San Francisco businesses split over May Day blackout and worker protest

At Vesuvio Cafe in North Beach, the choice was never just symbolic: join the May Day blackout or keep the register ringing and swallow a lost day of sales. Across San Francisco, the debate exposed the city’s sharpest split, between businesses eager to show solidarity with workers and owners who said they could not afford to go dark.

The blackout call was wrapped in a broader May Day Strong campaign that framed May 1, 2026 as “No School. No Work. No Shopping.” Organizers described it as a national day of action backed by hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of working people, with more than a thousand events anchored across the country in 2025. The politics were familiar, rooted in the labor movement’s fight for the eight-hour workday and in International Workers’ Day itself, but the cost question landed differently in a city where a single day’s revenue can determine whether a small business makes rent.

Some operators chose to close. Arizmendi Bakery said it would be shut on Friday, May 1, 2026, “in honor of International Workers’ Day,” and the Oakland Museum of California also closed. Those decisions gave the protest real economic weight, even as they guaranteed a lost day of business.

Others stayed open. Joanna Lioce at Vesuvio Cafe described a hard balancing act, with politically aware staff on one side and the reality that many people cannot afford to miss a Friday on the other. In North Beach, Daniel Macchiarini said he had closed for No Kings Day earlier in the year, but not for May Day. He argued that the neighborhood had long supported International Workers’ Day and that shuttering the district would keep people from its art and street life.

Chinatown brought the same tension into sharper focus. Ed Sui, who runs a travel agency and leads the Chinatown Merchants Association, said he supported the protest but warned that many mom-and-pop shops cannot give up a Friday, then go into the weekend without that income. He has also been identified as Edward Siu, chairman of the Chinatown Merchants United Association of San Francisco, underscoring how long he has spoken for neighborhood businesses. Merchants in Chinatown have repeatedly raised concerns about street closures, illegal vending and other disruptions that cut into foot traffic and sales.

The protest politics did not stop at storefronts. On May Day, hundreds of unionized airport workers blocked the departure roadway at San Francisco International Airport, and 25 people were arrested, including state Sen. Scott Wiener and supervisors Connie Chan and Rafael Mandelman. The day that began as a debate over whether to lock the doors at a bakery or bar ended as a broader measure of how much San Francisco can pay, in dollars and in disruption, for public solidarity.