Member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang -- considered "one of the most dangerous street gangs in San Francisco" -- Edwin Ramos, 21, of El Sobrante was arrested for last Sunday's road-rage shooting deaths of Tony Bologna and his two sons, Michael and Matthew. The suspect allegedly shot the family to death, according to the Chronicle, because Tony "inadvertently blocked another car from completing a left turn onto Congdon from Maynard Street...after the......

The Mission District's shooting fad sees no signs of slowing down. ...

Three men were shot in the Mission early Sunday morning at Valencia and Tiffany streets. According to the Gate, one of the victims, Jimmy Durwin Gongora, died from gunshot-related wounds; the other two were transported to SF General Hospital with life-threatening injuries. Two unidentified men, it seems, shot the three victims. No arrests have been made.Three more guys, it seems, were also shot in the Mission on Saturday night, resulting in yet another death.......

In what's turning into a slapfight between city attorneys over civil gang injunctions, public defender Jeff Adachi recently sent a proposal over the Board of Supes that, according to the Examiner, "would give named alleged gang members priority when it comes to receiving city services, including, 'city funded economic development, employment, vocation, educational, housing, asset building, mental health, drug treatment and social service programs.' And Dennis Herrera is none too pleased....

There's been so many murders lately that it's hard to find a new twist on the stories, so here's one: a Pizza Hut pizza delivery man was shot and killed in the Richmond last night as he was trying to deliver a pizza. Apparently, he got lost and was wandering around trying to find the house he was supposed to deliver the pizza too and when he was stopped by several men trying to rob him. When he tried to run away, he was shot in the back, something that anyone who has ever seen a Western knows is the coward's way. ...

-- Gargantuan steroid sting nabs two Bay Area brothers. [SJ Merc] -- PC World editor's suspected killers could receive death sentences. [Chron] -- Marines banned from filming commercial in SF. [FOX] -- Another attempt to ban the Blue Angels proves unsuccessful. Sorry, Chris. [CBS5] -- Speaking of Board of Supes, someone done got suspended/replaced. [ABC7] -- Death of an lILWU longshoreman results in Oakland port's closure for the day. [Oakland Tribune] -- Chloe Veltman......

You know we usually try to hoard up all the crime-type news for the Tuesday and Friday blotters, but there was enough vaguely unsettling news this weekend to warrant a post a little early, we thought. To wit: --Fernando Gonzalez, an 18-year-old Redwood City man, died after he fell into a vat of sulfuric acid. Gonzalez was working the early-morning shift at Coastal Circuits Factory this weekend, without a protective face mask, when he appeared......

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express. Dream cartoonist: Fascist zombies versus Marxist ones. So hard to tell the difference sometimes! The situation with the Oakland Trib union. Internal disputes at an East Bay lesbian bar. Cover article: should you store your baby's umbilical cord blood or donate it? Hand-churned ice cream in Fruitvale. Hey, we didn't know I Like Eating is a teacher! We would totally be in I Like Eating's homeroom class! Yoshi's......

-- The 2007 Bay Area Rhythm Exchange: Stepology (which we can only hope is very much like "Vibeology") presents tap stars Channing Cook-Holmes (Riverdance, Gangs of New York, Bojangles), John Kloss (Tap Heat), Deborah Mitchell (The Cotton Club, Black and Blue), Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards (Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, Bamboozled), Sam Weber (Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood). 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre (SF War Memorial and Performing Arts Center), 401 Van Ness; $19-$22. -- Chrome:......

Remember that couple we told you about that was stealing stuff from open houses? They got busted by the OnStar in their rental Hummer. Police won't reveal where they were, except to say they were "out of state." DA Kamala Harris went to the Board of Supes to ask for more money to fight misdemeanor crimes (usually your smaller quality-of-life ones). The SF DA's office only has nine attorneys handling misdemeanors, and they've got an......

