One of the best things about covering local politics in a city like San Francisco is there’s never a shortage of hilarious villainy. Case-in-point: on Sunday, Julie Pitta — president of a new “grassroots coalition” seeking to expose how “tech and real estate billionaires” are staging an anti-democratic “hostile takeover” of city politics — was spotted at a café in Richmond tearing down campaign posters for Marjan Philhour, a moderate running to unseat Supervisor Chan in D1. After CCTV footage of Pitta pulling posters off café windows made the rounds on X, she posted a statement on Facebook claiming she had returned to the café, apologized to the owner, and offered to put up another Philhour poster — to which the owner (per Pitta) responded: “these are not my signs” and “I don’t want any more signs.”

But shortly after she posted this, yet another a CCTV clip emerged on X showing the owner had actually said nothing to this effect, and had instead contradicted Pitta’s claim that she’d asked staff members before removing the posters.

The debacle puts Pitta in the rarified company of other notorious SF campaign material thieves like Jason Kruta (a staffer for Supervisor Preston who was caught on camera stealing school board recall petitions from a parent volunteer back in 2021, and was later forced to publicly apologize and pay the volunteer $1 as part of a civil settlement), and Karen Fleshman (who had herself filmed taking down a banner calling for ex-DA Chesa Boudin’s recall). Kruta's crime — attempting to substantially interfere with efforts to put a recall initiative on the ballot — was serious and warranted significant punishment. Pitta and Fleshman's antics, on the other hand, are merely clownish.