At around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday near the intersection of Brookdale Avenue and Santos Street, near the Cow Palace, two young folks, ages 15 and 19, were robbed on a Muni bus. According to BCN (via SF Appeal), "The two teens...were on the bus when the suspect approached and took an iPod from the 15-year-old," which is when the suspect, described as being a man in his 20s, exited the bus. The two women followed the suspect, with the eldest trying to call the police, until "the suspect grabbed her phone and then ran away." more ›

Before Cirque du Soleil's Quidam opens tonight at the Cow Palace, this acrobat (?) defies gravity during a taut routine. Kudos to you, sir. more ›

You'll recall how State Assemblywoman Fiona Ma was looking to define what a "rave" was so that she could write a bill that would ban raves from occurring on public property? Well, now she sounds like she's backing off a bit, saying she won't move forward with the Anti-Raves Act of 2011, a.k.a. AB 74, until she has some "stakeholder meetings" with various interested parties. "I don't believe anyone wants the tragedies that occurred this year to continue happening. The stakeholder meetings will be inclusive and I commit to not moving AB 74 until meeting and hearing from all perspectives," said Ma in a statement. "This issue is complicated. We have to find a way to protect young people without compromising everyone's legitimate rights to enjoy themselves in a safe environment." more ›

The State assemblywoman, whose district includes the Daly City home of the Cow Palace, has introduced legislation to ban those all-night bamp-bamp dance parties from public land across the state. Unsurprisingly, it's called the Anti-Raves Act of 2011 and it seeks to ban any "public event at night that includes prerecorded music and lasts more than three and one-half hours.". more ›

As expected, Cow Palace in Daly City will no longer host "music and dance parties" after a slew of booze and drug overdoses at parties there. While the Cow Palace board "voted unanimously on Tuesday in favor of a moratorium on the events according to AP (via KTVU) it didn't specify any length of time. Which is to say, they could very well host more glow-stick dance parties in the near future. more ›

In further party-casualty news from this past weekend, sixteen people were taken to the hospital after apparent drug overdoses during another Cow Palace dance music fest on Friday night. Two remained in critical condition as of yesterday. more ›

Trung Nguyen, 25, died on Sunday at Washington Hospital in Fremont, making him the second fatality after Memorial Day weekend's infamous Cow Palace rave. Nguyen was a graduate of Overfelt High School and UC Davis graduate. more ›

Though toxicology reports are still two weeks off, the San Mateo County Times wants to be the first to shout it from the rooftops that last weekend's post-Cow Palace, drug-related death and multiple hospitalizations were the result of an overdose, not of tainted drugs. The journalist in question writes that Anthony Mata "took a fatal dose either before or during the POP 2010 The Dream festival," but nowhere in the article do they or doctors say what this might have been a fatal dose of. more ›

Apparently, raves are still going strong, as 20,000 people attended the "POP 2010: The Dream" party on Saturday night at Cow Palace. more ›

The International Cannabis & Hemp Expo comes to the Cow Palace for the first time on April 17th and 18th, featuring a multitude of booths to educate you as to the wonders of marijuana and hemp products, as well as a performance by a band called LoveRat. more ›

We'll 'fess up. We haven't been to the Cow Palace since the 2005 Tattoo Expo. With that said, we're a bit torn with how to feel about the possibility of the Cow Palace being demolished. With such historical events as the Beatles playing there and John F. Kennedy speaking to the masses about starting the Peace Corp, on that hand alone, we'd hate to see this place go. more ›

The motorcycling-riding Johnny Knoxville of his time, minus any homoerotic subtext, Evel Knievel died today at the wonderful age of 69. He passed away after years of suffering from "diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs." Which? Good for him -- in that he wasn't taken down by his daredevil-laced stuntsmanship. He even survived a run-in with the Hell's Angels. (Aside: why do the Hell's Angels act like such... more ›

We received a few messages this morning of sleeplessness regarding last night's Oracle Open World finale. Even the enchanting Stevie Nick's couldn't keep SF residents from calling the cops to ask what the hell was going on. more ›

You think Hallwoeen on the Castro is a nightmare of douche-baggie proportions? Try the Oracle Open World 2007 convention, which is happening this Sunday, November 11 through Thursday, November 15. And it sucks for us plebeians. Imagine nerds and sales tools infused with a false sense of power. (Except for any Oracle SFist reader; you're all golden.) Imagine nasty Oracle PR bitches who hangup on local media outlets trying to get a modicum of... more ›

We could've gone with a YouTube clip of the video for Love Is A Battlefield (totally one of the best videos ever), but we went instead for the Benatards doing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" at the Eagle Tavern -- that's right, Pat Benatar's playing a show tonight! If you can get up to the Marin County Fair in San Rafael, Ms. Benatar and her husband Neil Girardo will be performing hits like "Heartbreaker," "Invincible," and "We Belong," among many others starting at 7:30 tonight. Concert is free with fair admission ($13), at 10 Avenue of the Flags. more ›

Special Friday Night Lights edition more ›

Twenty-three thousand nine hundred seventeen dollars and eighy-three cents -- but let's just round it up to a solid $24,000. That's how much the MTA (Muni's parent agency) is going to be allotting to pay off this month's round of settlements. Collecting Muni money in February are State Farm Insurance, Nikita and Vivienne Johnson, and Tokuko Yamagishi. The Johnsons' case is dramatic -- they claim that back in 2004, a driver on the 9 line refused to let off a 17-year-old kid at his regular stop, and forced him to disembark near the Cow Palace around midnight, where he was set upon and beaten by "street thugs." You can view the complaint here, but look out -- it's in TIFF format, for some ridiculous municipal reason. Muni doesn't offer an explanation in court documents (and technically, it's the City/County of SF that was sued, not Muni) but they'll be drawing a warrant against $9,000 to pay that particular claim. more ›