City Attorney Dennis Herrera took a break from harassing that nice Ed Jew today, introducing a lawsuit against three gangs. Our knowledge of streetgang etiquette is pretty much zero, but we can't imagine the "Knock Out Posse" will be giving him the courtesy of an RSVP. At any rate, the plan is to use an injunction to impose stiffer penalties for gang activity in certain areas. In the past, this technique worked against the......

Anyone who's ridden Muni in the middle of a weekday is quite familiar with this scenario. As your bus pulls up to it's stop, you see a dozen or two school kids anxiously waiting to step up and embark Muni. You and your fellow passengers groan and brace yourselves for the ensuing chaos. (Mind you, we enjoy the company of kids but not groups of them in enclosed spaces.) Last Friday morning was our most recent encounter of this kind, and we were inspired to compile all of our of "gangs of kids" on Muni memories. Feel free to share your kid/Muni invasion experiences in the comments! Friday's ride played out like this: We were riding the 49 along Van Ness, when we were soon invaded by about ten to fifteen 10/11-year-olds. Although we were at the back of the double-bus with no vantage point of the stop, we had a bit of a warning about this invasion when the bus, in the process of pulling up to the stop, was met by the collective, high-pitched screams of several young girls. We were like, oh no, did one of them get run over? Luckily not—they were just excited about the novelty of riding Muni. And maybe the driver looked like Justin Timberlake or Usher? (We can't exactly remember what our driver looked like, but we think he probably looked more like Pat Morita. And by the way, who are the tweens loving these days, anyway?) About six of these said young girls decided to all congregate in the middle, bendy part of the bus, so that they could scream every time they lost their balance, while at the same time blocking the railings for passengers attempting to get past them. We're not sure which was worse—the prepubescents' ear-piercing screams or the ear-piercing yells of their teenaged chaperones behind us who were telling them to quit screaming. One of the "chaperones" also loudly said, "I'm sure these people didn't pay to hear you scream." And we thought to ourselves, "We didn't pay to hear you scream about their screaming either," but we all know it's more than likely futile to try to communicate with power-hungry teenagers on Muni. Luckily, we soon found ourselved getting off at City Hall to buy our Fast Pass with our first commuter check at Room 140. (Until we remembered that security checks your bags at City Hall, and we had two-days worth of dirty yoga clothes stuffed in ours. Yuck.) More kids invade Muni after the jump!...

We are giddy with glee to welcome Richard, author of the Sparkletack blog and podcast, to the SFist family. Richard's encyclopedic knowledge of San Francisco's past makes his history podcast mandatory listening for anyone who cares about the city -- where we came from, how we got here, and why we're so bizarre. His expertise stretches back hundreds of years, and we're totally hooked on his ability to link modern-day San Franciscoisms to their......

The Hell's Angels are throwing themselves a three day celebration in Oakland this weekend in honor of it being their 50th anniversary and it's going to be fabulous. There'll be a Tupperware party and a Sandra Bullock film festival plus such classes as "Fixing Your Hog," "How to Rekindle Romance with Your Old Lady While on the Road" and "The Semiotics of Tattoos." ...

Since this story is now the #1 most read story on SFGate, we feel we would be remiss in not covering it. Give the people what they want and all that. So anyways, a 7th grader in a school in Napa got in trouble at school for wearing socks with Winnie the Pooh's BFF Tigger on it. And now the ACLU wants in. ...

-The Chron plays "I Love the Radical '70s" -As Ron Dellums isn't in Davos, he'll be at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. ...

Boing Boing tips us off to this awesome short 1961 film about juvenile delinquency, and how gangs can help curb the trend towards teenage lawlessness. And by "gangs" we mean "clubs," as that's what they're called here. The most awesome thing about this video? It's all in San Francisco. And you'll probably need a jive dictionary to translate the narration.......

After the supposed success in levying an injunction against the Oakdale mob, City Attorney Dennis Herrera is thinking about seeking an injunction against two notorious Mission Street gangs, the Sureños and Norteños. ...

