Old hippy dude throwing down with a yuppy at a Michael Pollan talk. In Palo Alto! A small skirmish errupted when the bolo tie wearing hippy was upset by the yuppy not volunteering a saved seat (turns out was saving it for his mom) for an elderly gentleman. Things got good when sunglasses were grabbed, and Stanford students intervened. Isn’t eating well supposed to make you less angry? Oh, and the talk was really......

Have you seen this couple? [SFGate] Vulgar, yes, but it will all be half-price come tomorrow. [Nature abhors a vacuum] Bonds failed a steroids test in 2001? You don't say. [ABC7] Obama Haight/hate graffiti. [Curbed] National Boring Sex Week comes to Cal. [Daily Clog] J-school student sentenced to five days in the clink for the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam. [EBX] Bad cop. [Valleywag] Apply for the San Francisco County Transportation Authority’s Citizens......

Surely looking to turn us all into latter-career, Catalina-vacationing Natalie Woods, it looks like the rain will fall down (and wake our dreams) and won't stop until god knows when. Flooding, high winds, high tides, airport delays, glacial weather, and mass hysteria are all expected to bring us some mid-winter cheer. Santa Cruz will be getting the brunt of it, or so says the radar, so grab your spot at Pergolesi early and hold......

50-year-old Chiu Chun Wong of San Lorenzo was killed yesterday after a 15-ton section of concrete came toppling down on him. Ouch. According to the Gate, the fatal workplace incident occurred at "J.C. Steel Fabrication at 220 Michelle Court shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday." It seems that while Wong and another worker were putting a chain "around the bottom of the 20-foot-by-12-foot wall," the chuck of cement slipped, fell, and struck Wong, killing him......

Not to be outdone by their wicked step-sister, UCLA, who all too tastefully/boringly galloped about in their panties on the streets of LA, UC Berkeley also had its traditional end-of-semester streak last week. But they did it in the raw. Hee. The Daily Clog's Christine Borden captured the free-spirited perversity on film. And then had it taken down by the mustache-twirling puritans over at by YouTube. (!) It seems that last week's footage was......

Omigod people! A genuine Christmas miracle happened on the latest "Project Runway"!? Didja see it? Wasn't it awesome? Let's discuss. So, on the previous episode of "Project Runway" we lost our last local, Chris March, when he created a "shoulder pads"-inspired jacket that would have made Joan Crawford cry. We were on the fence about continuing to cover the show, as the only local left, Jack, was really just a quasi-local, as he went to......

Saturday is what is known around these here parts as "the Big Game," a kinda cute nickname for a game usually not of any importance to anyone other to us NorCal folks. This game, in particular, doesn't have much going for it as Stanford, with the exception of the 'SC upset, hasn't been very good and Cal has been more disappointing than Fred Thompson's candidacy. Nevertheless, the game is always pretty exciting and full of tradition-- all the things that makes college football what it is. ...

Today's Chron Bay Area section takes a break from covering the plight of lungless salamanders in Korea (why is this in the Bay Area section? Yes, yes, we know, it's because Cal researchers are researching them -- we're asking the question in a more philosophical sense.) to report that: oh no! Ed Jew's state criminal trial has been postponed again, to at least April 08. To justify the request for a further delay, Ed Jew's......

Be careful if you're having Thanksgiving dinner near the coast tomorrow. Because if you plan on strolling down the beach afterwards to walk off that dark meat sitting in the pit of your stomach -- does anyone really prefer white meat? why? -- you might get swept to sea. Unusually high swells could reach up to eight feet over the holiday weekend according to the Nation Weather Service. What's more, "swimmers and [well, for......

After a 10-month protest atop an oak grove next to Memorial Stadium, a judge ruled on Monday that UC Berkeley can now start removing up-in-a-tree protesters, as well as their ground support, even if police can't identify the protesters by name. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Richard Keller amended his ruling from a month ago. At that time, his decree gave authorities the power to strip the environmental activists off of the UC-owned land,......

the best place to get a parking ticket in S.F....

