The Cleveland Orchestra, in a press conference known as The Decision, announced that they were taking their talents away from the Midwest. Their goal in leaving Cleveland wasn't to win six, seven or eight titles. There is no world championship for orchestras, even though they'd be perennial contenders based on what we heard this week. The 94 year old Cleveland Orchestra only came in town to celebrate the SF Symphony 100th anniversary season, and just for two concerts Sunday and Monday night at Davies Symphony Hall. While Franz Welser-Möst's orchestra likes to get out on the road and take up residencies in New-York, Lucerne or, obviously, Miami, it isn't stabbing Cleveland in the back. And it does not falter in crunch time either: the Cleveland Orchestra has a marvelous, homogenous sound, and when the repertory turns to the romantic era, they can out-lush anybody. more ›

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• Londonist pondered who might be the next sponsors of the London Eye and whether or not readers would be willing to donate £1,000 each for a Londonist Eye.
• Shanghaiist was shocked to find a cameltoe in the city's only English-language paper.
• Gothamist believed that a writer who wanted pre-gentrified gritty New York and ended up getting beaten up during a mugging learned his lesson.

Here's todays sports news more ›

Perry Kucinich, the brother of Democratic Prez candidate Dennis Kucinich, has been found dead according CBS 5. His other brother, Larry, found 52-year-old Perry at his Cleveland home at around 9 a.m. this morning. Reports claims that there were "no signs of foul play." more ›

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Saturday is what is known around these here parts as "the Big Game," a kinda cute nickname for a game usually not of any importance to anyone other to us NorCal folks. This game, in particular, doesn't have much going for it as Stanford, with the exception of the 'SC upset, hasn't been very good and Cal has been more disappointing than Fred Thompson's candidacy. Nevertheless, the game is always pretty exciting and full of tradition-- all the things that makes college football what it is. more ›

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Poor Cal-- so close yet so far. Our theory about what happened is that the idea of Cal having the #1 ranked team in the country was so crazy that even in this year (decade, actually) of sports craziness, the God of Sports deemed that just too crazy and set the upset in motion. Of course, we're also looking at the Rockies in the World Series, so whadda we know? more ›

Serialized gem / siren song Tales of the City drew many folks to SF. Well, it brought us here, anyway. And the character of Mary Ann Singleton acted as a temporary stand-in until many of us arrived. To wit: more ›

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Ahhh, crap. During this week’s practice, 49er OLB Manny Lawson tore an ACL and will be out for the 2007 season. This is a mighty blow to the nascent Niner defense, who had been counting on the former first-round pick to lend his 6’5” frame and sprinter’s speed to the linebacking corps this year. more ›

It's time for American Football Spectacular's capsule reviews of the 2007 NFL Draft. Adventure, excitement,measureables! more ›

Now that the National Football League's 2007 schedule has been released, let the carpin' in Oakland begin. more ›

As a Vans salesman recently told us, "Yo, Sis, this is fresh!" Maybe so. more ›

If you were born after 1994 you have no idea what it's like. If you're a long-time fan, you might have a hazy, vague recollection of it. If you come from places like Los Angeles, Chicago, or Miami, you desperately miss it. We're talking a big game -- more specifically, a Warriors big game. An important game. A game that means something besides wrapping up a Lottery pick or nudging out Seattle or Memphis for the 11th overall spot in the Western Conference.

Tonight the Warriors play the Indiana Pacers in their biggest, most important game of this season or possibly the last 10 seasons. If the Dubs win, their slight hopes for the last playoff spot in the WC remain on life support; if they lose, consider the plug pulled on yet another failed season.

It's come to that point of the season -- make or break time. Backed up to the edge of seasons past, the Warriors find themselves heading off on a six-game East Coast road trip with a must-win mentality.

The right-coast swing, which includes two sets of back-to-backs and games against Indianapolis and playoff rival Minnesota, is the kind of mid-season road trip that has buried lesser Warriors teams of yesteryear. Like, say, lasteryear's team.

This year's squad hasn't fared particularly well on the road either, limping to a 4-15 record thus far. Warriors fans are a confident, if not resilient bunch though.

