God, sometimes we love Orange County. It's such a parody of itself at times, which we admire. Especially when it comes to brilliance like the following found over at Laughing Squid. You see, the city of Santa Ana (oy) wants to help parents determine, via the graphic above, whether or not their child is a rat bastard tagger. The city of Santa Ana's site explains their accusatory and unfair image, along with the final......

Monica Lewinsky's interest level in working for SF city government just went up a notch, as the SF Board of Supes overwhelmingly voted down Chris Daly's proposal to ban office affairs between supervisors and supervisees. (No, not affairs with supervisors like Chris Daly is a supervisor, affairs with supervisors like your boss. We could probably get a proposition on the ballot barring affairs between the San Francisco Supervisors and their constituents, though -- because, come......

Well, well, well. According to Alix Rosenthal (Citizens for Halloween), ahem: Word has arrived from a credible source in city government. The City has rented 120 toilets to be placed in the Castro by 5pm today. It may not prevent all of the public urination, but it is certainly better than no toilets at all. We are thrilled that the City made the right decision, even though they could have done more to decrease......

Since February, that's $670,381.39. It's been a busy month for lawyers: Muni's conceding $131,695.06 (about the cost of a bribe to Ted Stevens, or one foot of collapsed-bridge repairs, or a single union employee, or an English teacher in Seoul, or your very own hair salon) in settlements for August in nine separate cases. The biggest payout is $47,500 to a guy who broke his ankle when the bus lurched forward before he could......

-Officer shoots and kills a man for allegedly trying to rob a pizza place....

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 being reported that everyone's favorite whipping girl, Annemarie Conroy, has resigned as of this morning. Conroy was the Executive Director of Emergency Services but was recently demoted mainly for the sin of having no real experience doing anything emergency service related. After being demoted, the Board of Supes then pulled the financing for her recently created position. She was so popular that Aaron Peskin couldn't even say anything nice about her leaving; saying instead "there was no resignation. Her job was evaporated." Ouch. ...

When the Party-Party folks started agitating to Dump Dufty, we couldn't wait to see who'd step up to the plate. Who would dare run against a celebrated gay man in the gayest gay district of a city populated entirely by gay homosexual gays? Alix Rosenthal (pictured at right, hovering majestically above the treetops), that's who. Bevan, can you hover majestically? We didn't think so. Alix is an attorney and civil servant, known for her......

Remember that guy who totally hated on Tristan Bettencourt and posted a web site with all sorts of nasty rumors about him? Well, that's nothing compared to what's been put out on Rob Black, one of the candidates running against Chris Daly in District 6. You may think that Rob comes off as one of those aging hipster types who looks like Ted from "Queer Eye", a nice enough guy with an impressive resume of political involvement, but you would be wrong. See, according to the site, Meet Rob Black, Rob Black is actually some deep-undercover ops guy who single-handedly brought oppression, war, and dictatorships to several third world countries. ...

The possibility of booze free North Beach Fests (both neighborhood and jazz) came one step closer as San Francisco park and recreation commissioners voted yesterday to ban the selling of booze and liquor inside Washington Square Park. The organizers of the Jazz Fest will appeal the decision. ...

We love it when our commenters get involved! We were proud when we first noticed a commenter had gotten a letter to the editor published! One of our commenters (who never, ever, brings his B-game to work), we understand has an important role in city government somewhere ! But we've never, ever, ever had a commenter run for higher office before! That's right, faithful commenter and contest-enterer Anthony Faber has thrown his hat in the ring for the SF assessor-recorder's race! Dude, if we were giving away the assessor-recorder position in an SFist contest, antfaber would have a lock on it! So, as his campaign email triumphantly announces: WRITE IN ANTHONY FABER FOR ASSESSOR-RECORDER: HE IS NONE OF THE ABOVE. Run, antfaber, run! Run, antfaber, run! ...

