Skip to main content

New top story from Time: MacKenzie Scott Gave Away $6 Billion Last Year. It’s Not As Easy As It Sounds

https://ift.tt/3hPO8Aj

Imagine for a moment being obscenely, outrageously rich. I know you’ve done it before. You probably have a list of priorities—college for the kids, new car, pay off debts. Forget that list. That list is puny. You’re so rich that you can do everything on it three times over. You could buy a small Massachusetts town and deliver the title deed to Harvard along with your kid’s application. You could get Jay Leno to autograph the mud flap of his 1994 McLaren F1 before selling it to you. You could eliminate the debt of Kentucky. This is the kind of rich where nothing except a second home on an exoplanet is out of your reach.

That is the position in which MacKenzie Scott found herself in July 2019, when her divorce from Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was finalized and she became the owner of 4% of Amazon’s stock. She was a single woman in her 50th year with about $38 billion to blow. Since then Amazon’s share price has grown like the piles of cardboard boxes it leaves on quarantined homes’ doorsteps, so estimates of her wealth are even higher, something like $57 billion. And that’s after giving $5.9 billion away.

People have given away that much before. But not usually so fast. Or without starting a foundation first. Or without any of the recipients asking for it or even knowing in advance. Or with so few strings attached; the organizations can use the money in any way they see fit. One of the beneficiaries of her largesse, Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), got an amount, $30 million, that was 3,000% the size of any other gift in its history. A community college in Nebraska got $15 million, equal to its entire endowment. The Charlotte, N.C., YMCA got $18 million, enough to make its CEO burst into tears. According to Candid, an organization that tracks spending in the charitable sector, Scott was responsible for 20% of all the COVID-19-related philanthropic funds given away globally last year, and almost 75% of those given by individuals. More than half of the money given to BIPOC communities by rich people last year came from her.

Scott was rich before her divorce, of course. Increasingly so, during her 25-year marriage to Bezos. But perhaps because the wealth was not strictly hers to dispose of, she was not noted for her extravagant giving. In fact, she was not noted for her extravagant anything. She drove a Honda minivan to drop her kids at school—and Bezos at the office. She wore a $700 jersey dress to the 2018 Vanity Fair Oscar party. (If you want to make like MacKenzie, it’s now 80% off.) Some of the dinners she hosted at her home were potluck.

So it’s probably not surprising that even before the stock transfer made her one of the richest women in the world, just a month after her divorce was settled, and two years ago this month, Scott signed the Giving Pledge, a public promise to give away the bulk of her wealth. “We each come by the gifts we have to offer by an infinite series of influences and lucky breaks we can never fully understand,” she wrote in her pledge. “In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share.” Warren Buffett’s a signatory to the pledge, as are Bill and Melinda Gates; Sara Blakely, who invented Spanx; and Michael Bloomberg, among more than 200 others. (Bezos is not.) But in her first year of giving her money away, Scott has been behaving quite differently from her fellow philanthropists. And in doing so, she may quietly be changing the way the trillion-dollar-a-year philanthropy business operates.

“I don’t even remember the subject line,” says Leah Barrett, president of Northeast Community College in Norfolk, Neb., of an email she received in December. “It simply said, you know, ‘President Barrett, I represent a philanthropist who is interested in giving a gift to Northeast Community College. Can we set up a time when we could talk in the next few days?’” Without thinking about it too much, she sent back her phone number. Then she had a pang of doubt. What weird email address did she just send her number to?

She called her head of IT and VP of development to ask if she’d done the wrong thing. Their suggestions calmed her; it probably was either spam or, her development officer said, “some farmer that wants to give us five grand.” The last group to give the school a significant gift was the Acklie family—Northeast alumnus Duane Acklie made it big in the trucking business—whose foundation donated $5 million and got a farm-equipment warehouse named after them.

A few days after the email, Barrett got on the phone with a woman whose name she is not allowed to reveal, who told her that a philanthropist known as MacKenzie Scott was giving the school $15 million to do with as she wished. Scott wanted nothing named after her in return, not even a tractor. Barrett was told Scott believed in her and her ability to make the right choice for the money. “I said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude but this is crazy. Help me to confirm the legitimacy of this,’” says Barrett. “And so she sent me to the Medium post.”

