Here at SFist, we have a general editorial policy of opposing everything; but we've looked, and there's just very little to dislike about "Family Appreciation Day." Except maybe the logo. Seriously, what font is that? It looks like something from a used car dealership. But aside from that, it's actually a pretty cool initative. Which is probably why Gavin's trying to take credit for it, as if he has now personally kissed every baby......

-- Coit Tower murals. Just loverly. [WhatImSeeing] -- Building workers unwittingly perform air acrobatics. [Curbed SF] -- Concerts at the Cadillac. [BeyondChron] -- Matt Smith on bloggin'. Awesome. [SF Weekly] -- Double-decker Muni all up in your bus stop. Soon. [N Judah Chronicles] -- Susan Leal gets laid... off. (Thank you! We're here all week.) [SFBG] -- Bernie Ward busted for research? [ABC7] -- Six-year-old metrosexual? Uh oh. So were we. Just saying is......

-Coit Tower might be getting an Extreme Makeover. -There were dueling immigration rallies in Castro Valley. -Straight people are moving more and more into the Castro-- there goes the neighborhood. -When squirrels attack. -Is the phrase "that's so gay" when said by a 15-year old girl so wrong? And is she being targeted because she's Mormon? -Foreign exchange student hit by a hit-and-run driver when he pulls over to work in his car. -Woman who......

For most of the day it looked like a total Cinderella story for unknown Jason Donald, but when the very last rider of the 2007 Tour of California (TOC) prologue crossed the finish line Sunday, it was Levi Leipheimer who had tears in his eyes.

A Credit Agricole rider suffers his way up the last 300 meters to the finish line atop Telegraph Hill. Photo from SF_Chris.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the national anthem, Jean-Marc Marino of team Credit Agricole rolled down the starting chute at 1:00 p.m. sharp and the prologue was on. In a time trial like Sunday's prologue, riders race alone and against the clock rather than against each other en masse. Following Marino, 144 more riders attacked the course at one-minute intervals for the next two hours.

Clip in sports fans, between the weather and the Amgen Tour of California (TOC), it's going to be a great weekend for cycling in the Bay Area.

Whether you're tackling Mt.Tam on your Saturday morning club ride or comparing yourselves to the pros with a summit of Stage 3's infamous Sierra Hill climb, pack the sunscreen today and leave the rain shell behind.

On Sunday at 1:00 p.m., the TOC starts with the prologue, a 3.0 kilometer time trial from the Ferry building to Coit Tower.

In yet another babysitting-related crime in the Bay Area, a woman in Richmond is in jail after she left a 2-year-old she was watching (along with an 8-month old) with her 11-year-old daughter while she went out to run some errands. The 11-year-old dropped the 2-year-old, who suffered a skull fracture and died. Other babysitter-related crimes of late include: the woman who let a baby she was watching get hit by a train, the nanny......

For 127 of the best road cyclists in the world, it was five minutes of pain. For Americans Levi Leipheimer, Bobby Julich, George Hincapie, and Floyd Landis, it was a little less. For the American cycling peloton, veteran cycling announcer Paul Sherwen called it the Holy Grail they've been seeking. For the spectators, it was an instant classic....

It's not exactly the Tour, but this weekend the Bay Area plays host to the opening stages of the 2006 Tour of California. This eight-day, 600-mile, multi-stage road race brings the excitement of international professional cycling back to the Bay Area....

The Women's Building auditorium on Sunday night was filled with IndieFesters cramming themselves into uncomfortable purple plastic seats and giggling about the naughtiness of the upcoming film. Us, we were just thrilled to see that the SFist.com logo wasn't too blurry on the list of sponsors. (does the Coit Tower part of the logo make it look like our site is called lsfist.com?) SFist is proud to present the documentary F*CK, a rollicking history......

