Twenty-four of the world's most bitchin-ass surfers are on their way to Half Moon bay for a dangerous showdown at this year's 2008 Mavericks Surf Contest. Shore stars like Shawn Rhodes, Greg Long (San Clemente FTW), Brock Little, Randy Cone, Santa Cruz's Tyler Smith, and more will take part in tomorrow's dangerous and exhilarating surf contest. The cold waters of Half Moon Bay combined with the Pacific storm winter weather make some of "the most dangerous waves in the world." This battle of the sea is not to be missed. Dude....

Huge Chunk of the Bay Bridge sitting on a beach in Half Moon Bay...

Huge waves hit Ocean Beach....

The sands of Marin and San Mateo have officially reopened to the public. (We recommend hitting the beach in the fall. There's something luxurious about walking on the beach, bundled up in winter clothing.) What's more, 50 wild birds have been cleaned up and released at Pillar Point Yacht Harbor at Half Moon Bay. But what's worse, "the spill has cost the U.S. government $1.4 million, money spent on operations by the Coast Guard,......

Oil Spill Volunteer Training 2nite. ...

-- March, rally, die. [Bluoz, SFGate] -- Zombie, thrill(er), dance. [SFWeekly] -- Mac OS X Leopard...on your PC! [Laughing Squid] -- San Francisco's Visitacion Valley Middle School's principal to receive highest honor available for principals. Okay then. [CBS5] -- Half Moon Bay gang rape sentencing delayed. (Karma's a bitch, boys. Well, for you all it sure will be.) [Examiner] -- 32 Heron Street. Mmm, bricky SOMA goodness. [Curbed SF] -- Plane high dives into the......

-- 756. [SFist for links] -- Bonds' ball chasers. [Chron, The Snitch] -- Steve Jobs' pretty new iMacs and more. [eWEEK, Chron] -- Schwarzenegger forces the fuzz to patrol more Oakland streets. [Chron] -- Lights Out wants to dim SF's lights for an hour to neck, or write poetry with a plume pen, or...something. [Examiner] -- Half Moon Bay soccer team busted for "looking for love in all the wrong places." [CBS 5] Image:......

SFist Jon's away for the weekend, so we're subbing in for the weekend daily news roundups! --Isn't anyone going to run against Gavin Newsom? It's like San Francisco has decided to punish Gavin for his sexual/alcohol indiscretions by forcing him to be mayor for four more years. --The ABC 7 news team reviews all the news they've covered in addition to Newsom Meltdown 2007. --Groups A, B, and C will be lining up at......

So, according to the LA Times, Barack Obama spent his early college years smoking dope, listening to new wave music, and taking classes in Marxist theory and gender issues. In other words, can we vote for him yet? Just the thought that he could be the first President to have ever squatted down at the "down...down...down..." part of "Rock Lobster" makes us want to vote for him. We still, however, await the first presidential candidate who could quote from Snoop and Dre. ...

For the past few seasons, the Warriors primary marketing slogan has been, "A Great Time Out". Brimming with hope after Tuesday's trade, SFist decided to catch a game at the O-rena to find out for ourselves.

Since the Merc's Tim Kawakami couldn't make it, we figured we'd step in for Saturday's game against the Cavaliers. This team now has new hope, and SFist was eager to see if there was a new buzz to go with it.

Our audit considered 11 different categories: parking, Oraclelization, concessions, personnel, entertainment, the crowd, new players, visuals/lighting, the seats, music/sound, and the game itself. Each category was ranked from 1 to 10, with 10 being Pac Bell/SBC/ATT park and 1 being, well, Candlestick.

Josh Wolf's Ninth Circuit appeal is officially dead, and it looks like he's stuck in jail for the next 18 months -- unless he wants to turn over his video footage. And in other grand jury contempt of court news, an animal rights activist is scheduled to stay silent before the federal grand jury today, and the LA Times laments the fate of Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada. Remenber the drunk ostrich killers in Half......

The 36th annual Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival kicked off Saturday morning to much fanfare and a crapload of pumpkins and pumpkin paraphenalia. Several blocks of the fog-shrouded farming community-cum-tourist giftshop's Main Street were closed to cars and packed with vendor booths and festival-goers.

-Three fires raged in Rockridge last night and police think it's all due to arson. What the hell is going on in Oakland these days? -Former HP head honcho, CEO Carly Fiorina, can't understand why she was fired and replaced by a bunch of people who just got indicted. We would imagine that would kind of hurt, but we're also pretty sure all the millions she got as a buy out would probably ease some of that pain. ...

--Zephyr Realty's not going to sell TICs where protected people (seniors, disabled) were Ellis Acted out anymore. --The Google CEO is joining the Apple board of directors. We'll get you, Bill and Melinda Gates! --There's a fight brewing over Bayview redevelopment. --After some contentious inside baseball, the Harvey Milk club votes no endorsement for either Dufty or Rosenthal in the District 8 race. --Leather Tongue Video on 18th and Valencia has closed. --House of Prime......

