Was it something we said? First there was the dispiriting news about Clean Well-Lighted's sale, and now the Chron reports that the flagship Cody's Books on Telegraph is closing, after 43 years. NO!!! Andy Ross, who owns Cody's, says that the store has lost over $1 million/year trying to keep the store open and that they just can't support it anymore. Foot traffic is down, maybe because older readers don't like going to Telegraph Avenue,......

We can't take any more of this Bay Area independent bookstore stress -- first the Kepler's drama and now this? Venerated SF independent bookstore stalwart A Clean Well-Lighted Place For Books is on the market. Owner Neal Sofman says that it's been hard getting walk-in traffic at its Opera Plaza location and that sales have been steadily declining over the years. But what about that new Peet's that just opened next door? Surely that would......

Wednesday has 100 gmail invitations left! Tonight: Former SF firefighter Caroline Paul reads from her first novel, East Wind, Rain (about 1940s Hawaii), at Clean Well-Lighted. Paul wrote an acclaimed memoir of her time in the SFFD, called Fighting Fire, but what's also notable is that her identical twin sister is the actress Alexandra Paul from Baywatch. (Caroline is the Gay Twin in the picture to your right.) Thursday: We're never going to be done celebrating the 1906 quake! The Exploratorium and the SF Arts Commission are presenting a spoken word event with WritersCorp youth poets from Everett Middle School, who will read from their new collection Solid Ground, and create interactive poetry with the audience. 6-8 p.m., $13 adults, $10 students, $8 kids from 4-12. and Friday: It's not just Lotta's Fountain's centennial -- it's Samuel Beckett's too! Celebrate a century of cheerful Irish nihilism with the ACT and the Commonwealth Club as scholars discuss his work and then actors read some of Beckett's greatest hits. (Will Godot ever show up?) The big one-oh-oh kicks off at 5:30 at 415 Geary Street, and admission is free. ...

Saturday:We're hitting the San Francisco Peoples’ Organization “Auctions Off Downtown" event at 111 Minna. There'll be live music, film screenings, and the aforementioned auction with Matt Gonzalez taking the auctioneer's podium. This we've got to see! It all starts at 7:30. Sunday:We'll be at the SF MOMA's Wattis Theater for the 2 p.m. screening of local filmmaker Philip Lane's 55-minute documentary Working Title, a movie about "career, art, and identity in America". Monday: We're......

Nikki Richesin, the editor of the The May Queen, started compiling this book of essays on "the eve of the thirtieth birthday." Given that the tagline of the book is "Women on life, love, work, and pulling it all together in your 30s", that piece of data seemed ironic -- we're pretty sure we spent the eve of our thirtieth birthday watching "Knight Rider". Thanks for making us feel like even MORE of a screwup,......

Amanda Boyden, author of Pretty Little Dirty is going to be reading from her book at 7 p.m. at A Clean Well-Lighted Place tonight and City Lights tomorrow. Doesn't the idea of sitting in a cozy bookstore listening to bits of a punk-influenced story of friendship sound perfect on a day like today (yes, that WAS hail)? Even if you can't make it to one of these readings, Amanda's publishers want to give the......

It's a triple espresso shot in your Blotter/Trimeth latte -- the SFPD were called in this afternoon to the Starbucks on Van Ness and Bush after an employee found a homemade pipe bomb in the bathroom. The police cleared out everyone from the neighboring Ellis Brooks auto center, the Wayo sushi bar, and the apartments upstairs. The bomb squad took about 20-30 minutes to defuse the bomb, which was described as "a portion of a flashlight and a fuse." No one was injured, and the folks evacuated across the street said they didn't hear anything when the bomb was detonated. Traffic was rerouted for about an hour. Picture of the Van Ness/Bush Starbucks from the site Starbucks Everywhere...

