Crews restored electricity for roughly 20,000 PG&E customers who lost power Thursday evening in San Francisco's SOMA district, according to a utility spokesman.
The outage started at 5:49 p.m. and had ended by 7:18 p.m.
Restaurant managers that were in the affected area reported sending staffers home, as did store clerks, only to have power return shortly thereafter.
Traffic in the city -- which usually hits a few snags and snarls on busy streets when power is working -- slowed to a snail's pace as cars navigated through broken traffic lights, according to onlookers.
The cause of the outage is being investigated.
