When Ivor Bradley goes before San Francisco’s most powerful legislative body Tuesday, he won’t be arguing for anything extraordinary. Inst

'Grumpalumps and gadflies': S.F. cafe owner fights to open in vacant Mission District spot

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2021-06-06 06:30:06

When Ivor Bradley goes before San Francisco’s most powerful legislative body Tuesday, he won’t be arguing for anything extraordinary. Instead, the Board of Supervisors will spend precious time debating a controversy that could only happen in San Francisco: whether to let Bradley open a coffee shop.

The fight over croissants and cappuccinos promises to be the most San Francisco story of them all — one that covers the city’s tech industry, its small business crisis, its intense NIMBY-ism and its famously dramatic fights over every little change proposed to the city’s landscape.

The latest chapter in the saga that might as well be titled “San Francisco is arguing over what now?” began last summer when Bradley closed his famous cafe, the Creamery, after 12 years in the South of Market.

A drop in revenue because of the pandemic and uncertainty over a planned 960-unit development on the site prompted Bradley to not renew the lease on the cafe that was famous in tech circles for its venture capitalist confabs and the apparent birth of Airbnb.