Wednesday, you're doing a heck of a job! Tonight: Satisfy your craving for Germanic food and drink at Schroeder's, while also learning more about the development plans for Piers 27-31 with San Francisco for Democracy, a spinoff group from the 2004 Howard Dean campaign. The local Sierra Club and a rep for an anti-development citizens' group will speak; the corporation trying to develop the property cancelled at the last minute. Mmmm, sauerkraut. Thursday: Events listing fave Michelle Tea is at it again -- she's hosting a reading of underground and emerging writers in conjunction with the Gay and Lesbian Center at the Public Library. Authors Regie Cabico, Kaui Hemings, Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, and Horehound Stillpoint will be reading. 5-8 pm in the Latino/Hispanic Room at the Main Library. In the same area, Cindy Sheehan is reading too, at Clean Well-Lighted at 7 p.m. and Friday: The DeYoung Museum sponsors events on Friday nights! This week, Egyptian belly dancing performances! The dancers of the Al Masri Restaurant on Balboa and 42nd will perform a dance history of the raqs sharki dance from antiquity to today. 6:45 and 7:45, free with museum admission. The Egyptian Consul General will be present as well. ...

Big ups to SFist Eve for this week's Wednesdays post title! Wednesday: Get all in the Wednesday SFist Reads mood with a cavalcade of options: Barbara Ehrenreich at Clean Well-Lighted (7:00), a Dr. Atomic discussion at City Lights (7 p.m.), Caroline Kennedy at Grace Cathedral via Books Inc. (7:30, $25 tickets at Books Inc.), Terry Pratchett at Cody's on Telegraph (7:30), and Salman Rushdie at the Herbst Theater (8:00, buy tickets here). Thursday: our biggest local purveyors of hip classical music, the Kronos Quartet, kick off the first of two shows to support their new album of Bollywood standards at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The divine Asha Bhosle will be singing, and classical Chinese pipa-ist (that's the new Gothamist site, we know it!) Wu Man will play as well. Friday: You're going to our Webzine kickoff party, right? Right? SFist's hosting Webzine 2005's kickoff party at Cafe Du Nord, from 8-10 p.m.. Everyone's invited, even if you're not going to Webzine itself. Come by, check out our cool DJs, meet your favorite staffer, and see what SFist-themed toys we can scrounge up by then! (Contrary to rumors, we will not have a cardboard picture of Chris Daly for you to take pictures with. We will have Mrs. Chris Daly shirts for sale, though! Well, maybe we'll have them for sale. Hey, can we borrow your car to drive the Mrs. Chris Daly t-shirts over to Cafe Du Nord on Friday night?) Got an event you want to tell us about? Go right ahead!...

In case you missed our passing mention in yesterday's interview with Andrew Sean Greer, Picador, the publishers of such SFist faves as The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll and A Death in Brazil, is celebrating its 10th birthday with a series of readings across the country. Here in San Francisco, the reading is tomorrow at 7 PM at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, and features local writer Michael Chabon and new friend......

Who is that charming young man riding his scooter up Divis for the early-bird special at the Metro Cafe? It's Andrew Sean Greer, California Book Award winner for The Confessions of Max Tivoli, San Franciscan, and one of the featured readers at Picador's 10th Birthday Event (scroll down) at A Clean Well Lighted Place For Books, this Wednesday at 7 p.m. To kick things off, we have some copies of Max Tivoli to give......

Paula Kamen has a headache. We can say that with some assurance because she's had a headache for over a decade now. For most of us, the idea of suffering from a headache for more time than it takes for a couple of Advil to kick in sounds unbelievable, but after reading All in My Head, Kamen's book about her battle with chronic daily headache, (and dealing with some daily headache issues of our......

We need to come up with a new word to describe the tasteless, fabulous, trashy, glamorous style of the Tenderloin. It's not just a slummy neighborhood; it's a slummy neighborhood with a can-do spirit and discerning palette. And one of its heroines is Tenderloinish drag star Juanita More, who, along with three hot Moreboys and the adorable Mike Albo, performed for an adoring crowd at The LGBT Center on Tuesday night. The evening, the......

We've loved Wendy McClure almost as long as we've loved the internerd, from her appearances on the late, great Hissyfit site, to her recaps at what we now call Television Without Pity, to her personal site, Pound, to her column in Bust. When we heard she wrote a book we thought about hitting her up for a review copy, before we decided to go out and spend our own money on it, library-abusing cheapskate......

Special up-and-down-the-penninsula edition. For the waveriding set, Tribal Surf is putting on a tsunami benefit, "Elements" at the Blue Cube to benefit SurfAid. Surf photography by the legendary Bob Barbour and surf wear from local designers will be on sale, and you can pick up your blue SurfAid wristband to make a small donation and tell the world that you both carve cutbacks and care. Reception starts at six. At the half way point......