Get ready to dream along with the National Association of City Transportation Officials. Oh, sure, you may think that the fantasies of municipal infrastructure bureaucrats are boring. But allow us to shatter your misconceptions with just five words: Two-Stage Turn Queue Boxes. Try to remain calm. NACTO is a sort of national clearinghouse for transportation visionaries in major cities. While state agencies are united under a slow-moving dinosaur called the... [Read more...]

In a collection of salt evaporation ponds tucked between a freeway, a sleepy little marina, and the headquarters of Dreamworks Animation, the San Francisco Bay's ecological future hangs in the balance. The ponds themselves look deceptively blank: Vast flat rectangles of shallow water once used by Cargill to produce salt, the two-and-a-quarter square miles are fenced-off and nearly featureless, like an enormous bank of flattened solar panels. To the west... [Read more...]

Over the last three decades, the Eagle Tavern at 12th and Harrison streets has provided a welcoming home for countless community fundraisers, musicians, drag acts, beer busts, and LGBT patrons. But there's one person who has seldom put in an appearance: property owner John Nikitopoulos. "He doesn't stop in," said Eagle co-owner John Gardiner, whose business rents the space from Nikitopoulos. "I've seen him twice. Maybe three times." That disconnect... [Read more...]

As dusk fell one spring evening in 2003, a small group of volunteers crawled along a creek bank, searching among tall grasses, under piles of decaying garbage and in stagnant puddles for gelatinous clutches of eggs. The Port of San Francisco was about to build a new bridge over Islais Creek Channel on the city's southern waterfront, and time had nearly run out for its Pacific chorus frog colony. Urban... [Read more...]

In the span of just a few days, a group of entertainers, event promoters, and city officials have sprung into action to address safety problems at electronic music dance parties, prompted in large part by a surprise attempt by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) to ban a broad range of music events altogether. Ma's proposed legislation, known as Assembly Bill 74 or the Anti-Raves Act of 2011, would have... [Read more...]

Equality California held its annual Equality Awards gala at San Francisco City Hall Saturday, February 12, honoring state Attorney General Kamala Harris and Alameda County Superior Court Judge Victoria Kolakowski. But this year, much of the conversation was devoted to Executive Director Geoff Kors's announcement that he will step down from his position at the end of March. "It's been fun," Kors told the Bay Area Reporter. "I still... [Read more...]

Just a few years ago, they were abandoned freeways, dilapidated back yards, and institutional dumping grounds. But today, thanks to San Francisco's urban agriculture renaissance, many of these pockets of underutilized land are being transformed. And one local company -- Bayview Greenwaste -- is playing a key role, by transforming waste into mulch, and giving it away. The city's largest agricultural experiment to date may be the Hayes Valley Farm,... [Read more...]

story and photos by Matt Baume The cozy ambiance of The Gangway What makes a dive bar divey? Is it the decor, the clientele, the prices, the paucity of decorative soaps in the gentlemen's room? Or maybe it's just a way of life. On a recent survey of bars reputed to be "dives," we found that their one common trait is an inclusive atmosphere that invites all comers and asks... [Read more...]

Supervisor Bevan Dufty wants to allow the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro to maintain rainbow banners on lamp posts along Market Street, but even in the Castro, rainbows face a labyrinth of bureaucracy, protest, and environmental review. The existing law allows banners to appear on Market Street lamp posts only within several days of a special event. Afterward, they must be promptly removed. But due to an apparent... [Read more...]

The future of Grinding is more than just hookups and flirty texting, its creator told Queerty in an interview this week. These days, Joel Simkhai is looking at expanding his social app in directions that include community, events, matchmaking, and even -- get this -- women. The very idea! "Our goal is to increase the number of people you're meeting. That's what Grindr is for us," Joel explains. For... [Read more...]

Could 2011 be journalism's Year of Context? A showcase of emerging news technology in San Francisco highlighted four start-ups that specialize in placing content where it makes the most sense. The show-and-tell was hosted by Hacks/Hackers, an informal group of journalists and coders who blur the boundaries between news and technology. Attended by about 50 professionals, the start-ups sought to streamline the movement of information from the Web to apps,... [Read more...]

You have 85 acres on the waterfront and two billion dollars ... what would you build? A once-bustling industrial site that has fallen into decay on San Francisco's waterfront, Pier 70 is facing a dramatic transformation. And in the next year, the Port of San Francisco will ask the public for feedback on as-yet unwritten development plans. The Port has been keen to redevelop the site for years. Though the... [Read more...]