Almost exactly a year ago, we reviewed "Less Than Hero," by local artists Jason McNamara and Tony Talbert. They've got a new book out now, and it's called "Continuity," possibly because it seems to continue and continue and continue. Why oh why is this book an estimated five thousand pages long? Brevity, people. We'll have a few more words to say about it in a minute, but first we want to get in some......

In the time of chimpanzees there was a monkey.... -Old stuff coming to U.C. Berkeley ...

Bass...how low can you go... -City of San Francisco has new battle in fight against gangs in the Bayview-- court injunctions....

Always looking ahead to a post-Apocalyptic future, SFist Nico, Barrespondent-de-doom, hides out from wayward radiation this week. While we hardly expect the destruction of mankind, there is a twittering voice in our heads that says we can't be far from it. Come on, we read headlines. So in lieu of riding the pessimist's waterslide, we went out in search of a bomb-safe place to kick back and take pleasure in what reassures us most, drink.......

Filmmaker Georgia Lee dropped out of Harvard Business School to make movies. That must rank right up there with biting your fingernails and dating a felon as one of the all time best ways to torture your mother. Fear not Mrs. Lee, Georgia seems like she's doing okay. A short film she directed while at NYU film school was spotted by Martin Scorsese who took her under his wing during the shooting of Gangs of......

Well, the 2005 body count in SF is now up to 92 after a man was found strangled to death in a SoMA hotel, making this the worst year in SF for murders in ten years. In response, Chief of Police Heather Fong held a press conference the other day to address people's concerns. Chief Fong seemed somewhat defensive, at one point blaming the uptick in murders over the last three months on the nice weather we've been having. "If it’s always nice out, people start drinking, there are arguments and violence ensues," she said. See, it's the Bush Administration's fault for not adopting the Kyoto Protocol! Fong did note that black-on-black gang violence is down 35% this year, but murders in the Western Addition and the Mission are up sharply from last year (The Western Addition had 20 this year and 6 last, and the Mission had 13 as opposed to 4). Aren't at least some of the murders in those areas considered gang-related too? And you know, what about those Nortenos and Surenos -- what going on with the Latino gangs? And intriguingly, our city controller's calculated that for each murder, the city loses about $38,000 (in police and medical expenses). No wonder no one can afford a house these days. The Ex also has a totally and completely fascinating connect-the-dots map of all the murders this year in SF. (.pdf only, but worth the download wait.) Our only quibble -- we thought the first murder of the year took place at Fisherman's Wharf: where's that one? ...

As part of our big fun December, we're giving away lots of stuff, including review copies of materials previously discussed on the site. Why? Because we like you! For example, do you remember this post? One of the books discussed is the great Smoke and Guns, about which was said: As a former cigarette girl herself, Kirsten Baldock had plenty of material to mine for Smoke and Guns, a Sin-Cityish shoot-em-up about warring gangs......

Remember last year, when Newsom said that if he didn't reduce the murder rate this year, we should vote to recall him as mayor? "I might be there as a co-signer myself!" the splendid-haired one said jocularly. Ehhhhhh -- do over! His bad! As the murder rate for 2005 rises to exceed last year's (we're now at 88, tying where we were last year at this time), Gavin's quit it with the glib recall jokes and is all serious-face town-hall meeting about it now, blah blah, "crimes this year don't follow traditional patterns," "I was talking about gangs," please please PLEASE don't recall me, how else will I meet chicks???? Chief of Police Heather Fong, bless her heart, says she's doing the best she can and has authorized more hires for the PD, and her deputies keep emphasizing that there's only so much they can do, if someone, say, decides to throw her three kids in the bay or set a homeless guy on fire. True -- but guys, that's only four. What about the other 84? What about when you said you got that one kingpin gang guy so murders should drop? Or the big local-fed gang task force you bragged so much about? What's going on there? And how's the clearance rate on those murders looking too? If we don't get answers, well.... Mr. Newsom, please print and sign your name on the following line, and please include your local address too. ...