We weren't sure what to expect when entering the Dickens Fair for the first time this past Sunday. We (as in the contributor of this story) had never even heard of this curious event until just a couple of weeks ago. When we eagerly checked out their web site, we learned that it's been around since the '70s and was started by Red Barn Productions and the Patterson Family, the people who ran the Renaissance Pleasure Faire at Black Point in Marin before it closed. Wikipedia also informed us that San Francisco's fair is "the oldest, largest, and most successful of the modern Dickens festivals outside of England." more ›

Yes, we went to the Crossroads of the West Gun Show at the Cow Palace this weekend. Why? Aren't we supposed to be virulently anti-gun? Shouldn't we hate not just guns but people who like guns? Well, maybe. But we actually thought going was a no-brainer. After all, we live in a city in which watching somebody leading another person in their bondage slave gear is considered normal but a guy in pickup truck with "Vegetarian is an Indian Word For Lazy" isn't and there's a lot more of the later than the former in this country. We like checking out things that we don't normally get to check out and a gun show definitely fits into that category. Let's put it another way, any event that has to go out of it's way to make everyone aware that paraphernalia glorifying Nazism isn't allowed has to be seen to be believed. more ›

Saturday: We're wiping down our vinyl dress for the San Francisco Fetish Ball. Running March 16 through 19, get your chips, dips, chains, and whips on at a variety on venues all weekend. more ›

You can bet your ear plugs we'll be tuning in to "American Idol" tonight as the show continues with its seemingly endless episodes of auditions, because San Francisco is their next stop! more ›

If we're done talking about Drew Barrymore's braless appearance at the Golden Globes last night, let's move on and see what TV has in store for us this evening. more ›

We were walking through the Cow Palace the other day -- that giant warehouse-ish building, way south of the Mission, where they have rodeos and exhibitions and stuff -- when who should walk past us but a tall man with an ivy wreath on his head, luxuriant flowing white hair, and majestic robes. He was holding by the arm a small, whimpering man in a dressing gown, and he was saying something like, "look, Ebeneezer, at all these holiday revelers," or whatever. more ›

Four unrelated shootings in San Francisco over the long Labor Day weekend -- one at 24th and Alabama, one at Turk and Laguna, one at Harrison and 1st, and one in Visitacion Valley near the Cow Palace. Two victims are dead, two are in the hospital. PG&E announced that it figured out why that generator blew the other week underneath the Ralph Lauren store -- water leaked into the transformer, which caused an electrical short, which then blew up oil in the chamber used for insulation. Who uses oil for insulation? (Okay, engineers, enlighten us.) In other news, another transformer blew up on Market Street due to a failed cable splice, there was a power outage near UCSF when a tree blew into some power lines, and another outage in the Outer Mission when a car drove into a pole. And celebrating Labor Day the old-school way, 61 union members were arrested outside the Grand Hyatt at a sit-in over the year-long hotel strike. The union organizers have agreed to end the boycott against the Westin St. Francis because the WSF management has agreed to support several of the union's key demands. more ›

People, what are you doing sitting around reading this site when local auditions for "American Idol" are being held TOMORROW?! According to the show's official site, the lining-up process began this morning at 6 a.m. If you haven't received your official "American Idol" lining-up bracelet yet, we're sure there's still time. And this is part we couldn't believe: Parking is FREE! Hell, just going there, parking, and witnessing the sheer humanity is probably worth calling in sick to work. more ›

While we can think of about fifty places in the Mish to practice your Downward Dog without even trying, it's nice to find places where we can practice our favorite set of postitions without looking like we were stranded by our dates in the Cow Palace parking lot after Exotic Erotic. Since none of those Yoga Tree joints will let us practice our California Roll and the Metereon threw us out after our last Popcorn Bucket, we have to look a little further afield, like, at those places where people are to have sex in public -- sex clubs. more ›

When we heard that the Golden Gloves were moving back up to San Francisco from the Cow Palace, we were all "sure, that sounds cool", but we didn't really get how awesome it was until we set foot in the Civic Center Friday night. Right away, we want to take our hats off to the entire organization for taking what was, as we said earlier, basically a friends and family event and making it into some fantastic sports entertainment. more ›

">class gyms and fighters in the Bay Area, SFist has always wondered why the San Francisco Golden Gloves has evolved into more of a fighter friends and family event than a fan-oriented competition, as it was when established in 1931. In years past we've witnessed the Gloves from the bleachers of the Cow Palace, where remnants of hay and manure from last week's rodeo made us feel more like we were at Fight Night at the State Fair than at San Francisco's oldest sports franchise. more ›

roundup of the Bay Area weeklies more ›

We had two new weekly features debut this week - the Trimethyldioxypurist will be bringing you slightly jittery thoughts on the local coffee culture and the independently owned establishments that make it happen every Monday. If you want to know what weird songs are turning up on SFist's collective shuffle setting, check out SFist listens on Wednesdays. We'll also be chronicling the efforts of a NaNoWriMo novelist for the rest of the month - find out what it's like to write an entire novel in a month, or "What Danielle Steele does once a year for parking permit money." more ›