On the afternoon of Dec. 21, one day after a blackout plunged a third of San Francisco into darkness, City Hall and many of the surrounding blocks remained without power.
But the stage lights were on at the War Memorial Opera House on Van Ness Avenue, where San Francisco Ballet performances of “The Nutcracker” were set to be staged at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
The mystery of why that venue received special attention from Pacific Gas & Electric (opens in new tab) while swaths of the city were still in the dark was partially answered Thursday at a Board of Supervisors hearing, when PG&E CEO Sumeet Singh testified that Mayor Daniel Lurie had asked the utility to restore power at the opera house. However, the CEO later recanted those statements in an interview with The Standard.
Not mentioned at the hearing: The mayor’s teenage daughter, Taya Lurie, was cast in the starring role of Clara (opens in new tab) at the matinee performance that Sunday.
During stunning testimony before the Board’s Public Safety Committee, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood asked Singh why the utility had chosen to help the arts venue while so many other San Francisco sites were without power.
“You prioritized the opera, where no one is living, to restore service, before you prioritized restoring service in communities and seniors living in [single room occupancies],” said Mahmood.
“We did not make that decision on our own accord,” Singh replied. “We were requested by the mayor to provide temporary generation to that specific location. And we responded to that.”
Singh said 10% of affected PG&E customers were still experiencing blackouts when the mayor made his request. The outages were caused by a fire at a PG&E substation on Eighth and Mission streets.
Questions about why PG&E prioritized the opera house began after the utility posted on X (opens in new tab) a picture of two of its trucks outside the venue at approximately 2 p.m. on Dec. 21.
That’s the exact time that the mayor’s teenage daughter, Taya Lurie, was cast in the starring role of Clara (opens in new tab) at a matinee performance. According to Amy Ovalle, an SF Ballet spokesperson, emergency backup power kept the show running. Weekend performances of “The Nutcracker” can generate more than $450,000 in ticket sales, according to the ballet.
A text message obtained by The Standard through a public records request shows that Lurie received an update from a PG&E representative about the opera house during the blackout.
“Opera house update,” Jake Zigelman, PG&E’s bay region VP, wrote to Lurie. “Our team is onsite and has been in touch with the opera folks. We’ve been told they have enough natural light and emergency backup power to move ahead with 2pm performance. We have a vendor mobilized to support temporary generation for the 7pm show. Not 100% on timing but working feverishly to make that happen.”
A text message from PG&E representative Jake Zigelman sent to Mayor Daniel Lurie about the opera.
Zigelman did not respond to a request for comment.
On the day that Lurie received the text message from Zigelman, much of the Richmond and parts of the Tenderloin remained without power. On Dec. 22, a sign was posted outside City Hall stating that the building remained closed. Just blocks away, on Market Street, the NEMA high-rise tower did not regain power until Dec. 23, as residents dealt with cut elevator service and darkened hallways.
The mayor’s office disputed Singh’s statement.
“For days through the blackout, Mayor Lurie personally pushed PG&E to restore power across San Francisco as quickly as possible,” the mayor’s spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, wrote to The Standard. “The holiday season is an especially critical period for our major venues and cultural institutions, supporting small businesses and generating significant revenue for the city, so of course city leaders were communicating directly with those institutions and PG&E to help scheduled performances for tens of thousands of attendees proceed.”
He added, “But to be clear, the mayor never directed any PG&E employee to provide power at any specific venue — and the San Francisco Ballet didn’t even have PG&E support until after the weekend.”
When asked about the timing of the mayor’s daughter’s performance, Lurie’s office deferred to its statement.
PG&E spokesperson David McCulloch said the utility was “constantly in touch” with city officials during the blackout. “As a significant venue hosting several major events over the weekend, the opera house was one of the facilities highlighted. However, we want to clarify that the mayor did not ask or direct PG&E to restore power to the opera house.”
McCulloch declined to comment on the text message Zigelman sent to Lurie, saying that “our team was communicating updates to numerous city leaders throughout the restoration.”
In an interview with Singh after publication, the company’s CEO called his remarks a “misunderstanding.”
“I thought there was a specific request from the mayor’s office,” he said. “There was not a specific request. That was my misunderstanding because of all the communication that went back and forth. So that was misstated in the hearing.”
In a statement, the Department of Emergency Management’s executive director, Mary Ellen Carroll, said she “passed along a request from the War Memorial Opera House leadership to PG&E to provide temporary generators.” Carroll said it was “not our top priority nor was it communicated to PG&E as such.”
PG&E CEO Sumeet Singh said at a public hearing on Thursday that Mayor Daniel Lurie requested that the opera house receive priority during the blackout. | Source: Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images
After questioning Singh about the opera house during the hearing, Mahmood professed to be dismayed by the utility chief’s response. “During a four-hour hearing with PG&E, their CEO gave inconsistent answers and repeatedly deflected blame instead of taking responsibility,” the supervisor said in a statement. “After hearing those contradictions, I find it difficult to trust their claims.”
As the blackout continued in December, Lurie publicly expressed anger toward PG&E.
“I’ll be pressing them very hard, because this is obviously not OK,” Lurie told The Standard on Dec. 21, as he was making a visit to the Richmond Recreation Center. “We’ll get to the bottom of that in the next day or two, I hope.”
On Dec. 22, Lurie posted a video on his Instagram (opens in new tab), stating that he would engage in “real honest” conversation with PG&E about the blackout. At the time of the morning post, 5,000 customers remained without power, he said.
The revelations about the opera house come as supervisors on Thursday criticized the utility company’s response to the blackout, which left 130,000 residents without power beginning Dec. 20. The incident caused chaos across the city, as stoplights went dark, Waymos stalled, and underground Muni lines were closed.
As criticisms bubble up over the blackout, the perennial conversation about San Francisco transitioning to public power has reignited. In December, state Sen. Scott Wiener said he would introduce legislation to have San Francisco and other cities break up with PG&E.
In the meantime, an ongoing petition by the city to the California Public Utilities Commission is establishing the value of PG&E’s electric assets in San Francisco. The city’s planning department is conducting an environmental analysis surrounding its public power efforts, and a final version of the report is expected in April. Any efforts to take over PG&E’s equipment are likely to meet with stiff resistance from the utility.
