The battle over Gavin's new staffing plans went up a notch in lieu of a report by Board of Supervisors Budget Analyst Harvey Rose that will be released today saying that Gavin is spending $959,903 in raises and taking that money out of departmental funds. The report was done at the behest of Jake McGoldrick after the first initial reports came out about Gavin going around City Hall and making it rain....

Rickie Lee Jones: Easy listening-ish jazz and pop/R&B songstress ("Chuck E.'s in Love") sings tonight at 8:30 p.m. at Cafe Du Nord; $30. SOLD OUTThe Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007): "An action western surrounding the private life and public exploits of America''s most notorious outlaw, Jesse James," starring pretty boys Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, and the best actress in the entire stratosphere, Mary-Louise Parker. Screens at 8 p.m.......

The South Bay gets it. California's High Speed Rail Authority picked the Pacheco Pass as the future route for the 200-mph train that will help you get from SF to LA in record time. According to SFGate, "without a vote, the authority accepted its staff's recommendation last month to run trains from the San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area over Pacheco Pass, east of Gilroy." Well then. After a four-hour meeting with Mayor......

-- Aimee Mann's Second Annual Christmas Show: Paul F. Tompkins, Sean Hayes, Chuck Prophet, and Morgan Murphy join the delightfully blond songstress for a night of holiday warm fuzzies. Because X-Mas is coming and there's no way around it, come catch this wonderful singer/songwriter during the, um, recording-a-holiday-album period of her career. Show starts at 8 p.m. at Bimbo's 365; $35.50. -- Margot at the Wedding: Fantastic movie. Just great. And whatever. It totally......

Pocket Gophers in Golden Gate Park ...

Care to avoid be ridiculed by your Thanksgiving hosts following your departure after din din? Good. Then pay attention. (For those of you who have T-Day hosts who regularly gulp Chuck Shaw or Yellowtail, ew, feel free to ignore this post. You're screwed anyway.) Here's what NOT to bring to Thanksgiving dinner: Cabernet Sauvignon (for the love of God, don't bring Cab) Merlot Petite Sirah Chardonnay (unless there is a crab dish) The varietals above......

Good news for students of the struggle of the proletariat: even if you don't have time to read Marx, there are alternatives. Like Paul Krugman, Harpers, Howard Zin, Noam Chomsky, the Guardian of London -- and even our very own home-grown SF Bay Guardian. This reading list is the result of a conversation that started innocently enough on the SFBG's blogs, in a post about homelessness in Golden Gate Park and, tangentially, the Spanish......

After last week's dueling press conferences and memo-leakage, the Homeless issue is becoming the Issue du Jour, leading to a full-fledged reporter dogpile. First came CW Nevius who weighed in with yet another story on the issue, this time saying that even in liberal, tolerant, San Francisco, residents might not be feeling so liberal and tolerant when it comes to dealing with the homeless. As evidence, he points to one of those online polls SFGate ran about the issue in which 90% of the people said they wanted something to be done. We, as a rule, hate those "polls" because it's actual scientific value is nil as it's all determined by people who were motivated enough to play along and doesn’t factor in those who were too lazy to. ...

After telling the public that he wanted his day in court as soon as possible -- similar to telling the public that he lived in SF, among other massive fibs -- Jew won a seven-week (!) delay for his trial start date. As always, whatever works best for you, Ed. District Attorney Kamala Harris opposed the delay, but Superior Court Judge Chuck Haines ruled that Jew's trial will start Oct. 26. That's more than......

Rosario Dawson: "Dude, I can't believe you're from Daly City." Sam Rockwell: "I know, right? I'm not supposed to be anywhere." ...

Rant Chuck Palahniuck will be at sponsored by Booksmith tonight around 7 pm, reading from and signing his latest book, Rant, about a serial killer who's weapon of choice is...rabies. Booksmith, Park Branch Library, 1833 Page St., SF. Garden of Deadly Delights Head over to the Conservatory of Flowers to feast your eyes on a greenhouse full of carnivorous plants! Chomp! opens today and runs through Nov 4. The Red Party A socialist themed......