Childless curmudgeons, gnash your teeth in anger over another way in which society prefers folks with kids over you! Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Dept. of Children, Youth, and Families are sponsoring Family Appreciation Day this Sunday, January 8. Various museums and other local attractions are flinging open the door and child-proofing all their power outlets at places like the Asian Art Museum, SBC Park (which will be sponsoring free tours), Coit Tower (who's going to let you take the elevator for free), the zoo, the Exploratorium, and about a bazillion other places too. Those of you who live for First Tuesdays, you may want to borrow your friends' kids for the afternoon -- and those of you who hate those ankle-biters, you might want to check the list too, to figure out where you won't be this weekend. Kids must be between 0 and 18, and adult supervisors must bring proof of San Francisco residency. The rules also state that grown-ups must accompany children at all times. We now have a vision of wailing abandoned toddlers in the front foyer of the Asian Art Museum as the adults dash off into the Chinese painting galleries! ...

No, Bill, no! That's not Coit Tower! It was a week of O'No O'Reilly in these parts, as everyone from Peskin to Daly to Newsom to Pelosi to our faithful readers chimed in. Why are we giving him any more publicity? But it's so hysterically funny! When we weren't storming over Coit Tower, we were storming into the new H&M. Or storming about the LOUDLOUDLOUD Rolling Stones show, babies, and the cancellation of Arrested......

You know, with all this Bill O'Reilly brouhaha, we totally realized that, as stalwart San Francisco residents, we'd never actually been to Coit Tower. In fact, we only know it as the leftmost icon in the SFist logo. Gotta go before it's gone! Like Daly said, Coit Tower was built on land donated to the city by Lillian Coit to commemorate SF firefighters (with whom she was a little obsessed). The Tower opened in 1933, and our government, flirting with socialism, decided to pay artists to paint public works of art in it. And now Bill O'Reilly wants it destroyed! Parking is always a nightmare on Telegraph Hill Road, so either schlep up on foot or take the #39 bus. The 39 only goes from Fisherman's Wharf to Coit Tower -- and it only runs every 20 minutes, but hey -- you paid for that FastPass, it's free to you! The Tower's open from 10 to 5; it's free to view the WPA murals on the first floor. It's $3 to take the elevator to the top, and you can only see the murals on the 2nd floor on the Sunday 11 a.m. tour. ...

The Oakland PD has arrested a man for the shooting of Antar Bey, the 20-year-old leader of a Black Muslim organization in Oakland. The police had been working to rule out any possible assassination attempts, in light of the fact that after the death of its founder and Antar Bey's father, Yusuf Bey, two other members of the Black Muslim group had been shot under mysterious circumstances in the last two years. The president and CEO of Your Black Muslim Bakery was found in a shallow grave in the Oakland hills in 2004, and Bey's adopted brother was wounded by a gunman outside his house just this June. Antar Bey's killing appears to be just a random carjacking, and unrelated to any political strife in the organization. Well, in lighter news, a guy in Blackhawk (near Danville) was driving along and thought he hit a deer. He pulled over to see what happened. No deer..... -- until a second car drove by, and hit the deer a second time. The deer went flying -- and hit the first driver. First man broke his ankle. Cops are still looking for the second driver. Deer was pronounced dead on the scene. And in the wake of the Yes on I vote in SF (disapproving of military recruiting in schools), Bill O'Reilly's called for terrorists to destroy Coit Tower. Why call for terrorists to do it when we can use budget cuts to do the same thing? Mayor Gav brushed it off, saying, "remember that guy wanted to have me arrested last year?" (for the gay marriages). And after the jump, a recap of all the blotter pictures since June. Previous updates here and here. ...

February is maybe the dreariest month, what with its being the dying days of winter and there being a dearth of sports on TV, but cheer up, San Franciscans, the Board of Supervisors has come to the rescue! A resolution passed this week proclaims Feb. 9th as "Wild Parrot Day" in honor of those colorful and loudly squawking birds that have made a home out of Telegraph Hill. "The wild parrots' great-hearted lunacy makes us laugh," reads the proclamation, although we like what one Telegraph Hill resident said about the birds: "I think, most profoundly, they're a daily reminder that San Francisco is still an oasis for exotics." This is actually the second "Wild Parrot Day" to occur, as there was a previous one in 1999 that SFist fondly remembers as a day when everyone dressed up in bright, beautiful colors and bar hopped tiki bars. ...

The ice is a little less shiny these days, with these reports that the Bay Area gold teeth market has come upon hard times...