Whether you like it or not, SoCal is a part of us. So, this one is going out to our lower half: stay safe, San Diego and SoCal. Fueled by disgusting, freakishly warm Santa Ana winds, coastal and inland areas are on fire. La Gov declared a state of emergency last night for San Diego and seven surrounding counties. Work and school has been canceled; people evacuated. Ugh. In a rare state of concern, we......

Hey, remember that Grand Jury that was out there looking into the whole BALCO mess? And remember how supposedly the Grand Jury dropped that issue and instead started investigating Barry B? Well, according to the New York Daily News, the Grand Jury got themselves six more months to look at the case against Barry and that supposedly they have a pretty good case against him. The source in the story say that the Grand Jury has enough to go after Barry but wants at least six more months to make the case go from pretty strong to dead-to-rights strong. They are also afraid of making it look too political in handing down the indictment right around the time Barry is on the verge of breaking the big record. ...

--We're up to 130 Galaxies now. [picture from the Fillmore Jazz Fest this weekend by megac0rp, from the SFist Flickr stream.] --Huge fire on University Avenue in Palo Alto; officials suspect arson. [Merc News, Palo Alto Daily News.] --A drag Loretta Lynn? Awesome! [Civic Center.] --Building housing over the main Caltrain station. [The Examiner.] --The return of the N-Judah to Mission Bay seems to have worked okay. [Chron, N Judah Chronicles.] --31 layoffs at......

SFist Jon's away for the weekend, so we're subbing in for the weekend daily news roundups! --Isn't anyone going to run against Gavin Newsom? It's like San Francisco has decided to punish Gavin for his sexual/alcohol indiscretions by forcing him to be mayor for four more years. --The ABC 7 news team reviews all the news they've covered in addition to Newsom Meltdown 2007. --Groups A, B, and C will be lining up at......

From the Usual Suspects, we found a link to a story about Doughgate (we like that one) in the Yale Daily News. As you might as well imagine, it's a big story over there. Anyways, it’s an interesting read as it gives you an idea how it's seen over there in Ivy League Land. Among other things, they have no idea about all the inside San Francisco stuff, like the high schools involved or who the people who hosted the party were. To them it's just a straight forward assault and battery....

The New York Daily News is reporting that Barry Bonds tested positive last year for taking amphetamines. As part of the recent steroid testing measure MLB took up last year, amphetamines were banned. What makes the story even worse for the Barry is that according to reports, he immediately blamed somebody else, mainly teammate Mark Sweeney and said whatever it was he tested positive for was something he got when he ate something from Sweeney's locker. ...

The good folks who bring local political junkies our daily news updates and analysis at The Usual Suspects are all affiliated with a political lobbying/consulting group known as Barbary Coast Consulting. So you know when you see the bright green headline on Usual Suspects that says "Supes Question Giving Contract To Lobbying Firm" and the note in bold from Usual Suspects publisher Alex Clemens that says "We think everyone who reads Suspects should be aware......

Careful readers of our daily news summary Day Around The Bay may have noticed that the Golden Gate Restaurant Association has filed a lawsuit against Gavin Newsom and Tom Ammiano's proposed citywide health insurance plan. How can people who support the health care plan show their outrage? Well, never let it be said that the progressives in town don't come up with some entertaining protest ideas! So get your top hat and/or velvet bonnet, warm......

Our new daily news roundup column! Someone gave Amy Lee (the acting head of the Dept. of Building Inspection, not the lead singer of Evanescence) a dishwasher. Boo hoo, people who bought condos by the ballpark think they're too small. The company providing free wifi in the South Bay is better than what Google's promising SF. There were a lot of tourists in the area this summer. They're building a J-Pop culture center in J-Town,......

