At Delirium, a dive bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, the décor is dark, the drinks are strong, and the emotions are raw. The punk rockers and old-school city natives here look tough, but they are in mourning.
Kit Kat used to bar-hop along the block, slinking into Delirium for company and chin rubs. Everybody knew the bodega cat, affectionately calling him the Mayor of 16th Street. Kit Kat was their “dawg,” the guys hanging out on the corner said.
But shortly before midnight on Oct. 27, the tabby was run over just outside the bar and left for dead. The culprit?
A robot taxi.
Hundreds of animals are killed by human drivers in San Francisco each year. But the death of a single cat, crushed by the back tire of a Waymo self-driving taxi, has infuriated some residents in the Mission who loved Kit Kat — and led to consternation among those who resent how automation has encroached on so many parts of society.
“Waymo? Hell, no. I’m terrified of those things,” said Margarita Lara, a bartender who loved Kit Kat. “There’s so many of them now. They just released them out into our city, and it’s unnecessary.”
Kit Kat’s death has sparked outrage and debate for the past three weeks in San Francisco. A feline shrine quickly emerged. Tempers flared on social media, with some bemoaning the way robot taxis had taken over the city and others wondering why there hadn’t been the same level of concern over the San Francisco pedestrians and pets killed by human drivers over the years.
A city supervisor called for state leaders to give residents local control over self-driving taxis. And, this being San Francisco, there are now rival Kit Kat meme coins inspired by the cat’s demise.
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But all of that is noise at Delirium. Kit Kat was loved there. And now he is gone.
“Kit Kat had star quality,” said Lee Ellsworth, wearing a San Francisco 49ers hat and drinking a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
Before Kit Kat’s death made headlines, Waymo was on a roll. The driverless car company owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, fully rolled out its San Francisco taxi service in 2024 and now has a fleet of 1,000 vehicles in the Bay Area. It announced an expansion this month with freeway service down the Peninsula and pickups at the airport in San Jose. Waymo expects to serve San Francisco International Airport soon, too.
Just a couple of years ago, the white Jaguars with whirring cameras on top were considered oddities. Passers-by would do double takes when they saw the steering wheel turning with nobody in the driver’s seat.
Waymos are now a top tourist attraction, however. Many women find them a safer choice than relying on an Uber or Lyft driven by a man. So many parents have ordered them for their children that some schools can look like Waymo parking lots.
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And Grow SF, a moderate political group with ties to the tech industry, found that San Francisco voter support of Waymo had jumped from 44 percent in September 2023 to 67 percent this July.
Still, Kit Kat’s death has given new fuel to detractors. They argue that robot taxis steal riders from public transit, eliminate jobs for people, enrich Silicon Valley executives — and are just plain creepy.
Jackie Fielder, a progressive San Francisco supervisor who represents the Mission District, has been among the most vocal critics. She introduced a city resolution after Kit Kat’s death that calls for the state Legislature to let voters decide if driverless cars can operate where they live. (Currently, the state regulates autonomous vehicles in California.)
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“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”
Ms. Fielder has strong ties to labor unions, including the Teamsters, which has fought for more regulation of autonomous vehicles, largely out of concern for members who could eventually lose their own driving jobs in other sectors.
Ms. Fielder has posted videos to social media, showing her walking the streets of the Mission as she discusses Kit Kat.
“We will never forget our sweet Kit Kat,” she says in one of them. “The poor thing … suffered a horrible, horrible, long unaliving.”
(The word “unaliving” is used by some social media users to avoid algorithms that suppress videos using words such as “death.”)