We were super-excited when we got the chance to talk with Alex Ross, the New Yorker's resident classical music critic (and blogger). Ross's writing has profoundly affected the way we think about music and music writing in all its genres and forms, and his twin enthusiasm for new classical music of the 21st century along with his deep love of the profoundly musical Icelandic pixie that is Björk always liven up our weekly periodicals reading......

Poor Cal-- so close yet so far. Our theory about what happened is that the idea of Cal having the #1 ranked team in the country was so crazy that even in this year (decade, actually) of sports craziness, the God of Sports deemed that just too crazy and set the upset in motion. Of course, we're also looking at the Rockies in the World Series, so whadda we know? Okay, before the Raiders recap,......

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond says the Navy is the gayest armed services branch. Well, sure. Cars are worse than homeless people, says a letter writer. Halloween will suuuuuck. A former director of Intersection for the Arts died in a car crash. The new crackdown on homelessness, and why aren't people more upset? Cover article: Our pals at SwapSF make the cover! About the whole freetail trend! Yay SwapSF! (and other freegans!)......

Now we're just picking on the poor guy: in today's edition of the Examiner, the largest-font front page headline screams, "Pot club in Jew family's building is under review," going on to say, "Jew's pot-club tenants probed" (hee!) on page five. Anyway, the Nor-Cal Herbal Relief Patients’ Cooperative, a pot-club under review today by the Planning Department, happens to be located in a Jew-owned building in lovely Ingleside. What makes this club special --......

Serialized gem / siren song Tales of the City drew many folks to SF. Well, it brought us here, anyway. And the character of Mary Ann Singleton acted as a temporary stand-in until many of us arrived. To wit: Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time. She came to the city alone for an eight-day vacation. On the fifth night, she drank three Irish coffees......

Oh, Berkeley law professor and torture-sanctioner John Yoo's not going to be happy about this (or maybe he will be!) -- Cal has tentatively agreed to accept a controversial collection of paintings by Colombian artist Fernando Botero, based on the Abu Ghraib photographs that repulsed the world. Botero showed the paintings at Berkeley earlier this year at the Doe Library, to large crowds, and in April, emailed Berkeley's Center for Latin American Studies to say......

Hey, everyone loves a list, right? Especially those ranking institutions of higher learning. The yearly U.S. News & World Report list is out -- any wagers on how local schools did? And, really, how much would it affect your choices? We remember mulling the 1991 list saying "can't get in there, can't get in there, nope, not there either . . ." But it's still fun to see how stuff measures up, we suppose. Unshockingly, Stanford University was high on the list, reaching No. 4 this year, undoubtedly driving the next generation of Azia Kims....

-- 8.8-foot-long Smart Fortwo cars in SF. Squash. [Chron] -- No surprise: Gap Inc. sales suck. (Hint: Burn all billboards promoting horizontal pastels.) [Examiner] -- Hayward murder-suicide.[Chron] -- Barry Bonds bash. [Examiner] -- Wall Street went up and down a lot today, or something. [Chron] -- Hey! If it ain't the ol' pro-Blue Angels switcheroo. [BeyondChron] -- Devaughndre Broussard asked to take the fall? [ABC 7, Oakland Tribune] -- RIAA brings their silly war......

From the SFist Tips line: yet another daytime shooting yesterday, this time at 23rd and South Van Ness around 1:45 p.m, by the post office, and fatal. In a particularly brazen act, the shooters then drove by the SFPD Ingleside Station to drop off the body about an hour and a half later. You'll all be pleased to hear that the cops did at least manage to catch the person driving the car. Those activists......

-- 4.2 tremor slightly moves the Bay Area, donuts. [Chron, Yahoo, Examiner, FCJ] -- Ron Russell on Chron business writer David Lazarus' new LA Times gig. [The Snitch] -- One Rincon Hill tops off. [KGO] -- Cal swim coach/Olympic gold medalist gets job back, $3.5 million in gender-discrimination lawsuit. [Chron] -- Antioch police accused of racism. [Courage Campaign] -- Final Harry Potter installment arrives tomorrow; controversy surrounding spoilers today. [Valleywag] -- Seagulls still reigning......

