In what must have been the six most shit-laced months of his life, Manuel Mollinedo, the executive director of the San Francisco Zoo, has resigned. Ever since Tatiana the tiger went for Carlos Sousa's jugular last Christmas, and made minor Bay Area celebrities out of the bumbling brothers Dahliwal, the San Francisco Zoo has faced "high zoo employee turnover" and "abysmal morale." Tanya McVeigh Peterson, a zoo society board lawyer will serve as interim......

Carlos Sousa Jr.'s autopsy report has just been released to the public. According to ABC 7's Dan Noyes, the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office's report details the massive (and pretty graphic) injures Sousa suffered from Tatiana the tiger on Christmas Day 2007 at the San Francisco Zoo after a tiger escaped from her grotto. The report confirms the cause of death: “Blunt force injuries of the head and neck (predatory cat bite(s)).” The evidence......

Let's not think about that mauling incident or the possibility that one or both of the Dhaliwal brothers pissed into the tiger grotto, prompting the Christmas Day attacks. No, instead let's think about the bundle of joy born at the Zoo this past weekend: a little giraffe, right. Sure, it was yesterday's news, but the adorable image was just released, and the story wouldn't have been complete without it. All together now: aw. Also,......

A 245-pound Sumatra tiger in Hawaii was found wandering the grounds of the Honolulu Zoo on Thursday morning. it seems she "wandered out of her cage" during closing hours. According to AP (via the Merc): A startled female volunteer reported the escape after the tiger brushed past her. The volunteer quickly retreated and secured a second gate that kept the tiger from going into a public area. It took zoo workers several minutes to......

As many of you know, Bernie Ward, former Catholic priest and KGO 810 AM host, was fired from his job after the Feds hit him with charges of child pornography. Although he used the Pete Townsend defense that he was merely doing a little kiddie porn research, that doesn't seem to be the case. Dan Noyes, who takes on the difficult task of having to do an investigatory report on a former colleague, says......

Glorious, isn't it? Raising the walls of the grotto 16.4 feet, in order to meet the minimum guidelines of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the first phase of improving the SF Zoo's four big-cat grottos is complete. The tweaks were needed, as most of you know by now, after Siberian tiger Tatiana escaped and killed Carlos Sousa Jr. during the now infamous Christmas Day tiger attacks. The second phase of the project, according to......

Due to the "unusual and extraordinary" Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo -- which resulted in the mauling death of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. and wounding of Paul and Kulbir Dhaliwal -- a three-member tiger team formed by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums has been called in to examine the zoo's big cat grotto. While the investigation and renovations are underway, the tigers and lions are currently kicking it indoors.......

According to today's Examiner, Tatiana will not, in fact, be honored with a gravestone complete old Sicilian widows throwing themselves onto her coffin. Instead, her "body parts will be probed and preserved while the rest, including the tiger’s coat, have already been incinerated. It’s just what happens to all zoo animals after they die." ...

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According to police reports Paul Dhaliwal admitted to "standing atop a railing of the big cat enclosure and yelling and waving at the animal that would later maul them," killing Carlos Sousa Jr. on Christmas Day at the SF Zoo. The trio, it seems, were also hopped up on mary jane and expensive vodka. Toxicology reports turned up numbers indicating that Paul was especially wasted during the attack. His blood alcohol level was 0.16......

In the battle to see who's going down and who gets what and how much in court, new "evidence" suggests that possibly, maybe, perhaps Tatiana the tiger was provoked. It seems that said proof is in the form of a footprint and blood found inside the tiger enclosure at the SF Zoo. According to the kids down at KCBS: ...a significant amount of blood was found on an exhibit sign inside the tiger enclosure,......

At the bargain price of just $35 dollars down at City Hall this morning, authorities released the emergency 911 tapes of the San Francisco Zoo tiger attacks. The attacks, if you don't remember, occurred on Christmas Day, taking the life of Carlos Sousa Jr. and injuring the now (in)famous Dhaliwal brothers. The footage is raw, with the most unnerving robotic British female voice overlapping the frantic phone call, but to check listen to the......

Delay, delay, dealy in the deadly tiger case...

Today Gavin Newsom announced that "a series of public hearings on the fatal Christmas Day tiger attack" that resulted in the killing of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. will start as soon as this Friday. After these hearings, the Recreation and Parks Department Commission will "make a set of recommendations to improve the agreement that allows a nonprofit to run the public zoo." Or something like that. Although it's an attempt to appease the mayor......

What's on the cell phones of those who survived the recent tiger attack? ...

While not on par with Christmas Day tsunamis, this storm is pretty nifty, huh? Golden Gate transit buses have stopped, power has been knocked out to hundreds -- yes, hundreds! - of thousands of people, and surely snow is falling really hard atop a mountain somewhere. But what must actually suck is this morning's nightmare traffic caused by the raindrops falling on our heads. Ahem: Marin/Contra Costa County: E-580, Richmond-San Rafael Bridge closed due......