Scott announced her giving via two articles on Medium, one after her $1.7 billion donating spree in July 2020 and another after she handed out $4.2 billion in December of the same year. She has made no further statements. She is not, by all reports, an extrovert. She does very few interviews. (She did not respond to repeated requests through several intermediaries for an interview for this story.) The people who are close to her know that she prefers to stay out of the spotlight.

The groups that received money from her were given instructions as to what they could and could not reveal; some would not even disclose the gender of the person from whom they got the news. This makes sense. Rich people with children are always vigilant about privacy. (Amazon’s SEC filings reveal that it spent $1.6 million on security for Bezos and his family in 2019.) Scott doesn’t need any more attention. And as she told Vogue in 2013, she doesn’t like glad-handing. “Cocktail parties for me can be nerve-racking. The brevity of conversations, the number of them—it’s not my sweet spot.” You can see her discomfort in a 2013 interview with Charlie Rose for one of her novels, as a red rash creeps around her neck even before Rose’s questions move away from her book and toward her marriage.

Her inaccessibility has come with a cost. Scams have been perpetrated in her name. Websites and a Facebook page for a fake MacKenzie Scott Foundation were set up. A mother in Wollongong, Australia, who started a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the cost of her autistic son’s education, was contacted by someone who said they were MacKenzie Scott and wanted to help. The woman, Danielle Churchill, told the New York Times that she borrowed more than $10,000 from her family to pay what were called associated fees, only to find that she had been defrauded. Churchill wrote in a GoFundMe update that she did not blame Scott, but noted that maybe a different approach at her giving will help this from happening again.” (Churchill’s campaign has now raised the $50,000 it initially sought.)

Other experts in philanthropy have questioned the wisdom and utility of operating at the scale of the largest foundations but being as unreachable, and thus unaccountable, as a private individual. Inside Philanthropy called her methods “simultaneously exciting and troubling to behold.” If all philanthropists worked the way she did—acting alone without a foundation or an obvious way of being contacted—grantmaking might be more efficient, but it would be less transparent, and possibly less diverse in its interests and approaches. (There might also be fewer jobs in the philanthropy business.)

The public statements Scott has made about her giving all came via the Medium posts in which she explained how she tried to make her unusual strategy rigorous. The causes she funded could broadly be described as progressive: organizations that support women’s and LGBTQ rights; address climate change; alleviate poverty, disability and hunger; and seek racial equity. What she outlined could be described as a hunter, rather than a gatherer, approach to giving: instead of hanging out a shingle and gathering the applications, she amassed a hunting party with the Bridgespan Group, an elite nonprofit consultancy spun off from the management consultancy Bain & Co., to sniff out organizations with strong leadership and results. Other foundations, including Gates and Rockefeller, have also worked with the group, but not like Scott did—using it more or less as a one-stop shop for all her philanthropy needs. Over the months, they whittled the list down from 6,490 to exactly 500, with at least one from each state, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

The Medium posts are well-written and literary—with allusions to the glasswing butterfly and Emily Dickinson—but they beg the question: Why not just let your money do the talking, especially if you’re averse to the spotlight? “There was probably some sense that she wanted to express some of the emotional and analytical frames that she was using to guide this process,” says Candid’s executive vice president, Jacob Harold. But it was also partly to amplify the effect of the gift. “My own reflection after recent events revealed a dividend of privilege I’d been overlooking,” Scott writes. “The attention I can call to organizations and leaders driving change.”

Scott lists every organization, with a link, and suggests others join her in sending some resources the way of these groups now that she has done the heavy lifting of figuring out if they’re doing any good. The grant recipients TIME contacted said they had not seen an increase in giving. But they had received other unexpected dividends. Most of the organizations were midsize, and some of them began to form loose coalitions. The president of BMCC, Anthony Munroe, emailed every other college on that list to see if they wanted to join forces and share resources and ideas. About a dozen did, including Barrett’s school in Nebraska. They’ve formed smaller committees to discuss how to leverage their combined energy on marketing and communications, development and fundraising, strategic planning, and helping their students succeed.

