Residents in Balboa Park are taking legal action to get answers about a mysterious goo-like substance that has been oozing up out of house foundations. This greasy, disgrossting substance has afflicted at least eighteen homes on Navajo Avenue, just down the street from a MUNI maintenance yard. Residents suspect some sort of oil spill as being the culprit. The city, surprise surprise, hasn’t been all that helpful. Samples were taken months ago by the......

...And that's not even the curviest part! A car chase that started in Marin County around 3:00 a.m. Monday morning ended abruptly when the driver, speeding at around 75 mph over the Golden Gate Bridge, overshot the turn from Doyle Drive onto Lombard Street and flipped over. A open fifth of Hennessey was found in the car, and the passengers are in SF General with non-fatal injuries. Your SF Labor Day weekend homicide count: 3.......

And now for a little garbage-related news this side of the bridge: While others are pushing their dust-covered garbage cans back out onto the curb east of One Rincon, those of us west of Balboa Park are having our hands slapped for keeping ours out too long. Seems like the folks actually participating in the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association are fed up with the offensive vision of unhidden trash bins on their streets. According to......

--Here's today's mini-blotter: a family murder-suicide in Tilden Park; Man hit by a BART train at Balboa Park in the late morning today; a guy drove off the side of Mount Tam [Inside Bay Area, the EBX 92510, the Chron; CBS 5; Marin IJ]. --They're laying people off at the Merc News too? [SFBG Politics Blog]. --A blogger gets sued for defamation in small claims court by a journalist who didn't like, among other things,......

Service changes! Yay! Who doesn't love service changes? Communists, that's who. The point is, Muni's announcing some service changes. You're just going to have to take our word for it, though, because as usual the information isn't on their website yet. (We once asked a Muni spokesperson: who takes care of putting info on the website? Nobody could answer that.) We'll post a rundown of the changes below. Are they good or bad? Who......

These sniper attacks never make us feel very secure, even if it is only paintball -- over the last month, 10 people (and a dog) have been hit by paintballs throughout the City of Berkeley. No one's been seriously hurt yet, but some people's clothes were damaged, some people almost got in car accidents, and one kid was hit in the cheek (the reports are silent as to the state of the dog.) It's like......

BART was delayed today for more than an hour and a half as once again there was a power outage. This time the outage was caused not by a Temp, but by a BART train traveling from Balboa Park to Daly City striking a piece of metal on the track. No word as to what the piece of metal was or where it was from or whether any motherf------ snakes were involved. ...

Our inchoate suspicions were answered -- the music student whose $175,000 loaner violin disappeared has now recanted her story that the violin was stolen from her locked trunk and admitted that she filed a false police report. The violin itself mysteriously turned up on the steps of a church in San Bruno -- possibly after the violinist learned that the insurance company would not cover the instrument's "loss." Maybe 2006'll be a better year for the SFPD! File under heartwarming -- two couples driving home from two separate New Year's Eve parties in San Jose saved a toddler from a burning van on the Lawrence Expressway. The mother, who was driving, had apparently continued driving the van after its left front tire fell off, and sparks from the wheel well set the car on fire. The mother jumped out of the car but somehow managed to lock herself out and the child in. The partygoers smashed the window with a heavy flashlight and got the baby out safely. And file under ...."a machine gun???" The BART police broke up a fight at the Balboa Park station at 3:40 a.m. on New Year's Day, and found out one of the (teen) perps had a Tec-9 assault weapon on him. We have two thoughts: 1) good thing that kid had until April 1 to report that gun to City Hall, and 2) we sincerely hope this doesn't cut into our chances of getting 24 hour BART service around here! ...

Last night we went to a see a new play called 'Sleeper,' written by the lovely and talented Samantha Chanse and directed by Friend of SFist Oliver Saria. We've seen Sam and Oliver slay an audience doing stand-up, so it came as no surprise that the play came with a healthy dose of laughs. There's one more show tonight and tomorrow at eight at Bindlestiff Studio, 6th and Natoma. Finally, some actual summer weather,......