San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie demanded that energy be restored on the metropolis’s Opera Home — so his daughter might carry out because the lead function within the Nutcracker ballet as her dad’s constituents endured days of darkness simply earlier than Christmas.
Lurie, the rich inheritor to the Levi Strauss jean fortune and fixture in SF’s excessive society set, “requested” PG&E ship emergency mills to the San Francisco Opera Home as the blackout blanketed large swaths of town, CEO Sumeet Singh stated at a listening to on the Board of Supervisors — a declare an organization consultant later walked again, in response to experiences.
Information obtained by The Put up present the mayor was “straight” concerned within the name to redirect scarce backup energy to the Nutcracker ballet — a vacation custom for town’s posh higher crust.
“I want to personally acknowledge each the Division of Emergency Administration and the Mayor himself-who has been very engaged with us directly- we have now succeeded in getting PGE to relocate two huge mills from one other web site to the Opera Home. See picture,” bragged Kate Sofis, director of the Warfare Memorial Opera Home, in a Dec. 21 e-mail.
The identical day, PG&E rep Jake Zigelman assured the mayor in a textual content that he was “working feverishly” to revive energy to the ballet after Lurie demanded updates on restoring energy in Civic Heart, which is dwelling to the opulent Warfare Memorial and Davies Symphony Corridor — as an estimated 20,000 properties and companies had been nonetheless at the hours of darkness.
The despised utility shared a tone-deaf X submit that day boasting that the two p.m. Nutcracker efficiency — the place Lurie’s daughter carried out as Clara — was “ON utilizing its backup generator” and it was working to “safe non permanent era” for the 7 p.m. present.
The corporate was torched for prioritizing the ballet whereas a lot of the low-income Tenderloin and residential Richmond neighborhoods languished with out energy for as much as 48 hours.
“The present should go on, however f–okay the residents who dwell within the space,” Richard Bullock chimed in.
“The self appointed elites in SF want their nutcracker whereas different individuals are 24+ hours with out energy having to throw away a complete fridge of spoiled meals, can’t cook dinner, don’t have any warmth,” one other resident fumed.
Singh stated the choice to reallocate assets to the Opera Home wasn’t his firm’s alone.
“We didn’t make that call on our personal accord,” he advised supervisors on the Thursday night time listening to. “We had been requested by the mayor to offer non permanent era to that particular location and we responded to that and by that point we had about 90% of our clients restored.”
PG&E didn’t reply to a request for remark by deadline however walked again Singh’s assertion, in response to the San Francisco Customary.
One-third of San Francisco was plunged into darkness 5 days earlier than Christmas when a hearth at a San Francisco substation induced “vital and intensive harm” to PG&E tools. The blackout induced widespread havoc on streets as site visitors lights went out and Waymos stalled.
The corporate has nonetheless not recognized the reason for the fireplace.
San Francisco small enterprise homeowners filed a class-action lawsuit this month aiming to recoup losses from the outage — which price some outlets greater than $100,000 in spoiled meals and misplaced income, in response to the criticism.
Lurie, who defeated former San Francisco mayor London Breed in 2024, is understood for posting incessantly on Instagram and TikTok concerning the metropolis’s points of interest and spending practically $1 million final 12 months on a small military of personal PR consultants.
A December video posted by the Warfare Memorial exhibits the 48-year-old father of two “fired up” about his daughter’s look within the ballet.
Textual content messages obtained in a public information request present Lurie repeatedly asking his employees to submit selfie video updates he filmed concerning the standing of the outage.