Eboo Patel’s organization, Interfaith Youth Core, which tries to bring together students of different faiths to work toward unity and eliminate mistrust, got $6 million. But Patel also got something less tangible. Scott put all the organizations she was supporting into certain categories to demonstrate where her priorities were. “The category that we were under was empathy and bridge building,” says Patel. “MacKenzie Scott named a new category. There are very few foundations that have a bridge-building giving area, and by naming that space, then by making gifts to a dozen or so organizations, MacKenzie Scott accelerated the growth of a field, dramatically.” Its not as if others werent attuned to the problem of divisiveness—the Einhorn Collaborative and other foundations have gathered together to form the New Pluralists to support nonprofits that help build empathy between people with opposing views of an issue, and in 2020, the group established a $100 million fund with this bridge-building aim—but Scott’s nomenclature still moved the needle. “She categorized these organizations as a necessary field to invest in,” says Jenn Hoos Rothberg, executive director of the Einhorn Collaborative. “For those of us who have been in this space for so long, it was a cause for celebration.”

It sounds a lot easier to give money away effectively than it actually is. Money is like fertilizer; if you put it in the wrong places, or lay it on too thick, you can destroy ecosystems and poison people. Most wealthy benefactors create their own foundations, limited liability companies or donor-advised funds (which invest the money until the donor decides where to give it away), and have considerable infrastructure and staff to handle their giving. Some pick a few favorite existing charities that they understand and work with.

Keeping the money can also be difficult. John D. Rockefeller’s adviser Frederick T. Gates warned the tycoon that his fortune was like an avalanche: “You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you, and your children, and your children’s children!” Because money begets money, billionaires such as Bezos—and even some who are trying a little harder to give it away—struggle to make a dent in their wealth. Scott, who has promised to keep giving “until the safe is empty,” was richer at the end of the year than before she handed out her $6 billion.

It’s also true that Scott wrote about what she was doing because Scott is a writer. At Hotchkiss, the fancy private boarding school Scott attended when she was still MacKenzie Tuttle (Scott is her middle name, after her grandfather), she was known as one of the strongest writers, says Katie Gates, who was in the same study group in her dormitory, Buehler. “She was an excellent editor, especially of certain papers, like those for Robert Hawkins—the Hawk. In his class, if you were lucky, you’d get a C.”

Her professor at Princeton, Toni Morrison, called her “really one of the best” creative-writing students she’d ever had and wrote a blurb for her first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, which won a 2006 American Book Award. Her second novel, Traps, was published in 2013. Writing is how Scott prefers to communicate. Writing was how Scott intended to spend her life. The whole billionaire thing was just an accident.

Scott met Bezos at the New York City hedge fund D.E. Shaw in 1992. Shaw had decided he needed to hire smart assistants who weren’t necessarily math majors, and Scott, who had recently graduated from Princeton, sent in her résumé. Scott may be quiet, but she is not timid. The woman who was once the Hotchkiss men’s lacrosse team equipment manager was not going to be intimidated by a bunch of finance people. She ended up with an office next to the guy with the loudest laugh in the joint. She has said that she fell in love with the guffaw and started to pursue its owner, a fellow Princeton grad. After dating for three months they got engaged. Three months later they were married. Scott was 23.

Before long they were driving across the country in Bezos’ dad’s car to pursue Bezos’ dream of setting up an online book business. This meant leaving behind the safe salaried job at the hedge fund, but Scott, the last woman Bezos can know for sure didn’t marry him for his money, was reportedly unruffled; she had experienced a change of fortune before. While she was at Hotchkiss, her father Jason Tuttle, who had an investment-planning business in San Francisco, ran afoul of the SEC. The Tuttles declared bankruptcy, moved to Palm Beach, Fla., and Jason was barred from the financial advisory field.

During the upheaval, Scott got into Princeton, with the help of financial aid. Some of her costs were paid by a group of alumni from the class of 1926 who each year supported one student for their four-year education. In return, she turned up at their reunions to help out. (They loved her.) She also had to work, she told Charlie Rose, 30 hours a week in low-wage jobs—waitressing, dishwashing, retail—to pay her way, and she worried that she could not take full advantage of what her Ivy League education offered. These experiences may be reflected in the more than 35 schools that received grants from her. Munroe of BMCC says his student body, “the majority of whom are female of color, and many of them head of household,” were struggling to stay in school in 2020, because the stay-at-home measures had meant they had lost jobs or had hours cut back and they needed to find work. A fifth of his students reported being homeless at some point during the pandemic.