A drunken truck driver in Pacific Heights killed a cabbie and one of his passengers Sunday night. The trucker had been running stop signs and red lights all around Russian Heights, and had grazed a guy at Polk and Washington, without stopping. The hit-and-run victim was following the truck driver and saw him run head-on into a Yellow Cab at Broadway and Webster. The cab driver and the passenger in the front seat were killed; the two passengers in the back were taken to the hospital. The cab driver was a union organizer trying to get health benefits for other drivers, and the passenger was a senior at Duke who had gone to Indonesia to help out after the tsunami. Well, if you went to see A History of Violence, you might have at least been prepared -- moviegoers exiting the Jack London movie theater in Oakland last week were greeted by a hail of gunfire, as two rival Latino gangs shot out their differences outside the movie house. Moviegoers hid in the bathrooms as the gunshots shattered the glass doors, and one angry San Franciscan said, "Given that I live in San Francisco, I'd say there's a pretty good chance we'll skip the Jack London cinema from now on. There's a perfectly good movie theater in Emeryville.'' What, the Metreon's not good enough for you either? And a gay male cruising site has sued Paypal, because the online money collection service won't let them collect donations through their site for Katrina victims, citing their rule against using Paypal for sex-related businesses. CFS.com (Cruising for Sex.com; we assume it's NSFW) says it has two employees who have relatives affected by Katrina and had collected between $1500-2000 before Paypal pulled the plug. ...

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly: Tommy Craggs, like Tony Toni Tone, has done it again! This week, he uses the Microsoft Word auto-summarizer to read last week's interminable Sean Penn in Iran articles from the Chron! Could it be that Mr. Craggs heard our desperate cries for help? In other news, Matt Smith hates on Chris Daly's Rincon Hill deal, the Infiltrator pretends to Christian rock, and the cover article's about heavy metal Thor. Savage Love: you know, if you start a letter to Dan with "I'm straight, I'm smart, I'm funny, and I'm hot," you kind of get what you deserve. Next: the Metro! RIP, Bob Moog. The war on terror seemed a little overblown in Lodi. Spongebob Squarepants at Great America! Cover: San Jose gang war. And Secret Asian Man eats your hate up like love. The Guardian and the East Bay Express after the jump, plus the pick of the week! ...

So a bunch of anarchist yutzes from the suburbs decided to protest G8 at that hotbed crossroads of capitalism, 23rd Street and Bartlett, and in the melee, threw a hammer at a cop's head. The cop's in the hospital and three yutzes are in the clink. Our feeling is, what's the point of having all these Sureno and Norteno Mission Street gangs if they're not actually going to protect us from outsider threats? But we'll save all that for tomorrow's Blotter. SF Indybay was at the protest, and posted some pictures and coverage of the fight. KRON 4's new aggregator-blog, The Bay Area Is Talking, which was liveblogging it, then put up the Indybay pictures on their site. Bloggers love bloggers, right? More publicity makes for higher hit counts, right? Nope. Indybay sent an angry note to KRON accusing them of copyright infringement and demanding that the pictures be taken down. KRON 4 said they thought the use of the pictures constituted permissible fair use, but agreed to take them down and link to them instead. There's some fascinating ironies here about anarchists invoking the august majesty of federal United States Code section 17, a group called "IndyBay" censoring the content of another independent media provider (yup, KRON's indie), a member of the mainstream media going all Creative Commons, and leftists avoiding publicity for their public demonstration -- but mostly, it seems to have devolved into a fight where people are mixing up copyright and trademark law. Maybe SFist Jackson and the EFF can clear this up for you at their panel discussion next Tuesday, the 19th --"Bloggers -- Know Your Rights." ...

We don't mean to ALARM you ... but it's possible that President Kennedy is in VERY GRAVE DANGER. Although similar recent efforts have mostly failed, our very own Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Leland Yee is pushing a bill -- AB 450 -- that would fine retailers $1,000 for selling M-rated video games to the under-17 set. Leland, himself a child psychologist, points to surprisingly convincing evidence that violent play can lead to violent behavior,......