Photo by Phillyist's Matt Johnson, SkyscraperSunset.com, December 19, 2007. Phillyist explored an impending implosion and lived to tell the tale.Gothamist marveled at the city's new NYC-branded condom campaign - especially the use of a Toronto landmark in the advertising. (Also, fun fact: Gothamist turned five years old yesterday.)Tired of the worldwide Scientology protests? Torontoist totally isn't: they covered the big downtown protest the day it happened, and followed up with an examination of all......

While not nearly as exciting as receiving top honors as the best city for tourists to walk slow on city sidewalks, or best city in which singles can hump, on Monday the FBI just awarded SF as the city with the largest reported number of hate crimes in 2006. According to Bay City News (via SF Crime): With a population of approximately 746,000, had a total of 94 reported hate crime incidents in 2006,......

Whether this is a hate crime or simply a theft, we are flabbergasted that this story has barely made the news. The valuable bronze plaque commemorating the Armenian Genocide that occurred in the early 20th century was discovered missing on Sunday the 23rd, during an event to recognize Armenian Independence Day. Although police are calling this a "a very serious matter," word hadn't gotten out until this last Thursday. In cases like these, one......

-- Good God, Genesis (alas, the band) is back. [BeyondChron] -- HA! Even bunnies know that square-mouthed Giada De Laurentiis is a wee bit porn-y at times. [CHOW] -- San Leandro teen killed in car crash on (the) 680. [Chron] -- Gap laptop stolen along with the personal data of over 800,000 retail queens. Whoops. [Examiner] -- Party poopers: Apple brings down the hammer on hacked iPhones. (Dear AT&T, Hate you much. xo, us)......

Currently on sabbatical at the psychiatric unit of San Francisco County jailhouse for trying to beat the holy hell out of Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel -- and also hopped up on meds to soothe his lack of mental clarity , which supposedly triggered the violent incident -- the apologetic 23-year-old Eric Hunt will go to trial on September 4. Staring down the barrel of six felony charges -- i.e., attempted battery, stalking, kidnapping,......

A man was stabbed at 11th and Folsom at around 1:30 Monday morning. The victim is alive but suffered life-threatening wounds. An angry neighbor in Belmont got so sick of the noise from her neighbor's evening carpentry activities that she revved up her black 1995 Mustang at around 11:30 p.m. and ran over the cabinets he was working on (and then fled the scene). Because she was shouting racial epithets at the time, she was......

Here's todays recap of the todays news...

-More officers are sent to the Ocean View neighborhood after two men were shot within an hour of each other last night. -They still can't figure out who it was that was in that apartment on Haight Street. They do know he was naked and handcuffed. -Now the Native Americans are getting involved with those trees in Berkeley as they're claiming it's sacred ground. Boy, this new fitness center is getting off to a great......

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly. Matt Smith tries to solve a murder from 2003. The Apologist on the new mall. Paper City folds. Cover article: discrimination against mothers in the workplace. The Brutal Sound Effects Festival -- sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Meredith Brody goes to Front Porch with Hiya Swanhuyser. Everyone seems to like Hiya at the Weekly! SFist Ced has nothing bad to say about the review, but is now taking bets on......

Last night's "Battlestar Galactica" was....awesome. Just awesome. -YMCA plan to cut down trees for their Camp Jones Gulch camp near La Honda not going down well with people who live near there. ...