Now, we should take this all with a grain of salt and maybe a few more grains after that and possibly some pepper for good measure, but according to the always credible NY Daily News, an indictment could come next week against the Barry. Or more like it could possibly, maybe, you never know, why not? come soon. The main reason for the thinking is that the grand jury's term is about to expire in a few weeks and usually, whoever is trying to get some sort of indictment thingy tries to get it before the grand jury expires. You wouldn't want to have to go through the whole rigmarole of working a court case all over again would you? ...

Bravely risking horrifying pregnancy and/or breast-feeding remarks from multinymous Commenter Matt/Brunhilda/Saul, we'll report that the Guilfency nuptials may be of the shotgun variety, as Kim's five months pregnant with a son! According to Page Six, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Eric Villency actually got engaged "at the end of last year, but (Kim) kept it secret until her divorce from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom became final." We'd given up on trying to find a registry......

The three forms of water, in your daily news! Solid: Authorities continue to be baffled about a huge piece of ice that fell from the sky over Oakland, landing in Bushrod Park by Shattuck. No one was hurt, and authorities have confirmed that it's not the dreaded "blue ice" that falls from the septic tanks of airplane lavatories. Apparently ice does just randomly fall from the sky every now and then. (Thanks to SFist Tiffany for passing this along!) Liquid: That's not the kind of splashdown they like to see at McCovey Cove! The authorities dredged out a body from the little inlet behind AT&T Park yesterday afternoon. They think it's the body of a man who was fleeing the cops after being reported robbing offices at the UCSF Mission Bay campus. If you have any information, call UCSF officer Ed Huang at (415) 476-1414. Gas: The third entry is always the hardest. Um.... K-FOG (get it?) rival station 106.9 Free FM just fired talk radio DJ John London after he issued a death threat on Penn Jillette. London says he was upset that Jillette called Mother Teresa slutty (we're paraphrasing) and a fraud, but that his $7000 fatwa was made sarcastically. Only $7000 to kill Penn Jillette? ...

Spring is a time for love. The flowers bloom, the sun shines, and the little creatures copulate. Today brings us not one, but two reports from New York about the Gavster's ex, Kim-Kim. First, from the Post, which we'll just quote because, well, they're evil and they require registration now: Court TV's Kimberly Guilfoyle — who moved here in January after filing for divorce from her workaholic husband, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom —......

This week's adoptable pet (he'll be featured on SFist all week long on the right side of the site, below the ads) comes to us from Grateful Dogs Rescue. Any shelter or resuce worker will tell you that here in the Bay Area we have very serious issues with abandoned or unwanted pit bulls with no behavorial issues whatsoever. Unlike the Palo Alto Daily News, we believe that responsible guardianship and training of these......

The New York Daily News is reporting that Major League Baseball is investigating Barry Bonds and looking into his various troubles. Dude has 99 problems and, yes, a, umm, "woman" is one. Let's see, there's possible income tax evasion, possible perjury, and the whole steroid thing. And then there's the latest problem- the surgeon who performed Barry's latest knee surgery, a Dr. Albert Ting, has been reprimanded twice by the California State Medical Board and......

As football fades and a weary Bay Area turns to that moment when pitchers and catchers report, yet another reminder of baseball’s little steroid problem bobbed to the surface over the weekend as the publisher for Jose Canceco’s supposed tell-all book leaked some juicy little bits of gossip to the press. Canseco’s book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big, will be released on February 21, and the bits of gossip were in this Sunday’s New York Daily News. In the book, Canseco claims that he was sort of like the Pied Piper of steroids, turning on all his teamates to the wonders of synthetic drugs; so much so, he was called “the Chemist.” He claims to have personally injected Mark McGwire in the ass in a bathroom stall when both were rookies and sat around another men’s room stall watching McGwire inject steroid poster boy Jason Giambi in the ass another year. Canseco also claims to have introduced steroids to Texas Rangers’ stars Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez, and Rafael Palmerio when he was with the Rangers, an act which he claims was well-known by then-Rangers owner George W. Bush. And yes, it’s the same George W. we all know and love as our President. The very same President who famously called for a ban on steroids in a State of the Union speech....