The Examiner reports that Alex Tourk, campaign consultant and lobbyist-about-town, resigned from Dennis Herrera's campaign for mayor today. In a statement, Tourk said Herrera should be spending more time focusing on his campaign and less time being distracted by questions about Tourk and his firm Ground Floor Public Affairs. The announcement comes after Tourk found himself scrutinized for his work in winning the lease to the Stow Lake boat house for his client Ortega Family Enterprises. more ›

Back in February, the Board of Supervisors finally approved a bid from New Mexico-based Ortega Family Enterprises to take over the vending duties at the Stow Lake boat house. As San Franciscans tend to do, some people got excited about the prospect of a modernized lakeside eatery with free WiFi. Others decried the displacement of the McClellan family operation that had been running things since the 1940s. Two months later, the Chronicle has decided the whole thing was an inside job perpetrated by connected San Francisco lobbyists. Or maybe that's just how business is done in San Francisco now. more ›

Jackie Speier runs for Congress again, after a 29-year break. more ›

KGO7's Dan Noyes has it that cocaine-and-booze-free Ruby Tourk has already written two chapters of a hopefully-soon-to-be-published self-help book, which will detail her “‘hitting rock bottom with Newsom after 20 years of alcoholism and coke use.’” more ›

A very sincere thank you to the reader who forwarded along this picture of former Mrs. Gavin Newsom Kimberly Guilfoyle with her baby boy Ronan Anthony Villency. All together: awwwwwww! more ›

Alex Tourk: "No, I'm not putting my beak in. Somebody needs to let that go, unless they want me to help them run for mayor. In that case, I know a guy who knows a guy, and y'all know where to find me..." more ›

The City's Atttorney's Office came out today to say that as far as they know, there was nothing improper about handing over thousand of dollars of "catastrophic illness pay" to Ruby Rippey-Tourk. The payment had become a bit of an issue because Ruby was able to get money reserved for "catastrophic illness" and nobody is quite sure why she needed it. more ›

We were very busy running errands dowtown this morning, when we spotted a silver fox coming our way. "Damn, who that?" we said to ourselves, "Thank gawd we're wearing our cute new purple dress, and that our haircut is lookin' all sorts of fierce." more ›

kind of girl: the kind that doesn't like other girls. People are abuzz about the comments that Gavin Newsom's current companion made in what was otherwise a kind of fluffy throwaway interview in the Sunday Style section of the Chronicle -- where she lashed out at people criticizing her man's behavior with the wife of his campaign aide by saying, "the woman is the culprit.." Oh, nice. more ›

-Repair crews begin to clean up landslide in North Beach. more ›

If Alex Tourk had a MySpace page, he would have moved Gavin from the #1 spot on his Top 8 after he heard about the affair, and deleted Gavin as a friend. So Gavin trying to be nice on Alex's birthday was like Gavin trying to re-friend Alex, and being denied. Gavin's gonna rot in Alex's hypothetical friend request box for all of eternity because they aren't even RealSpace friends anymore. more ›

"Oh My Gawd, did you hear?" "No, what? "Well, like Gavin was at this, like, party and you'll never guess who was there?" "Oh my gawd, who?" "Alex Tourk." "NO WAY" "Totally." more ›

Way back when, in days of yore, Alex Tourk and Gavin Newsom were friends and worked on projects together, like San Francisco Connect. And so they decided to that in order to get people to join in and volunteer, they needed to come up with an advertising campaign. Which they did. And guess what tag line they came up with for Project Connect? "Volunteering is Sexy." Guess what new advertising campaign is going live this week? more ›

Hey, does anyone know what the mayor of San Francisco's up to? more ›

There's not much going on in the Gavin front today, for which we praise the heavens for. Yes, we're as tired of this as you are, and, actually, that's got to be considered good for the Gavster as the more bored we are by it, the less we'll care about it. So today, we have Gavin paying Alex Tourk, the latest on Gavin's re-election chances, and Ken Garcia putting Gavin on the couch. more ›

As we go almost a week into As the Gav Turns, a few more stories are leaking out about what's been going on with the Mayor lately. But first, some news, mainly that he is most definitely not going to resign. In fact, he and Jake McG, who earlier called on Gavin to resign, had a meeting yesterday about that very subject that didn't go very well. Gavin played the "why is everybody always picking on me" card to which Jake responded, "bitch, please." Earlier, Jake had called on Gavin to resign, saying that Gavin did not have the "moral fiber" to be Mayor and we seem to recall that not being on the city charter. And if Gavin doesn't have moral turpitude than what could one say about Willie? The other news is that there's been issues as to who exactly is paying Alex Tourk's compensation and Gavin's people are trying to figure out a legal way around paying Alex Tourk as people have brought up the legal issues with how it was initially set up. more ›

So your Alex Tourk. Everything is fine and honky dorky until your wife, out of the blue, admits to having a fling with not only your boss but one of your best buddies. Even worse, it appears the everyone in the city (except us) knew about it but you didn't. Man, that's one hell of a bad week. Whenever we see these storylines on TV or in the movies, it always ends badly, like in people being shot and killed badly. So where are we with all of this? Well everybody is still loving the story. It's in this week's Newsweek and Time. Wonkette finally weighed in on it (says a commentor: "Oh this is SF. They love making mountains out of mole hills at every perceived ethical lapse.") and the story even made Perez Hilton. more ›

SFist Jim stopped by the swearing-in for San Francisco assessor-recorder (and buzzed-about mayoral possibility?) Phil Ting last night and snapped these pictures for us. Yes, that is a subdued-looking Gavin Newsom, hiding in the stairwell of the Assessor-Recorder's office, a floor away from the prying questions of the media. Gavin made some awkward jokes about the awkwardness of the situation, refused to take the one question shouted out about whether he'd seek reelection (Dan Noyes, was that you?), and fled the scene shortly afterwards. (To be fair, Newsom had a campaign kickoff event in Chinatown to get to, set up by Alex Tourk before the scandal hit and to which media were not allowed). more ›

We got KCBS on the radio and ABC 7 on the internet and we're all ready to go in probably the craziest press conference we've seen in this city in a long time. We're not defending Gavin here and we're not saying he's got anyone else to blame but himself, but we can't imagine things like this are easy to do. Anyways, here we go: more ›

So earlier today, we heard that Alex Tourk resigned as Gavin's campaign manager. It was a bit curious, a bit odd, but these things happen, although whenever somebody mentions that they are leaving for "personal reasons" the mind does tend to go to certain places. But no matter where your mind wandered, we have a feeling it didn't wander as far as what really happened because the Chron is reporting that Tourk quit mainly because Gavin had an affair with Tourk's wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk. Rippey-Tourk (and woah, what a name) was Gavin's appointments secretary at the time. more ›