Restaurant and bar owners trying to adhere to new permitting rules for parklets are living a bureaucratic nightmare.

On a recent Friday night, my partner and I stopped at Ruby Wine, a natural wine bar in Potrero Hill, to meet some friends we hadn’t seen in a long time. The bar was dark and warm, filled with the tannin-scented exhalations of all the people crammed inside; compared to that, the parklet, a tiered wooden structure that clung elegantly to the sloped street, was literally a breath of fresh air. Patrons hung around the cozy, tiered parklet in clusters; inevitably, we ran into other friends who just happened to be there. Friend groups collided; people exchanged numbers. It was, in my mind, the kind of vibrant, but intimate life stuff that cities can do so well.

And yet, despite spending so many resources trying to revitalize the city and reform its image, like spending millions of dollars to disrupt its urban core for Asia-Pacific Economic summit, San Francisco’s government seems determined to dismantle one of the few things proven to bring life to our streets.

Parklets that were erected in 2020 under that year’s regulations, often to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, have been subject to ever-evolving rules in the years since: at least three times, according to one owner I spoke to. Parklet operators face steep fines for noncompliance even if their parklets used to be permitted. Only a psychic would have been able to avoid this situation.

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In 2021, after the city gave parklet owners just two weeks to comply with expanded........

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