A small shaker hit The Geysers near the border of Sonoma and Lake counties at 6:28 a.m. this morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. No one was hurt. It was a mere wisp of a quake, really. But these small shivers are always a good reminder to get prepared for The Big One. Tips, emergency numbers, do's, dont's, etc. are as follows: -- For more safety information about emergency on tips surviving an......

Oh, and here are some tips from the NERT (National Neighborhood Emergency Response Team), care of Ed Chu of the San Francisco Fire department. It's not the most entertaining bit of footage you'll see this year, but could be the most important. (Quick quiz: how many gallons of water per person is recommended for the 72 hour period after an earthquake? Five!) Also, for more in-depth earthquake safety info, SFGTV2 (channel 78) is running......

An earthquake registering 3.2 hit the East Bay this morning, located five miles south of Antioch. The quake happened four hours ager a smaller 3.1 quake hit Reno last night.. There was no damage or injuries in either temblor. Why are we reporting this? To alarm you, that's why. And, as always, to get you prepared. For more safety information about emergency on tips surviving an earthquake, here are some handy do's & don'ts.For......

Oh dear. A hefty-sized earthquake hit northeastern Nevada this morning. You know what that means, don't you? Time to sound the alarm for everyone in the Bay Area to get prepared. Not sure what to do? Well then, check out the following info: For more safety information about emergency on tips surviving an earthquake, here are some handy do's & don'ts.For free training in disaster and emergency response, visit NERT -- Neighborhood Emergency Response TeamFor......

Judging by the audiences' volatile reactions, She Wants Revenge did everything in their power to give the audience what they wanted: a spectacle (with some music). About half-way through their hour and a half set, a fight erupted. (This isn't the first time, we hear, that fights have started at one of their shows.) The lead singer, Justin Warfield asked, "Can't we all just get along?" and then continued singing their synth-pop Depeche Mode influenced......

A 3.7 aftershock in San Jose just shook the ground of Silicon Valley. According to our own Spencer Williams, it happened a little before 4 p.m. and It "only lasted a couple of seconds." So there you have it. ...

Readers responded with light speed and razor-sharp accuracy (more or less) when it came to detailing last night's devastating -- body-wash-plummeting-to-the-earth devastating! -- 5.6 quake. We will all look back on October 30, asking ourselves, where were we when the great 5.6 quake of '07 hit? Well, after sending out the we-hope-you're-still-alive-and-kicking call to the SFist team at large, they responded. Here are a few of the shattering moments in the lives of some......

Remember just last week when Sutro Tower was sad and blue? No one was paying any attention to the Bay Area because of Southern Cali and their attention-seeking wildfires. Thanks to a 5.6 earthquake and tonight's "Will there be a Halloween in the Castro or not?" question plaguing the minds of locals and bridge and tunnelers alike, San Francisco is back on top! Even KRON, whose top story was still the wildfires as of......

Either under the table for protection or hiding from someone sporting a fiendish fannypack-khakis combo, Catherine Kilkenny of San Jose's Willow Glen looks scared as all hell, doesn't she? Many people were. Last night's 5.6 earthquake, which we didn't feel but hear the majority of you did, tore nerves to shreds, shook the ground, and sent magazines flying to the floor. In a little over 12 hours, it managed to cause quite the stir.......

9:30 Update: Things seem to be settling down. We're going to move the bulk of this post behind a jump. The only really big news at the moment is that there's a 30% chance of a strong aftershock in the next week, and a 5 to 10% chance of another strong earthquake. If you were lucky enough to feel The Great San Francisco San Jose Alum Rock 5.6 Back-and-Forthing of 2007, please continue to......

"A deep and powerful earthquake beneath the Pacific in the Northern Mariana Islands" sent waves a rollin', reaching as far as Emeryville today with a total score of somewhere between 3.8 to 4.2. Nothing to freak out over. Yet. Alarmist alert: as always, you should be prepared for the big one, and 72 Hours is a good place to start.......

Tomorrow BART celebrates 35 years of hauling your asses around. Revenue service began on 9/11 in 1972. Since then, according to BART Board President Lynette Sweet, BART has continued to "carry the Bay Area through good times and bad...[w]e were there to keep the economy moving when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake knocked out the Bay Bridge, and most recently when the MacArthur Maze connector collapsed." But most important of all, BART has also......

As we only learned from reading the comments on our whiny post about the weather, there was just an earthquake in Berkeley about 30 minutes ago. It was a 3.0, centered near Claremont Ave. in the hills. That other quake yesterday was in Berkeley too. We didn't feel a thing (we never feel earthquakes unless something starts rumbling), but if you did, you can report it here.......

It's a day of relatively-unusual natural phenomena -- first the earthquake this morning and then, less than 24 hours later, there's going to be a total eclipse of the moon. The lunar eclipse will be visible throughout California, but only for those of you who are up from the hours of 1:51 a.m., when the partial eclipse will start, through 5:24 a.m., when dawn starts up. If you are up that late, the total......