“The usual suspects for really big grants are elite cultural institutions, elite health care institutions—basically hospitals—and elite universities,” says Candid’s Harold. “The fact that those organizations were not on her list was definitely noticeable.” It’s possible Scott also gave to Princeton—the Bezoses gave their alma mater $15 million in 2011—but a spokesperson for the university declined to comment on whether Scott had donated any other funds.

Mackenzie Scott and Jeff Bezos in Sun Valley, Idaho for the Allen & Co. annual conference on July 10, 2013.
Kevork Djansezian—Getty ImagesMacKenzie Scott and Jeff Bezos in Sun Valley, Idaho for the Allen & Co. annual conference on July 10, 2013.

The Tuttle family’s financial woes seem to be behind them. One of her brothers, Chandler, is CEO of Freethink, an innovation-focused media platform funded by the Skoll Foundation. Her other brother, Jason Jr., is an indie video-game developer, and his wife is director of operations at one of L.A.’s best restaurants. Her parents are well ensconced in Palm Beach, Fla., society, where Tuttle’s mother Holiday (she was born on Dec. 25) is a chairperson of the charitable-works committee of a local Catholic church guild. Elizabeth Ailes, widow of onetime Fox News honcho Roger Ailes, is also on the committee, which may explain why the Tuttles’ 55th wedding-anniversary party in 2018 was like a who’s who of conservative big shots: Liz Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Anna Murdoch Mann (Rupert Murdoch’s second wife) mingled with the likes of the artist Edwina Sandys (a.k.a. Winston Churchill’s granddaughter) and Andres Fanjul, the son of a sugar baron. “It was a splendid occasion,” says Sandys. “They’re a very warm family.”

Bezos was there with Scott, although within eight months, the National Enquirer would publish intimate texts between Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a bubbly TV personality-cum-helicopter pilot-cum-aerial-filming business owner, and four months after that, in April 2019, the Bezoses would announce that they had reached a divorce settlement. Scott did no damage to her reputation for extravagant modesty when she published, in her first-ever tweet, that she was “Grateful to have finished the process of dissolving my marriage with Jeff.” She has since tweeted—to her 148,000 followers—two times.

There are those who say, especially in the comments sections under stories about Scott, that she should give away the money because she did not earn it. This is true and not true. There is some luck in the accumulation of any fortune. Before she left Amazon to focus on raising their four kids, including a daughter adopted from China, Scott was doing the books, some deals and whatever was necessary to keep the company going and the staff happy at the fledgling retailer. Many of her colleagues from that time no longer have to work for a living. (“I have nothing but the kindest memories and thoughts about and sentiments towards MacKenzie,” says Jonathan Kochmer, another employee who was made rich by his early association with Amazon.)

If it is true that Scott’s fortune arrived on her doorstep by chance, it is also true that it is leaving her doorstep with a lot of purpose. She recently remarried. What eligible bachelor did she score? Dan Jewett, who taught her children science at Lakeside School. He’s tall, handsome, intelligent, about five years younger than she is, and was previously married to an interior designer with whom he shared several dogs. Former students recall him as a nerd and disciplinarian, but one with an impressive repertoire of bad chemistry jokes and a heart. “One time, the administrator came to the classroom to take attendance,” that is, the names of those who had been late or absent, says Griffin Cock Foster, who was taught by Jewett in 2008. “He jumped out the window because turning in attendance basically means, like, ratting on kids.” Jewett shares Scott’s affection for books, and often recommended his students read a YA collection of essays about the history of chemistry, Napoleon’s Buttons.