Sorry for the delay in reading your alt-weeklies this week; there was a comical mixup in our attempts to implement the weekly switchoff between us and SFist Sarah L. We'll try again in a few weeks, and we also briefly considered just not doing something this week, and then we thought, Oh no -- what about the YTD count? Everyone in December will say "that only adds up to 51!". So here we are! Last......

>Theatrical Releases April 13th, 2007 Of the major releases, we think the most interesting is Mike White’s directorial debut: Year of the Dog. White continues with his tradition of dealing with sexual/social awkwardness (a la Chuck and Buck), humor about the bizarreness of development (Freaks and Geeks, School of Rock) and the conflict of “where we come from” (Orange County and Nacho Libre). It’s well put together and worth the time. This film proves itself to be one in a long career: White will certainly direct again. ...

Last week's winner, the San Jose Metro. Gary Singh infiltrates a ladies' drinking circle, while Chuck Reed goes drinking with the Merc News. Do note, Gavin Newsom, that Reed only drank two bottled waters the entire night. Cover article: Making Redwood City fun again (land use edition). Italian food in Los Gatos. Lemon trees in winter. Women chanters. A review of the Justin Timberlake show. And the Straight Dope: are the magnetic poles going to......

After reading the harrowing tale of the Kim family and how Mrs. Kim kept her children alive by breastfeeding them, we feel a bit blasé about all these fine food and cocktail party charitable events tonight. But since we are fortunate enough to not be in a life-or-death struggle for survival ... At the Rickshaw Stop (155 Fell between Van Ness & Franklin), Root Division presents Spectacle: A Cocktail Party and Visual Carnival, with......

Oh, where would we be without those local news I-Team reports? Probably stuck in a world full of scamming businesses, not enough labels on things, and bad tanning salons. Now we owe another round of thanks to an I-Team, the KGO one. Because thanks to their hard-hitting report, San Jose is going to undertake the task of cleaning up their libraries. ...

Now here's what we're talking about! This is what we call a motherquacking ghost tour. We, pointlessly clad in red fanny pack and Alcatraz t-shirt, blew our tourist cover because we kept running into friends and friends' roommates and waving, and paling noticeably, even in the dark, when the tour got a little too close to our house for comfort. Note: never do a ghost tour in your own neighborhood, unless you are prepared to walk past the same spot at least 3 or 4 times a day, thinking every single time: "Oh yeah, whatev, Charles Manson lived there. Across the street? Yeah, they have a little ghost girl that they buy dolls for. See, you can see them on the mantel. Not frickin' freaky at all. Oh no. What, you don't sleep with the light on too?" On a chilly Sunday night in front of Coffee to the People, we met our genial tour guide, Tommy, an honest-to-goodness ghost hunter, There were only two of us on the tour, but that didn't phase him. Us, a little at first, but we got over it. And most importantly, he had goodie bags for us. With candy, a book of the tour, and fun goodie bag stuff. Take notes, Chuck and Ingmar, take notes. ...

In one of those great, hedging your bets type headlines that the press so loves, there's a story going around entitled "Some fear California's bulky ballots may intimidate voters." Really? Do you think? We love reading hundred page tomes of arcane political and legislative arcana. ...

As part of its upcoming literary arts festival, Litquake is throwing a big and-- dare we say it-- bad Between the Bridges opening night to-do this Friday October 6 at 8 p.m. The rockin' fun will be at the Regency Center Grand Ballroom, 1290 Sutter Street (Van Ness at Sutter). And we've got two tickets to give away! ...

So, SFist Tourist has a bit of a confession: we went on the Chinatown Ghost Tour over a week ago and plumb forgot to write about it until we were watching Big Trouble in Little China last night. It could have been the misnomer in the name. Not that we thought a ghost would lead the tour, but you certainly don't go to a monster truck rally and not expect to see monster trucks.......