The owners of Gold's Gym in the Castro took action this week to distance themselves from a Texas billionaire whose company licenses the Gold's Gym brand name and has given millions to conservative outside political groups. The controversy erupted last week when Federal Election Commission filings showed that businessman Robert Rowling donated $2.5 million to a conservative organization called American Crossroads, as well as an additional $2,341,880.38 from his... [Read more...]

Eco-People proposal for current parking lot at 17th and Folsom. Get ready to peek into a possible future for San Francisco parks. This evening and next week, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department will lead a tour of four properties being considered for purchase and transformation into parkland. The locations being considered are at 17th and Folsom; Palou and Phelps in the shadow of 280; on Third Street... [Read more...]

Garbage: it's gross, it stinks, and all anyone wants is to be rid of it. For most cities, that means sending thousands of tons of unwanted flotsam and jetsam to landfills every day. But in San Francisco, garbage is treated like a resource that shouldn't be wasted. And that means formulating a plan to reduce the city's garbage output to zero. Yes, that's right: zero. Sound impossible? Well, thanks to... [Read more...]

Click to enlarge visualization of the former San Francisco watershed, with street map and topography. Source: Oakland Museum. The Mission is more than just a meeting point for different cultures: it's also a meeting point for different waters. Hundreds of years ago, two water sources converged along what is now Folsom Street. During rainy season, fresh water flowed east down from Twin Peaks, aligning roughly with today's 14th and... [Read more...]

Six months after the passage of health care reform, big changes are under way for the ways that LGBTs access health care. With lower costs and expanded protections on the horizon, the LGBT Community Center hosted a forum Monday to explain the ways that health care has already changed and may shift in the months and years ahead. Hosted by Dan Gould, director of the California LGBT Health and... [Read more...]

Won't somebody please think of the children? Well, OK, maybe not the children -- but young people, at least. That's just what Christopher Sopher has done with his research project, "Younger Thinking." It's a meta-analysis of available data about the relationship between the news industry and its up-and-coming consumers. Sopher, a senior studying public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, can relate to much of his... [Read more...]

There may be no better example of San Francisco's priorities than the city's giddy anticipation of two upcoming events: the November elections and this Sunday's 27th annual Folsom Street Fair.The city's long-established leather community tends to enjoy a strong relationship with city government."There have certainly been a lot of people at various appointed positions who identify as leather folks," said Gayle Rubin, an anthropologist and LGBT historian whose doctoral dissertation... [Read more...]

California's new gold rush has prospectors back in the water, but they're not panning for metals. This time, it's all about recycling the painkillers, steroids, and mood stabilizers in South San Francisco Bay. Alviso's Medicinal All-Salt may look like ordinary table salt, but it has a little extra pharmaceutical kick. Exactly which drugs are present is somewhat unknowable, even to those selling the product, since it depends on which ones... [Read more...]

Jerry Abrams didn't want to leave San Francisco. But when the United States denied a visa to his Pakistani partner, the retired IBM employee was forced to relocate to South Africa last month, where immigration law recognizes same-sex couples.Abrams met his partner Miel online about four years ago."We started e-mailing each other, and then chatting by phone, and I was encouraged by a friend to go visit him," Abrams told... [Read more...]

It may look like a forgotten military landscape, decaying beneath an elevated freeway and overgrown with weeds, but hidden beneath the abandoned buildings and broken pavement, Presidio planners see the potential to regenerate a wetland. Quartermaster Reach is currently so neglected, most people don't even know it exists. Floating between Lucasfilm's Letterman complex and the Presidio Post Office, some sections have been abandoned for decades. A disused power plant sits... [Read more...]

Gay Couples and Straight Couples are Fundamentally the Same -- but How Can we be Sure? by Matt Baume; published in conjunction with Spot.Us For all the emotion surrounding gay couples' freedom to marry, there's a remarkable dispassion to Judge Vaughn Walker's landmark ruling that Proposition 8 is fundamentally unconstitutional.  In his sweeping decision, Walker went one-by-one through the arguments of the Prop 8 proponents, shooting down each one in... [Read more...]

There's a brand new videographer at KGO-TV in San Francisco: you.As part of its ongoing "uReport" effort to solicit user-submitted content, the ABC station is now working directly with YouTube and taking advantage of its YouTube Direct technology, which lets news sites request, review and re-broadcast user-generated videos. The experimental partnership, which launched in late July, is aimed at marrying the editorial acumen of a traditional newsroom with the user-generated immediacy... [Read more...]

