With Gavin caught up in a tough re-election campaign against...ummm...well...huh.... he's started playing up his street people street cred. Recently, he announced a plan to deal with all the vagrants caught doing vagrant-like by sending out "Homeless Outreach Teams" to deal with it. The teams consist of police officers and social services and when they catch somebody doing something unpleasant, they're supposed to give them a choice between going into outreach services or being issued a citation, which as far as we can tell, is the handing out of giant frowny faces that will be put on a giant white board in the local police station. The program will be focused on targeted areas around Union Square and SOMA, read, tourist traps. Apparently, tourists don't appreciate seeing people defecate in the streets while riding the Cable Cars and eating soup in a sourdough roll-- kinda gives new meaning to the phrase "San Francisco Treat." Gavin has been putting putting some of these policies into effect lately but is now making a bigger deal out of it. ...

Last week's winner, the San Jose Metro: Gary Singh wants the San Jose flea market to move to City Hall. Folks moving from city to city to run for office -- hey, at least they actually move into the city they want to represent down in the South Bay. Ed Jew, take a note! Cover: yay the environment, reduce your carbon footprint by buying a Prius. There's a gymnastics meet on the Olympics circuit this......

Today marks the third anniversary of "Care Not Cash" and as a result, homelessness is having the Best Week Ever. In honor of the anniversary, Team Gavin has launched a full court press showing that despite appearances, things have improved. Question: what is the proof? Answer: according to Trent Roher, about 1,800 homeless people are now people formerly known as homeless. Those who go into the program mainly stay in the program. Of course, numbers can be spun all sorts of ways and there's been different interpretations of those numbers. ...

As we all know, Gavin is up for re-election this year (and why 2007? Aren't big elections supposed to be in even-numbered years? Is this one more "only in SF" type of thing?). So today's Examiner gets all up in Gavin's grill and checks him out. They recap his bout of recent bout of bad news, interview him (blue tie sighting!), and hand out report cards on his 2003 campaign promises. ...

It's our new occasional column, about the trials and tribulations facing Mayor Gav! So.... who's attacking Newsom now???? --...CBS 5!: KPIX aired a segment (video) detailing all of Newsom's recent woes. The clip includes an interview with Art Bruzzone about how Gavin's busy delegating everything to other people but doesn't actually know what's going on, a quizzical eye about Gavin's professed ambivalence about running for reelection, and footage of Gavin complaining about the excessive focus......

A hotel that's been set up as housing for homeless people is running into a problem-- there's no internet access. And yes, this is a big problem because as we all know, being internet-less can be a hindrance in life these days and the whole point of the program the people are in is to help them become less hindered. Having the internet helps one find a job, connect with other people, and get casual encounters. Hell, how can they even know what's going on in this city without the ability to check out SFist! ...

Where we summarize reports written by actual media sources because they're really important but we don't feel like we're in any position to be able to comment on them! The Chron revived its semi-regular profile of life on the streets with a three-part series (which concluded yesterday) about how things are looking for the San Francisco homeless population after the implementation of Newsom's Care Not Cash program. Answer: definitely at least some good, maybe part......

Well, we suppose he has every right to crow about it -- Gavin Newsom announced to a cheering crowd of social service providers and homeless people that the number of homeless people on welfare in SF has dropped 84% this year, and there's only 319 remaining on the homeless rolls. Of those people who left the homeless list (2,106 people), about 50% of them are now in newly-created housing. In other statistics, we've sent 887 people home on the SF "free one way bus ticket to anywhere!" program (42% of the 2,106 people who left the homeless list), we've built 1855 new housing units for the homeless and are projected to build another 632 by next April, and Newsom wants to build a 75-bed medical respite center to help people recover from physical illness, mental illness, or substance abuse. Also, Care Not Cash has been renamed "Housing First." Newsom did note that there's still some problems -- namely, that the $59 monthly stipend is too little to live on, but he hastened to add that the city's now providing free mental health services and food stamps to make up for it. The only critic quoted by the Chron noted that Care Not Cash Housing First was "robbing Peter to pay Paul" by helping homeless individuals at the expense of homeless families, but that point wasn't really followed up on in the article. The only critic quoted by the Examiner noted that police brutality towards homeless people has increased and more people are being cited for "camping." Are there any other issues on the con- side that aren't being covered, or is that really it? Picture from the CareNotCash.com website...

