Good Lord, Bay Area residents. It seems that we had not one, but two bomb scares yesterday....

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they......

Okay, we're still freaking out about the Macarthur Maze collapsing, but here's the other news we were trying to compile when we found out about it this morning. --Civic Center SFMike went to check out Impeach Beach and caught this picture of an adorable doggie! Thanks for letting us use it, Mike! --Bevan Dufty said something mean about Gavin Newsom. He's since called to apologize. --Biotech's moving to San Francisco. --Liveblogging the baby eagle......

Last Saturday, a fight broke out at the "Hyphy High School Bash" at the Marin County Corte Madera Recreation Center. The police raced to the scene upon hearing reports of gunshots and a Golden Gate Transit bus being blocked on Tamalpais Drive by 80 teenagers. They couldn't confirm whether shots had been fired, but someone had sprayed pepper spray into the crowd and around the same time, someone broke into a nearby elementary school. Hilariously,......

The SF Bomb Squad's given the all-clear for a bomb scare outside Davies Symphony Hall this morning, on the Hayes Street side. Hey, we don't want to hear about a bomb scare at Symphony Hall -- we're supposed to be meeting the Philistine SFist Ced there later tonight! An alert gardener noticed a 3 foot by 1 foot yellow tub with a wire coming out of it, on top of a bottle and some liquid,......

Man, if you want to go drag-racing, don't kill members of a royal family -- the 18-year-old suspect burst into tears after a judge in San Mateo County refused to lower her bail from $3 million. The DA was unmoved, saying, "Highway 101 is not a video game and it's not a racetrack." That's right -- that's what 280 is. A rash of bomb threats! Yesterday, the Hall of Justice was evacuated and the bomb......

Seattlest saw a house party get senselessly attacked with a shotgun and end in seven dead. A local senator is debated and their version of the big dig is investigated. To truly get to the bottom of it they interview the writer Jonathan Raban. Bostonist has its first birthday party and investigates how to attach more gambling dollars to the Red Sox. Benjamin Franklin is celebrated and Johnny Damon is not. Image by Ethan Bagley......

When we lived on the East Coast, Amtrak was totally where it was at -- pick up an Au Bon Pain raspberry cheese croissant at Boston's South Station, emerge in Penn Station and pick up a Village Voice. So we're crushed to see that the California version of the Acela bullet train has run into some snags. Legislators are now balking at putting up a bond measure to fund the 220-mph SF-to-LA-in-2.5 hours rail program, saying they'd rather focus on transportation measures that could relieve vehicular congestion instead. Sure, it would take about $33 billion to build over a 10-20 year period (and we'd need to raise $1 billion in seed money now), but it would be so rad! We can't wait to get to these parties LAist is always talking about! Plus, if we don't get a high-speed rail, we'll just have to spend comparable amounts of money to expand highways and airports to accommodate intrastate travel anyways, right? And you know how we're getting the money to expand those highways? Bridge fare hikes. In 2007, all bridges are going up by another dollar. We saw some excellent interviews on the local news of stoically disgruntled commuters hearing the news. "Sure I'm unhappy, but -- well, how else you gonna get into the city?" one Emeryville driver grumbled, eyes squinting in repressed rage. ....So you spend all that money to get on the bridge in the first place, and then what? Yesterday afternoon, a truck heading into the city caught on fire. This morning, when you drove into SF over the weird new Fastrak lanes, you then promptly got stuck in traffic because Mission Street's closed down after a water main broke yesterday on Mission and Fremont. And if you were heading to City Hall, you got stuck in a bomb scare. (no, not at Starbucks this time, but the cops did shout "Fire in the hole!" before blowing it up, which is always cool.) ...

Break for freedom! An ostrich escaped from a truck crossing the Golden Gate Bridge during yesterday's commute, much to the entertainment of everyone except its owner. There is certainly no denying that the picture is hilarious. That strip club Centerfolds was held up in an attempted armed robbery yesterday. Even though they didn't make off with any money, about five zillion cops showed up, including a SWAT team and a bomb squad -- just in case! "Ma'am, we'll need to do a verrrry thorough search." Hee! (Okay, to be fair, they thought the robbers might still be in the building, but come on -- hysterically funny to see a huge swarm of interested-looking cops congregating outside Centerfolds!) And there was a bomb scare in the Haight yesterday too, on a no. 7 bus. It turned out it was just a toolbox someone left behind -- but you know the bomb squadders who deactivated it were bummed that they weren't on the Centerfolds detail instead. ("Ma'am, we'll have to do a verrrry thorough search.") The Sentinel has their usual crack reporting and photography for both SFPD events. ...

There's been an underground explosion at Post and Kearny, right outside the Ralph Lauren store at the Crocker Galleria. At around 10 a.m., people said they heard an explosion and saw the sidewalk rise up about 6-7 inches. Two manhole covers were blown off, as was a concrete cover, and the explosion blew up the glass front of the Ralph Lauren store. One woman was sent to the hospital with serious, but not life-threatening, burns. We wish her a speedy recovery. The authorities suspect that an underground transformer blew, but the bomb squad is going in before they let PG&E look around. Parts of Post, Sutter, Montgomery, and Kearny have been cordoned off as the investigation continues. Not a good day for PG&E, who just got hit with a possible $15 million fine for the 2003 above-ground transformer explosion. In other news, there was also a bomb scare at Civic Center (which was cleared without incident) around the same time. Meanwhile, the authorities are also worrying that the beached whale we told you about in Half Moon Bay might explode as well. (Really!) Also -- Flickr users, ABC News 7 wants to use your digital photos of the blast if you have any....

Oy vey, we just got word from John over at the Legal Reader that there's yet another bomb scare in The City, this time at City Hall. Add it up with the bomb scares in the BART stations, and that makes, what, four in two weeks? Maybe somebody was late to a meeting and called it in, or just wanted to go home early. And if you tinfoil hat-wearers think it's more than a......

C'mon, Star Trek 4 is all about cops in SF! Yesterday's bomb scare at City Hall was traced to a kook who went up to the security desk on the Van Ness side around 3:30 p.m., put his cell phone down, and said, "I put a bomb in here." After evacuating the building, the po-po shot a water cannon at the phone and determined it was explosives-free. SFist Jackson has an airtight alibi (item 4, around 1:00:00. Thanks for sticking up for the bloggers!) Yet more wacky weed news! Firefighters in El Cerrito that were inspecting a house that had been flooded by a water main break last Friday morning "noticed grow lights, hydroponic equipment and the strong smell of marijuana." Suspicious, they called the cops, who found about 100 plants and a pound of processed pot, and promptly booked the residents. Bummer to get busted at 3 in the morning while your house is flooding. "....No, man! I gotta get the Galactic bootlegs out of the basement!" And South Asian families in the Valley are concerned that they're being targeted by thieves who know that they tend to have expensive gold jewelry in their homes. Fourteen families have been robbed on weekends since December. This reminds us of that spate of burglaries in the Orange County Asian-American community (.pdf), where they figured out the burglars were targeting houses where there were a lot of shoes outside the front door. ...

Bay Area crime roundup...