July 23, 2026 - San Francisco Post

Gate Lice, Overhead Bin Abusers, and the Leadership Lessons They Accidentally Taught Brandon Blewett

San Francisco Post Staff on July 23, 2026

By: Michael Shank

Business insights can arrive from unexpected directions, and Brandon C. Blewett has spent more than a decade observing how airports and airplanes reveal human behavior under pressure. In those environments, people are tired, rushed, crowded, and often less guarded than they might be in a professional setting.

How to Avoid Strangers on Airplanes is the book that takes those observations seriously, wraps them in workplace-adjacent comedy, and uses the experience to explore leadership, resilience, and professional behavior through the lens of crowded boarding gates, full flights, and the rituals of business travel.

What makes the reading experience engaging is the quality of Blewett’s comic observation. He has Million Miler status with one major U.S. carrier and top-tier status with two others, which means he has spent significant time watching human nature in compressed and stressful conditions.

The Six Habits of Highly Annoying Travelers he identifies are rendered with specificity and comic precision. Each one feels less like a made-up character type and more like someone many travelers have encountered on a Monday morning flight. The Gate Lice are sharply observed. The overhead bin abusers are described with the kind of frustration frequent flyers may recognize immediately.

But Blewett is doing more than cataloging grievances. The book’s broader value becomes clear in the sections where he unpacks what each traveler archetype may reveal about professional behavior more generally.

The person who crowds the gate before their zone is called can resemble the person who ignores shared norms in meeting rooms, project teams, and organizational hierarchies. The overhead bin abuser can resemble the colleague who takes more than their share of organizational resources and seems surprised when others notice.

Those connections are made with enough wit that they feel like observations rather than lectures. That balance helps the book deliver its message without becoming overly formal or heavy-handed.

His practical career guidance, built from more than a decade in professional services consulting and his current role leading the M&A engine at a private equity-backed company, reflects grounded experience with organizational complexity. The sections on leadership, resilience, and knowing when to pivot are concise, direct, and shaped by lessons drawn from both business travel and professional life.

How to Avoid Strangers on Airplanes is the kind of business book that can sneak up on the reader. Someone may pick it up for the comedy and finish it with a clearer way to think about workplace behavior, leadership, and self-awareness. That combination gives the book its appeal.

If you spend more time in airports than in your own living room and have been waiting for someone to finally write the book that makes sense of everything you have been observing from the middle seat, How to Avoid Strangers on Airplanes by Brandon C. Blewett is waiting for you on Amazon. Pick up your copy today and get the most entertaining and most quietly instructive career guide currently available, one that will make your next flight considerably more enjoyable and your professional life considerably more self-aware.

The Filmmaker, The Entrepreneur, And The Twenty Other Visionary Voices Who Proved That Purpose Is Not Found, It Is Built

San Francisco Post Staff on July 23, 2026

By: May Franco

Most books about purpose arrive with the implicit promise that reading them will reveal something you did not previously know about yourself, some hidden calling or dormant passion that the right framework or the right exercise will bring to the surface. Wings of Purpose makes a more honest and more useful promise: that hearing how other real people have navigated the specific challenge of finding and living their purpose will give you both the courage and the practical understanding to navigate your own. That distinction, between the book that claims to reveal your purpose and the book that helps you build it, is what makes this anthology genuinely different from the crowded genre it inhabits.

M. Teresa Lawrence has curated twenty-one contributors with the care and the discernment of someone who understands that the value of this kind of anthology lies not in the celebrity of its contributors but in the authenticity of their stories and the diversity of the paths they represent. The stories assembled here span industries and continents and life circumstances in ways that make it genuinely likely that every reader will find at least one contributor whose experience resonates with something in their own, and the cumulative effect of encountering that resonance across multiple chapters from multiple directions is a growing sense of recognition that is considerably more powerful than the intellectual understanding of purpose that more abstract treatments of the subject typically produce.

The specific stories she has chosen reflect an unusually honest account of what living with purpose actually requires. The contributor who chose integrity over self-preservation in a South African business context and walked straight into the fire is not describing a comfortable or an easy decision. The filmmaker who discovered that healing could travel through a camera lens is describing a discovery made from the pavement, from the specific vantage point of someone who has been knocked flat and is finding their way back up. These are stories about what purpose costs as much as what it produces, and that honesty is precisely what makes them useful rather than merely inspirational.

The structure Lawrence has built around these stories, the framework that holds them together as a coherent journey toward the reader’s own clarity rather than a collection of individual testimonies, reflects the intelligence and the care of a curator who has thought seriously about how this kind of material actually works on a reader navigating their own questions. Wings of Purpose is not a book you read and set aside. It is a book you work with, returning to particular chapters when your own path brings you to a moment that resonates with something you found in its pages.

With ninety-five percent of proceeds benefiting The Trueness Project, this is an anthology that embodies the values it teaches, a genuinely purposeful book about the genuine pursuit of purpose.

If you are ready for a book about purpose that makes the honest promise of showing you how other real people built theirs rather than the comfortable promise of revealing yours to you, Wings of Purpose by M. Teresa Lawrence is exactly that book, and it is waiting for you on Amazon. Pick up your copy today and discover what twenty-one genuinely different people from across the globe found when they finally committed to building a life around what they were really here for.

