Offices in Capitol Hill received a manila envelope with a letter claiming responsibility for today's bombing of a landmark military recruiting station in Times Square, NYC. Our parent site, Gothamist, tells us that "WNBC reports that the letters, which arrived today, included a photo of the Army recruiting center 'before it was bombed and...the words 'We did it.'" Which group is claiming responsibility, exactly, remains to be known. According to the AP, Senator Dianne......

Undergoing a procedure to erase 30 years from its face, the Castro neighborhood is going retro, circa 1978, for the filming of Gus Van Sant's Harvey Milk biopic, Milk, which starts shooting this week. Already the Castro Theatre, right, and boutique shop Given, formerly Milk's camera store / campaign headquarters, are being renovated to get that '70s vibe. Rumor has it that Castro Street between 18th and 19th streets (i.e., the staphicenter) will be......

As of noon today, the District 4 seat formerly occupied by Ed Jew is now empty, and the Sunset has no representation on the Board of Supervisors. Quick, everyone, now's the time to put a toxic waste dump on 26th and Wawona! (We just like saying the word "Wawona" is all.) Former acting District 4 supervisor Carmen Chu is still trying to decide if she wants the seat through November or not, and while......

“I was shocked,” said Board of Supervisors Prez Aaron Peskin after being asked about Gavin Newsom's whereabouts this past weekend. Same here. Word is that Gavin was in Hawaii this past weekend, kicking in the sand and surf. Has senioritis kicked in already, Mayor? Not that you could've mopped up the oil singlehandedly, but still, you should have been here. We're a sensitive lot, us SF babies. Meanwhile Bevan was our acting mayor, and......

Well spun, Dianne. Looking to use the oil spill to get some much needed face time -- perfect for balancing out other less savory images of the Senator -- Dianne Feinstein flew to San Francisco yesterday to put her foot down about the Bay Area's "disturbing lack of readiness" to the oil spill. "It's pretty clear cities around the bay should have been brought in faster than they were," she said, according to the......

Local movie star, sometimes activist, and Tosca regular Sean Penn will play gay for pay in the long-incubated version of Randy Shilts' 1982 "The Mayor of Castro Street". (An amazing book for those of you who have yet to read it.) He'll play murdered San Francisco Supervisor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was shot and killed along with Mayor George Moscone by Supervisor Dan White. Perma-boy Matt Damon gets to play the......

Offside! Penalty -- three months. Any talk of the Niners moving from San Francisco down to Santa Clara is before the snap (did we get our convoluted football metaphor right? SFist Jon's out on vacation this week so we can't check), now that the City of Santa Clara's experienced yet more delays in completing the required feasibility study about how they're going to raise their $160 million share for the stadium. The study was supposed......

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly: What? MORE letters about Rainbow? Matt Smith threatens to derail Newsom's gubernatorial campaign if he doesn't do something about parking. Rape awareness campaigns in the Castro. Cover article: a man who went through the SF court program designed to assist the mentally ill homeless. Ha! We like the headline "Fresno? Fres Yes!" A locally-written musical about San Francisco life. This picture of the dancing Starbucks baristas is excellent. Meredith......

A public memorial is all set to honor Bill Walsh. It'll be held at Candlestick at 11 AM on August 10th and among the speakers will be Joe Montana and Eddie De Bartolo. A private ceremony will be held on August 9th at the Stanford Memorial Church. Speakers there will not only include Montana and DeBartolo, but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Dianne Feinstein. Rumored to attend are Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of State George Shultz who were friends of the Genius. Current owners of the 49ers, John and Denise York have also asked that the Governor declare a Bill Walsh Day. ...

Man, we were reading the Chron on the plane out of San Francisco on July 4 for vacation, balling our fists in frustration over missing the stories on Ed Jew's "part-time lover" response to the City Attorney's allegations AND the story about Aaron Peskin's zinger to Dianne Feinstein about her strange letter complaining about Chris Daly. No fair! (but thank you, SFist Jer, for covering it for us while we were gone!) Well, even......

Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 65. Total number of people pictured whom we recognize: 9 (including George Shultz, Dianne Feinstein's husband, and Spike Lee). Minority count: 6 (9.2%). Getty v. Traina: 2-2. Gavin holds down the fort for both points scored by Team Getty. Years between visits with Queen Elizabeth for Charlotte Maillard Shultz: 24. "She absolutely radiates like a queen," Ms. Maillard Shultz raves to Swells. Percentage of......

On Fark.com they have this thing where if anyone in the House or Senate introduces a silly little bill, the person who writes the headline will always say "with nothing else going on Senator Blah Blah Blah introduced a bill to blah blah blah." Chuckles all around. So what does this have to do with anything? Well, with all the other stuff going on, you know, like the war, Senator Dianne Feinstein yesterday introduced legislation into the Senate giving the NFL a limited anti-trust exemption and so making it so that no team could move without first getting permission from the NFL first. And if you were to guess that this was all in an attempt to keep you know who from moving to you know where, you would be correct. ...

While most of the 2006 elections are over, there's still a bit of a contention coming from, where else, Florida. In the Sarasota congressional race, a recount was held and 18,000 under votes were discovered. That meant those people voted for everything else but not for congress. This drew alarm bells from people because the percentage of under votes was higher than anywhere else. And, you'd have to figure that the one race people would vote on would be for congress instead of the school board or bond measures or a Sarasota style Question Time. Voters also complained that the machines garbled everything up and they never got a chance to vote. ...