Sweet Sally Jesus, it's twue! it's twue! Devil's Slide is once again open to through traffic. And they said it couldn't be done.

By 4:30 a.m. when we rolled the SFist news Bronco up to the Montara entrance of the slide hoping to be one of the first to pass through the reopened roadway, all the gates were down and the road crews already gone. Only two CHPs, a KRON car, and a photographer from the Half Moon Bay Review gave evidence to the fact that this morning was special. (In fact, Caltrans opened the Slide to the public last night at about 10:00 p.m. Let-down.) All the glam and glitz happened yesterday, in a secret ceremony, for the priveleged, behind barricades, far away from the unwashed masses. They probably needed the extra elbow room for all that back patting they were doing.

Here's a riddle. You invite a fisherman, his lobbyist, and his sales channel, ie. a fishmonger and a restaurateur, and what do you get? Not an all knives out fight, for sure. More like hugs and kisses, and lots and lots of fish knowledge. The congregation of the above-mentioned people was assembled to discuss sustainable seafood at the invite of the Slow Food convivium of the Russian River. From the Latin: con (with, together), and......

The Russian River Slow Food movement comes down to San Francisco this Sunday for a Sustainable Seafood Salon, that is a panel discussion on the issues of sustainability in fishing in the Northern California coast. You guys remember we narrowly escaped having no local wild salmon on our plates this year, and it is only one example of fishing going awry. So if you are concerned about having good fresh local wild seafood on your......

Aw, you know we love a good cliff rescue story. A man walking too close to the edge of the cliff in Half Moon Bay was successfully pulled up about 80 feet on Thursday afternoon. Did you hear a loud bang right after the spelling bee ended last night (around 10:20 p.m.) in the Mission? There was a major water main break at 20th and Valencia. Expect hipsters to look a bit scruffier tomorrow! And dude, don't block the box! A truck didn't manage to pull all the way through the railroad tracks by the Oakland Coliseum and got hit by an oncoming train. The driver got his rear wheels over the tracks but the back 10-15 feet were still over the tracks; he honked his horn but the person in front of him couldn't move up any further. The driver was uninjured but the empty truck trailer didn't come out looking so good. Railway officials repeat their warnings that if it doesn't look like you have enough room to clear the tracks, don't cross 'em. ...

The SF Zoo is mourning the death of Pogo, one of the oldest gorillas at the zoo, who had been suffering declining health over the past few years. Pogo seems to have been subjected to a fair amount of anthropomorphism, in the way that only happens with loved animals -- she liked to read National Geographic (but the zookeepers didn't show her nature videos, because they thought they were too violent), loved to dress up,......

Apparently, Caltrans is gearing up to begin repair work on the disheveled Devil's Slide this week, but they're not offering any estimates as to when the road might once again be open to traffic. The official, public position is that the picturesque but perpetually rubbly stretch of Hwy 1 that links Pacifica to the coastal communities is "closed indefinitely." Hmm, that sounds like a long, long time.

But take heart Coastsiders, while dining in North Half Moon Bay on Saturday night, SFist learned through firsthand hearsay, relayed from a source that we were assured was "totally connected," that the latest insider estimate for the reopening of Devil's Slide is sometime around the Fourth of July. For coastal denizens about ready to lose their mother freakin' minds, this should offer some solace. We looked it up -- in the Thanks for Nothing category, two months does in fact beat boundless eternity.

Traffic, already straining the limits of the coastside's underdeveloped infrastructure under normal conditions, has been at DEFCON 5 since the Slide was closed to traffic on the evening of Sunday, April 2. Because Hwy 92 is now the only viable route in or out of a host of coastal towns from Montara to Pescadero, it's not a pretty sight during commute hours. And that's just down in Half Moon Bay. For upper coastsiders in El Granada, Moss Beach, Princeton, and Montara, it's worse. On April 3, the first day that Devil's Slide was closed, it was taking commuters an hour to move between the two El Granada stoplights on Hwy 1, a distance of about half a mile. Many commuters are now getting up before 5:00 a.m. just to have a shot at making it to work in under two hours.

OK mountain bikers, it's raining this weekend, and that means most of the trails out there are muck. Yeah, sure, some trails like the Bobcat and Miwok trails in the Marin Headlands , the Mitchell Canyon and Deer Flat roads on Mt. Diablo, and the North Peak Access Road up Montara Mountain are probably still rideable, but beyond that, the trails are just too fragile for responsible riding right now....

The Mavericks Surf Contest, held in the treacherous and icy waters north of Half Moon Bay, is the world's greatest big wave surfing contest. The on-again, off-again contest founded by Half Moon Bay surf legend Jeff Clark in 1999, in on again for tomorrow, February 7, 2006....

At last! The wait is over for those eager for crab season to manifest itself on their plates. Jeez, we write about crab a lot -- and that's not even counting Crazy Crab! As reported earlier, fishermen and processors had been unable to agree on per pound pricing until this past Saturday, when "the two groups agreed on a price of $1.75 a pound and more than 100 commercial boats went to sea from......