Damn. Ing. An eyewitness has stepped forward, giving her account of what she supposedly saw on Christmas Day at the SF Zoo. Jennifer Miller, who visited the now infamous park with her husband and two small children, tells the Chronicle what she claims to have seen, just before the Tatiana mauled Carlos Sousa Jr. to death and injured Paul Dhaliwal and Kulbir Dhaliwal. "The boys, especially the older one, were roaring at them. He......

SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others. Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list. Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island. LAist received a Christmas present in the form of a drunk Santa Claus in a g-string. Bostonist launched......

Compared to the same time last year, this week BART saw a 20% jump in riders traveling to SFO during the Christmas week. How was this done? Well, according to reports, the dramatic increase was partly due to a "Kids Ride Free" promotion, which exposed itself to an unsuspecting public on 12/22. (Thankfully, we missed this promotion by one day. Lucky us. But tell us, was there an inordinate amount of little people on......

Less than a week after the fatal tiger mauling at the SF Zoo, much of the news that has (slowly) unraveled from the Christmas Day tiger attacks has been disheartening. From the downplayed info about the too-short tiger pen fence, conflicting evidence that the three boys taunted the Siberian tiger just before the attack, and that emergency protocol wasn't followed by SF Zoo employees, there are more chin-scratching facts to add to the list.......

Uh oh. According to the cats over at the Chron, an "18-page 'Emergency Procedures' manual, written in 2006, spells out what zookeepers, guards and even the receptionist in the main office are supposed to do if a 'Siberian tiger is out of its enclosure' or any other dangerous animal escapes." (It's always the receptionist's fault, isn't it? The fall guys of the modern world, really.) Basically, such emergency procedures as a "Code One" call,......

Not only was Tatiana a gorgeous, majestic, and endangered creature. It seems that she had a special talent for sniffing out liars, too. It has been revealed that the uncooperative, tiger-mauled Dhaliwal brothers received a phone call from Carlos Sousa Sr. on Christmas Day when Carlos Jr. failed to show up for Christmas dinner. The father asked if they knew where his son was and was he with them? The brothers lied, saying that the......

Just like the headline says, folks. The SF Zoo will stay shut tomorrow, Thursday, December 27. (And we promise you some tiger-free news shortly. We've run this so far into the ground, it's in China by now.) Getting all-cappy on us, SF Zoo's site shouts out: THE ZOO IS CLOSED THURSDAY, 12/27, OUT OF RESPECT FOR THE VICTIMS OF TUESDAY'S INCIDENTS, AND WHILE A PUBLIC INVESTIGATION CONTINUES. WE ANTICIPATE THAT THE ZOO WILL BE......

Update: The murdered teen has been identified as Carlos Sousa, Jr. As the investigation continues into Christmas Day's gruesome tiger attack at the SF Zoo, it turns out that the guy killed by Tatiana the tiger was a 17-year-old boy from San Jose. Unidentified at this point, and currently stuck with the moniker "John Doe 116," it seems that he also knew the tiger's two other victims, 19- and 23-year-old brothers from San Jose. The......

Oakland Interfaith Gospel Ensemble: This awe-inspiring gospel ensemble from "the other side of the Bay," noted for its "interfaith, multi-racial, and multi-cultural" makeup -- will get you in the mood. The Christmas-y mood, that is. And if you can't handle all of the holiday joy abounding, there are plenty of bars around the neighborhood where you can get your joy on, booze-wise. The singing starts at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. at Slim's; $15.Midnight......

This doggy is ready for Christmas. ...

Meet Joe Alioto Veronese...

-- Unsilent Night: New York-based composer Phil Kline’s holiday concert creates "an outdoor ambient music piece for an infinite number of boomboxes. It’s like a Christmas caroling party except that [you] don’t sing, but rather carry the music, each [member] playing a separate track that is a "voice" in the piece. In effect, we become a city-block-long sound system" So ... there you have it. Tapes and CDs will be handed out to participants.......

We saw this house the other day while running in Noe Valley, so it seemed appropriate to go back today and snap a photo. The decorations are on a scaffold next to the house, and that's a working model train down near the bottom. If you want to check it out, it's on 21st, up the hill a bit from Church Street.......

Back in October, we featured Josh Groban in our holiday section of New Tunes Tuesday. We suggested that it would be "perfectly Grobanized - gorgeous string accompaniments, long high notes, huge endings, orchestral arrangements, different languages and of course several collaborations..." It seems that everyone needed to be Grobanized this Christmas season especially after Oprah Winfrey's suggestion that Noel is "the one Christmas CD every family should have." Since then, Josh Groban's Noel has......