Earthquake! There was a small (2.4) quake centered in southeast Berkeley this morning at 3:13 a.m. No reports of injuries or damage, and, as you can tell from the light colors in this "Did You Feel It?" map we borrowed from the USGS, it doesn't sound like there was much shaking either. In other early morning grounds-shaking news, did you see Alberto Gonzales is resigning? (reg. req'd.) No way!......

We can only hope that every single news outlet has printed a typo when reporting the amount of cash the United States is sending Peru, which is still experiencing severe aftershocks. As the death toll climbs past 500, with more than 1,500 reported injuries, the United States government has pledged a whopping $100,000 in support. Why don’t we just send America’s Player, Eric (with his oh-so-attractive pierced nipples) from Big Brother to help them......

-- 8.8-foot-long Smart Fortwo cars in SF. Squash. [Chron] -- No surprise: Gap Inc. sales suck. (Hint: Burn all billboards promoting horizontal pastels.) [Examiner] -- Hayward murder-suicide.[Chron] -- Barry Bonds bash. [Examiner] -- Wall Street went up and down a lot today, or something. [Chron] -- Hey! If it ain't the ol' pro-Blue Angels switcheroo. [BeyondChron] -- Devaughndre Broussard asked to take the fall? [ABC 7, Oakland Tribune] -- RIAA brings their silly war......

Obviously, this isn't local (though we did get a small East Bay "jiggle" this morning) but definitely of local interest: it seems, according to KRON 4, a 8.0 earthquake hit "90 miles southeast" of Lima, Peru this afternoon, just off of the coast. Major power outages are reported. But from what we hear, they're deep quakes -- about 20-30 miles or more down. And a tsunami warning/watch is in effect for the coast of South......

As anyone trying to get onto the Golden Gate Bridge knows, the onramp of Doyle Drive is in terrible shape -- it's too narrow, there's no shoulder, lanes merge and swerve around with no rhyme or reason, and there's those weird white poles in the middle of the street to visually break up the two lanes of traffic but are just begging to be hit. Apparently it's really unsafe in an earthquake too. That's just......

Did you see (video footage) all that smoke (pictures) yesterday? A fire at 17th and Noe Street between the Mission and the Castro at around 6:30 yesterday evening displaced at least 14 people, and sent seven to the hospital for smoke inhalation. One man had to be rescued off the roof. The fire spread to the building next door too, but firefighters managed to put it out before that building was too damaged. The SFFD......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

No, you didn't dream it! There was a 4.2 temblor this morning at around 4:42 a.m., centered two miles east of Oakland on the dreaded Hayward Fault. It knocked out power in Oakland (poor PG&E, it's been a busy week), and broke the windows of the Safeway on Shattuck and Rose in Berkeley, and at a doughnut shop on College and Ashby (but with no interruption in donut service, they added) -- but in......

Who ya got? The cowboy or the samurai? That's the question posed by the Asian-American Theater Company's Cowboy v. Samurai, a story about two Asian-American cowboys in Montana who fall in love with the same Korean-American new girl in town. Our Gothamist cousins liked it when it played in New York. 2 p.m. at the Thick House (1695 18th Street, x Arkansas), $20. Other events: --The workers united -- have a whole month to celebrate!......

In honor of it being the 50th Anniversary of BART, BART announced their vision for BART over the next 50 years. Those plans include: ...

Photo of Sutro Tower in the fog...

Here where the Mission melts into the Castro to the west, and Noe Valley to the southwest, it’s a bit unclear which neighborhood we’re wandering around. If the shiny new brown sign at the foot of the hilly 000 block of Fair Oaks St. is to be taken seriously - and frankly, it’s not - then we’ve landed in the Liberty Hill Historic District. Crafty, real crafty. San Francisco needs more fictional “sub-neighborhoods” whose names reek of realtor-sponsored specificity, with the express intention of spiking property values, like it needs another earthquake. But since we’re still east of Dolores, let’s just go with the safe bet: this is the western edge of the Mission. Too general? Can we keep a straight face by upgrading this leg of Fair Oaks to tony-sounding Dolores Heights? What’s next? Pinning the “Amoeba Gulch” tag on the westernmost block of Haight?...

As usual, there was a bit of a commemeration of the '06 quake, although much smaller than last year's gala Earthquakepalooza. Instead of the thousands who showed up last year, there were only a couple of hundred. And it looks like we're down to just one survivor-- 104 year old Herbert Hamrol, who actually said he took a day off from work to attend the ceremony. And he was being serious. ...

Here's the recap of the news...

So with baseball starting up this week, we thought we'd turn over the previews to our favorite revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. Coming up, quotes that he thinks sum up the season and Leon's predictions. You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in, you. To a man we are told is the smartest man in baseball, Tony LaRussa, who finally overcame years of being the most annoying and most overrated manager in baseball......