July 26, 2007
We Read The Weeklies
Last week's winner, the SF Weekly! Letters from people who say they are not in a cult. An article about former SFist editor Eve Batey's promotion at the Chron! Go Eve! Also, they called us a "sassy" local blog. We loved Sassy! Cover article: A guy who makes money suing small businesses under the ADA. A review of the Kiki & Herb show. The Simpsons movie is okay. Meredith didn't much like her North Beach wine bar. Why did political cartoonist Ted Rall get moved to the food listings? Let's Get Killed reviews the Pamela des Barres book, feels ambivalent about it. And Savage Love: "is this a weird fetish?" (The lady's clapping on a date story was pretty funny.)
Next up, the Bay Guardian. You know why? Because we were voted readers' favorite local blog!!!!!!!! Thank you thank you thank you thank you! We're pleased to be in such good company as Green Apple, Tu Lan, and Gavin Newsom (favorite AND least favorite local politician). Let's hope the new guy at the SF School District lets people talk to the press. Why won't the Ethics Commission investigate Gavin Newsom's mayoral campaign finances like they did Matt Gonzalez's? And some random impressions from your best-ofs: We really liked Steven Jones's paean to living in the city. We must try this dumpling place! Free stuff in Dolores Park. And these graphics are GREAT! Santino from Project Runway is in town. Oops, they called Lindsay Lohan "newly sober" (print edition only). True when they went to press! And Ed Jew's horoscope: "you're being called to take responsibility for some things that need fixin'."
After the jump: the East Bay Express, the San Jose Metro, our prestigious Pick of the Week, and the count of picks for the year!
The East Bay Express: Buying drugs at the B-Town Dollar and More at Sacto and Ashby in Berkeley. Another charter school principal resigns. Cover article: What's going on with the Paramount Theater, especially with competition soon from the Fox Theater? Books section! Mundane explorations books (like Dishwasher Pete's). Slow Food in San Ramon, and some lovely white wines made of grapes you've never heard of before. Daft Punk is playing... at the Greek Theater, the Greek Theater. And the Smashing Pumpkins show sounded kind of eh. Also, their blog has some pictures they got off Flickr of Arcade Fire playing some pre-show ball in People's Park, before the photographer took them down.
And the SJ Metro: Closing bars in San Jose. Backlash against business casual! They've made all of Gary Singh's random walks through San Jose into the cover article??? Hairspray was fun. A letter to Avril Lavigne. Vegetarian Ethiopian food in San Jose. An article about the author's preparations to blog! We're hoping his blog has posts about his preparations to write articles!
Weekly of the Week: We won best blog!!! Even though we're a little hurt we didn't win any editor's picks, 'sawright, we're still giving WotW to The Guardian. Do check out the Weekly's interview with Eve, though -- we had no idea she was a writer for her high school newspaper!
YTD count: SF Weekly: 9; SFBG: 9, EBX: 7, Metro: 4.
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A grumble about the Bay Guardian's piece on SFUSD: Of course appropriate criticism of the school district should be encouraged. But on the other hand, when Redmond continues to bash the district for PAST sins, that makes it harder to encourage prospective SFUSD parents to look upon our public schools favorably. (Also, if Redmond could get his "progressive" friends to rethink their elitist migration to such exclusive cloisters of private privilege as Synergy, Live Oak, Waldorf, Friends, Lick Wilmerding etc., that might do some real good for our schools, and help fight hypocrisy in our community as well!)
Carlos Garcia worked as a principal at a middle school (Horace Mann) not a high school (as stated in the article in the SFBG), and he only spent 3-5 years in SFUSD.
The anti-business casual article was aggravating. Just because I don't have to wear a collared shirt to work or a pant/skirtsuit and can pull off a T-shirt under a cardigan with a pair of nice slacks doesn't mean I slack off at my desk. No one has ever complained about my work ethic, and I've worked at two different business casual companies. Personally, I've found the companies that enforce a suit-and-tie dress code have a higher-stress environment with employees who don't have the same sense of camaraderie as a more business-casual staff.
Also, his last paragraph with the puns was just horrible. I think I sprained my eyes with all the eyeball rolling I did.
Check out the budding controversy about the Guardian's Best of the Bay. The Loin's Mouth pointed out how it's "interesting" that the Eros Guide won the readers poll for Best Local Zine and Best Online Personals. Should the Eros Guide really qualify as a local zine or a "personals" site? Did readers really vote for EG, or were there some e-voting shenanigans? What the hell is the Eros Guide? Not safe for work: http://www.erosguide.com/
Wow Rita -
Even though that was a nice article on Eve -
we didn't forgot that sfist previously thought it was weird that Will Harper who it seems sfist called 'a bottom feeder from EBX' was now writing for SF Weekly...