It was pandemonium at the Castro Theatre Saturday night as drag celebrity Peaches Christ unleashed a hundred lap dancers on a screaming audience. The occasion was the 15th anniversary screening of Showgirls , the bizarre 1995 Paul Verhoeven film in which Saved By The Bell's Elizabeth Berkley plays Nomi Malone, an aspiring dancer who flails her way to infamy as a Las Vegas showgirl. "It's definitely one of those... [Read more...]

Attempts to open two Target stores in San Francisco may have hit a roadblock in the form of the company's support for an anti-gay politician. Target gave $150,000 to Minnesota Forward, an independent expenditure committee backing Republican Tom Emmer for Minnesota governor. Emmer, a state representative, authored a proposed constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality, and has promoted the work of a religious rock band whose frontman described countries... [Read more...]

A jubilant crowd took to the streets in San Francisco on Wednesday night to cheer Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker's decision that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, addressed a crowd of around 800 people from the steps of City Hall. "The last time I stood on these steps, we were in pain because Prop 8 had just... [Read more...]

Although many news organizations know they should incorporate Facebook into their social media strategies, so far they've had to rely on independent consultants to tell them what works. This week, however, Facebook outlined best practices on how news organizations can connect with the site's enormous and highly engaged user base. The findings are the result of a several-month long study by an internal team that examined Facebook usage at major... [Read more...]

Lawyers for AC Transit and the Amalgamated Transit Union squared off in an Oakland courtroom today in the ongoing dispute over a new contract. After two hours of arguments, Superior Court Judge Judith B. Ford indicated she would issue a ruling as early as Monday, but AC Transit attorneys predicted a final agreement might take much longer, and the legal ordeal could potentially drag into early next year. At issue... [Read more...]

When most San Franciscans turn on a faucet, they'll see water that's traveled as far as two hundred miles from Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. But that's not the case for some locally-minded gardeners, for whom careful water stewardship is as important as selecting their crops. This past weekend, the San Francisco Bike Coalition organized a rec ride that visited several gardens around the Sunset, highlighting low-impact water... [Read more...]

Drive north from San Francisco for a few hours, and the 101 will gradually melt into a slim road between giant sequoia trees. You've found your way to Richardson Grove State Park, where you can see thousand-year-old redwoods, the South Fork Eel River, and lots of campgrounds, but you won't see any big box stores. That's thanks, at least in part, to the narrowness of the 101. With a... [Read more...]

Responding to several violent incidents that occurred during Pride weekend, local leaders and police this week appealed to the LGBT community for help in combating crime. This year's Pride was marred by a shooting at the Pink Saturday street party in the Castro that left one man dead and two others wounded, a late-night assault against a former Mr. San Francisco Leather title holder, and a confrontation caught on... [Read more...]

An Eagle Tavern patron at a recent cigar event. Photo: RichStadtmiller The open-air patios at Castro-area bars like The Pilsner and The Mix are great places to catch a little sun, meet up with friends, pick up a phone number or two ... and if you smoke, maybe develop a little erectile dysfunction. Although the health consequences of smoking are well known, LGBTs are 40 to 70 percent more... [Read more...]

Bevan Dufty was standing near the main stage at Pink Saturday when he saw the crowd suddenly turn and run. He instantly recognized what had just happened. "San Francisco has a homicide problem," the openly gay District 8 supervisor told the Bay Area Reporter. "The city has worked mightily to address it, and homicide has reduced significantly last year. But it hasn't gone away. And that problem came to... [Read more...]

Tom Tague isn't content to let an article just be an article. "How do I take a chunk of text," he asked, "and turn it into a chunk of data?"He was speaking Thursday night at a panel discussion hosted by Hacks/Hackers, a San Francisco-based group that bridges the worlds of journalism and engineering. Coinciding with the 2010 Semantic Technology Conference, Thursday's presentation dealt with the Web's evolution from a tangle... [Read more...]

Gay etiquette expert Steven Petrow has an important message for San Francisco Pride celebrants. "Share your water and sunscreen," he urged, "don't blow a whistle in someone's ear," and, if you're marching alongside a float, "don't hold up the parade to cruise someone on the sidelines, unless you're a very talented homosexual and can march and flirt at the same time." In the 15 years since he wrote The... [Read more...]

The sound of a sneezing rat was keeping me up at night. All would be silent, and then from across the room I'd hear it: a tiny "pff!" followed by two paws furiously wiping a fuzzy face. The sneezes belonged to Christopher and Robin, two little guys I'd picked up from a breeder a few months earlier. Why rats? Well, a dog was too big, I'm allergic to cats,... [Read more...]

