Parolee Troyshawn Robinson, 20, was arrested for committing a sexual assault "on an El Cerrito pathway underneath the BART tracks," according to the Gate. Robinson allegedly walked up to a male and female passing passing by around 8:15 p.m., robbed the two of them, and used a knife to hold the "man at bay" while he attacked the woman. As her tried to flee on foot, he was quickly arrested a few feet away.......

Somehow this news story managed to slip past our radar last week, but the Gate published a story on how our wonderful state of California will be spraying the Bay Area with pesticides this summer. In an effort to eliminate the light brown apple moth (aww. Aren't they so cute?), an insect potentially disastrous for farming in California, the state agricultural department will be spraying an insecticide known as Checkmate over urban areas, according to......

Jorge Liderman, 50, music theory and composition professor at UC Berkeley, died on Sunday after being hit by a BART car at El Cerrito Plaza. At around 9:30 a.m., it seems, the BART train operator claims that as the car was about four or five feet from the station, Liderman hurled himself in front of it, killing him instantly. And although the word "suicide" is being tossed about, his cause of death is still......

The latest weekend murder in SF: At around noon on Saturday, a 66-year-old Asian man was shot to death after a road rage incident in Viz Valley. Witnesses say the man was arguing with three men in their late teens or early 20s after a fender bender right before the shots were fired. After shooting the man, at least one of the suspects then stole the man's car. The car was later recovered; the cops......

It's a record-breaking day! It has never in the history of the world (or, rather, in the history of weather record-keeping) rained on a July 18th before in the Bay Area. The .01 inches of rain that's fallen has, naturally, rendered swaths of the East Bay without power, with 40 separate outages and about 10,000 in El Cerrito, Berkeley, and El Cerrito Richmond affected. Basically, the dust on top of the transformers get wet,......

Well, that was a grim Daily Californian homepage yesterday. The top six stories: pedestrian hit by car on Telegraph; Berkeley summer camp evacuated due to Tahoe fire, body found near the Berkeley Marina, beloved local activist hit by train, Cal student to be tried for killing David Halberstam, and memorials for the local murder-suicide family. On the bright side, the other article on the home page is that Cal basketball star DeVon Hardin has decided......

We've been slightly afraid of Tribe 8 lead singer Lynn Breedlove ever since she crashed into us in a riotgrrl mosh pit, causing us moderate injury -- but that shouldn't stop you from checking out her short film "Godspeed," based on her book about speed freak bike messengers, which is screening next Wednesday, April 11, as part of the Third Annual SF Women's Film Festival! The Women's Film Fest has put together an eclectic group......

Anyone been to the Cerrito Speakeasy Theater in El Cerrito yet? The Cerrito is the sister theater to the fabulous Parkway Theater in Oakland and opened this past November. ...

Well, they're just doing what you were going to do anyways -- a political consultant in Fremont has filed a complaint after learning that postal workers tossed "tens of thousands" of her No On Measure K(against protecting Coyote Hills) and No On Measure L (against a utility tax) mailers to be sent to the zip code 94538 as "undeliverable." (Also, some mailers for City Council candidate Bill Harrison, and some Pennysavers.) The consultant claims her......

As we mentioned yesterday, tonight is the MUNI confab with MUNI Director Mr. Ford live in person hosted by District 5 Supervisor Mirkarimi. Take the N-Judah to the County Fair Building (9th and Irving) for this scintillating discussion of service, security and the future of MUNI. (7-9pm) Perhaps after listening to bureaucrats thank everyone for their input, you need a stiff drink and valuable information about giant spiders and obscure factoids about dinosaurs. The......

We're not going to miss a rare opportunity to see Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky (director of the original Solaris), screening tonight at the SF Art Institute (800 Chestnut St.) for free. This influential Russian film has many elements associated with Russian literature - epic length, existential ennui, depressing locales. A brief plot synopsis: Two disenchanted intellectuals wish to explore the Zone, a mysterious region at the center of which a room, said to offer......

-Yesterday, on a beautiful, sunny September afternoon (before the fog rolled in), blues was heard, butless leather chaps were worn, and freaky people danced. We stayed in....

No one does mafia like the Chinese mafia: the FBI has gotten in on the investigation of the mysterious death of Chinatown businessman Allen Leong, who was shot to death in his office on Jackson Street. Leong, who was active in a number of Chinatown fraternal groups, also known as tongs, had rejected another tong's request for $100,000. The rejected group then vandalized a number of storefronts and sent taunting letters to Leong's tong, to......

Submissions go to yvesdroppings - at - gmail - dot - com. The scene: an animation student is creating a butler character, and is trying to think of stuff for him to do in a scene. Teacher: "You could have him gesturing at stuff." Student: "He can't gesture! He's British!" -- Academy of Art University Woman: "You know, in Georgian Republic, I was very religious, but it was banned. And now, I move to......

C'mon, Star Trek 4 is all about cops in SF! Yesterday's bomb scare at City Hall was traced to a kook who went up to the security desk on the Van Ness side around 3:30 p.m., put his cell phone down, and said, "I put a bomb in here." After evacuating the building, the po-po shot a water cannon at the phone and determined it was explosives-free. SFist Jackson has an airtight alibi (item 4, around 1:00:00. Thanks for sticking up for the bloggers!) Yet more wacky weed news! Firefighters in El Cerrito that were inspecting a house that had been flooded by a water main break last Friday morning "noticed grow lights, hydroponic equipment and the strong smell of marijuana." Suspicious, they called the cops, who found about 100 plants and a pound of processed pot, and promptly booked the residents. Bummer to get busted at 3 in the morning while your house is flooding. "....No, man! I gotta get the Galactic bootlegs out of the basement!" And South Asian families in the Valley are concerned that they're being targeted by thieves who know that they tend to have expensive gold jewelry in their homes. Fourteen families have been robbed on weekends since December. This reminds us of that spate of burglaries in the Orange County Asian-American community (.pdf), where they figured out the burglars were targeting houses where there were a lot of shoes outside the front door. ...

Acts mistaken as terrorism on the Monday morning BART...