SF Arts Commission Grants paid for…free rent and videos bashing SF?

The year was 2018; things were good in San Francisco. Downtown was humming. Tourism was booming. With ample revenue flowing into City Hall’s coffers and a Gatsby-level of joie de vivre across the city, San Franciscans overwhelmingly and happily passed Prop E, a set-aside that garnished 1.5% of the city’s hotel tax to invest in “specified arts and cultural purposes.” This all sounds great, right? Perhaps it’s why Prop E passed with a commanding 75% margin of victory.

It’s critical that our city continues to invest in the artistic legacy that has shaped San Francisco’s iconic culture. But today, Prop E funds are allocated through an obscure and bureaucratic process, and to people who, in some cases, are actively working against our city’s recovery.   

The SF Arts Commission recently made just over $10M in grants from Prop E funds, and based on initial reporting from the Voice of San Francisco, we dug into the 151 recipients of grants from this most recent cycle; what we found can only be described as questionable allocations.

Let’s take the $30,000 to Toshio Meronek (also known as Sad Francisco on Instagram and TikTok). Meronek is known for his videos that absolutely smear San Francisco and its leaders. 

Some of his takes have:

• Called for no longer electing LGBT people. 
• Platformed disgraced and racist former school board member Allison Collins. 
• Labeled Matt Dorsey (District 6 Supervisor who himself is in recovery) as “meth daddy.”
• Read as veiled anti-Semitism, including supporting a boycott of Manny’s and declaring City Hall as being “owned” by Israel for being illuminated in blue and white for Israeli Independence Day - a possible swipe at Mayor Lurie’s Jewish identity.

For someone so critical of our city, he seems happy enough to be accepting free money from it. Meronek will be “using funds to support an audio podcast series and a live premier event” about Linda Evans, a known domestic terrorist.

Other recipients received grants for everything from maintaining "financial equilibrium” (read: covering their rent to the tune of $30,000) while they work on a novel, to funding the creation of a feature-length dance piece exploring the intersection of the recipient’s Type 2 diabetes diagnosis and their relationship with food in the context of being Latinx (for $50,000).

Supporting the arts is critical. San Francisco should continue to foster its creative communities. But like so many of the funds our city spends (is starting to sound like the lack of financial accountability with our city’s non-profit industrial complex), there’s zero measurement of how funds are being used once they leave the city’s coffers. Who’s to say that the novel gets published? Who’s to say that the dance piece gets produced? Who’s to say that Meronek doesn’t use the funds to create more media bashing San Francisco and our leaders, ostensibly worsening our city’s reputation with the very tourists whose hotel dollars fund the grant program he’s grifting from?

We should be incentivizing local artists to use Prop E funds for works that build up our city - not tear it down. At a time where we are seeing increased financial pressure on grant-making organizations, City Hall dollars can play a unique role in continuing to support local artists while also investing set-aside money in public space enhancements.