Hikers on the Presidio's newest trail. Photo by Matt Baume. There's no mistaking the signs of this year's late spring in the Presidio, with California poppies, beach strawberries, and beautiful (but invasive) calla lilies appearing in increasing numbers every day. But the Presidio is also experiencing a far more gradual and deliberate regrowth as well: that of its network of trails. "It's a really important part of the backbone of the park,"... [Read more...]

This is the third part of a three part series (parts one and two here) funded with the help of Spot.us.A POLICE FORCE THAT MATCHES ITS COMMUNITYThe SFPD's improved relationship with LGBTs is no accident. It's thanks largely to the work of organizations like the SF Police Officers Pride Alliance , a five-year-old organization that's grown to be the city's second largest police employee group.The Pride Alliance advocates on behalf... [Read more...]

This is part two (see part one here) in a three part series funded with the help of Spot.us. INVISIBLE VICTIMSTracking hook-up violence is particularly challenging due to a reluctance on the part of victims to come forward. Everyone seems to have a story about victims declining to file a report. "Not wanting to report is very odd to me," said Castro Community on Patrol Chair Greg Carey. "In one... [Read more...]

Part one in a three part series funded with the help of Spot.us.On May 18th at 5:41am, someone robbed a store at the corner of 18th and Castro. A week earlier, at 18th and Sanchez, there was a strong arm robbery on the street at 2:30am. And at 1:45am on May 9, there was a mugging involving bodily force at Market and Sanchez.That's an average rate of crime in the... [Read more...]

The results are in! In collaboration with Spot.us, we surveyed 135 prominent local politicians and political organizations to find out how they want to you vote, and the consensus on the ballot propositions is: yes, no, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. (Don't remember what the props are? Here's your official voter's info pamphlet.) But that doesn't mean, obviously, that you SHOULD vote that way. Instead,... [Read more...]

Two men fished off the end of a pier at sunset on Saturday evening, their view framed by Sutro Tower, downtown highrises, and a rusting Bayview warehouse. Just a few feet away, a large yellow sign over the water, warning "Underground Sewer Crossing," served as a perch for gulls. The T-Third Muni Metro clattered across a grooved metal bridge over the water, and on the opposite bank, some kids skateboarded... [Read more...]

There I was, drenched and freezing and all by myself, flailing through the underbrush in the Presidio in the middle of a storm. "Who wears sneakers to a downpour?" I asked out loud, curling my toes into icy waterlogged balls.  And then I nearly stepped directly into the very thing I'd come looking for: Dragonfly Creek, one of the few remaining visible bodies of water in the city.  I'd... [Read more...]

This year the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club's dinner marked a milestone: the first official statewide holiday in recognition of their club's namesake. But the club's 32nd annual dinner, attended last week at the Hotel Whitcomb by the leftmost members of the city's political community, was also a time to observe the organization's role in a wide range of progressive issues. "We're one of the few groups that connects... [Read more...]

Of all the ghosts haunting Golden Gate Park, the most frustrated might be John McLaren. When McLaren died in 1943 at the age of 96, he'd served as Golden Gate Park superintendent for 52 years, during most of which he lived in the stately lodge at Stanyan and JFK. His was a life distinguished by a devotion to trees and a hatred of statuary - so how did they... [Read more...]

At a conference last weekend for developers of iPad news apps, organizer Burt Herman posed an unexpected question: "How can we make news more like finger-painting?" he asked.He was responding to a point made by Jennifer Bove of Kicker Studio, a product-design firm. She had just pointed out how satisfying it is to manipulate media on the iPad, comparing it to painting. "It's as close as we can get to... [Read more...]

With rallies, protests, dedications, and ceremonies across the state, it was hard to miss California's inaugural celebration of Harvey Milk's birthday. And if you live in a conservative-voting neighborhood, Equality California may have even brought Harvey Milk Day right to your door. Since the passage of Proposition 8 in 2008, EQCA has significantly beefed up its organizing for marriage equality by hiring a Marriage Director, opening field offices in conservative... [Read more...]

"Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it." --Lao Tzu There's something about San Francisco's bodies of water that people just can't resist. We abuse them, we bury them, we fill them in with rubble and toxins - and then finally when we realize the... [Read more...]

It's been 16 years since the Employment Non-Discrimination Act was first introduced in Congress, and according to organizers of a Tuesday rally at Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco office, it's closer than ever to being finally passed. Braving wind and a light rain, a crowd of about 100 gathered to call for a vote on ENDA. According to media reports this week, Pelosi promised LGBT leaders on Monday that... [Read more...]