I guess Eros Guide is local, in the sense that they're headquartered in Oakland under the name Darkside Promotions. However, it seems a bit like giving Pizza Hut the nod for best local pizza place.
Guest[5] -- I've always loved Will Harper! Are you referring to the fact that Harper's former column at the EBX was called "Bottom Feeder"?
Congratulations... I guess....
The Best of the Bay issue used to be somewhat informative and fill me in on upcoming places I may not have heard of, now it's just the same stupid list every year and is filled with an awful mix of redundant stuff that everyone knows and really terrible examples of ballot stuffing by marina jerks.
A few examples from this year;
Best local comedian - Robert Strong. A cruise ship magician and juggler? That's just sickening.
Best beer selection - The Toronado. Just in case you woke up from a 20 year coma this week and didn't see it listed every year prior. Also, it's a touristy dump that smells like the dogs that are allowed on the tables.
Best dive bar - 500 club. Dive bars aren't filled to the gills with rich a-holes. There was a period of about a year when this place might have qualified.
This, along with the fifty or so other things you could learn by buying a ten year old Frommer's guide makes this year's BOTB the most pointless one yet.
But congratulations, seriously.
#7 Rita:
" we still think it's a little weird to read former EBX Bottom Feeder Will Harper writing about SF politics now!"
http://sfist.com/2007/04/13/we_read_the_weeklies_a_little_late.php
...yeah, that sentence was a reference to the fact that Will Harper used to write the hilarious East Bay politics gossip column "Bottom Feeder" for the EBX and then switched over to writing SF gossip for the Weekly. It's like referring to Laurel Wellman as "Dog Bites Laurel."
No personal offense meant to Will Harper, who I really do love!
I second that, Rita. Love me some Will.
Congratulations on winning the Guardian Readers Poll, SFist! We's lurvin' you.
Too bad all our hard work on it's being categorized as pointless, just because some people have a large fanbase who are dedicated to voting for their favorites .... as the former editor of Gay.com and Citysearch (and one of the original homocore zinesters), I can verify that there was no electronic ballot-stuffing in the case of the declared winners -- I can smell that shit a mile away, and we changed platforms several times to avoid it. And, as I've stated to some of the participants in this "controversy" (omg we're the Britney of alt-weeklies! OK!), as our readers tastes and views continue to change and evolve, so will our Readers Poll categories.
If some people are disappointed by the results of the Readers Poll, I'd love to direct their attention to the large Editors Picks section (it's kind of a matter of turning a few pages, though -- be brave!), which is our opportunity to point up things that we love about the Bay that don't often make it to our Readers Poll results.
Still, it's lovely to get so much attention! Even if it tastes like sour grape juice and smells like a loin's mouth. Sensational!
Guest, please tell me a bar that has a better beer selection than Toronado. Bonus points if they are adjacent to a delicious sausage outlet.
Englander in San Leandro; Over 100 beer selections including 4 or 5 hand pumped English beers. No really good sausage place nearby, but the recently converted Vatran's Flying Sausages used to be 2 blocks away.
Kilowatt; An impressive beer selection and right across the street from Gestault House, probably the best sausages in town.
Ben & Nick's in Oakland; Excellent selection of micros and such, and stuck in the middle of one of the better food parts of the east bay.
There's a few places I would do before the Toronado, a pee-pee soaked heck-hole in the Haight at the corner of tourist and boring.
I like the Best of the Bay. I actually still have the 2006 and 2005 editions stashed away. The mix of the editors insight and the readers poll glimpse of the zeitgeist is cool. And I'll take Marke's word that there was no electronic ballot-stuffing. But I still think you guys blew it by allowing Eros Guide to qualify for Best Personals and Best Local Zine. There are no personals in the Eros Guide! It's only classified ads of people exchanging services for money.
And can anyone really argue that the Eros Zine is a local zine? It's a national website with local calendars tacked on. It may be produced locally, but the same content is targeted at all of the Eros Guide's 50+ locations. Another major distinction is that zines have traditionally been non-profit or low-profit or money-losing labors of love. The "Eros Zine" is a slick, for-profit website run by a big money company that produces classified ads for adult services.
It's not the end of the world, but it is a bummer that a hard working community like the Loin's Mouth wasn't recognized instead. And maybe next year you guys can be a little more careful about making sure that the Readers Poll winners really qualify for their categories.
here's some Will Harper:
"VOICE: Will Harper … Will Harper … This is the fax machine talking. Do I sound like a guy you’d want to mess with?
HARPER: No, oh great voice in the machine. You sound like Mike Lacey."
http://altweeklydeathwatch.blogspot.com/2007/07/masterpiece-of-shit-theatre-presents.html
Thanks, Jeremy! We appreciate the support. In fact, I suppose that's the irony... We didn't know how much support we had before! 4th issue out soon! Later gators! -- Rachel M.