Hey there, San Francisco. 

Yesterday, I mentioned checking out this weekend’s soapbox derby, where over 50 artists will “race” their gravity powered cars/contraptions down the John F. Shelley Drive in McLaren Park. 

And today, I was able to catch up with one of the participants, Reniel Del Rosario, a ceramicist from Vallejo. 

Del Rosario said he got the invite from SFMOMA (which is organizing the race) back in January and his team started conceptualizing their car soon thereafter. 

The idea? A ice cream truck called Ren Ren’s that will have hundreds of treats inside, all made of ceramics. 

“It’s all made by hand,” Del Rosario said. “So every single one's a little bit wonky in its own way.” 

Del Rosario said the hardest part for his team (made up of ceramicists, screen printers, and friends from high school) was deciding how to construct the car itself. 

“None of us had really done anything like this before,” he said. 

But the team found an instructional video on YouTube for making a go-kart chassis and went from there. 

“We were like, ‘Alright, we’re running out of time. We just got to do something,’” he said. 

As for whether the truck will hold up, the team has taken it for test runs, but they haven’t yet tried the hill in McLaren Park, the site for Sunday’s race.

“It’ll be scary for a lot of us,” Del Rosario said. “It’ll be a good test of like, whose breaks and whose steering mechanisms actually work.” 

Still, the plan isn’t to go fast.

Each car has around seven minutes to complete the course. And Del Rosario says his team will try and take as much time as they can, inching down the hill and selling ceramic ice cream along the way. 

Sunday’s soapbox races start at 11am in McLaren Park and run till around 4pm. More info here. And, if you’d like to make sure to catch Ren Ren’s Ice Cream Parlor, they’re scheduled to head down the hill in heat #4, starting at 12:45pm. 

And with that… onto the news… 

Quick bits: News to know 

• A three-story building in Duboce Triangle (home to Sushi Urashima on the bottom floor) caught fire Friday morning. No one was injured, but over 100 firefighters were needed to put out the blaze. (Hoodline) 

• The San Francisco planning commission voted unanimously on Thursday in support of updating zoning laws that will allow gay bathhouses and sex venues to open in the city’s LGBTQ neighborhoods, including the Castro and parts of SoMa. The Board of Supervisors will need to approve the zoning change, which could happen by June. (Bay Area Reporter) 

• The state has offered San Francisco nearly 6,000 doses of Covid antiviral medications this year, but we’ve turned down some 3,500 doses due to a lack of demand. (Chronicle) 

What else I’m reading: Links to browse

• War for JFK Drive: How a Museum’s Money Is Shaping the Fight Over San Francisco’s Most Controversial Street (SF Standard) 

• State demands SF figure out how to fund enough affordable housing (Mission Local) 

• How S.F. Chinatown’s Dragon Gate came to be (Chronicle) 

ICYMI: This week’s most popular stories 

Monday: S.F.’s emergency psych unit faces dire conditions (Examiner) 

Tuesday: Mijoté, A New French-Style Bistro From A Natural Wine World-Acclaimed Chef, Opens April 10 in The Mission (Eater) 

Wednesday: More gray whales, including a baby, spotted in the San Francisco Bay (SFGATE) 

Thursday: This new food-delivery app sold the Bay Area’s best pastries. But the bakeries had no clue (Chronicle) 

And finally… 🏎 Soapbox history 

The SFMOMA held its first soapbox derby in McLaren Park back in 1975. Here are photos from the inaugural race.

That’s all for today! Thanks so much for reading y’all and have a wonderful weekend. See you here on Monday. - Nick B. 🍦