Step right up! Step right up! The Gavin Newsom San Francisco carnival is coming to town! SEE .... the horrors that abound in the San Francisco Housing Authority! GAWK..... at the desperate lives of people trying to get by in the sub-standard apartment units provided by the city! GASP..... at the pitiful amounts of money residents try to live on! And then.... open your wallets! Won't you help.... for the children? more ›

We sure had fun singing along to "Brown Sugar" with Mick Jagger last night. Singing along from our bedroom up on Bernal Hill, that is. Earlier in the evening while we were making dinner at home, we thought our neighbors were rocking some old school Metallica awfully loud, but we figured it was Sunday night, let them have their fun. When a friend from the other side of Bernal Hill called and asked if we could hear the music, we realized something bigger was going on. We leaned our head out of our 2nd floor window and realized Mick was serenading us from SBC Park -- four miles away. We could hear the "yeah, yeah, yeah - woo!" as distinctly as if it were being pumped from a stereo inside a house across the street (here's a terrible video of it from our digital camera). It could have been worse, at least it wasn't the Dave Matthews Band wafting across the city and up the hill to our window. But it would have been better to have been there. more ›

Of course, you could go out tonight or this weekend and catch some live music. Or you could stay home alone, muttering to yourself. For those who can't decide, here's some suggestions: more ›

We'd never lie to you, so let's just be upfront: this correspondent loathes the Dave Matthews Band. The insipid guitar solos, the faux-brohemian goatee -- why? why? Dear Lord, why? Frankly, we have no idea how Dave Matthews managed to raise a million dollars in his Golden Gate Park benefit show last September. Who are you, concert attendees? What makes you tick? What will you do to celebrate San Francisco's next Dave Matthews Day on September 12? Well, we can identify at least one fan -- look at that beaming head of gelled hair hangin' with the band! Gavin Newsom's gotta be pleased that the boys have agreed to donate 25% of their earnings from the Golden Gate Park concert to build a state-of-the-art playground in Hunters Point. (The article doesn't say what the remaining 75% will be spent on.) Kids, when polled, said they wanted a tetherball court, a climbing wall, and a jungle gym. No word if anyone requested port-a-potties. more ›

As a public service annoucement for our readers, we here at EssEffist would like to warn San Franciscans to be wary of KFOG Artist of the Month, the Dave Matthews Band when they come to town for a concert at Golden Gate Park Polo Grounds on September 12th. Why? Because as reported by our friends at Chicagoist, they are a public menace, and not just because of their power-pop, neo-folk, smooth-jazz balladeering. While driving across the Chicago River, their driver Stefan A. Wohl released over eight hundred pounds of human waste onto a group taking an architectural tour of Chicago by boat. We warn you because the DMB is around town all the time, and boy do we have lots of bridges. Many of their top albums were recorded accross the Golden Gate at The Plant Studios in Sausalito. After their date at Golden Gate Park they'll be heading east, over the Bay Bridge, to go on a tour of swing states as part of the MoveOn/America Coming Together tour. We recommend avoiding your ferry commute or kayak trip until they're safely out of town. more ›