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly. First, Dianne Feinstein came for the animal rights activists, and we said nothing. What are some of the election day losers doing now? Well, Krissy Keefer has been offered $100,000 to run against Gavin Newsom. Cover article: Chron blogs editor (and SFist editor emerita) Eve Batey must save the Chronicle!! (In a travesty of justice, Eve is not mentioned in the piece. Boooo!). It's actually a pretty decent article......

We missed you last week, Swells! Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 59. Total number of people pictured whom we recognize: 8 (including Tracy Chapman, Dianne Feinstein, and... hey! Welcome back, Charlotte Maillard Shultz!) Minority count: 3 (5%). Getty v. Traina: 3-1. Al Wilsey is counted as a Traina. Hats, capes, tiaras: 0, 0, 0. Stanlee Gatti count: 2. The number of square feet that Dianne Feinstein says former Petaluma......

--Sofia Milos is back in town. --Maria Shriver admires Gavin's partying skills. (And yes! He did have a pair of ceremonial scissors!) --Rob Anderson tells his side of the Matt Smith story about his lawyer and his bikes in SF plan. --The SFPartyParty notes the irony in Gavin Newsom donating his parking space to make a performance art park last week, when he keeps insisting on making an actual park into a parking space on......

Old skool's hot again, as the Quaker Oats folks who own Rice-A-Roni have decided to bring back the cable car and the "San Francisco treat" tagline in its ad campaigns. And what about that infernally-catchy song? "We haven't brought back the jingle, but we're talking about it,'' Rice-a-Roni's marketing director Monica Young told the Chron. It turns out Rice-A-Roni is actually a San Francisco treat -- the family of the guy who currently runs the......

Our own Dianne Feinstein continues to put her own stamp on Congress' annual "Seersucker Thursday" tribute to Southern style. Not since the last "Jeans Day" at their local Catholic High School has this country seen such a gang of folks giddy about a short-term change in dress expectations, and DiFi keeps the fun rolling with her gift of seersucker suits to her female colleagues in the senate. She (or more accurately, we suspect, her hapless......

Man, our office is by the Montgomery BART/MUNI stop and we didn't see this. Well, we did overoptimistically think we wouldn't need an umbrella today, so we were a little distracted by the rain to look for folks in orange jumpsuits blocking the street from about 8:15-8:45 a.m. That's right, it's time to protest Bush by tying up traffic again! Seventeen protestors were arrested for blocking an intersection and refusing to comply with police orders,......

One of the ways bloggers can leverage their collective influence is through a good, old-fashioned pile on. We don't have to necessarily break the story, but if a critical mass of bloggers start addressing it simultaneously, the s**tstorm will finally hit the mainstream. Just ask Dan Rather. The worldwide blogosphere was shocked -- shocked -- at the implications of a recent Chicago Sun-Times article. Turns out that armed with someone's phone number and a......

We asked some of our representatives last week about their feelings about the Terri Schiavo issue and the bill passed by Congress to allow her parents to sue. Guess what? No one got back to us, not even our favorite rep, Barbara Lee. Shame on you, unresponsive representatives....

We're a little late on this, but mazel tov to newly-affianced Mayor Jerry Brown of Oakland and his girlfriend of 15 years, Gap executive Anne Gust! (We apologize for using the picture of Jerry Brown with ex Linda Ronstadt, but Linda is apparently getting an invitation to the wedding so we figure it's all good.) Brown proposed on Gust's birthday two weeks ago, in their loft on Telegraph Avenue, after he cooked her a romantic dinner of BBQ chicken and peas. He was so excited he hadn't even bought a ring yet! Awwwwwww. It's a first wedding for them both. They're tentatively planning for a June 2005 wedding. Guess if you're the mayor, you don't have to worry so much about the year-long wait lists at popular Oaktown wedding spots like the rest of us. Sen. Dianne Feinstein will officiate (here's hoping she doesn't accidentally sell Brown and Gust out to the right wing in the process). And no registry -- all gifts should be sent to the Oakland School of the Arts. Cynics may say that this may have something to do with the fact that Jerry's planning on running for attorney general next year -- but we're choosing to see it solely as a move for love! Most importantly, though, Jerry! Are you going to go the route of all engaged bloggers and fill up your blogspot account with long accounts of trying on shoes and cake tastings and ofotos of fabric swatches? We can't wait! ...

The Schiavo bill passed without almost any input from Bay Area lawmakers. How did that happen?...

Nothing like senate confirmation hearings to get the partisan juices flowing. Kos reports that Senator Barbara Boxer would speak her mind [link via 1115] as part of Dr. Condoleeza Rice's confirmation as Secretary of State. Dr. Rice, former Provost at Stanford, and Boxer, the only Senator to request an investigation into voter disenfranchisement in Ohio, are two of Washington's most powerful women. While SFist would rather have seen this settled in a steel-cage match, the......

The National Geographic reported today that scientists now project that the Arctic may have melted completely by the end of this century, raising sea level globally by some 20 feet or so. The hardest hit, of course, would be coastline areas, especially major cities like ours that run right up to the water. We can't help but think that this is a nefarious plot by the GOP to make sure that the 2100 elections are......

Sort of touching on the previous post, our boy Gavin's not having the best week this week either. His tax increases lost (so MUNI fares may go up to $1.50, 300 city employees will be fired, and a homeless shelter will be closed -- you gotta kinda admire Newsom, he went on record and was like, "if you don't vote for tax increases, I'll shoot this dog," and now he's going to shoot the dog), his Board of Supervisors will continue to be divided, Bad Reporter continues to envelop him in a spoon-hug on the carpet, and now this? ...