A theater review of S.F. Mayor Daniel Lurie's Instagram reels

San Francisco Chronicle​

24-05-2025

In the old days, a politician was judged by his charisma in front of a bandstand, the power of his radio-ready voice or how he looked on TV.
Today, if San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is any yardstick, it's all about getting constituents to smash that like button on your Instagram reels.
Lurie is hardly the only leader to turn to the form. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is a master of it, looking slick yet organic, like she's very urgently talking to you, her confidante.
Now local politicians are getting in on the act, too, with iPhone-toting aides following them around to trumpet their messages. But by entering the business of content creation — like Lurie, who shares at least one post of himself out and about each weekday on @danielluriesf — they're also subject to artistic critique.
More than press releases and podium appearances, more than public hearings and ribbon cuttings, social videos are our mayor's way of communicating en masse with the citizens he serves. Politicos of the past had to be telegenic, sure, but then it was newscasters shaping the narrative, choosing the angles, making the cuts.
Now that it's Lurie, a newcomer both as a politician and a public figure of any sort, approving the editorial choices, they're more revealing.
So far, the overall impression of the mayor's social presence is of an ambassador pounding the pavement and taking Muni from West Portal to Market Street, from Mission Bay to Golden Gate Park. He's out there, observing troubled corridors in the South of Market and Mission districts, applauding San Francisco entrepreneurs for investing in the city.
Yet while some leaders are natural performers, effortlessly presenting even generic content ChatGPT could have written about 'challenges' and 'commitments,' Lurie's Instagram grid so far is a checkerboard of acting 101 gaffes. Lurie hasn't yet made the camera his old pal or his lover. He hasn't learned how to hear the rhythm and melody in his speeches yet; he's still lurching from one word to the next like he's at sea and they're a series of life preservers.
Occasionally, as in a February appearance with Supervisor Jackie Fielder at the 16th and Mission plaza, Lurie's crew forgoes any editing bells and whistles. Here, where the man is basically on his own, is a good indication of what his team has to work with: They have to take a Spear Carrier No. 3, staccato rhythms and all, and make him a star.
Background music and voiceover help smooth him over. Cuts provide welcome variety. Emojis pop in, serving as bullet points for his themes. Lurie settles on a favorite gesture, thumbs and index fingers forming a downward-pointing rhombus. He adopts a newscaster-in-the-field mode, as if we're to take his remarks on, say, the crowd of holiday shoppers at Stonestown Galleria as journalistically objective.
The mayor seems to favor food content, and sometimes his crew follows him about his day as if he were an aspiring influencer. Here's Lurie sampling Turtle Tower's pho to the soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac. There's Lurie ordering a strawberry matcha boba in Chinatown. Here's Lurie at Meski on opening night with Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green. There's Lurie introducing an 'El Salvadorean' restaurant at Fisherman's Wharf while a hotel lobby-style beat drops.
Of course, if he were an actual Foodtokker, he would have, like, 34 followers. You'd wonder why this uncharismatic guy was trying and swipe away.
Other posts befuddle even more. Without explanation, Lurie pops into a Muni completionist's jaunt for the last route she hasn't ridden, like the un-hyper hype man glomming onto some family's afternoon outing.
Presumably, the actual, less camera-friendly work of mayoring is not accurately represented on Instagram. An elected official, like any other user, has to curate. More noteworthy is that making reels is evidently a part of Lurie's job. If you don't post a video about it, were you even really governing?
Now tech companies are mediating yet another aspect of citizenship. The Venn diagram of your followers and your demos is not a perfect circle, and Meta, one of the biggest companies in the world, is not a legitimate part of the democratic process. But Lurie's posts imply that a certain type of voter — the online, connected one — is the one worthy of his communication.
In all Lurie's reels, perhaps his piece de resistance is a Valentine's Day clip in which the mayor, finally de-icing before the camera, marvels at the number of couples in line to wed at City Hall that day and then officiates over some. Here, the city itself finally stars, and Lurie finds his type as an actor, playing the part of its proud but reserved and goofy uncle.
As any seasoned actor can tell you, it's crucial to know your type: bombshell or schoolmarm, waif or gouty royal, matinee idol or underbridge troll. Having a type doesn't mean you can't play against it or evolve it over time.
But embracing it shows you have the self-awareness to know how you generally come across and can tailor your message accordingly. It shows you've done your homework as an actor instead of leaping onstage without knowing your back story and motivation. It shows you know your audience and your story — or in Lurie's case his city and his place in it — and that's been a mayor's job since time immemorial, regardless of medium.