Photo by KatyG/Flickr Oh my, word. Did you hear it? We received a few emails mentioning it, but NBC 11 confirms: "As of 4:10 p.m., PG & E activity in the vicinity of California and Drumm streets is disrupting regular cable car service on the California line," read a Muni alert. "Service will be provided by bus shuttles. The 1-California and the 41-Union are switching back at Clay and Drumm streets in both directions.......

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......

Earlier this morning, Forensics Analytical Lab in Hayward called the fire department for help because they'd spilled a bunch of picric acid. Dry picric acid is apparently very sensitive to shock and friction, and can explode like dynamite. This one article we found says it blows up when you drop a 2 kg weight on it, from just 36 cm above. (Metric units because the article is Canadian.) Yikes! So all the other businesses in......

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......

Transformers.... more than meets the eye! Not only robots in disguise, but also the source of today's MUNI irritation. Curse you, Decepticons! A transformer explosion and subsequent electrical pole damage at San Jose and Ocean has rendered the following lines extremely delayed: the J, the 26 Valencia, the 36 Teresita, and the 49 Van Ness. Plan accordingly, Optimus Prime. We went with a picture from the 1986 Transformers animated movie rather than the live-action movie......

As discussed in the SFist Contributes tips page, what people heard in Ingleside Heights early yesterday morning was a mysterious car explosion. Witnesses saw a man park a car, get out of the car and into someone else's, and then the parked car burst into flames. Around 7:00 a.m, another car mysteriously exploded, this time in the Tenderloin at Ellis and Taylor. The two incidents aren't thought to be related -- but how weird. Gimmi......

Friend of SFist Charlie Anders reminds us that her nifty and unusual spoken-word group, Writers With Drinks, will be experiencing yet another stupendous explosion of literary greatness this Saturday, the 9th, from 7:30 to 9:30 at The Make Out Room. Presenters include: - Judy Budnitz, author of Nice Big American Baby and If I've Told You Once - Clifford Chase, author of Winkie - Sesshu Foster, author of Atomik Aztex - Anthony McCann, poet......

There was an early-morning explosion just before 7 a.m. in an apartment building on Mission Street near Geneva, in the Ingleside Excelsior neighborhood. The explosion blew out the windows of the dry-cleaning business located on the bottom floor, spraying glass all over Mission Street. The authorities are still investigating but note that they've been called to that address for drug-related activities before. And to tie this all to two other hot topics at SFist: 1)......

Update: All Bay Area public transportation will be free tomorrow -- but does that means all public transportation, including MUNI and Caltrain and SamTrans? We think so, anyways. People who drove to Oakland today despite the warnings not to reported very light traffic! You don't say! Schwarzenegger is coming to tour the scene and do a press conference around 10:30 pm tonight. Oakland FD used water and not foam to fight the fire because......

Here's todays sports news...

Last Saturday, a fight broke out at the "Hyphy High School Bash" at the Marin County Corte Madera Recreation Center. The police raced to the scene upon hearing reports of gunshots and a Golden Gate Transit bus being blocked on Tamalpais Drive by 80 teenagers. They couldn't confirm whether shots had been fired, but someone had sprayed pepper spray into the crowd and around the same time, someone broke into a nearby elementary school. Hilariously,......

When we first heard about the show, "One Man Star Wars", we weren't sure whether it was the dumbest idea ever or the awesomest idea ever. After seeing it, we can say with great confidence that it's the awesomest idea ever....

Greetings from the great beyond! We've just died and gone to blog heaven after this explosion of every single thing we're obsessed with over on the Chronicle's Culture Blog. RIP, us! Okay, so let's see, what do we have here... a 1) Catherine Bigelow-penned blog entry featuring 2) Britney Spears's bald head grafted onto the bodies of 3) local politicians and 4) Pac Heights celebutantes!! Over on our beloved former co-editor's new online adventure, with......

That power outage at SFO yesterday was from a switch failure, not PG&E. PG&E, though, still has to take the blame for that explosion in Chinatown yesterday too. An 8-month-old girl is safe after being dropped from the second-story window of a burning apartment in Sunnyvale. A neighbor had pulled underneath the window in a pickup truck and caught the baby, and then caught the mother safely in the cab of the truck as she......

-There was a power outage at SFO last night for about an hour. -And there was an explosion somewhere underground in Chinatown that led to evacuations. Nobody was hurt but the area reeked of gas. ...

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

We're back from our two-day vacation from the site with your Day Around The Bay, as SFist Jon continues to struggle with his DSL. --Children meet cows. --After a mysterious price rise last week that was unsupported by the economic fundamentals, gas prices have now dropped again. Did something happen last week? --The club Mingles in Jack London Square is closing down permanently after the death of a pregnant woman in a shooting last......

Security is a "top priority" for tomorrow's Mausoleum Party, hosted by the Stanford frats. You gotta love an article that starts with the splash headline "Police: Stanford not the place to go for free beer on weekends." As one officer tells the Stanford Daily, "I’ve had experiences where a high-school student from Palo Alto has gotten a hold of a Stanford ID card, made copies of it and put it over their own ID. Then,......