Like Scott’s first husband, Jewett is bald and has a booming voice. Unlike Bezos, however, he’s more into giving money away than making it. He signed the Giving Pledge in March, noting that he had been schooled in generosity by others, “people who supported me through challenging times, showed me grace when I was at my worst, befriended me despite our differences, and offered me a home when I had none.” While Jewett’s background is not well-known, he grew up in Maine and got both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Eastern University, a Christian college noted for its commitment to social good (Bryan Stevenson, head of the Equal Justice Initiative, is an alum). “Hes an incredibly gentle and generous person in all realms,” says someone from the Lakeside School community who doesn’t wish to be named, because the school has discouraged speaking to the press, but who wished to make clear he was no gold digger. “It doesnt surprise me one bit that hes excited to be in the position to give away money.”

Scott’s very first book, written when she was 6, was called The Book Worm. It had several chapters, and from the sound of things was more autobiography than treatise on annelids. We will never know, however, because it was destroyed in a flood. Her other books, one featuring an engineer father, whose life—and work—is shaken up by an unexpected tremor, the second featuring a woman who’s famous, also sound like they have drawn from her life experience. Given her fame, aversion to publicity and the enormous amount of money she wants to give away, Scott’s future literary output may be slim. But she is now getting to write the narrative of the rest of her life, rather than just getting crushed by the avalanche.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FOX NEWS: Americans will suffer 5 sweaty, sleepless nights before turning on the AC for the summer, survey finds Nearly half of Americans wouldn’t date someone who didn’t have the same thermostat etiquette as them, according to new research.

Americans will suffer 5 sweaty, sleepless nights before turning on the AC for the summer, survey finds Nearly half of Americans wouldn’t date someone who didn’t have the same thermostat etiquette as them, according to new research. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2Ay0ABA

New top story from Time: A COVID Outbreak Sparked by Partying Teens Leads to 5,000 Being Quarantined in Spain

https://ift.tt/2UJaeL7 MADRID — Almost 5,000 people are in quarantine after vacationing high school students triggered a major COVID-19 outbreak on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, a senior official said Monday. Authorities have confirmed almost 1,200 positive cases from the outbreak, Spain’s emergency health response coordinator, Fernando Simón said. The partying teens celebrating the end of their university entrance exams last week created a “perfect breeding ground” for the virus as they mixed with others from around Spain and abroad, Simón told a news conference. Mallorca health authorities carried out mass testing on hundreds of students after the outbreak became clear. It is believed to have spread as hundreds of partying students gathered at a concert and street parties. Officials have so far traced 5,126 travelers to Mallorca. More than 900 COVID-19 cases in eight regions across mainland Spain have been traced back to the outbreak. Scores of infected teens are...

PM Modi lauds IFS officers for their work towards serving nation, furthering national interests https://ift.tt/36HoEzw

Greeting Indian Foreign Service officers on IFS day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that their work towards serving the nation and furthering national interests globally are commendable. Their efforts during the Vande Bharat Mission, which was launched to bring Indians home from abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic as international travel came to a halt, and other related help to our citizens and other nations is noteworthy, Modi added.

New Sculptures Light up Van Ness Avenue

New Sculptures Light up Van Ness Avenue By Luis “Loui” Apolonio Light sculpture at Van Ness Avenue and O'Farrell Street Spectators gathered both online and in person to watch new lighting sculptures on Van Ness turned on for the first time on March 31, 2022. The whimsical and brightly colored sculptures located on the new Van Ness BRT boarding platform between Geary and O’Farrell are made of steel with LED lights inside on a timer set to illuminate at night.  The lighting event was kicked off with SFMTA Director Jeff Tumlin and MTAB Chair Gwyneth Borden serving as emcees. Mary Chou, Director of Public Arts and Collections at the San Francisco Arts Commission, spoke about the art installation itself, as well as the process for selecting the artist who would be awarded the project. In addition, Maddy Ruvolo, a member of the SFMTA’s Accessible Services team and a recently appointed member of President Biden’s U.S. Access Board, shared the importance of having accessibility as a ...

Happy Lunar New Year 2022: Year of the Tiger 

Happy Lunar New Year 2022: Year of the Tiger  By Pamela Johnson Lunar New Year is one of the biggest holidays celebrated in many Asian communities. Diverse San Franciscan communities including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese people have long celebrated this festive occasion.  For many, the Lunar New Year brings a fresh mindset and resolutions for happiness and health. A zodiac animal with specific traits represents each year in the repeating zodiac cycle of 12 years. 2022 is the Year of the Tiger, the third animal in the zodiac. The tiger is considered courageous and adventurous.   The holiday follows the moon's cycles and usually begins in late January or early February. This year Lunar New Year begins February 1.   Fun Fact: In the lunar calendar, the Vietnamese zodiac and the Chinese zodiac are similar, but the Vietnamese zodiac includes a cat while the Chinese ...