Jollibee Confirms July 31 Opening in Downtown San Francisco

San Francisco Staff 2 on July 23, 2026

Jollibee San Francisco will return to the city on July 31 with the opening of its new restaurant at 934 Market Street, bringing the Filipino fast-food chain back to San Francisco for the first time in more than a decade. The new location expands dining options in the downtown district following several years of development and regulatory review.

Key Takeaways

Jollibee will open its downtown San Francisco restaurant on July 31.
The restaurant is located at 934 Market Street near Hallidie Plaza.
It marks the company’s return to San Francisco after its previous city location closed in 2011.
Customers will have access to dine-in, takeout and digital ordering services.
The opening follows a multi-year permitting and development process.

Jollibee has confirmed that its new San Francisco restaurant will begin serving customers on July 31, completing a project that has been in development for several years. The restaurant is located at 934 Market Street near Hallidie Plaza and represents the company’s return to San Francisco after an absence of more than a decade.

The opening restores the Filipino fast-food chain’s presence within the city after its previous San Francisco location near Yerba Buena Gardens closed in 2011. The new restaurant will operate in a storefront on Market Street, one of the city’s primary commercial corridors, adding to the area’s Mid-Market business revival.

The company stated that the restaurant will provide dine-in service alongside takeout and digital ordering, giving customers multiple ways to purchase menu items from the new location.

Jollibee San Francisco Opening Date Confirmed

Jollibee announced that the downtown San Francisco restaurant will officially open on July 31.

The restaurant occupies 934 Market Street, close to Hallidie Plaza and public transit connections serving downtown San Francisco. Its location places the business within a busy retail and commercial district that attracts residents, commuters and visitors.

Company information released ahead of the opening states that the restaurant will operate daily from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The new location becomes Jollibee’s first restaurant inside San Francisco city limits in more than a decade. While the company has continued operating restaurants throughout the Bay Area, it has not maintained a location within the city following the closure of its earlier San Francisco restaurant.

The opening establishes a new destination for customers seeking the company’s menu, which includes fried chicken, sweet-style spaghetti and peach mango pie.

Market Street Restaurant Completes Multi-Year Development

Development Timeline

Plans for the Market Street restaurant have been in progress since 2020.

The project required multiple stages before reaching completion, including city permitting and reviews associated with the property’s location. The restaurant occupies a former retail space that previously housed a Payless ShoeSource store.

The opening date changed several times while work continued on the project. Earlier expectations for completion were revised before the company confirmed the July 31 opening.

Final Regulatory Approvals

Before confirming the opening, the project completed regulatory requirements that included permitting, historic preservation review and a noise compliance matter associated with the location.

Completion of those processes allowed the restaurant to proceed with its scheduled launch.

The finalized opening provides certainty for customers who had followed updates on the project during its development period while contributing to ongoing downtown restaurant activity across San Francisco.

New Downtown Location Expands Dining Options

The new restaurant adds another dining business to downtown San Francisco, where businesses have continued opening in commercial corridors including Market Street and Union Square.

Jollibee’s arrival increases the variety of restaurant options available within walking distance of Hallidie Plaza and nearby transit stations.

The location also strengthens the company’s presence across the Bay Area. Jollibee already operates multiple restaurants throughout Northern California, allowing the San Francisco location to complement its existing regional network.

For customers in the city, the new restaurant reduces the need to travel outside San Francisco to visit a Jollibee location.

The Market Street restaurant also returns one of the best-known Filipino restaurant brands to San Francisco, joining a city dining sector that continues to receive attention through Bay Area restaurant recognition.

Restaurant Operations and Customer Services Announced

Daily Operating Hours

Jollibee stated that the restaurant will be open every day from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m.

The schedule provides service throughout breakfast, lunch, dinner and evening hours.

Daily operations are expected to begin with the restaurant’s scheduled opening on July 31.

Ordering and Dining Options

Customers visiting the restaurant will be able to choose from dine-in service, takeout and digital ordering.

These options align with service formats available at many of the company’s existing locations.

The restaurant will offer Jollibee’s established menu, including its signature fried chicken, sweet-style spaghetti and peach mango pie.

Providing multiple ordering methods allows customers to choose the service that best matches their visit while supporting both in-person dining and off-site purchases.

Northern California Expansion Continues

The San Francisco opening forms part of Jollibee’s broader growth strategy across Northern California.

The company has previously stated plans to add additional restaurants in the region over the coming years, expanding beyond its existing Bay Area footprint.

Jollibee already operates multiple locations throughout the Bay Area, serving communities across several counties. The addition of the Market Street restaurant extends that network into downtown San Francisco.

The return to San Francisco also reconnects the company with a market where it previously operated before closing its earlier city restaurant in 2011.

With the July 31 opening confirmed, the company will once again maintain a restaurant within San Francisco while continuing its expansion across Northern California.

Frequently Asked Questions

When will the new Jollibee San Francisco restaurant open?

Jollibee has confirmed that its new downtown San Francisco restaurant will open on July 31.

Where is the new Jollibee location in San Francisco?

The restaurant is located at 934 Market Street near Hallidie Plaza in downtown San Francisco.

What dining options will the Market Street restaurant offer?

The location will provide dine-in service, takeout and digital ordering.

Why is the new San Francisco location significant for Jollibee?

It marks Jollibee’s return to San Francisco after the company’s previous city restaurant closed in 2011.

How does the new restaurant fit into Jollibee’s Northern California expansion?

The San Francisco restaurant adds to Jollibee’s existing Bay Area locations and aligns with the company’s previously announced plans to expand its presence across Northern California.

Day: July 23, 2026