Timecapsule: October 15, 1863 The first Cliff House opened its doors on this date 145 years ago. The brainchild of a real estate speculator and a State Senator, this first of umpteen incarnations was a simple white clapboard affair. Despite its external modesty, it was a high-class joint, and quickly became the most fashionable destination in town. Presidents Ulysses Grant and Rutherford B Hayes would number among its many distinguished guests over the years, but......

(...a rainy day, in SF town.) Heavens, no! You don't have to stay at home this weekend just because of a few pregnant storm clouds looming overhead. And you most certainly don't have to BART it to the Metreon, as most of us do during this kind weather, only to wind up staring down the barrel of some teenager's illegal firearm. 71Miles, a stellar travel site focused exclusively on regional travel, has some grand......

Man, we can tell how long we've been doing this by the number of Zagat posts we've amassed! The 2008 edition is out: your nice alphabetical list of restaurants with a grade for food, decor and service, as rated by the users of Zagat. This year, it is going 2.0, with the introduction of such spiffy new things as colors, as in two of them, black and red! Post-it "love it" tags to customize your......

There was a sewage spill on Ocean Beach last night. Wasn't Daniela Kirschenbaum just talking about this? A manhole cover blew out around 11 p.m., which allowed not only water but what we'll delicately call "SFSOS effluvia" to leak onto the beach. The affected area is about 150 feet of the beach, from the base of the Cliff House going west. There's a whooping cough outbreak at Palo Alto High -- one student managed to......

Two dear friends of SFist wrote in to let us know about local tsunami relief events. Your Waitress wants photobloggers and everyone else to know that HiMY SYeD, Toronto native and current Bay Area resident, is asking folks to organize neighborhood vigils on Sunday the 9th and Monday the 10th as part of the Global Vigil for the Global Village. Vigils are already planned for Toronto, New York, Karachi, London and Vancouver, as well......

Weekly wrap-up....

A San Francisco classic reborn....

Everyone wants to be a novelist!...

In this week’s Girl Interrupted Angelina Jolie department, a woman at a Los Gatos mental institution was shot in the stomach by the cops for attempting to stab another woman patient at the hospital. A man died after falling off the Ocean Beach cliff Sunday morning, a little bit south of the Cliff House. Rescue efforts were impeded by the early morning fog and the steepness of the slope. A criminal investigation has been opened.......