In the most angry game of this 2007 postseason, the ex-Baltimore Colts go to Baltimore to play the ex-Cleveland Browns Ravens. more ›

There's another plan being worked out to keep the Niners at bay near the bay and this plan is moving the locaton of the new stadium to Hunter's Point. Currently, the ill-fated plan is to have the new football stadium built pretty much right where the stadium is now. The benefits are plenty of land to be had and York won't have to worry about ugly construction being conducted near Candlestick. The disadvantages, well, we can't think of any right now but we'll get back to you when they're figured out. more ›

Is the sheen off the apple, or was this crappy episode just a one-time thing? Gosh, we hope it's just the latter, because we'd like for this to remain our favorite show. Why were we displeased this show? Guest judge Ming Tsai was kind of a schmuck.Marcel, who we hoped to continue loving to hate, seemed to take a pill. Oh, and the ridiculous "steal the crate of fruit" melodrama? Handled poorly by everyone. more ›

Isn't everyone glad the Bay Bridge is reopened? Well, maybe not BART -- they're reporting a 13% increase in ridership over Labor Day weekend, including 10,200 riders who used the overnight service. Despite that promising-sounding 10,200, BART continues to say that it makes no financial sense to run BART 24 hours all the time; they say that it costs $300,000 to run the trains overnight, and they only made $30,000 on overnight fares this weekend. (They're making up the $270,000 from Caltrans.) Hey BART, we have a thought -- maybe if you had 24 hour service all the time, more people would use it and it wouldn't just be this weird one-off thing for one solitary weekend? more ›

We are a little embarassed to admit that during high school Pink Floyd was our drug of choice. We actually didn't need to enhance the experience with anything else (we were way too jittery and naturally paranoid for pot), but a nice six a.m. bus ride in the pitch-dark cold Cleveland winter with Pink Floyd playing on a Walkman, well, that was pretty transcendent. So we were saddened to hear of Syd Barrett's passing. The oral legend around rock bands, and the 60s in general, is pretty overgrown, and separating fact from fiction can be, well, daunting, so we make no claims to the veracity of this next anecdote. But if you're trying to put into context just how unknown but influential Syd actually was, consider this. David Bowie admits that he was influenced by early Pink Floyd, and is said to have noted after David Gilmour replaced Syd in the band that, "When Syd left, there was no more Pink Floyd for me." That's right, the group that went on to incredible super-stardom and recorded an album that remained on Billboard's Top 100 chart for over 500 weeks didn't exist for Bowie once Barrett was no longer a part of it. more ›

Now that our long, national nightmare is over and Brett Favre has announced that he's both playing this season and maybe next season, it's time to check in with our Bay Area teams as both have made significant additions to their rosters over the past week or so. more ›

A couple of days ago, the Niners announced that they finally had their front office football guy and hired him. The new honcho: Lal Heneghan. Heneghan, 42, worked for seven years with the NFL and was vice president of football operations for the Cleveland Browns 2.0 from 1999-2004. Heneghan is supposedly a whiz at contract negotiations and the whacky world of the NFL salary cap, a job that has become one of the most important in the NFL. He will work directly under head coach Mike Nolan and VP of Player Personnel Scot McCloughan. more ›

SFist's award-winning sports desk continues on with their scintiliating discussion about the upcoming baseball season. Part 1 can be seen here

SFist Chris:On paper, in my opinion, the Junior Circuit is clearly the stronger league, so I'm looking for a team with a DH to win it all this year.

NBA fantasy leaguers, take a few deep breaths and start reshuffling your lineups. War-weep diehards, unpucker those bungholes and start looking for a silver lining. more ›

This week, the San Francisco symphony was performing an all Russian program which will definitely be one of the highlights of its upcoming trip to China. However, the trip was momentarily on hold, as the renegotiation of the musicians contract was proving unsatisfactory. They just reached an agreement this Monday morning, which they should sign and disclose very soon. The main sticking point: musicians want a pay package in the middle of the zone defined by the contracts of the seven top orchestras in the country (New York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, LA, and SF) while the current offer from management stands at the bottom. Both sides of the negotiation we talked to offered reasonable and careful statements, acknowledging that talks are ongoing and hoping for a quick resolution. more ›

SFGate Culture blog beat us to this story (damn, that Aidan Vazari), but the National Coalition for the Homeless recently put together a list of the meanest cities to the homeless and San Francisco came in eleventh. You know, the other night while we were walking the gauntlet on 16th between Mission & Valencia and trying to navigate between a passed out drunk lying in a pool of piss and a drunk couple yelling at each other at the top of the lungs, we were just thinking about how mean we were to the homeless. more ›

From the cultural legacies of black radio and French writers to physical theater and psychology, there's something for just about everyone in this week's offerings by Bay Area theaters. more ›

We've been looking forward to the opening of a Bay Area H&M like it's the damn Rapture or something, especially since it seems like they're everywhere else in the country already. more ›