Why is Fabulis, the newly-minted homo-social planning site, rubbing elbows with The Office, Grey Gardens, a tiny dachshund, and Bill Clinton's White House? And more importantly, how you can you jostle your own elbows into that scene? We've been talking about Fabulis for months -- from its boy-happy music video to its bank woes turned viral goldmine to its delicious Manhunt smack-down. When it launched a casual popularity contest... [Read more...]

Boy oh boy, the Bay Citizen sure has put online writers in an interesting position. Here's the abbreviated version: BC is a non-profit news startup, flush with a $5 million investment from fiscal celebrity Warren Hellman. They're launching a Bay-Area-wide news site on May 26th, and they need content. So they held a meeting last Friday where they told the roughly 40 assembled independent writers that any time those writers... [Read more...]

Upon completing my last gym class 15 years ago, I'd vowed to never again exercise in the presence of another human being. But then I inadvertently caught the bike bug. On my way up to the Fruit Shelf one day at Dolores Park, I glanced over at the bicyclists buzzing around Fixed-Gear Flats. "Could I do that?" I wondered, and was ready to answer "not a chance" when I spotted... [Read more...]

Confronting the end of a relationship is difficult enough, but for same-sex couples, the legal and emotional obstacles can be magnified. Overcoming those obstacles is the focus of "Separating with Heart and Smarts: LGBTQ Separation, Divorce, and Alternative Dispute Resolution." The free two-part workshop takes place at the LGBT Community Center in May and June. Organized by Our Family Coalition with support from First 5 and the San Francisco Department... [Read more...]

soupstance via Flickr So long, Muni. It was nice knowing you. The agency is following up a string of service cutbacks and fare hikes over the last few years with -- you guessed it -- more cutbacks and fare hikes. One big drain on Muni's bottom line: other city agencies. A new audit released Friday by the city controller cites a $65.8 million tab for services like legal advice,... [Read more...]

Thanks to pressure from local Asian community leaders, Muni and the SFPD may be stepping up safety on local buses and trains. People using the transit system have been involved in a series of recent high-profile violent attacks, specifically against Asian commuters. The most recent ugly incident came last week when two teens beat an elderly Asian man to death in Oakland. Previously, a group of teens threw a... [Read more...]

Getty Images Everyone should have a career to fall back on. For Santa Rosa police officer Robert Starling, that career was armored car robber. In his ongoing trial, Starling described how his police training helped him to plan successful heists. Knowing the armored car company's policy for shootouts enabled him to select an optimal weapon. His knowledge of police procedure allowed him to distract cops with phony 911 calls.... [Read more...]

Mount Pleasant High School has a friend in Public Radio International's Ira Glass. This weekend, Glass devoted a segment on his show "This American Life" to a takedown of the claims made in Steve Poizner's book, "Mount Pleasant." In the book, Poizner claimed that the school was rough, dangerous, and full of under-achievers. Poizner also suggested that the school was known for its high rates of pregnancy -- while... [Read more...]

Professional networking and hors d'oeuvres drew an estimated 210 LGBT professionals to a political brunch at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Saturday, April 24, including several candidates for District 8 supervisor. The event, organized by dot429 and Equality California, was a chance to provide local LGBT politicians an opportunity to meet and mingle with their community. Founded approximately a year ago, dot429 facilitates face-to-face networking among LGBT... [Read more...]

Nancy Pelosi's looking pretty good for a woman who celebrated her 70th birthday last month. A little too good, according to the Washington Examiner. Pelosi appeared on the cover of Capitol File this month, looking awfully youthful. What's her secret? Either she's a vampire, or she's received the airbrush treatment that's standard practice for any high-profile public figure. We're guessing it's the latter. Pelosi's defenders point out that The... [Read more...]

The announcement that gays, their families, and their friends had all been dreading came on Monday, April 12. A frantic signature-gathering campaign had officially failed, and Prop 8, the ban on equal marriage for same-sex couples, had just received a new lease on life. Back in late 2008, every progressive in California -- and beyond -- was riled up and ready to fight. Celebrations over Obama's presidential victory were dampened... [Read more...]

Source: Chicago's Green Alleys Handbook During the heavy rainfall season, San Francisco faces some daunting challenges: Draining the water, keeping the roads from getting slippery, and containing and treating the runoff. Some storms are so severe that the city can't keep pace. That's when we see flooding in the Muni tunnels and sewage discharges into the bay. But the solution -- or at least part of the solution --... [Read more...]

Islais Creek Channel. Photo: Matt Baume (Editor's note: This is Part 2 in a 3-part series on the Bay Area watershed.) San Francisco may be getting new waterfront soon, thanks to ambitious projects currently being studied by the city's Public Utilities Commission, including proposals for daylighting, or uncovering, long-buried creeks and streams and creating open-air channels that flow alongside the city's sidewalks and streets. Top contenders for daylighting include: Islais... [Read more...]

