December 20, 2025
Power out, takes on fire
PG&E outages in S.F. leave 130k without electricity
City goes dark, comments explode: roast PG&E, push public power, meme Waymo
TLDR: A substation fire and other glitches knocked out electricity for about 130,000 in San Francisco, stalling trains and even driverless cars. Commenters roasted PG&E’s monopoly, pushed for a city-owned grid, and clashed with skeptics calling it a one-off — with Waymo memes fueling the pile‑on.
San Francisco’s lights went out and the internet lit up. With nearly 130,000 customers in the dark after a day of rolling blackouts, the commentariat didn’t hold back. The official story: a fire at a PG&E substation at 8th and Mission helped trigger the chaos, trains skipped downtown stations, traffic lights blinked, and even driverless cars froze. PG&E posted a video promising power “tonight,” but no timeline — cue the collective eye-roll.
The loudest chorus? “End the monopoly.” One user asked why a city of this size has only one power provider, while another pushed hard for San Francisco to buy the grid outright, pointing to Santa Clara’s cheaper public utility as the model. Others slammed the silence from PG&E and cheered the city’s emergency center going live as Mayor Daniel Lurie told everyone to stay safe.
But not everyone’s buying the outrage. A cooler take argued this is a “one-off” and doesn’t prove anything about California’s grid, reviving the Texas-vs-California reliability debate — especially with Californians paying more for power. Meanwhile the memes wrote themselves: Waymo cars “playing freeze tag” at blinking reds, with receipts to prove it (tweet). Candles, cold dinners, warm takes — and a real question simmering: is this the moment SF goes public power?
Key Points
- •Nearly 130,000 PG&E customers in San Francisco lost power during widespread Saturday blackouts.
- •A fire at a PG&E substation at 8th and Mission around 2:15 p.m. caused at least some outages; it was extinguished by 6 p.m.
- •PG&E provided limited information; at 5:30 p.m. there was no restoration estimate, and an 8:30 p.m. video cited expected Saturday-night restoration without a timeline.
- •Transit was disrupted: BART bypassed Civic Center and Powell, and Muni avoided underground stops, including Van Ness.
- •Outages began on the West Side and spread through neighborhoods, with specific clusters affecting Inner/Outer Sunset, Presidio, Richmond, Market Street, Hayes Valley, Mission, and Alamo Square.