May 10, 2007
We Read The Weeklies
Last week's winner: the SF Bay Guardian . Cover article: Summer Guide - lots of world music and food festivals in places named "something"-ville. Remembering Jello Biafra and The Clash. Gavin's skimping on the details of his mayoralty to the public - it's the 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love, Gavin, let the sun shine in on your calendar. Do it for Beth Spotswood. Kimberly Chun wasn't a happy camper at Coachella. Daughters of Dusty: the problem with the new British soul songstresses that are white wanting "the black joy without the black pain." And L.E. Leone's just about out of chickens. Jello Biafra's horoscope: lean on your internal strength.
Next, the East Bay Express: Cover story: guy responsible for major mismanagement of the UC Pension Plan is now managing the Pension Plans for state employees and California's teachers. The Don Imus of Oakland's charter school principals. Music Editor David Downs mentions us (and tells us to "Eat It!") complaining about how he doesn't write about music in his column in which he interviews Damon Albarn and Paul Simonon about The Good The Bad and The Queen. (Back in the day, we preferred Pulp to Blur - David, if you interview Jarvis Cocker, we'll publicly apologize for that Dave Mustaine inferiority complex comment.) Haven't we read this story before? Locally-owned grocery store owner does battle with employees who want to unionize. This time it's Farmer Joe's in Oakland (last time it was Berkeley Bowl).
After the jump: the San Jose Metro and the SF Weekly, the Weekly of the Week, and the YTD!
The SJ Metro: Jim Carroll's not the only one, Gary Singh on friends that died from the live music in San Jose . Annalee Newitz on the myth of the universal library (our favorite quote, "Making something digital isn't like waving a wand over it—poof, you're digital!"). Cover article: an excerpt from a new spy thriller set in Palo Alto. The Stanford cafeteria. Results of a cell phone poll of teenagers' goals for the future. Blues legend Buddy Guy laments the lack of 24/7 public transit (no, he didn't write a song about it, but if you're lucky we might have a MUNI blues lyric contest).
And the SF Weekly: Holy moly, we got off light in our tangle over VV Media music writing: Will Harper goes for the jugular about the Guardian's Vincent Gallo cover story and is as vicious as some of our commenters in the Jennifer Siebel threads (we've linked to those enough, thank you). And carrying the brouhaha into the blogosphere, Guardian writer Johnny Ray Huston responds on the Guardian's Noise blog. (Johnny gives as good as he gets.) Muckraking the muckraker - there's an anti-Dan Noyes blog. Mission Creek Music Festival coverage: articles on Sonny Smith, P.G. Six, and Lavender Diamond. Cover Story: corruption charges on Colma casino.
Weekly of the Week: The vicious Vincent Gallo battle between the Weekly and the Guardian inspires us to be gentler with our criticism. At SFist we try to keep things light-hearted. In that spirit, we would like to show our appreciation for the fact that David Downs did indeed write about music and the captivating article about the UC Pension System (our partner is a UC Employee and three out of four of our parents are state employees, so this hit close to home) - this week's winner - the East Bay Express!
YTD count: SF Weekly: 6, SFBG: 6, EBX: 5, Metro: 3.


God those music columnists are wankers.
That's a great article in the Guardian about newsom ignoring the "Sunshine Ordinance" and destroying his calendar every 5 days. So much for open government gavin, I guess you just like to talk about it but when it comes to following through it might be personally embarassing (I don't want to read about the time you carved out to poke your best friends wife while drinking on the job!) But then again like every other rule, gavin thinks rules don't apply to his "camelot" administration or persona. The problem is that gavin is assisted in breaking the law by two people sworn to uphold it, two former deputy city attorneys who serve him, Phil Ginsberg and Nathan Ballard. The new(som) three stooges.
Will Harper's little jab at the Guardian was brilliant!
I still see that Gavin is flipping the people of San Francisco the finger.I just hope the people of San Francisco remember this come November 6th.