Well, the buyout offer the Chronicle gave former columnist Ken Garcia must not have been enough to retire on. Either that, or he missed having a public forum to laud Gavvy-Gav and harrass The Daly, and like a champion boxer wanted back into the ring:

"This is a great chance for me to write about what I love: San Francisco and the Bay Area and all the politics, personalities and eye-opening exploits that entails," Garcia said. "I'm looking forward to the competition and helping The Examiner grow in its role as the must-read local newspaper. It will be fun to be in a position again to really stir things up."

So color us surprised when Adriel Hampton sent us a note asking if we wanted to join him in a chat with some South Asian media professionals in town on a junket with the State Department. Apparently they wanted to learn more about these "blog" things, and how they relate to journalism, both online and in print. more ›

SFist Jackson's not here today, but we know he'd want us to let you know that, as expected, Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Kleinberg ruled against the bloggers and for Apple. Judge Kleinberg found (.pdf) that California's shield law protecting reporters who decline to reveal their sources didn't apply to bloggers, and ordered the bloggers to tell Apple who tipped them off about project "Asteroid", about the FireWire audio interface for GarageBand. The Electronic Freedom Foundation, who's representing the bloggers, will be filing an immediate appeal. We'd tell you to give us good gossip on the case anonymously in the comments or to editor@sfist.com, but, well, don't bother now. We'll just limp through, posting rehashes of Chronicle articles and gossip from Adriel Hampton. more ›

People, please! If we promise cross our heart to pick up hard copies of the Examiner, would it kill Mr. Anschutz to put up the articles just a little bit earlier? It cuts into our blogging schedule. So for those of you worrying that Matt Gonzalez had sold out his good citizenship-ry now that he's a big-time corporate lawyer with the reports in PJ Corkery's column last Friday that Matt was seen sneaking onto a MUNI bus without paying, PJ reports that Matt finally emailed back the following:

I plead guilty to boarding the bus in the manner described, but absolutely deny any furtive left/right glances! And no, I don't have a Fast Pass, but I ">did have a transfer, as I took the 22-Fillmore to get over there. ... (If you like, I could dig around my pockets and maybe find it for you). ... But more importantly, do you think you can get the mayor to get more buses on the street! ... How can we expect people to give up their cars if the buses are so crowded!

We all know it -- bloggers really can be such bitches (buy your SFist t-shirt bearing said message right here right now!) -- so guess who's the City's newest entrant in the blogrolls? That's right -- our favorite hothead, Chris Daly! (Thanks to Usual Suspects for the link!) Like Jerry Brown, Daly's started off strong, lashing out at "downtown interests," the Chronicle, and linking to articles listing the number of times he's been mocked by the Chronicle. (Also, an awesome picture of C. Daly carrying books into his office.) Unlike typepadder Jerry, though, Daly's running his blog off the sfgov.org computer, which makes it look less like a blog and more like a newsletter -- meaning, among other things, that you can't leave comments. Aw, come on!! Chris, have you considered a switch to Movable Type? Especially with the Usual Suspects' other news that Bay Blogger alum Adriel Hampton's hanging up his Body Politic gig at the Ex for a job with the City Attorney's office (what? no!!), we'll definitely be putting the DalyBlog into our favorites folder. (Hey, do you think Daly will qualify for a SFPD press pass?) more ›

We thought that maybe, just maybe, catching Ben Wallace, Tayshaun Prince, Rasheed Wallace and Richard Hamilton, pictured, leaving an Oakland nightclub at 2:15 am Sunday morning might mean a Warriors win. No luck -- the 'Stons slapped The City around 94-88. We hope the bitches at the club were treated better than the bitches at the Arena in Oakland. more ›

As you've probably figured out by now, SFist has a tendency to crush on people, especially people in the media. Granted, we're also known to have petty rivalries with people, again, especially in the media. Well, one object of our affection is Adriel Hampton, who's not only an actual journalist with the San Francisco Examiner, but a blogger as well. See, Meredith Brody and Mick LaSalle? Go start a blog and maybe we won't harsh on you constantly. Okay, nevermind -- that didn't work for Jerry Brown. See what we mean about the petty rivalries? So we should say start a blog, link to us repeatedly and shill our merchandise. Then we'll talk. more ›

Adriel Hampton reports on his blog that Alex Clemens, the mastermind behind SF politics must-see site Usual Suspects, has confessed that he's bought ad space on the back of Frank Chiu's "Impeach Clinton/12 Galaxies" sign for his company, Barbary Coast Consulting. When accused of taking unfair advantage of an obviously-sick man, Clemens unblinkingly responds that Chiu has been taking ads for some time and that Chiu should at least make some money promoting his zegnatronic messages. ("Anytime someone says 'I saw your ad on Frank Chiu's sign,' he gets a $1 bonus.") While we're not entirely convinced of Clemens' humanitarian instincts, there's certainly no denying that Chiu's got good local coverage. Plus, the ad is awesome: "Creative Communication for 10 of the 12 Galaxies. Serving all 12 by 2007, honest." more ›

Tune into KALW 91.7 next Tuesday at 1 p.m. to hear San Francisco's first female fire chief and first female police chief (pictured at left) speaking with SFist political reporter crush Adriel Hampton through the Commonwealth Club Broadcasts series (or stream it live now). Slippery criminals! A bank robbery suspect waiting to be interviewed by the FBI pried open a screen in the Federal Building in Oakland and then casually walked out past the U.S. Marshals office and out of custody. We hope he was whistling as he did it. The FBI re-caught the guy at the San Leandro BART station. And the Los Gatos police have made an arrest for murder in a missing persons case that's been unsolved for three years. The victim had gone out drinking in June 2001, met two guys at a bar, and then disappeared. The police finally solved the case when, about two years after the disappearance, someone living nearby contacted the authorities and said she'd found a rug matching the description of a rug missing from the victim's house. The police were able to trace fibers from the rug to the murder suspect. more ›

you know what always catches our eye? That's right, a throwdown! So our attention was finally piqued when Adriel Hampton, the Examiner political correspondent, posted the following j'accuse on his blog: if you scroll past the tedious Don Perata interview, you'll see that Matier and Ross republished his scoop as their own! Without credit! Poor journalistic sportsmanship, M&R! more ›

Now, SFist and your Political Junkie are not really statisticians, but the preliminary data coming in from the RCV reports compiled by the Center for Voting and Democracy yield some pretty interesting results, as reported by the Examiner's Adriel Hampton. more ›