Oh good. Valentine's Day is just around the corner. And if the thought of next Thursday's approaching fillet mignon-for-two-free evening doesn't make you want to slice open an artery followed by nap-time in the bathtub, then how about not making Nob Hill Gazette's annual Lucky 13th Annual Eligible's List? (Yes, yes, you and your hipster S.O. are too cool to celebrate a Hallmark holiday, clearly, but what a privileged thing to decide not to......

We were thinking wistfully just the other day about Drew Altizer's excellent society photos, now that we no longer read the Sunday Styles section to show our support for the dearly-departed Catherine Bigelow -- so how excited were we when Drew sent us this latest round of A-list pictures he's taken! Joan Rivers and Bill Pullman are in town with their stage productions at the Magic Theater: The Joan Rivers Theater Project (a work......

Made famous to us plebeians not by the names littering the social registry and its many sad suck-ups (an aside: ahem, our rent is due soon, bitches), but by the much-missed former SF Weekly's "Dog Bites" columnist Laurel Wellman, Nob Hill Gazette just landed another beloved local writer, former Chronicle society scribe Catherine Bigelow. She starts today as the top-drawer publication's shiny new Deputy Editor & Society Columnist, working alongside longtime Editor Merla Zellerbach. An......

--Picture of a woman collecting bottles from people in the iPhone line by reader zombie. Thanks for sending them in, zombie! [ZombieTime.] --Four murders in San Francisco this weekend, 10 murders throughout the Bay Area. One guy was stabbed in the back at Columbus and Union (by Washington Square Park). [Chron.] --Spotted: Gavin Newsom and Jennifer Siebel on a dinner date at the Slanted Door last night. [from a reader!] --The Chron Sunday Styles......

Hey -- we're not doing our usual light-hearted romp through the Swells society column this weekend, because we've got sad news. The doyenne of Swells, Catherine Bigelow, announced in this week's column that she's been asked to take the Chron's "voluntary buyout package," so this is it for your mathematically-inclined socialite review. Best of luck to you, C.Big, and we know you'll end up on your feet, tripping the light fantastic, and we hope you'll......

Number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 67. Number of people pictured whom we recognize: 9 (including 3 pictures of Gavin Newsom and 2 pictures of Dede Wilsey). Minority count: 5 (7.5%). Getty v. Traina: 10-8 (There's a spread about the LA branch of the Gettys in this month's Harper's Bazaar). Number of choice quotes concerning Gavin Newsom: 2. One by Dede Wilsey (re the Healthy Saturdays negotiations): "I learned that Gavin......

Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 100. (It's all pictures and captions this week, with no dishy Catherine Bigelow text, we're sorry to report.) Total number of people pictured whom we recognize: 14 (including Vanessa Carlton and Stephan Jenkins, Joan Chen, and a Chron reporter we see from time to time when we go out for drinks with Eve). Minority count: 24 (24%). Hats, capes, tiaras: 2, 0 (but 5......

Greetings from the great beyond! We've just died and gone to blog heaven after this explosion of every single thing we're obsessed with over on the Chronicle's Culture Blog. RIP, us! Okay, so let's see, what do we have here... a 1) Catherine Bigelow-penned blog entry featuring 2) Britney Spears's bald head grafted onto the bodies of 3) local politicians and 4) Pac Heights celebutantes!! Over on our beloved former co-editor's new online adventure, with......

SFiS -- more than just SFist minus the T! We give the new glossy advertorial section of the Chronicle our patented By The Numbers treatment below. (Warning -- SFiS only appears in .pdf form so many, but not all, of the links featured here will require Adobe Acrobat.) Average cost of items promoted in SFiS (not including ads): $399.91. Number of Catherine Bigelow columns: 6. (new recaps of Gordon Getty's birthday party, the Red Tie......

Hip, hip, HOORAY! Hip, hip, HOORAY! Catherine Bigelow, the Chron society columnist, is back from vacation, and here with a special report on Wednesday night's SF Ballet Opening Gala! Number of people pictured: 24. Number of people pictured whom we recognize: 3 (the Shultzes and Jerry Yang, though we did also recognize Angelique Griepp's Oscar de la Renta dress from SFMike's blog). Minority count: 3 (12.5%). Getty v. Traina: Too bad Gavin's in Davos this......

Yeah, we know, we're stuck here at SFist fetishizing weirdo wonks like Gavin Newsom and Ross Mirkarimi because we don't have any actual celebrities in town that we can follow around and talk about. Well, it's not always true! Drew Altizer sends along some pictures he took at the GlobalGreen USA fundraiser benefit ("Gorgeous and Green: An Ecofabulous Party"), whose board has enough celebrities that they were willing to fly a couple of them up......

Total number of people pictured in the Chron's Symphony Opening Night article: 23. Number of people pictured whom we recognize: 6 (Gavin, Brittanie Mountz, Billy and Vanessa Getty, Yurie Pascarella (the hostess in last week's Swells) -- and an uncredited Catherine Bigelow!) Minority count: 4 (17%). Getty v. Traina: 5-2. Number of hats: 0. Years they've been having the Symphony Gala: 95. Stanlee Gatti count: 2. Number of chilly patrons in the tent: 740. Amount......

We stole modified this column idea from Gothamist for Catherine Bigelow's Swells, the Chron's page-long Sunday society column-- but why don't we have a lurid weddings section in the Chron like the NYT does? Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells: 51 (plus two pictures of groups). Number of pictured people whose names we recognize: 5. George and Charlotte Shultz; Gavin (in plastic glasses); Matthew Barney and Bjork (blurry). Minority count: 6. (12%;......

With the advent of this Internet thingamabob, newspapers are finding themselves in quite a world of Darwinian hurt. In short, adapt or die. Lately, the Chron has been adapting by having some of their most favored writers do blogs on the SFGate side. Not a bad idea really as we're sure the idea of paying $30 a year to read Jon Carroll's cat columns is not going to bring in the cash money. How they've been getting the writers to do it is a good question as we have a feeling not many of them were that psyched on the idea. We're thinking either by gun point or with long-lost incriminating photos. ...

Well, all right, we didn't get in the New York Times by name. But their slurpy Sunday Styles article about our glamorous gad-about-town mayor and his Scientologist/actress girlfriend did mention that "[b]logs in . . . San Francisco have fueled online chatter about the couple." (emphasis added). We're going to assume that's us! We'll take it! Rest of the article's all blah blah blah, is he in the pocket of Scientology, what about the North Beach building issue, Sofia Milos describing Gavin as "perfect" (what says perfect like a sagging murder solve rate?) , and one gem: an item noting that at a party last weekend, Gavin "took over the bongos for 45 minutes." Nothing says "so totally not annoying after 2-3 minutes" like bongo drums! Check out Catherine Bigelow's pictures of the party in Swells -- or just enjoy the mayor's previous bongo excursion, above. Gavin on the drums by 1115...

SFist has lived in San Francisco for a long time and has been to our fair share of parties. We've been to hoity toity parties, arty parties, everyone tripping their balls off parties, and your plain-old beer bong parties. Yet in all of our partying, all of our barhopping, all of our being out and about, we have yet to have our photo taken in some paper's society section. Hell, we've never even been......

For some reason, SFist hasn’t gotten the invite in the mail yet for the big Masked Ball that marks the opening of San Francisco’s Ballet Season but we couldn’t be more super-psyched. This year marks the 72nd season of the ballet and the 20th under Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. According to Sylvia Rubin, the Chron’s fashion editor, the announcement of the Masked Ball "has sent everyone around town scurrying for something to cover their faces.”......