Gavin's number five! Gavin's number five! Mayor Newsom came in fifth in this year's World Mayor Awards -- a markedly better showing than last year, where "less than 1500 votes but strong international appeal." (That's a little awkward to have printed on a ribbon.) This year, Newsom was the highest-ranked US mayor, and came in behind Dora Bakoyannis of Athens, Greece; Hazel McCallion of Mississauga, Canada; Alvaro Arzu of Guatemala City; and Oscar Samson Rodriguez of San Fernando, Philippines. Bakoyannos was cited for her strong handling of the 2004 Olympics and her fight against terrorism. And Newsom....? Well, he got props for gay marriage and Care Not Cash. Um, didn't he do anything in 2005? (His profile does note that he broke up with the Kims this year). Check out the comments he got in support of his nomination too. ("As a San Franciscan, words cannot express the joy I have in knowing that Gavin Newsom is my Mayor.") No other -ist mayors made the top ten, but in the US, the mayors in Toronto, Chicago, DC, and Seattle made the finals, as did Shanghai, Paris, and London. Though we could always start Mississaugaist any day now! ...

Today, Gavin Newsom put a lid on places that sell lids and called for a moratorium on marijuana clubs. And we bet we're the only one's in the -ist family who'll ever have to write a story like this about their Mayor. What caused the moratorium is news that came out last week that a new marijuana club, the Holistic Center, had opened right below one of those Care Not Cash welfare hotels set up......

Oh, what the heck, one more time! Tongues are a-waggin' in town (and not just like that, you sick pervs) over the Gavin-x-Kim news and we're here to give you the latest gossip roundup. P.J. Corkery of the Ex reports that at "one grandee's party" (to which we were not invited?), he noticed that Gav Diddy and Kims were never seen in the same room at the same time, and someone had said, "well, they're not throwing daggers at each other." And apparently if Big G. had lost the mayor's race, he was going to move to New York and start a restaurant there. So really, it's Matt Gonzalez's fault for not running a better campaign! The KRON ran some man-on-the-Chestnut-Street interviews in the Marina the other day, where people concluded that they would be seeing more of Gavin at MatrixFillmore, "a known singles bar." (This does not appear to be online, more's the pity). We here at SFist are converging on the opinion that Gavin left Kim for Matt. But the best gossip so far is today's Bad Reporter -- who was so excited that he submitted a strip while on vacation -- hypothesizing that Gavin will be offering a "Care Not Cash" alimony package to Guilfoyle, and musing that "Gavin has a large rug to fill." He's also sponsoring a contest to have your face drawn in place of Kimberly's in a contest. We are so submitting a pic of SFist Jackson. Any gossip we're missing? Pass it along!...

…so we can accidentally hit people as we struggle to turn the pages while standing on BART! (sorry, neighbor.) Last week's cham-peen, the Guardian! Guess what the Guardian's worked up about? You'll never guess: PG&E! Also, an article providing a nice contrast to the Chron's unrelentingly pro-Newsom article series, about people falling through the cracks under Care Not Cash. Cover article: soldiers coming back from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder (well, sure). Annalee Newitz misses Joss Whedon. Sonic Reducer hated the new Lindsay Lohan album. Hooray For Anything got stuck directing traffic on Valencia this evening so no wank of the week. And to apologize for their absence over the past few weeks, the East Bay Express. Bottom Feeder gives some follow-up on the Stanford law student who became a prostitute and married one of the co-founders to Ask Jeeves.com. Apparently the law student was turned in to the IRS for tax evasion by Stone Cold Steve Austin's ex-girlfriend. A needle exchange group does one of those naked calendars to raise money. Is it just us or is that naked calendar thing getting kind of played out? People are getting botulism from a dirty batch of black tar heroin. Cover article: the dude who started dailykos.com (hey, did you hear there were a lot of bloggers covering the presidental election?). Places selling gingerbread houses, written up like real estate ads (FSBO). And hell yeah, a Jim Henson tribute band (the Dead Hensons) playing "upbeat hits" from Sesame Street, the Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, and the Dark Crystal. (All together! One two three four five, six seven eight nine ten, eleven tweeeeeeeelve! The band notes that the funky guitar part in that song is actually kind of hard to play). The Weekly and the pick of the week, after the jump (let's all say it together: sorry, no Metro this week.) ...

roundup of the Bay Area weeklies...

This morning, while paging leisurely to the ultimate goal of the funny pages, SFist nearly spit out its coffee all over the front page of the Datebook section. ......Whaaaaaaa? Who are these people? Why is our mayor lying like Matt Gonzalez? Did Newsom just wake up last week and think, you know, I don�t want anyone to take any of the policy work I�ve done seriously at all?...