Tonight October is SF Open Studios month, where art enthusiasts and wine and cheese chasers can traipse around the city and visit the studios of San Francisco artists and sign up on their mailing lists or buy their work. Tonight there are preview receptions featuring numerous artists at Belcher Studios and Gallery (69 Belcher, near Market, Church, 14th St.) and at Art Explosion Studios in two locations - 744 Alabama St. (between 19th &......

When last we saw the "Lost" gang, the Others had captured Sawyer, Jack, Kate, and Hurley--although Hurley was free to go; Michael was given WALT! and told to leave the island; Locke had lost all faith in the hatch, while Ecko became a true believer; Desmond realized his lack of button pushing had caused the crash of Oceanic Flight 815; Sayid, Sun, and Jin were pondering the remains of a gigantic statue, of which......

-Disaster strikes as a blackout affects the new Westfield shopping center. Luckily, Bloomies wasn't affected, but other stores were. The horror, the horror....

Sure, we talk all big about how we're above crass materialism and how yuppie bastards are ruining this town for us Missionistas -- but okay, we'll fess up: we are extremely excited about the Westfield San Francisco Shopping Centre's reopening of the old Emporium space on Market and Powell this Thursday (the 28th). Cross your fingers along with us that the opening ceremonies will include Gavin cutting a red ribbon with a big ol' pair......

There's nothing like a good post-apocalyptic story. Charlton Heston wandering around a deserted downtown while zombies lurk around the corner? Or Charlton Heston battling damned dirty apes? Or Charlton Heston eating people? Awesome. Recently, our desire for a good P-A book got so intense we contemplated reading The Stand again, for the third time. (Instead we opted for The Stand rip-off Swan Song and, well, we're still contemplating reading The Stand for a third......

Chargers 27 Raiders 0- Well, that didn't go well. It went so well, in fact, Aaron Brooks got himself already benched and we had him making it halfway through the season before getting benched. Typical Raiders-- all the hype, all the energy, all the excitement that was created before this game (the tailgaiting started early Monday morning) and they totally laid an egg. In sort-of Prime Time. Even more revealing, everybody in the world knew the Chargers were going to run the ball and everybody knows they weren't going to let Phillip Rivers throw the ball and yet the Raiders gave up 131 yards to Tomlinson. The countdown to the Randy Moss explosion begins now. ...

A rare Wednesday blotter, because these items are too interesting to wait until Friday! We missed this story the first time it happened -- but on Tuesday, a man was convicted of castrating and killing his father at a Mission SRO back in October 2004. The son was high on crack at the time and said he was angry with his father for not giving him a better life (even though the father was nice......

Remember how we said Bud wouldn't investigate Barry because it would serve absolutely no purpose? We were wrong. Yesterday, news leaked out that Bud is all set to investigate Barry and steroids with former Senator George Mitchell leading the investigation. We don't think it's much of a stretch to say that this investigation is nothing but a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. ...

Saturday, January 28, marks the 20th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger's explosion. SFist can't help but think of the ill-fated tenth mission every time we pass Onizuka Air Force Station down in Sunnyvale. We're not the only space groupies with the anniversary on our minds: the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland will feature a special memorial presentation all day, and screen the movie To Be an Astronaut at 11:30 am and......

We've always wanted to call something or someone "a delightful romp," and now's our chance. Rechristened "Magical Dog" by certain members of the SFist community, Sergeant Pepper is the story of Felix -- a young boy with no interest in forming human friends -- and a dog, Sergeant Pepper, who comes into Felix's life and who can (joy of joys for a small child) talk. There follows a fairly boiler-plate story with concerned parents; a......

A 3.4 magnitude earthquake hit the Hercules area of the East Bay around 10 a.m. this morning. But we didn't feel anything here in San Francisco, how about you? This report states that it was felt "as far north as Santa Rosa, as far east as Rancho Cordova, and as far south as Redwood City", so maybe we're just not that observant. BART was shut down briefly as a precaution, and the Contra Costa......

Writing an opera on the subject of the atomic bomb is a risky endeavour. For the sheer difficulty of the task, of course, but also because it unleashes the easy metaphors: will it be a dud, a fizzle, or a bang? We will say: a big bang -- but while we were blown away by the music, our appreciation is relativized by some other wrong decisions with the set direction. The opera focuses on the last days leading to the explosion of the first atomic test bomb, in June and July 1945. It is centered about J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), the scientific director of the Manhattan project, and the founder of the Los Alamos research lab. Let's get some local pride going: Oppie was a member of the Berkeley faculty, as many of the top scientists at Los Alamos (the UC still runs that lab in New Mexico). He lived in the same east bay hills as John Adams, the composer of the opera. We hear that the UC is now considering adding Opera spots to the Nobel parking lot, in case another member gets the honor. Photos by Terrence McCarthy- SF Opera...