Equality California's efforts to fine-tune its voter outreach continued last Thursday night at the LGBT Community Center, with marriage director Marc Solomon seeking community members' opinions on the future of marriage campaigns. In an informal chat, Solomon presented new research confirming that personal stories and one-on-one conversations are the most effective methods of moving public opinion in favor of marriage equality. The research was compiled earlier this year by EQCA... [Read more...]

One of the proposed designs for Center Street in Berkeley, by Ecocity Builders (Editor's note: This is Part 1 in a 3-part series on the Bay Area watershed) The proposal to convert Center Street in Berkeley from an asphalt thoroughfare to a park-like promenade -- revealing a long-hidden underground creek -- is the latest twist in the interesting and often-controversial story of the Bay Area's heavily-modified waterways. The Center Street... [Read more...]

Eco Citybuilders The Berkeley City Council has overwhelmingly endorsed a plan to radically transform Center Street. The project, to be overseen by Ecocity Builders, would turn the parking lot-lined thoroughfare into a pristine wildlife preserve complete with a babbling brook, stretching from the Downtown Berkeley BART to the UC Berkeley Campus. The plan is part of a movement known as "daylighting," whereby natural water sources, buried decades ago, are... [Read more...]

Getty Images eBay CEO Meg Whitman wants to put the brakes on a "buy it now" button for health care. The conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate said Tuesday that she'd like the California Attorney General to sue to block the health care reform bill. For his part, the California Attorney General is unlikely to find her argument persuasive. Jerry Brown -- the likely Democratic contender against Whitman in the governor's... [Read more...]

San Francisco's LGBT Center can breathe a sigh of relief: a likely loan from the Board of Supervisors will save the Center a boatload of cash. The pricey new building at Market and Octavia still owes about $3.2 million in debt, but a restructuring of their mortgage made possible by the Supes' loan will cut their repayments by about $200,000. Mayor Gavin Newsom opposed the transfer of funds, saying,... [Read more...]

Photo: Troy Holden Roughly two dozen attendees came out to the inaugural meeting of the San Francisco Transit Riders Union (SFTRU) on Thursday evening and had a spirited -- at times heated -- debate about how to make the fledgling organization a vocal constituency representing the diverse interests of Muni riders. Billed as an opportunity for the public to become familiar with the new riders union, the meeting functioned largely... [Read more...]

Their name's mispeld, The Awl called them "retrograde," their dancing-gays video missed the mark, and nobody's seen their actual product yet. And judging from the results of a sneaky trick that we pulled during its beta launch, Fabulis.com is going to be a hit. Fabulis made a name for itself a month ago, when Citibank inadvertently did them the favor of shutting down their business account in a move... [Read more...]

Writing on a local real estate blog, I noted the repair of some holes in a hillside sidewalk-staircases, and compared the city's filling-in of crumbling concrete steps to a time that I had repaired a partially-disintegrated cake by stuffing it with bread and slopping on layer upon layer of desperate icing. I was pretty pleased with that analogy until it was published, at which point commenters let me know exactly... [Read more...]

Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2 We've seen slow versions of everything lately: slow food, slow travel, slow shopping, slow dentistry. (We might've made one of those up.) But have you tried slow photography? It's like a yoga class for your camera. Long conversations with subjects, patient exposures, and delicate macros will lend your photos a new calmness and longevity -- so vital in these rush-rush go-go slam-crash rock-and-roll... [Read more...]

Fact: the members of the Board of Supervisors meet to talk about governing and such at least once a week. Really! Will this finally be the week that they accomplish something? Probably not, but we salute their undying optimism. Keep plugging away, noble supervisors! You'll get the hang of it one of these days. Highlights of this week's meetings: advice for felons, Strangelovian restrictions on smoking, and ending the inexplicable... [Read more...]

A great philosopher once told us, "first, you must first learn to focus without focusing." Or maybe it was our optometrist. Whatever. It's deep. That transcendental magic is at the heart of Freelensing, a photographic process that begins with the removal of your lens. Freelensers simply hold unattached lenses in front their camera's exposed sensor, and delicately tilt it until focus emerges. Hand-manipulating a lens will reinvent your focal... [Read more...]

Nobody likes losing their job -- especially Muni drivers, who have it pretty sweet. But times are tough, thanks largely to local and state leaders who raid transit whenever their pet projects need more cash. At the beginning of the month, the Appeal predicted that service cuts and fare hikes are not far off; and sure enough, Muni's new budget has us paying more for less service as soon... [Read more...]

