SAN FRANCISCO — Finally, it happened.
After days of inching upward, gasoline on Sunday crossed the $4 threshold in San Francisco. The city became the first in the mainland U.S. where the average gallon of regular unleaded self-serve gasoline cost more than $4, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report.
To be exact, the average in the city was $4.006.
People tanking up didn't express shock. Some were angry, and some resolved that they would get used to the new normal. This being the sort of city that has a monthly bicycle rights protest, some were positively gleeful at the $4-plus price.
"I like it when it goes up," said Shannon Wu, 26, an events planner from Oakland who was filling up a Honda Element. She hired the vehicle for the day from a car-sharing service so she could help her boyfriend move. She hasn't owned a car for a couple of years.
"Anything that discourages driving," she said, "is good."
Other California cities will probably soon see signs for $4 regular too. "San Francisco is just the suffering pioneer," said Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. "The rest of California will soon follow, and most likely the rest of the country."
Many cities were a half-step or less behind on Sunday -- with the average at $3.878 in Los Angeles, $3.994 in Santa Barbara and $3.924 in San Diego.
San Francisco wasn't the first in the U.S. with an average above $4. Earlier this month, the island of Maui got that honor.
But with a new high price on the mainland, analysts expect energy to be the talk of the summer. Consumers will ruminate more on the implications of $4 gas than they did of, say, $3, a barrier broken in California in May 2006. (Gasoline crossed $2 a gallon in the state in September 2003.)
"Four dollars is truly a mental barrier for a lot of people," said Michael Geeser, a spokesman for AAA of Northern California. When it comes to actually filling their tanks, though, "for many people, it doesn't matter if it's $4 or $3.97. They still have to use their cars to pick their kids up from school or get to work."
Nationally, the average price was $3.508, a record, according to the Energy Department's latest weekly survey.
Demand is expected to increase as summer travelers take to the road. If anything happens to pinch supply -- a hurricane off the Gulf of Mexico, a workers' strike on an oil field in the North Sea, political unrest in an oil-rich country -- "it will be pretty easy to see a national average of $4," said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, a Texas-based oil consultant.
