rate of bank-held office loans has also been rising since late last year: In Q4 2022, the delinquency rate of bank-held office loans reached 2.2%; and in Q1 2023 it rose to 2.7%.

This is according to Trepp’s analysis of Trepp’s Anonymized Loan-Level Repository data set, which is based on a sample of $160 billion in diverse bank loans from multiple banks. So this is a limited sample of the enormous size of the loan market, but it points at the direction this is going.

The data is quarterly. The delinquency rate of 2.7% in Q1, the last data point, is roughly equal to the March delinquency rate of office CMBS. So there’s that.

If this sample is broadly representative of all bank-held office mortgages, what we still don’t know is how big the loans are – they could be smaller office properties – and what the loss ratios will be if and when the properties are sold.

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SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Giants’ offense appeared to wake up Wednesday, and the club should have been well-rested Friday after a long-awaited day off.

They must have hit the snooze button.

Rookie shortstop Marco Luciano recorded his first hit and scored his first run of his career, and Joc Pederson smashed a late solo shot, but the Giants didn’t manage much else Friday night to back up a bounce-back start from Logan Webb in a 3-2 loss to the Boston Red Sox, who ran their winning streak to five games.

Pederson’s home run in the eighth, his 11th of the season, should have tied the score at 2. But the Red Sox widened their lead to 3-1 in the top half of the inning, after manager Gabe Kapler pulled an ultraefficient Webb with one out in the eighth, and Taylor Rogers surrendered an RBI single to the next batter.

Rebounding from the worst start of his career, Webb mostly silenced a lineup that has been the hottest in the majors since the end of June. He was shown shaking his head on the bench after the run scored, more likely lamenting the base runner he left for Rogers than Kapler’s decision to pull him.

Webb didn’t run a three-ball count until the fifth inning and was at only 88 pitches when Kapler came to get him, with Boston’s lineup turning over for a fourth time and a runner at second after a leadoff single and a sacrifice bunt. Pinch-hitter Rob Refsnyder lined the first pitch from Rogers into left-field, driving home Connor Wong for what proved to be a crucial insurance run.

Limiting a dangerous Boston lineup to three runs on six hits, Webb lowered his ERA to 3.49, including a 2.20 mark in 10 starts at Oracle Park. He struck out four and walked none. It should have been enough to earn the win, but the Giants’ lineup returned to its slumber against Red Sox starter Kutter Crawford.

The Giants managed just one other hit off Crawford besides Luciano’s and the RBI single from Michael Conforto that drove him in. Looking to extend their sixth-inning rally after Crawford was lifted for left-handed reliever Brennan Bernardino, Kapler called on Austin Slater to pinch-hit, and he struck out.

In his second major-league game, Luciano recorded his first career hit with a line drive that glanced off the glove of third baseman Rafael Devers to lead off the sixth. The ball left his bat at 107.1 mph. He took second on a wild pitch, putting him in position to score on a single from Conforto.

The Giants were primed to strike again in the seventh, with leadoff singles from J.D. Davis and Patrick Bailey. But, with the help of a sensational diving stop and flip from second baseman Justin Turner, they came up empty. Turner’s diving stop robbed Blake Sabol of an RBI single, and Luciano was called out on strikes to end the inning, stranding Davis at third as the would-be tying run.

The Red Sox, who improved to an MLB-best 16-5 since June 30, possess six of the top nine batters in the AL in that time span. Consider them the polar opposites of the Giants’ ice-cold group, which has produced three or fewer runs in eight of their past nine games and is batting .204 this month (Boston: .299).

Triston Casas accounted for Boston’s first two runs off Webb with two of their six hits, including his MLB-leading seventh home run since the All-Star break.

Casas traded places with Adam Duvall in the second inning with back-to-back ground rule doubles that put Boston up 1-0. Duvall’s was a line drive down the third-base line that just evaded the glove of Davis but eventually found the one of the ball guy, automatically awarding Duvall second.

Manager Alex Cora and a Red Sox trainer came out of the dugout to check on Casas in the fifth after he fouled a two-strike changeup off his shin and fell to the ground. It didn’t take long for Casas to prove he was all right, unloading on Webb’s next pitch for a 435-foot home run that landed halfway up the left-field bleachers.

©#YR@ MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at mercurynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Copyright 2023 Tribune Content Agency.

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Landlords in San Francisco inked 389 legally recorded tenant buyout agreements last year, as mapped above, effectively equal to the 391 agreements inked in 2021 but with 618 “pre-buyout negotiation” forms having been newly disclosed as well.

The highest reported buyout agreement totaled $460,000 last year, according to our queries of the City’s database, a total which was split between two holdout tenants in a six-unit building in Pacific Heights, with the largest payout per tenant totaling $300,000 for one of two units in a Pacific Heights duplex that was acquired with the tenant in early 2021.

The average reported buyout agreement in San Francisco totaled $53,828 last year, according to our queries, with an average payout of $35,720 per tenant, which was up from an average agreement of $46,676 and $29,270 per tenant in 2021, which was up from an average agreement of $44,714 and $29,216 per tenant in 2020.

And for the fifth year in a row, the Mission was the San Francisco neighborhood with the most inked buyout agreements (49), followed by the Sunset (42) for the second year in a row and now trailed by Ingleside (33), Haight-Ashbury (29), the Inner Richmond (26), Eureka Valley (25) and Parkside (22).

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

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FILE – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde delivers a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France on Wednesday, February 15, 2023. Leading global central bankers reassured on Wednesday 28 June 2023 that they would not back down. Their sharp hikes in interest rates suggest inflation is more stubborn than expected but still downplays recession fears stemming from their rate hikes.Jean-Francois Badias/AP

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) – Inflation is moving in different directions in Europe, rising in Germany and falling again in Spain, official figures said on Thursday.

German consumer prices rose 6.8% year-on-year in June, compared with 6.3% in May, state statistics office Destatis said. Analysts say the number was boosted in part by a widespread sale of cheap public transport tickets last summer.

The surge in Europe’s largest economy comes a day ahead of the release of inflation figures for the entire 20-nation area that uses the euro. Eurozone inflation fell to 6.1% in May from a peak of 10.6% in October.

But that’s still well above the 2% target set by the European Central Bank. ECB President Christine Lagarde warned at the bank’s July 27 meeting that inflation was so stubborn that it warranted at least one more rate hike.

Higher interest rates are central banks’ main anti-inflation tool.

Meanwhile, lower food and energy inflation meant Spain’s consumer price index rose just 1.6% yoy in June, compared to 2.9% in May.

Adrian Prettejohn, European economist at Capital Economics, said that the low Spanish interest rate is unlikely to affect the ECB’s decision-making, “as country-specific factors mean that inflation in Spain is much lower than in other countries.”

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