Numerous bus lines face further cutbacks and possible elimination later this year, according to the SF Appeal's analysis of data recently supplied by Muni as part of its Transit Effectiveness Project. Lines most at-risk include the 24-Divisadero, the 28-19th Ave, the 28L-19th Ave Limited, and the 23-Monterey. Muni's always been strapped for funds, but in the past decade they've faced unprecedented budget shortfalls and rapidly escalating fare inflation. Fares... [Read more...]

There are plenty of worse ways to spend a Thursday evening than in the company of an open bar, nerds, and a brisket; and that's where we found ourselves last night, at the showroom of K&D Furniture near the baseball park. "Geek Chic" was pitched as a tech/fashion-themed party, and that's what they got: everyone was a little bit nerd, a little bit chic, and not unlike pretty much... [Read more...]

Voting! Just like knocking on wood, rubbing a lucky penny, or wearing pants, it's one of those superstitious acts that somehow makes us feel safer despite the lack of any discernible benefit. Voting isn't easy, of course; because only jerks care about political news, most of us have no idea what's on the ballot or how we should vote. Making decisions is hard -- and that's why endorsements and... [Read more...]

"It starts from a love of the cute and furry animals," explained filmmaker Amy Do, director of Docfest's Rabbit Fever. "Kids start with them as pets, and it just keeps growing." The Appeal chatted with Amy before the premier of her documentary Sunday night at the Roxie, and asked her the same question that absolutely everyone must: why on Earth have you made a movie about competitive teenage rabbit breeding?... [Read more...]

Earlier this year, civil rights advocates celebrated when several New England states granted marriage rights to gay couples. But opponents are waging a campaign to eliminate the right to marry in Maine, and to eliminate rights like hospital visitation and death benefits for gay firefighters in Washington. These two battles could prove instrumental in California's upcoming battle to repeal Prop 8. The Maine campaign has shown care in learning... [Read more...]

What does it mean that Dick Costolo is Twitter's new COO? Observers are hopeful that Costolo will transform the service into something useful and appealling. Before coming to Twitter, he was the CEO of Feedburner, a service that allows websites to syndicate content and track subscribers -- sort of like a Nielsen rating for websites' news feeds. Those tools to measure readership and reach are exactly what Twitter lacks. Messages... [Read more...]

San Francisco's Mission District has entered a sort of Comic Art Renaissance lately, with last spring's opening of Caffeinated Comics and yesterday's launch of Mission: Comics and Art near 20th and Mission. Mission: Comics and Art is the brainchild of Leef Smith, a longtime comic reader and Mission resident. Back in October, his employer did him the favor of releasing him from wage slavery; and since his neighborhood had languished... [Read more...]

If the popularity contest between California's gubernatorial candidates is to be judged by Twitter followers, Gavin Newsom is beating Jerry Brown, with 994,857 versus 756,665 followers. Both are miles ahead of conservative candidate Meg Whitman's 3,093. And they all face stiff competition from the man they're trying to replace: Current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has an army of 1,032,355. If you were to compare these numbers to the number of followers boasted by celebrities, Gavin... [Read more...]

It's been a bumpy ride for Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard who's planning to run against Barbara Boxer for her Senate seat in California. First there were questions about whether a company she claimed to run actually existed; then there were issues about her voting record -- or lack thereof -- and now it's emerged that under her leadership and despite a trade embargo, HP somehow found a... [Read more...]

Recent reports that San Francisco's Muni is "more reliable than ever" are a real headscratcher to anyone who was caught in Monday's subway meltdown. Despite Muni trapping passengers with no explanation on Monday, Gavin Newsom's mayoral office/gubernatorial campaign just sent out a press release touting the agency's on-time performance. How could the Gavinator be so out of touch? Maybe it's because Muni's keeping the mayor's office in the dark,... [Read more...]

Good news for the idle youth of Los Gatos: the city is in the process of decriminalizing an activty known, thrillingly, as "ball playing in the streets." The law, first enacted in the 1880s, prohibited Los Gatonians from throwing, catching, or striking a ball on a public thoroughfare. It may not be California's strangest law: according to one compilation of anachronistic orginances, in Los Angeles it's illegal to hunt for... [Read more...]

It wasn't really fair of us to go to last weekend's Zine Fest looking for comics -- they're not really the same thing, are they? But lately we've had our fill of the sharpies and scotch tape and fervent prose that is intensely personal and therefore almost completely incomprehensible. So it was with an eye for picture books that we wandered into what is charmingly called "The County Fair Building"... [Read more...]

