Posts in Innovation
Joel Engardio Investigates

In my work as a journalist, I asked tough questions and held government accountable. As a supervisor, I’ll do that from inside City Hall. In that spirit, my new campaign video — “Investigate” — pays homage to San Francisco in the film noir era when the reporter or private eye took on a big case to advocate for the little guy.

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Better Death

By Joel P. Engardio -- Baby boomers changed everything because they were never content with the old rules of sex -- or career, or parenting or retirement. Now senior citizens, they are beginning to face a final taboo harder to break than sex ever was. Death has a lot of room for improvement.

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Health, Innovation, TechJoel Engardio
A Court for the 10th Circle of Hell

By Joel P. Engardio -- David Traylor attacked a tourist in a crack-fueled schizophrenic episode. But he isn't psychotic, in jail or dead today thanks to San Francisco's Behavioral Health Court. He is medicated, has a home and a job. Yet homeless and mentally ill people who haven't committed felonies are left to suffer as they scream at commuters and use the sidewalk as a toilet. Why don't we treat people who can't take care of themselves before they become violent?

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Not Your Grandma's Snapchat

By Joel P. Engardio -- It’s easy to forget that hippies and gays were originally despised as invaders and displacers when they first arrived in San Francisco. Does this mean a time will come when tech workers are celebrated in The City’s folklore?

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Saving San Francisco

By Joel P. Engardio -- In an effort to save San Francisco from itself, the Emmy-award winning director behind the PBS hit "Saving the Bay" is producing a new series called "Saving the City." It will highlight successful cities that know what to preserve and what to let go: "Cities change, and if they don't, they die."

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Do You Know the Way to San Mateo?

By Joel P. Engardio -- To understand how a sleepy suburb spawned start-ups like YouTube and food truck restaurants like Curry Up Now, it helps to know where San Mateo’s economic development manager learned about cities. Marcus Clarke lived in San Francisco -- branded by SF Weekly as “The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.” He knows what not to do when it comes to planning San Mateo’s future.

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Housing, InnovationJoel Engardio
A Coyote Whisperer for Urban Coyotes

By Joel P. Engardio -- For seven years, 64-year-old Janet Kessler has been voluntarily observing and photographing urban coyote behavior throughout San Francisco’s parks. She regularly logs six hours a day, taking up to 600 pictures. “People think coyotes are vermin, dangerous or the big bad wolf,” Kessler said. “But they’re wonderful animals we can live with if we treat them with respect and take the right precautions.”

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How to Resurrect a Public School

By Joel P. Engardio -- Elementary school graduations are cute, yet they hardly match the hat tossing euphoria of the U.S. Naval Academy or the pomp of an Ivy League procession. But don't tell that to the first-ever graduates of the Chinese Immersion School at De Avila this month. With the mythological phoenix as their mascot, they deserve a celebration fit for rising from the ashes of public education in San Francisco.

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