SFist Sarah L. tells us the latest in the East Bay! First, the quick and dirty: the Oakland Tribune reports: one dead, two injured, 3 alarm fire at a 6 story residential hotel in downtown Oakland early Friday morning . In the Berkeley Daily Planet, a new book alleges Oakland Mayor and Attorney General candidate, Jerry Brown, took money from the mob back in his gubernatorial days. Jerry's opponent, Chuck Poochigian (we're waiting on the......

It's been a while since we published a tech roundup. But the Internet turned 15 last Sunday, we got a new laptop from an entrepreneur and friend who'll be enabling this 'Fister's addiction to blogging, and SFist Chuck, whom we dearly miss, was kidnapped by Disney, who force him to Imagineer at gunpoint. All the while, you've been lost in the unmapped multiverse, wondering who Supr.c.ilio.us and TechCrunch are, and which is the hipper one......

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network. Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing)......

Let's see, here's a list of things in San Francisco you can't do: -Smoke (tobacco, that is). -Put left-over food in a Styrofoam container -Go shopping with plastic bags -Stop somebody from taking a dump on the street And now we can add another thing to the list-- no more "private dancing" in private booths at strip clubs. All of this thanks to the Commission on the Status of Women who went and gone did it and passed a bill banning private booths. The decision is now up to the Board of Supervisors who have the final say on this as we guess the Commission on the Status of Drunk, Horny Frat Boys were too hungover to weigh in on the subject. And if there's anything out there that deserves to be put on a ballot and voted on we say it's this. We mean, wouldn't the campaign commercials (usually probably airing at like 1 in the morning) be awesome? "Biff's buddies wanted to get him a special lap dance for his bachelor party, but thanks to a bunch of freedom-loving Feminazis, he was unable to. Because of them, he had to have his bachelor party at Chuck E. Cheese...." ...

Bay Blogger alum The Legal Reader's got quite a claim to fame now -- he helped capture Darren Mack, that guy in Reno who stabbed his wife, shot the family court judge that ruled against him, and then fled to Mexico. Dang, the Blotter does nothing. So an innocuous post of the Reader's from 2004, about George Bush's bad federal judicial nominees, somehow turned into one of the top places for people to post comments......

It warms our red hearts to see workers marching here at home and around the world on International Workers' Day, otherwise known as May Day. Protests and demonstrations happened from Berlin to Indonesia, and while most were peaceful, there were scuffles with authorities. Here in the United States, the marches were to protest changes to immigration laws, and coincided with many businesses shuttering their doors as immigrant workers walked off their jobs. Marches were......

Our secret boyfriend is breaking up with us! The Village Voice media juggernaut has just announced that our WRTW crush Rob Harvilla is taking over the New York flagship alt-paper's music editorship, replacing poor beleaguered Chuck Eddy at the helm. What will we do without the Cred Sheet or Down In Front? Who will we crush on in the alt-weekly music realm now? Todd Inoue of the SJ Metro, you're our only hope! Rubbing salt......

Phillyist notes a fistfight between local pols that leaves one man down for the count. Jehovah's Witnesses get a Philly contributor out of bed, things get a little geeky with a film festival and geeky gets taken to a whole new galaxy when they talk with the Dragon Queen of the Dark Kingdom. Shanghaiist gets all excited this week over a new nightclub in the city unfortunately named "Snatch" and Mike Tyson is scheduled to......

A battle has been raging behind the scenes at Wikipedia. No, it's not over copyrights or veracity or how well an article explains its premise. It's over whether or not the entry on San Francisco's Marina District should include an explanation of the term Marina Girl (and, by extension, Marina Guy). The main arguments for deletion is that it's a stereotype and that the content of the article is heavily biased against the Juicy Couture......

Last night we braved the blustery elements (man, do we miss that 70 degree weather!) to see our old friend from Austin Jeff Klein open for The Honorary Title, Koufax and Limbeck at Bottom of the Hill. Even though Jeff went on at 8pm sharp, which seemed awfully early to us, the venue was already packed with supportive kids decked out in their hoodies, bangs covering half their faces, Chuck Taylors planted firmly with the......