So now that Laurie Beijan had her dream wedding at Flood Mansion uninterrupted by cries of "Tubular!" from outside -- what's going on with Jonny Moseley's ski jump plans now? The good folks of Pacific Heights called a public meeting yesterday, where some interesting things were said. On the one hand, there was the angry resident at Fillmore and Green, who says, "For my 30th birthday, I went to Mexico, got drunk, and learned how to surf. It didn't affect anyone." (Huh. Mexico.) On the other, there was the passionate Iranian immigrant who asked, "I can't help but wonder if there is a starving child in Africa or Taiwan who will watch this event and be drawn to San Francisco to make it their home." (Taiwan is actually doing OK on food these days, but thanks for asking). However, everyone agreed that no matter what happened, San Francisco is at least better than the rest of the country: "It is events like this that distinguish us from Kansas City, which is flat in every way," said one person, who said we had to have the jump so our city wouldn't be "boring." And all agreed that no matter what happened, it was probably the city government's fault as well. "This company went through San Francisco and got the proper permits. We should be angry at The City, not this company," said another resident. Icer is hoping to have the ski jump in Pac Heights still, on Sept. 29. ...

The concerns over The City's new franchise agreement with Comcast have been bubbling under the surface for a while now, but things are just starting to get nasty. Gerardo Sandoval, in a Bay Guardian editorial estimates that Comcast makes around $100 in revenue from subscriptions, and the current contract proposal would involve about $2.5 million a year to The City -- a $3.5 million lump sum, $5 million for public and government programming and......

Oy vey, we just got word from John over at the Legal Reader that there's yet another bomb scare in The City, this time at City Hall. Add it up with the bomb scares in the BART stations, and that makes, what, four in two weeks? Maybe somebody was late to a meeting and called it in, or just wanted to go home early. And if you tinfoil hat-wearers think it's more than a......

The criminal investigations into steroid use continue to widen, as San Francisco city government was rocked by word that Congressional subpoenas are on their way to the flaxseed oil factory of 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place. No one's talking on the record, but insiders have been discussing, with growing concern, not only Chris Daly's sudden rages, but also Aaron Peskin's new suspicious muscularity, Tom Ammiano's gravelly baritone, and .... could it be bacne? on the Mayor Gavin Newsomhimself. "Let's not look towards the past, but towards the future instead," said Ross Mirkarimi, his voice catching and a tear misting his eye....

Here in The City, hordes of anarchists are as mundane as hordes of shoppers at Union Square or crab-cracking tourists at Fisherman's Wharf. But in the rest of the country -- particularly over there on that other coast -- they're seen as a danger to everything that's good and right with America, even if they're just fun-loving kids with a taste for Emma Goldman. First, the Tenth Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair which Rona......

We don't mean to ALARM anyone ... but according to sketchy, unreliable camera-phone-based reports, there seems to be an IRISH FLAG being flown above the door of the capitol building. As per the Bloggers' Code of Ethics, we are honor-bound not to disseminate sheer speculation as to the implications of this strange turn of events; but it's pretty clear to us by now what's going on. Obviously, city government has been overtaken by a......

SFist ascended the steps to the gilded seat of city government for the first time today, as we desperately wanted to overpay for a tiny sandwich and miniature Pepsi at the City Hall Cafe. Kidding. We wanted to speak up at a public Government Audit and Oversight Committee meeting, where committee member and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi would be asking questions of the SFPD press department and asking the public for their thoughts on the......

By a 2-1 margin, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Finance Committee Ok-a-lee-do-keed a proposal to give one million dollars out of the San Francisco General Fund for tsunami relief. The two supervisors voting to spend the money were Chris Daly (who proposed the idea) and Tom Ammiano. Voting no was Supervisor Sean Elsbernd. Next step is a full vote in front of the board and then approval by the Mayor. Says Daly: "A donation......

At the beginning of the year, our earnest Boy Wonder of a Mayor said that in the spirit of sharing the pain of the inevitable budget cuts, he would cut his own salary 15% percent. The total amount of his cut? $25,000 -- taking his salary down from the $168,867 being Mayor pays. Sure living on a salary around $140,000 isn't that difficult. And sure it's easy to give up money when you're already rich.......