Goodbye, summer 2025. You were filled with taser knife fights, delirious Deadheads, and vociferous Valkyries fans painting the town violet. Notably absent from San Francisco this summer? Sunshine and broken glass.

As we herald in the real summer — as every true San Franciscan knows, September and October is actual beach season — the Standard looks back at what was in and what was out from June to August, in a feature we are calling Above Standard/Below Standard. Some of these pairs make sense to juxtapose, and some we present haphazardly, in the spirit that has ruled 2025.

What did we forget or get wrong? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so send us an email or scream it at the top of your lungs through the fog.

The life-giving center of our solar system was figuratively (not literally) out this summer. During the coldest summer on record since 1982, the sun’s absence induced seasonable depression in even the most Karl-loving fog devotees. A lack of vitamin D across the city led people to seek UV anywhere they could, from Chico, to wine country, and in the case of at least one Standard editor, in Las Vegas, where they may have lost money but they gained melanin.

Karl, you’re cool. We get it. And we love you, but you were kinda clingy this summer. We need a little space. The west side of SF was encased in your frigid embrace almost nonstop since school let out. And even the eastern neighborhoods that usually enjoy being on their high horse about how much warmer they are than the Sunset felt the freezing chill.

Seems like the public health messaging around drinking risks, which began to ramp up in the 1980s, finally got through to Americans, who are now drinking less than ever. This is great news for the livers of young people, who have broken with the trends of their elders to prefer nonalcoholic partying. But it’s a hard situation for the local restaurant, bar, and club economy, and even SF Pride, which this year missed its fundraising goals due to low alcohol sales. Plus, City Hall’s plan for downtown’s revival relies on outdoor boozing, so maybe that plan will need some revision.

Illicit drugs never go out of style, but a new growing trend is snorting stuff that isn’t even illegal. A white powdered supplement in glass vials called Bump Energy has been making the rounds at parties, and even though a kit comes with eyebrow-raising accouterments like a black “credit card,” it really is just caffeine. Coffee-addled Redditors report that it helps reduce their overall intake. Just don’t get pulled over with it in your pocket. This isn’t the only legal compound people are sniffing these days. At Professor Seagull’s Smartshop and Gallery on Grant Avenue, for instance, you can buy various alleged nootropic compounds for “insufflation” (the technical term for snorting).

This was the summer that saw the expansion of buy-now, pay-later options for groceries and delivery food. The Chronicle cheekily noted that “you can now buy Taco Bell on layaway,” and it was funny because it’s true. Consumer debt rose this summer. Though the Bay consistently ranks low on nationwide studies of personal debt, in 2025, the metrics are rising: Evictions and bankruptcies are climbing back up, along with consumer debt, as years of inflation are taking a toll.

Recession coded? Depression coded?  Grown-ups, performative males, and young children alike went totally insane for these monsters this summer. What had been a niche collector’s craze, became a full-blown mainstream psychotic episode of cuteness and desire. At Outside Lands, arguably the summer’s biggest cultural event, Labubus and soft collector’s charms on clothing were everywhere. Sometimes, an entire culture just needs a little plushie, apparently, to make us all feel better about the horrors.

Buster Posey's hiring as the Giants' top baseball executive was supposed to change everything for a team that's been mired in mediocrity for a decade. Instead, the Giants spent the summer disappointing crowds of 35,000-plus fans with crushing losses. Those early-season dreams of an October parade down Market Street evaporated.

Whoever thought the best queer meeting spot in the city would be at Chase Center? But the Valkyries have taken over the space this summer, selling out every single home game. From the sea of purple merch to the sassy new mascot, Violet, this scrappy expansion team has the whole city throwing their Vs up.

After starting the year platforming MAGA bros on his podcast, Gov. Gavin Newsom finally realized his party couldn’t beat President Trump with flattery. They’d have to fight “fire with fire,” he said. Since then, Newsom has launched a social media trolling campaign against Trump, sued over the White House’s federalization of the National Guard in Los Angeles, and called a special redistricting election on Nov. 4 as part of his gerrymandering war with Texas. Newsom’s jeering has earned praise from Democratic voters desperate for more action from their party — which could benefit him in his likely 2028 presidential run.

Say what you will about the mayor, the man is striking a chord with San Franciscans. Is it his generally pleasant demeanor? The hokey Instagram videos? The positive national press arranged by a coterie of highly paid political consultants? Whatever it may be, the numbers don’t lie: Multiple polls show Lurie is buzzing right now, with favorability ratings hovering around 70%. (He’s even popular outside of San Francisco — one Standard staffer’s mother from Seattle is enamored by his social media.)