...oh no!! The whale's back! The whale that was previously beached in Half Moon Bay that just washed out to sea a few days ago has resurfaced -- floating on the waters right by Half Moon Bay's Ritz-Carlton hotel. "It doesn't smell like incense," says a marine biologist, no doubt rubbing his hands together with glee. Hotel management claims they haven't had any complaints yet, but the Merc notes that "gelatinous blobs of dead whale" will probably start washing ashore any minute now. Oakland City Councilmember Desley Brooks is under investigation for accepting kickbacks. Brooks was apparently funneling money through the daughter of her boyfriend, who was getting paid $5200/month while enrolled in college on the East Coast. Brooks, who it sounds like is not the most popular councilmember in the world, claims it's all a setup by Council President Ignacio de la Fuenta to get her out of office. And two shootings in SF last night -- one at 26th and Treat, one in Crocker Amazon Park. Both victims are at SF General and the shooters remain at large. ...

The dead whale in Half Moon Bay still hasn't exploded (the threat of that has apparently passed.) There's now a turf war over whether the Harbor District (who takes the sea) or San Mateo Parks and Rec (who takes the land) is responsible for getting the rotting carcass off the beach. Meanwhile, a shark research foundation has gotten permission to cut off some of the whale's blubber to use as shark bait. Dude, you're bumming if your dog bites a politician's dog. Burlingame city counselman Paul Prendiville is trying to get a lab-pit mix off his block after it attacked his shih-tzu. The shih-tzu's eye was pulled out of its socket, but has since been resewn back in. The owner has agreed to pay the vet bill and neuter the dog, but Prendiville wants the dog off the block entirely. Prendiville told the press, "I'm grateful that my dog is Catholic and he survived." (....um, what does that mean?) ....okay, this isn't really animal-related but hey, the witness's name is Dog! Close enough! A dump truck carrying 20 tons of dirt lost control and ran into an "adult video arcade" on Sixth and Mission in San Francisco at about 9 a.m. this morning, narrowly missing three patrons (getting an early start on the day there, guys!). Store clerk Jersey Dog said one patron was pinned against the wall but was otherwise okay. Interestingly, about a year and a half ago, the adult bookstore across the street was also hit by a runaway vehicle (a 14 Mission bus). Picture of dead whale by Judith Calson of the SJ Merc News...

There's been an underground explosion at Post and Kearny, right outside the Ralph Lauren store at the Crocker Galleria. At around 10 a.m., people said they heard an explosion and saw the sidewalk rise up about 6-7 inches. Two manhole covers were blown off, as was a concrete cover, and the explosion blew up the glass front of the Ralph Lauren store. One woman was sent to the hospital with serious, but not life-threatening, burns. We wish her a speedy recovery. The authorities suspect that an underground transformer blew, but the bomb squad is going in before they let PG&E look around. Parts of Post, Sutter, Montgomery, and Kearny have been cordoned off as the investigation continues. Not a good day for PG&E, who just got hit with a possible $15 million fine for the 2003 above-ground transformer explosion. In other news, there was also a bomb scare at Civic Center (which was cleared without incident) around the same time. Meanwhile, the authorities are also worrying that the beached whale we told you about in Half Moon Bay might explode as well. (Really!) Also -- Flickr users, ABC News 7 wants to use your digital photos of the blast if you have any....

Awww, look at that sweet duck. This duck is one of the survivors of last week's attack at the Campbell car wash, and was just found to have suffered a broken leg. The vets expect the duck to recover within 3-4 weeks. Meanwhile, the reward fund for information is now over $11,000. Editor and wag SFist Jackson forwards this along for the Animal Roundup, with the following note:

Beached whale! And no, I'm not talking Courtney Love.

Beer: We like it. So Half Moon Bay Brewing Company — a waterfront restaurant that brews its own — seemed a great choice for a foggy afternoon on the coast. We had s**t to do that day, so we didn't get to HMB until about three p.m. The anticipated thinness of the post-lunch, pre-dinner-hour crowd didn't pan out; we approached the hostess out on the patio (which was crowded even in the fog, and......

One recent gorgeous sunny day, craving a micro-vacation and some good food, we abandoned our obligations for the afternoon and headed down the coast to Half Moon Bay's ">Ono Hawaiian Grill. We drove along the rugged coastline, not caring how long or how often we were slowed to a crawl as surfers and families and people with dogs and tourists with cameras pulled off the road at various beach hotspots. With an iPod full......

Okay, it's a little bit of a stretch to call Susie Bright a 'Bay' blogger, unless you're talking about Half Moon Bay, since she lives in Santa Cruz. But she spent many a year as what could only be described as a San Francisco literary impresario and raconteur, so we're calling it close enough for government work. Regardless, there aren't a lot of other blogs that feature musings on the nature of the Brad......