Amazon Go cashier-free store could be headed to SF’s...

San Francisco is about to get its first Amazon Go cashier-free convenience store.

Word is the consumer Goliath plans to open a grab-and-go store downtown and may have its sights set on space at Post and Kearny streets near Union Square.

“No comment,” an Amazon representative said Friday.

We’re told company reps recently notified the city they would be applying for the required building permits, though the exact location is being kept hush-hush. A formal announcement of the new store is expected in a matter of weeks.

In January, after a year of prototype testing, Amazon opened its first convenience store in Seattle, billing it as the first cashier-less shop in the world. Not only aren’t there cashiers, there aren’t even checkout counters — or checkout lines, for that matter.

Buyers simply download the Amazon Go app and scan in a unique code that identifies them and lets them start shopping. According to a Seattle Times review of the store there, the “natural grab-and-go experience ... was about as easy and painless as promised,” whether shopping for milk, cereal, snacks or prepared sandwiches. Or even Tylenol.

Sensors and cameras lining the store’s ceiling keep tabs on what customers are taking off — or returning — to the shelves. Amazon Go’s systems automatically debit shoppers’ accounts for the products they take, sending the receipt to the app.

When customers are done shopping, they just leave.

One customer told the Times that shopping at the Amazon Go store was both fun and unusual — even if the experience “felt just a little like shoplifting.”

Hug and slug: Stuck in second place with only three weeks left before the June mayoral election, former state Sen. Mark Leno has opted for a “hug-and-slug” campaign to shake loose enough votes to turn the election in his favor.

Leno’s “hug” is with rival candidate turned tag-teammate Supervisor Jane Kim who, according to polls, is running a close third behind Leno.

Leno and Kim have begun an unprecedented ad calling on their supporters to make the other one their second pick in the instant runoff election. The idea is that, while neither has enough first place voters to beat Board of Supervisors President London Breed, they may win on second-pick votes.

Recent polling, however, shows that Leno isn’t getting enough of Kim’s second place picks to beat Breed. So Leno has to knock back Breed as well.

Hence the new “slug” ad aimed directly at front-runner Breed.

“Want more empty promises from City Hall?” the ad asks. “Meet London Breed.”

“It’s ironic that the guy who has been a politician for 20 years is blaming London Breed for society’s ills,” Breed campaign spokeswoman Tara Moriarty said.

Then and now: State Assemblyman David Chiu got a bit of a blast from the past the other day out in the Richmond.

Chiu was canvassing for London Breed’s mayoral campaign when he ran into Vanessa Kim, who had just flown in from New York to help with daughter Jane Kim’s campaign.

“What happened to you two? What happened to you two?” mother Kim was overheard repeatedly asking Chiu. It was an apparent reference to when recent law school grads Chiu, Kim and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo all shared a house in San Francisco.

The only answer Chiu could come up with for Mom was: “Things change.”

In life, as well as politics.

And finally: One of the enterprising independent contractors who make a buck rounding up and recharging the new electric scooters on San Francisco’s streets recently made an unlikely appearance at garbage giant Recology’s Tunnel Avenue transfer station in the Bayview.

The man’s cell phone GPS had pinpointed three scooters as being somewhere on the garbage company’s sprawling, 25-acre property.

The manager politely escorted the scooter hunter to the spot where the GPS showed the scooters were located — an open pit where bulldozers were loading piles of waste into long-haul trucks to be driven off to the company’s landfill.

“At that point, he gave up,” said Recology executive Eric Potashner, who speculated that somebody — maybe even a city Public Works crew — had tossed the scooters into the back of a garbage truck, which in turn dumped them at the transfer station.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@ sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross