Back in 2003, a friend of SFist found a discarded typewritten letter on the ground in SF’s Financial District, which reads as if Danielle Steele typed it up and tossed it out her Pac Heights window. The very Bay Area-esque diatribe is full of twists and turns.

The original manifesto, which was found outside 560 Davis Street near the Embarcadero, consists of one single painstakingly typed wall of text directed at “Tim” from an unnamed management company. It repeatedly mentions employees named Tina and Allen, along with a “neurotic” named Ernestine and someone named Able, who’s a bit of a gloater. Amidst the vitriol, the letter takes a grim turn as the author mentions an incident involving a victim of sex trafficking, from which they say the management company profited.

Whether it was written in the ‘90s, 2000s, or today, such a letter is sadly timeless in San Francisco. So, grab your popcorn.

Yes, Tim, we know where you live, and we intend to publish your address and telephone number. Wait until the tenants know where to call you and where you live. The thought of people ringing your door bell truly delights us. When Ernestine [redacted] and some of the other neurotics know where to contact you, you will be in trouble. We are doing everything in our power to alert the federal authorities and we want nothing more than to see you in jail. Greed has made you stupid, and when the time comes for the court trial, Allen, Tina and those other rats working there will throw you to the wolves.

We have a contact that gives us all the information we need. How did we know about Stephanie? How did we know where you live? How do you think the Examiner knew? The rock you hide under has become a very public place. We wait, we watch, we plan and we will ruin you. We want to see you in jail. Is that clear, you bastard?

Install your cameras, have your guards watching, hire more detectives and bring in more consultants to conduct encounter groups, your efforts are a constant source of joy and amusement — we are laughing at you. We knew about the cameras in the town house and laundry room. You cannot hide from us and neither can those pack of Hyenas you have working for you. When you fall, Able will probably have a gala party.

Do you have any idea how much the people you do business with hate you and your staff? Hopefully, this will be your last chance to cheat and rob your tenants. You are truly the most despicable people we have known. We wish you and that pack of animals that work for you nothing but ruin and disaster. We hope someone in your family has the same experience as the prostitute that was beaten up. Allen can tell them that being beaten is just a natural part of life in the big city. Did he really say that? Only an animal like you would allow that kind of statement to be made.

The woman who was beaten was only twenty years old. She was smuggled into this country and sold as a sex slave and you profited from her misery. Do you truly understand what you have done? Do you truly understand how much you are hated? Do you truly understand how much Tina and Allen are hated? How can any person work for you and those other two despicable people?

Top image: Cannell Entertainment/Fandom

A San Francisco resident and marathon runner, Cal Calamia, is getting into it with the organizers of the New York City Marathon.

Calamia, who's a non-binary, trans-masculine runner living in San Francisco, won the non-binary race category at last year's famous New York City Marathon. But despite the win, Calamia discovered they were ineligible for the $5,000 prize money that accompanied the prestigious title, per KRON4.

The New York City Marathon became the first major marathon to offer prize money to non-binary runners in 2022. However, after competing and securing the first-place medal, Calamia never received the $5,000 prize money. They reached out to the New York Road Runners (NYRR), the marathon organizers, who said there was a rule that hadn't been followed: runners were supposed to compete in six NYRR races in the year leading up to the New York City Marathon. That stipulation had quietly posted on the marathon's website three months after their registration, according to KRON4.

Calamia said they never saw it, and couldn't have complied if they did. That "would obviously require me to live in NYC,” Calamia told KRON4. “I can't fly out there six times to go do races, so I was really surprised by this being added and really disappointed.”

Then, NYRR issued a statement in response: "Cal was not eligible for the NYRR member division, non-binary prize money as they did not complete the six fully scored races required. The prize money and eligibility requirements for the non-binary category were published on our website at the same time as all the other categories, six months before the race."

As Outsports reported, NYRR also got defensive and said that it has "supported Cal on multiple fronts for nearly a half a year in their fight for inclusion — including assisting them with acquiring pro-bono legal representation in their successful therapeutic use exemption battle. We are saddened by their inaccurate portrayal of this matter." (Calamia had to petition the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to make sure they could compete while on masculinizing hormone therapy, per Outsports.)

Calamia was reportedly unsatisfied with the response and wanted more accountability. ”They didn't say, 'hey, it was our mistake, we should have communicated better,'" Calamia reportedly recounted.

The $5,000 prize instead was awarded to the second-place runner in the non-binary category who fulfilled the six-race requirement.

The good news is, the SF Marathon is coming up over the summer, and it has a non-binary category as well. Hopefully all of the rules are posted well in advance.

Feature image of NYC marathon via Getty Images/Terraxplorer.

"Remember those modern art style desserts?" SFist wondered in April 2015 when we learned that MOMA had not renewed its contract with the coffee shop Blue Bottle. "What will become of them!?"

You know the sweets: In particular, the above Mondrian cake. Well, at long last, that question has been (in part)answered by a recent food piece in the Chronicle. According to the Blue Bottle pastry chef who invented them, they're back in the museum while she's on the sidelines, having been stolen in a "direct rip-off." If the accusation is to be believed, it might be seen as a strange but nonetheless real indictment of the museum's commitment to intellectual property.

Being rejected from the new MOMA clearly irked Blue Bottle pastry chef Caitlin Freeman, who wrote the 2013 cookbook Modern Art Desserts to celebrate and share her previous work at the museum. Freeman's husband, James Freeman, is Blue Bottle's founder. The couple says they paid about $20,000 on renderings and tasting menus to woo the MOMA contract.

But after finally visiting the new space and seeing cakes reminiscent of her own, the pastry chef says she's not just insulted, but injured. The caterers at Cafe 5, the fifth floor restaurant in the newly reopened SFMOMA, are making their own artistic cakes, though notably not the Mondrian item, on the same museum floor where Blue Bottle opened in 2009.

“It’s so tacky and so gross," Freeman tells the Chronicle, "but there’s kind of nothing I can do about it,”

The company McCalls Catering runs Cafe 5, and the new “art-inspired cakes" include a banana peanut butter cake named after Warhol’s “Triple Elvis” and a layer cake that takes its name and (some of its appearance) from Ellsworth Kelly’s “Gaza.”

Blue Bottle didn't have those cakes, specifically. While the Mondrian was the best known, there were also layer cakes in the style of artists like a Thiebaud and Diebenkorn. Nevertheless, Freeman says she is so offended that “It makes me not want to go back to the museum" but that she might anyway, because "it's so beautiful."

Complicating all of this is the fact that Corey Lee, the three-Michelin-star chef, is opening a restaurant basically dedicated to cooking the dishes popular at other restaurants while citing them and giving them credit. Of that spot, which has yet to open, he says he's “thinking of it as a food exhibition." Since Freeman hasn't gotten McCalls or MOMA to budge, at least yet, maybe she ought to talk to Lee about getting her name on his dessert menu.

Related: 3-Michelin-Star Chef Corey Lee's SFMOMA Restaurant To Serve Copies Of Famous Dishes

This, dear readers, is not a review. Rather, it is an exhortation: Go see Z Space's new comedy by playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb starring the arrestingly funny Danny Scheie. Titled A House Tour of the Infamous Porter Family Mansion with Tour Guide Weston Ludlow Londonderry, the 90-minute piece is an alternatively gut-bustingly hilarious and intensely poignant dive into what it means to not quite fit in.

Modeled on famous house tours (think Winchester Mystery House), the show takes place throughout Z Space's cavernous, repurposed industrial space. When you go, don't expect to sit still — the tour guide and sole performer, Danny Scheie, pushes and pulls and directs you through a series of rooms and hallways (and one bathroom) as he recalls the story of the couple that built the eponymous Porter mansion.

Scheie is no stranger to Bay Area theatergoers, who will recall his performances in 2009's A Midsummer Night's Dream at CalShakes and last year's One Man, Two Guvnors at Berkeley Rep. Trained as a Shakespearean actor (he used to run Shakespeare Santa Cruz), his delivery makes the wonderfully layered text of House Tour pop.

The play was developed at Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor incubator for new work, and had its opening last night.

As I saw a packed preview performance last week, I cannot technically offer a formal review of the show. However, unless the play's writing, acting, directing, set design, lighting, and sound all of the sudden went terribly south, I can comfortably and emphatically say that you should go see this extraordinarily bizarre, lewd, and endearing piece of theater.

House Tour runs through April 23, and tickets are available on Z Space's website. Oh, and, without giving anything away, it's not exactly appropriate for children. Below, a brief, wordless, video preview.

Related: SFist Reviews: A Midsummer Night's Dream at CalShakes
SFist Reviews: One Man, Two Guvnors at Berkeley Rep

Seeing as how San Francisco Pride sits in a state of confusion and flux (look no further than the Chelsea Manning SNAFU and the brutal Pink Saturday attacks to see how far the influential organization has distanced itself from the city of San Francisco), we've asked Patrick Connors (noted Tweeter and SFist commenter) to give you the lowdown on the brouhaha that is SF Pride. On Sunday, their annual meeting was held at the W Hotel where, among other things, a new board was to be selected. The night did not go according to plan.

Take it away, Connors:

The SF Pride Annual Meeting held on Sunday, September 15 at the W Hotel was a real hootenanny. The day began with the spirit of unity, with some forced smiles, and the usual dose of chaotic planning.

Seriously, if nothing else, the SF Pride Board needs to have someone on staff that knows how to plan an event. Registration was a delayed, disorganized, clusterfuck that pushed the start of the meeting well past the designated time (2 PM).

All fourteen candidates running for seven seats on the Board were chosen at random and given 5 minutes to speak. That also took way too long. Even the overseer of the process, SF Pride interim General Counsel Juilius Turman was spotted dozing during the 8th or 9th candidate.

Following the Board candidate presentation and voting the membership was engrossed in a vote to designate the theme of the 2014 SF Pride Celebration. There were approximately 15 choices some with teeth ("Smash the church, Smash the state"). Some with relevance to SF ("Housing for All" among others about housing) and some with acknowledgment of international events ("To Russia with love"). And some, like the winning theme, bland and difficult to define ("Color Our World With Pride").

Once the voting and bickering over the proposed agenda (which was not approved by the membership before the Board started picking and choosing which items THEY wanted to cover while ignoring the rest) was complete, the wait for the counting of votes began

The next 7 hours included very little food, an open bar, and the division of the remaining attendees into separate factions: those that want the results to reflect the candidates that received the most votes and those that want to keep any reform candidates from gaining access to the Board.

After hours of haggling and review and debate and intrigue it was determined that either 6 out of 7 reform candidates won a seat on the Board of SF Pride or in fact NOBODY won the election at all ... which would result in something that hasn't been defined or addressed.

The debate centers around how the votes are to be tabulated according to a proper reading of the Policy/Procedures and or the ByLaws of the non profit organization that would be really too annoying to explain in this summary.

Just as a coup of the still ongoing meeting (at 11pm) was arranged and began a stampede on the sequestered members of the Board, acting President Davace Chin stepped forward to read a statement. Before he could begin he remarked that he was feeling dizzy and then he crumbled to the ground.

An ambulance arrived to care for him but he wasn't hospitalized as far as I know. He - even more than the rest of us - had been cooped up all day long with little to eat and was under intense pressure and scrutiny.

For example: I arrived 10 minutes before the suggested registration time (1:30 PM Sunday) and left the W at 12:05 AM Monday. Davace was already there when I arrived. Although the timing of his collapse seems awfully convenient (and dramatic and explainable and a perfect cliff hanger), it wasn't openly questioned. We were all concerned that this meeting had gone on way too long and wasn't going to end organically. Check it out:

What's next?? God only knows ... but someone better be on the phone with Ted Olson. This election is NOT over.

Be sure to follow Patrick Connors at @uppityfag.

We have a new favorite crazy cannon on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. And her name is London Breed. For whatever reason, Ms. Breed will only respond to a constituent with respect and insight via email; but on Twitter, do not come for her unless she sends for you. For Supervisor Breed is prone to such hashtagging as #suchahater, as well as spitting out gems like "you started it," "ohhhh I'm scared," and "if you pay my salary, I want a raise to listen to your bullshit."

Some of her constituents are understandably #butthurt over it. Uppercasing complied some of Breed's best tweets over the last week during a communique with @cynthia_says. Following is just a sample of the Twitter dramaz going on.

Check out more of the heated exchange. The District 5 supervisor has done this before, back in April when she went off on criticism railed against her.

Breed keeps is real, sure. She also keeps it untrustworthy. If Cynthia had said that same thing to Breed at a town meeting, would Breed respond that way from the podium? No, she would not. People who are all "fuck you!" online and then nice in person are typically not to be trusted. Something to keep in mind.

Update: In light of the Twitter drama, Breed promises to stay "boring" and "politically correct."

They say it was really nothing. Really. It happens about once a year. But somehow, some sort of "metallic debris" ended up on the BART tracks at Civic Center on September 16 and caused a dramatic, bright, orange arc of electricity to flash up from the third rail to the train's running rail up above, sending out a bunch of smoke into the BART station and triggering an evacuation. And now there's surveillance video.

BART just released the video above, and unfortunately you can't get a good glimpse of the flash, which you can only barely see in the upper right quadrant around the 10-second mark. BART officials say that the actual debris burned up in the flash, so they don't know exactly what it was, but the flash was essentially just a giant "spark" and caused only about $600 worth of damage. But, as you can see, it freaked everyone out, and many went running out of the station thinking there'd been a terrorist attack. Also, Civic Center Station was evacuated and shut down for about an hour, a week ago Sunday, starting at around 1:30 p.m.

[Chron]
[BCN/Appeal]

Say it ain't so, KPIX! Rich Lieberman has word that our favorite meteorologist and color-blocking fashion icon, Roberta Gonzales, is out at CBS 5. And she's going to be replaced (after 16 years!) by some dude in Seattle, Paul Deanno.

Lieberman reports:

This move seems to be, early on, a direct power play by [KPIX news director, Dan Rosenheim], who likes to pick and choose his players. He's good buddies with sports anchor, Dennis O'Donnell, and has pushed hard for fellow weather bud, Brian Hackney. In fact, it was widely rumored that Rosenheim wanted Hackney to do weeknight weather and push Gonzales over to the weekend.

This much is clear. Gonzales, in addition to being a popular personality with Bay Area viewers, is also an active charity participant. Frankly, this move by PIX befuddles me and is sure to draw the ire of many of its core viewers, most notably, women. And yes, of course, men too.

It's so very The Newsroom. Wait, is it so The Newsroom? We have no idea. That show looks terrible. Whenever anything Sorkinian, other than The West Wing, comes on TV, our eyes rip themselves out of their sockets to go hide under the bed. Point being, it's all so very dramatic. And too bad, really. We sure will miss seeing Gonzales each evening. She's the Edina to Dana King's Saffy.

[Lieberman]

While the food press has turned the benign foie gras ban into the gastronomic Brown v. Board of Education of our lifetime, you won't likely see the fattened liver off too many menus come Monday. Yet some chefs are getting creative. They're mad as hell and shan't take it anymore. LA-based chef Michael Cimarusti will leave a blank space on his menus with an inscription that simply says, "formerly a foie gras dish." (Not since Rosa Parks sat in the VIP section have we been this moved.)

Meanwhile, an article in Bloomberg reported that Incanto owner Mark Pastore might start charging a "foie-kage fee," similar to a corkage fee, but would allow the chef to prepare meat purchased in another state. However, SFist talked Pastore who explained, "No, we actually do have no plans to do that. I was responding to a question where the reporter asked me if that [a foie-kage fee] would be legal. I was musing, 'Hmm, a foie-kage fee? I guess it would be legal.' But we currently don't have any plans to do any such thing. Although it sounds like a great idea."

Overall, the ban won't be enforced, overwrought loopholes seem to exist, and — seeing as how authorities will ignore the provision about selling, especially since the liver will now come from out of state — it's a bit of a non-story. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't check out some of the impassioned foie gras dinners happening this weekend.

Later today, SFist will also have a brief rundown of foie gras you shouldn't miss. If violently fattened duck liver is your thing, that is.

A harrowing scene was captured on tape recently as ranch dressing and ketchup duked it out on the Dolores Park playground. Ranch, the clear winner since it's the superior condiment, was minding its own business when ketchup began to harass Ranch for, presumably, hanging out in his skivvies on the fruit shelf and getting stoned. Actually, it's all part of Hidden Valley Ranch's campaign to become to the ketchup. Yes, it's an ad campaign and, yes, we are falling for it because, again, we love Ranch dressing. It should be on everything.

Also, Linda would approve.

[via Mission Mission]

In the ongoing saga swiming around the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts: Bella, the orphaned, injured and recently rehabbed Palace swan has been ousted from the lagoon. Bella's brother and sister-in-law have been in something of a fowl mood lately, likely due to long nights spent caring for their three-week-old cygnet Martha.

According to Rec & Park officials, the reunion has been "fraught with bickering and sibling rivalry," so Bella's swan social workers have opted to send her off to Petaluma where she will probably spend the rest of her days as a swan spinster, resenting her brother's preference for baby Martha and his new family. Phil Ginsburg, GM for the Rec & Parks Department, wished everyone the best, telling the press, "I hope they can at least enjoy visits over the holidays."

[CBS5]

Yesterday Chron's City Insider waded in to the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts where Bella, the injured mute swan who spent the last month and a half in rehab up in Point Reyes, once again graced the waters with her presence. With her webbed foot all healed up, Bella joins her brother Blue Boy and his new beau Blanche as they start to raise their newborn ball of downy fluff Martha who was born on Memorial Day. But it might not be all domestic bliss for the swan family. As Bay City New reports this morning, Blue Boy could be getting territorial now that he's got a cygnet to look after.

According to Jack Long, Bella's trainer from Point Reyes, she might have a tough time getting back in to the swan family's good graces. Long is concerned about the "protective attitude" the new father has been flaunting ever since the birth of his baby girl. Gayle Hagerty, the Palace's volunteer swan caretaker told the press they've been keeping a close eye on the birds, with people checking on them every hour. Should Bella find herself ostracized at the Palace, Hagerty and her team are already looking for alternative homes and she might end up back in Long's care in Point Reyes. Bella and Blue Boy's mother Friday, you might remember, was stolen last year and may or may not be living in a backyard in the Richmond.

As of June 1st, there were still three unhatched eggs in Blanche's nest. If they don't hatch soon they may be deemed infertile and removed.

As we keep a hard eye on the waterfowl reality series unfolding in the lagoon, here's that video of newborn Martha again, because: awwww.

[Chron]
[BCN/Appeal]