New T Third Connecting Chinatown to Sunnydale Starts Saturday

New T Third Connecting Chinatown to Sunnydale Starts Saturday By Christopher Ward New Muni Metro map. This Saturday the T Third starts its long-awaited new route connecting Chinatown-Rose Pak Station from 4th & King in Central Subway, Mondays through Fridays, 6 a.m. to midnight every 10 minutes and Saturdays and Sundays, 8 a.m. to midnight every 12 minutes.   The K Ingleside will now travel between Balboa Park and Embarcadero Station. Customers using Embarcadero & Folsom, Embarcadero & Brannan and 2nd and King platforms should transfer to the N Judah at Powell Station or 4th & King. Watch the new Muni Metro service  map animations . The following bus service changes also start this Saturday: The T Third Bus will now run along 3rd and 4th Streets in SoMa and on Stockton Street north of Market Street to align with the new T Third rail line and will no longer travel on the Embarcadero and Market Street.   The 6 Haight/Parnassus  will now...

Free Muni and Paratransit to COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments

Free Muni and Paratransit to COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments By Phillip Pierce Free Muni and Paratransit to COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments Starting on Tuesday, February 23, Muni and Paratransit will be free for those traveling to get vaccinated for COVID-19. This includes trips in both directions. The SFMTA is also providing additional access to taxi service for those who use the  Essential Trip Card . These rides are good for trips to the city-sponsored high-volume vaccine sites, hospitals or anywhere else that is offering vaccines. More information on the city-sponsored sites as well as directions on how to get there can be found on  the city vaccination website. We know that getting San Franciscans vaccinated is the city’s highest priority. This program is designed to eliminate transportation and cost barriers to receiving this life-changing vaccine. How to Ride on Muni Use our  trip planner  or  service map  to find the best way to get to your vacc...

FOX NEWS: Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell.

Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/iznRBtFTJ

New top story from Time: ‘It’s a Catastrophe.’ Iranians Turn to Black Market for Vaccines as COVID-19 Deaths Hit New Highs

https://ift.tt/3AODY94 In January, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the sudden announcement that American and British-made COVID-19 vaccines would be “forbidden” as they were “completely untrustworthy.” Almost nine months later, Iran is facing its worst surge in the virus to date — a record number of deaths and infections per day with nearly 4.2 million COVID-19 patients across the country , and a healthcare system near collapse. “It’s a catastrophe; and there is nothing we can do,” said an anesthesiology resident in one of Tehran’s public hospitals who due to the current surge is tasked to oversee the ICU ward for COVID-19 patients. “We can’t treat them nor help them; so all I can ask people to do is to stay home and do whatever it takes to not get exposed.” The doctor requested anonymity in order to speak freely; others interviewed by TIME asked to be identified only by their first name. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The scale of the crisis is such ...

SFMTA Staffers Share their Favorite SF Bike Rides

SFMTA Staffers Share their Favorite SF Bike Rides By Eillie Anzilotti Happy Bike Month, San Francisco! To celebrate, we’re sharing some of SFMTA staffers’ favorite rides through the city. From protected bike lanes to quick-build projects to Slow Streets, the JFK Promenade, and the Great Highway, all of the routes roll through projects that the SFMTA has completed in the last several years to make biking through San Francisco easier, safer, and joyful. We hope you get some inspiration for your next ride--and share your favorite route with us! For easy trip planning, we’ve included each ride below on an interactive map .   Jeffrey Tumlin, Director of Transportation: “I explore all of San Francisco by bike, but this is a standard trip: Starting from the Castro, I head up the Slow Street on Noe, where I like to admire the trees and people watch in Duboce Park. Then, I ride north on Scott to Fell Street along the Panhandle. When I reach the new JFK Promenade, it’s amazing how ...