Campus tree residency news! At Cal, it turns out those people living in the trees to protest the UC's plan to cut them down themselves did significant damage to the trees in question by cutting off the tops of the trees to put in their sleeping platforms. Ah, the sweet smell of irony. Meanwhile, at rival Stanford, they've finally evicted a veteran who's been living in the tree grove off Palm Drive for almost 10......

--One person is dead after a Caltrain hit a car in Palo Alto this afternoon. [CBS 5, Merc News.] --The Lauryn Hill show sucked. [The Chron, All Shook Down, the Inside Bay Area Buzz blog.] --What's Berkeley going to do after this Supreme Court ruling? [The Trib.] --Blogging from the iPhone line in Walnut Creek. [Contra Costa Times.] --A fight over a local grad student's blog post about racial and class divisions on MySpace and......

Well, that was a grim Daily Californian homepage yesterday. The top six stories: pedestrian hit by car on Telegraph; Berkeley summer camp evacuated due to Tahoe fire, body found near the Berkeley Marina, beloved local activist hit by train, Cal student to be tried for killing David Halberstam, and memorials for the local murder-suicide family. On the bright side, the other article on the home page is that Cal basketball star DeVon Hardin has decided......

--Pride was fun! (Have you noticed we always have great weather for Pride?) [Chron, ABC 7, CBS 5.] --Who were the bloggers floating the Newsom coke rumors? We don't think it was us. [Chron.] --They're trying to apply the lessons from the Kim family search in looking for the Alameda County woman and her priest friend. [KTVU.] --Cal students getting hyphy. [Clog Blog.] --Don't try and fix the worst house in San Francisco yourself......

The graduation ceremony at San Francisco State University was the biggest (and therefore the best?), we've ever seen. Some 3500-odd purple-clad Gators (Gaters?) lunged for their sheepskins a few weeks back. Wow, we attended a lot of graduation ceremonies the past month. Like SFSU, City College, and the Academy of Art in S.F. but also Stanford and Cal. Who spoke at your commencement? Anyway, get on out there, graduates, and rock and roll with your......

La Vie En Rose (the Embarcadero) is a full course, all four food groups, soup and cocktails, dinner of a film. (It screened at the SFIFF, and we loved it then too!) And if you haven’t had your fill by the end of Olivier Dahan’s homage to the great Parisian icon Edith Piaf (breathtakingly portrayed by Marion Cotillard), you can always watch it again. The strongest cross-section of decadence and nutrition is the ATA’s Sunday......

Cal Performances' biennial Berkeley Edge Fest is dedicated to presenting works of contemporary music and performance. Starting this Thursday (June 7) and running through Sunday June 10 at Zellerbach Hall, the Edge Fest seems to be pushing an anti-Bush theme this year. Oh, they're just giving the people of Berkeley exactly what they want to hear! This year, the Edge Fest is featuring a musical theater piece by Paul Dresher called The Tyrant, based on......

--Are you into those Iowa Futures Market invisible-hand-of-the-marketplace economic-based ways of predicting political races? Usual Suspects has started one for the SF mayoral race. Gavin Newsom is pegged to win at $36.78. --The ACLU is going to sue a San Jose company for arranging those "rendition" flights for outsourcing torture. --Don Perata and his spendthrift ways win him a Golden Pig! --Midwifery in San Francisco suffers another blow. --Wow, the real estate market must......

It's a short Swells this week! Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 85. Number of people pictured whom we recognize: 2: Dede Wilsey and Frank Jordan. Minority count: 13 (15.3%). Includes three food servers. Getty v. Traina: 0-1. Where's Gavin this week? We know he loves a party! Museums featured in this week's column: 3: the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Legion of Honor, and the Cal Academy of......