2018
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- January
- Starting January 1, with the Adult Use of Marijuana Act going into effect statewide, Harborside Health Center, The Berkeley Patients Group, and many other Marijuana dispensaries in the Bay Area begin retail sales of Marijuana to the general public [1] (public performer on 2016 Independence Day pictured)
- Parks in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, including Muir Woods National Monument and Fort Point National Historic Site, experience partial or total closure, due to the United States federal government shutdown of 2018 [2]
- More than 150,000 people attend 2018 Women's March protests across the Bay Area, adding the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements to the protests against President Donald Trump (San Francisco event pictured) [3]
- The San Francisco Board of Supervisors votes to replace acting mayor London Breed with an interim mayor, former supervisor Mark Farrell (pictured), amid accusations of racism [4]
- San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo resigns from the Federal Communications Commission Broadband Advisory Board, citing undue influence from telecommunications companies [5]
- San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announces his department will begin to retroactively apply Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which legalized the possession and recreational use of marijuana for adults ages 21 years or older, to misdemeanor and felony convictions dating back to 1975, recalling and re-sentencing up to 4,940 felony marijuana convictions and dismissing and sealing 3,038 misdemeanors [6]
- February
- The Berkeley City Council declares Berkeley a "sanctuary city" for recreational cannabis sales, prohibiting the use of city resources to assist in enforcing federal marijuana laws or providing information on legal cannabis sales, the first city in California to do so [7]
- Marin County is ranked worst among all California counties in racial disparity, according to Race Counts and Advancement Project California, with a spokesperson for the groups stating, "We were surprised, and were not expecting Marin to be the number-one county in terms of disparity...It’s not that progressive counties have it all figured out" [8]
- Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley announces that her office will review thousands of marijuana convictions, dating back to 1974, for possible dismissal under Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, guidelines, following closely after San Francisco announced a similar plan (above) [9]
- Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf alerts city residents to imminent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, earning criticism from some federal authorities. She responds, "I was sharing information in a way that was legal and was not obstructing justice, and it was an opportunity to ensure that people were aware of their rights." [10]
- March
- A man with a rifle enters the Veterans Home of California Yountville, the largest veterans home in the United States, holds employees hostage, and is found dead, along with 3 hostages [11]
- May
- Two studies conclude that the housing crisis in the Bay Area and California is reaching emergency proportions, with one study estimating that two counties alone, Santa Clara and Alameda, will need more than 50,000 new homes to meet the demand for affordable housing for lower-income residents, while homelessness increased by 36% in Alameda County from 2016-2017[12]
- The father of some of the ten children that were removed from a home in Fairfield, where they were living in conditions of severe neglect and abuse, is arrested and booked on seven counts of torture and nine counts of felony child abuse [13]
- A nine-story electronic sculpture, "Day for Night", created by artist Jim Campbell, that features low resolution, abstract videos of San Francisco, debuts at the top of Salesforce Tower [14][15]
- June
- San Francisco voters pass an ordinance banning the sale of flavored tobacco products, due in part to concerns that candy-flavored products may lure teenagers into nicotine addiction [16]
- Santa Clara County voters remove Santa Clara County Superior Court judge Aaron Persky, who came to national attention in 2016 when he sentenced a Stanford University student to just six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman [17]
- London Breed (pictured) is elected Mayor of San Francisco in a special election, defeating close rival Mark Leno [18]
- Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, and former president and COO Ramesh Balwani are indicted on charges of wire fraud, accused of carrying out a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors and patients. Theranos announced that Holmes would resign as CEO, but retain her position as chairwoman of the board [19]
- Hanabiko "Koko", a female western lowland gorilla born at the San Francisco Zoo, who was known for having learned a large number of hand signs from a modified version of American Sign Language. dies at her home in Woodside, California [20]
- July
- The West County Detention Center severs ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and will no longer incarcerate undocumented migrants at the Contra Costa County facility. [21]
- Nia Wilson, an African American woman, is killed while exiting MacArthur BART station, when a white male attacked her and one of her two sisters with her, with strong suspicions that this was a racially motivated hate crime [22]
- Ron Dellums (pictured), former East Bay US Representative and mayor of Oakland, known for his fiery anti-Vietnam War oratory and progressive politics, dies at his home in Washington, D.C. [23][24]
- August
- Apple Inc becomes the first company in history to reach $1,000,000,000,000 in value [25]
- The Transbay Transit Center opens in San Francisco, initially as a hub for bus lines including MUNI and AC Transit, and eventually nearly a dozen other transit agencies, including BART and CalTrain [26]
- A study by the California Association of Realtors shows that only about 1 in 5 Bay Area residents can afford the median purchase price for a home, with state home affordability rates at a 10 year low [27]
- A jury in San Francisco awards 46-year-old former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson US$289m in damages against Monsanto, after alleging that it had spent decades hiding the cancer-causing dangers of its Roundup herbicides [28]