With the goal of seeing a repeal of Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriages, in the coming year, a group of civil rights activists from around the state met at San Francisco State University this past weekend. The debate between returning to the ballot in 2010 and 2012 has reached a fever pitch lately, with some organizations urging swift action and others seeking more time to prepare. Recently,... [Read more...]

Anyone who thinks that we learned from our mistakes with Prop 8 needs to take a look at this TV ad that just started airing in Maine. In case you hadn't heard, the anti-gay people who took over marriage in California have packed up and headed east--literally, it is exactly the same company that pushed Prop 8 -- to try to take over Maine's equal marriage laws. And we're starting... [Read more...]

Feeling chipper? Well, we'll soon take care of that! Local artist Lev Yilmaz has perfected the craft of gloom in his comics and videos; he has a new book out, and he's presenting a dramatic reading tonight and tomorrow. We've been fans since before his work started appearing on SFist, so we're delighted to have an opportunity to interview him. Or at least, we'll try to be delighted. It's... [Read more...]

San Jose is not to be outdone by Oakland's slight-less-smelly air and San Franciso's squeaky-clean city hall! They're going to start processing their organic waste, turning it into compost and methane at a plant sandwiched between a recycling plant and a solid waste processor. Sounds like a nice neighborhood. So what does this mean for San Francisco? We certainly produce no shortage of biological waste, much of it strolling... [Read more...]

Can we revive the recent conversation about faster Muni and growing population in the Richmond one more time? We'd like to point out this post about Transit-Oriented Design (TOD) on the blog of the same name. In a nutshell: Faster transit and denser populations go hand-in-hand: more space for people equals less space for cars, which equals more need for transit, traffic calming, and pedestrian amenities. Or you can... [Read more...]

San Francisco City Hall is an inescapable black hole! Okay, so everybody knows that already. But we're talking about electricity: every day, the building consumes power several hundreds of times greater than that of a residential building. Several HUNDRED times? How is that even possible? What is Mister Green Mayor DOING over there, splitting the atom? Fortunately, the Public Utilities Commission is working on cleaning up City Hall's act,... [Read more...]

Clean is the new filthy! This Sunday, menaced by the Newsom administration's war on fun, Up Your Alley has had to clean up their act a bit, lest they suffer the same cruel punishment as Halloween. So, new rule: NO LEWD BEHAVIOR. That means exposed sexing is a definite no-no; expulsion of bodily fluids is verboten; and nudity is, at best, iffy. But just because you can't have sex in... [Read more...]

No big surprise: the great new pedestrian plaza at Market and Castro has been extended for four more months. Well of course. Streetsblog reports "surprise and pleasure at how well the plaza is functioning" but who the hell is surprised that people would rather have a nice sit-down than dodge cars amongst baffling traffic lights? The conversation is now turning to making the plaza permanent -- it's still a... [Read more...]

We're not sure what to gasp about first with this story, so let's start with the largest number: 107 years, the age of the oil refinery Richmond. Of course, the equipment itself isn't that old -- it's only been around for a mere 70 years. (Practically brand new!) Chevron wants to replace the old equipment with newer machinery that, the company says, is better and cleaner. That sounds nice,... [Read more...]

California recently tried to take away $1 billion (billion!) in gas-tax funds from transit -- but no, the 3rd district court of appeal just ruled, the state can't do that. Voters approved the gas tax specifically to fund buses and trains, but so far Arnold's stolen $152 million from Muni, and $30 million from BART last year alone. The governor plans to appeal the ruling; so when fares to go... [Read more...]

If you do not fall completely under the spell of Jeffery and Cole Casserole upon your very first viewing, then we have nothing to discuss. The show stars 2 giddy young lads in a NYC apartment, furiously bombarding a webcam with comedy and, well, that's it. And we love it. "It's recession TV," Jeffery Self, one of the show's stars, told us when we reached him by phone. That's... [Read more...]

NextBus Information Systems responds to this piece here. Kind of. When Steven Peterson created Routesy, an iPhone app that lets riders see Muni arrival times, the last thing he expected was to hear was that Muni's real-time arrival times were actually the property of a private company located in the East Bay. But that's exactly what happened, when Alex Orloff, COO of a company calling itself NextBus Information Systems,... [Read more...]

On Monday, we pined for a walking tour of prominent local palm trees. And you delivered! Or more specifically, Jason Dewees, palm broker to the stars, delivered. He emailed to let us know about this fancy Google map that details the locations of over sixty amazing trees. We know what we are doing this weekend! Mr. Dewees, you have us eating out of the palm of your hand. Controversy... [Read more...]