Quiet little East Bay burg Castro Valley was scheduled to host their first ever Pride march tomorrow afternoon, but greater-than-anticipated interest in the event -- at least 300 (!) people have said they're coming on Facebook -- has pushed organizers to abandon the marching and move the event to the Castro Valley High School parking lot. They're now calling it the Rainbow Rally Across the Valley. more ›

Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III of Castro Valley, the aspiring GANGSTA URBAN HIP-HOP RAP artist known as "Syko Sam" who allegedly killed four people in a small Virginia town (including his wildly naive girlfriend), bludgeoned his victims to death. Why? Because ""Jesus told [Syko Sam] to do it." more ›

A man in a "dispute over a cellphone and a ring" got super angry in Castro Valley last night and ran his car into five people and a living room, and pinning a poor little Chihuahua under the car before fleeing on foot. No one, including the Chihuahua, was killed, but one person suffered a broken neck. Police caught up with the suspect at the BART station, and the 19-year-old suspect from Pittsburgh is now being held pending felony charges. more ›

Oh noes! Things are moving to the beat of a big bushfire over in Castro Valley. It seems, according to CBS 5, a fire is roaring "near the intersection of Crow Canyon and Norris Canyon Roads in Castro Valley." One home has already caught on fire, and others are threatened. Gulp. more ›

. Russo says he was distracted by his sons as they were driving away (in his hybrid -- of course!) from Fenton's Ice Creamery and forgot. This is a class act apology, though -- "There's no excuse. I should have been wearing my seat belt. I will not fail to wear my seat belt in the future." Russo also got dinged for having a crack in his windshield and for having an outdated address on his driver's license. Ironically, the cop that ticketed him had been involved in a city lawsuit for kicking a perp in the groin in 1998. more ›

A recent wave of immigration sweeps (or, as Indy Bay calls it "Gestapo Immigration Raiders") is creating a bit of a fuss not only in San Francisco but throughout the Peninsula and East Bay. There's talk of protests, organizing, sending out nasty press releases, and even the creation of new laws. In Redwood City, there's talk of creating an "Immigration Sanctuary" in San Mateo County and in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors will debate a resolution tomorrow condemning the sweeps. That'll show them. Hell, even Gavin's jumped into the fray with his very own press release tut-tutting the raids. All of this has brought the Minutemen into the action as they held a rally in Castro Valley to call for closing the border. It wasn't until a few days ago when we realized the Minutemen were named after our Revolutionary soldiers and not their sexual dysfunctions, although one could probably explain the other. more ›

-Coit Tower might be getting an Extreme Makeover. more ›

With Rita's blessing, we bring you a brand new column called "We Read the Glossies." It's just like "We Read the Weeklies" only with monthly glossies. Here we review the February issues of Diablo, San Francisco Magazine, San Jose Magazine, and 7x7. more ›

The story about Rex Farrance, the PC World editor shot to death in a home invasion robbery gets more complicated, as his 19-year-old son tells the media that the "drug trade" alluded to by the police was in fact a stash of licensed medicinal marijuana that the son was keeping at the father's house with the father's knowledge. Farrance's wife, who was pistol-whipped in the attack, strongly denies any drug dealing in the house -- and Farrance's stepdaughter said she thinks the family was targeted because her stepfather had guns in the house. Farrance was a fitness buff, and had been profiled in the Chron back in 2001. more ›

A flat fee for BART? -- And speaking of BART, a new BART stop is about to be built, the first one since the SFO extension in 2003. It'll be called the West Dublin/Pleasanton stop and will be built between the ten minute gap in stops between Dublin/Pleasanton and Castro Valley more ›

Your occasional roundup of protests around the Bay. Photoblogger Thomas Hawk passed along this gorgeous shot of ferry workers protesting the National Park Service's decision to launch a ferry service to Alcatraz with anti-union Hornblower Yachts. Go to the Indybay site and check out their pictures of the ferry drill team! Extra bonus: Frank Chu in the background. Two strikers outside Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley were injured in protests today -- one striker was pepper-sprayed and another struck by a car. The strikers claim that the injuries were caused by security workers, but the hospital claims that a cleaning woman trying to get to work was the pepper-sprayer (but say nothing about the getting hit by a car thing.) No one was injured enough to need to go to (presumably another) hospital, though. And SF children's advocates rallied outside City Hall yesterday, with suitcases as props, to protest how San Francisco pressures middle class families to move out. Only 14.5% of the city is under 18 (from 25% in 1960. Children make up 27% of the state), 62% of families leaving the city are poor or middle-class, and 64% of families leaving SF are families of color. Picture of the ferry workers by Thomas Hawk more ›

Watch out for that 16th hole -- it's a doozy! The sandtrap and rotating windmill take on a sinister tone now at San Jose's mini golf haven Golfland, as authorities discovers that the fun park was listed as a potential terror target on a list submitted to the Dept. of Homeland Security. Was it the skeeball that might have attracted jihadist attention? (And why wouldn't the Goflands in Castro Valley or Sunnyvale attract the same kind of Al Qaida attention?) Rep. Zoe Lofgren from San Jose is annoyed about this -- noting that while the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and certain check-cashing facilities in LA were included on the homeland security list, no one bothered to put down the area where all of the Internet's servers are stored (is that Cisco?). Homeland Security will not comment, but it sounds like someone's gone ahead and taken Golfland off the list. Golfland manager Bob Kenney is pleased, saying, "I just hope nobody was upset or scared away by us being on the list. I heard we were 17 on a list of 18 sites, in order of the terrorists' favorite targets. We're small potatoes. They'd probably rather go for the Winchester Mystery House.'' Picture of Golfland off Golfland's website more ›