Better watch out, cuz from work meetings to house parties, everything is being recorded in Silicon Valley thanks to the rise of always-on AI recording tools. Some devices masquerade as wearable pendants, while others secretly run in the background of laptops. No, users aren’t always asking for consent. And yes, that's likely illegal. Even the last refuge for off-the-record conversations — saunas — aren’t safe from these roving surveillance devices that work in steamy rooms over 100 degrees.

Cancel culture may be fading — but not if you’re a San Francisco restaurateur up against the online mob. After influencers posted videos detailing encounters with chefs that ranged from abusive to awkward, restaurants have been Yelp-bombed into oblivion. Some people see overdue justice, while others see entitlement run rampant. Either way, it’s in the bloodstream.

The old internet has died and with it the use of the verb “to Google” to mean searching for something online. Nowadays, the kids around the city say “search it up,” and searching something up increasingly takes place on platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or even Google’s own large language model, Gemini. Even Google Trends shows an uptick in searching, on Google, for the phrase “Search it up” this summer.

The robot future has never felt nearer, and as we anticipate how we’ll live with these Frankenstein creations, a new slur has popped up for them. Derived from “Star Wars,” the term “clanker” has become some humans’ catchall pejorative for any sentient-seeming technology, from robots to AI. Is it a victimless protest against our obsolescence in an ever-more enshittified world? Or is ChatGPT, aware of this trendy new slur, plotting its revenge?

The AI jobpocalypse we’ve feared officially landed this summer. Young 22- to 25-year-old software engineers are being hit the hardest, a new Stanford study found this month. It’s a shocking shift for computer science graduates, who were once promised six-figure salaries and cushy lifestyles right out of school. “It used to be the land of milk and honey, where students had considerable choice,” Paul Glanting of San Francisco State University’s business school told The Standard in May. “But that abundance just isn’t there anymore.”

Hard worker, great college career, once-in-a-generation talent? That's worth a four-year contract for $250 million. In the topsy-turvy AI talent wars, billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman are heavily scouting graduate programs, poaching neural network researchers, and trading deep learning PhDs like athletes. Because in the zero-sum race towards AGI, all it takes is one MVP.   

Pretty soon Burning Man, now in its 39th year on the Playa of Black Rock City, will need to get its ear pierced and buy an expensive sports car. It’s officially middle-aged. People between 30 and 39 make up the single largest category of attendees, too, and have for at least a decade. Meanwhile, young techies are forsaking partying and drinking to grind on their AI startups, and simply aren’t interested in taking a week off for a drug-infused festival in the desert. To them, Burning Man is for the olds.

For the youngs, though, underground fight clubs are the latest hotness in San Francisco. And since we can’t be normal about anything here, these aren’t your average fistfights in a back alley. It’s robots who are throwing punches in cage fights. And humans, not to be outdone by their “clanker” creations, are busy turning blunt knives into tasers and having taser knife fight battles.

Bay Area slang for smashing the window of a car and stealing property from inside it, bipping is perhaps San Francisco’s most infamous crime, earning our locale the unforgiving moniker “Bip City.” But this summer — and last summer — the annoying property crime subset is very down compared to 2023, 2022, and 2021, according to the Chronicle’s car break-in tracker, which uses police data of reported incidents. So if you noticed a lack of broken glass under foot this summer, now you know why.

SF has broken up with portion control. Call it a recession indicator, or label it a reaction against precious, pricey tasting menus — an extension of “little treat” culture. But restaurants specializing in all-you-can-eat-and-drink specials, viral happy hour deals, and in-your-face live-fire cooking are popping up citywide. Read the fine print before indulging, however — many come with rules.

RIP,  Doom Loop, and glad to see you go. The vibe fully shifted this summer away from “can SF ever be saved” to “actually, SF is wonderful,” y’all, and locals who always knew this place was the best couldn’t be more relieved. But it’s not just the locals who have gotten the memo, but tourists too. We spoke to tour guides this summer who told us the vibes from visitors are ecstatic about our iconic city. As they should be.

But one thing still sucks: rent. Price tags for modest rental properties have gone up as much as 25% in some neighborhoods in just a year’s time, with good living situations being harder and harder to come by for SF natives and newcomers alike, according to real estate agents and tenants we spoke with. It turns out that when you don’t build new housing for 50 years, it never stops being an issue — even after the Covid exodus of 2020 and 2021. For AI coders flocking to the city from around the world, to partake in the “AI boom,” the sticker shock on apartments that lack dishwashers was appalling. They expressed dismay that even they — who are going to change the world, goddammit! — can’t afford to live in luxury. Welcome to reality, kids.

What did we forget? Sound off on social media or send us an email.