We are obsessively following the story about the father and stepmother who left the father's two sons alone in their San Ramon house with a bunch of frozen dinners so they could go to Vegas for a weeklong vacation!! The parents were willing to fork out the money for a dogsitter but not anyone for the kids! The younger boy was autistic and was heard shrieking for help from the garage over the weekend! The cops had to gain entry into the house through a second-story sliding door because the boys were told not to open the door for the week! The parents had done this at least once before! The maternal grandparent called the cops and now wants custody! The stepmother's defense is that she loves kids because she gives them free toothbrushes at her dental practice!!! Whew! What does the Chron's Two Cents think about the whole thing? The police in Santa Cruz get a call during last week's wild weather -- a dead body floating by the wharf, face down. Grim. They race out, with lifeguards, rescue boats, and a Coast Guard helicopter. It was a log. And the police are still investigating an anti-Semitic hate crime that happened back in October in front of a Marina pizza parlor. Two roommates, who had recently graduated from Stanford, were attacked outside Pizza Pino by a group of males shouting anti-Jewish slurs. One attacker has been caught but they're looking for two others. The Jewish ADL is offering a $5000 reward for information. ...

Your SF weekend assaults roundup: A shooting at 5 p.m. on Saturday at Mission and 18th, followed 45 minutes later by a stabbing at Mission and 17th; a shooting in Visitacion Valley Saturday night/Sunday morning; a shooting at Broadway and Columbus outside Vietnam Restaurant; and a shooting outside 330 Ritch. Hey, if you hate alternative music of the late 80s that much, just say so! Good Samaritans at the North Berkeley BART stop -- people waiting on the platform Sunday interceded to stop an attempted robbery of a woman waiting for a Richmond-bound train. Four people were injured (one seriously), but they caught the would-be robber. The BART stop was then closed for three hours as the police came by for interviews, a weapons search, and to clean up the station. BART says maybe September 11 is not the best day to try anything funny on a transit system. And yesterday, an Alameda County jury returned two second-degree murder convictions in the Gwen Araujo case, and hung again on the third defendant. The jury rejected first-degree or the hate crime enhancements to the penalties. ...

Special "SFist Rita is out of town, so bear with us" edition. So sad. The San Leandro police department is on the hunt for one Irving "Gotti" Ramirez of Newark who is suspected of killing a SLPD officer. The officer was responding to a complaint about noisy loiterers when Ramirez and an accomplice allegedly drove up in a Thunderbird and shot him in the head. The officer, a three year veteran, leaves behind a wife......

A passenger was stabbed yesterday afternoon at the MacArthur BART station -- the reports are sketchy, but it sounds like a teenage girl got in an argument with another woman on a Fremont-bound train. They both got off at MacArthur, and the girl attempted to stab the woman in the stomach, missed, and got the woman in the shoulder instead. The girl fled, with the woman chasing after her, but got out of the station before anyone could catch her. We heard on KRON that the victim was transgendered and the girl may have committed a hate crime, but no one else seems to have confirmed that yet. A woman in Menlo Park was at home when she suddenly heard a window break and noises from her upstairs bedroom! Burglars! She called 911 and the cops hustled on over. They got her out. They surrounded the house. They cautiously went upstairs ..... and found a terrified red-tailed hawk that had crashed through the window and deposited its half-eaten meal (a baby crow) on the woman's bed. The bird was taken in by the Humane Society, which says it's doing fine and should be released back into the wild soon. "I never thought my windows were clean enough for this to happen," mused the homeowner. And former A's and Giants pitcher Vida Blue has been summoned to San Mateo County Court next Monday to explain why he hasn't done the community service he was sentenced to after his DUI arrest last year on 101. Blue was recently arrested on another DUI in Scottsdale, Arizona in March. ...

Everyone's favorite attorney crime fighter, Kimberly Guilfoyle! Angry parolees in Oakland staged a protest at Oakland's City Hall on Wednesday, claiming Mayor Jerry Brown was unfairly blaming them for crime and failing to support them in finding jobs. When they got to City Hall, though, imagine their surprise when it turned out the City had organized a job fair for them! Quick thinking, Mayor Jerry! In kind of a Sore-Loserman move, though, some of the protesters then got in a screaming match with the fair organizers, claiming it had been set up solely to make the parolees look bad. Nonetheless, 16 people signed up for various city programs, and Jerry Brown released a pugnacious statement about not crashing people's parties. In Daly City, a middle-aged gay Asian man wearing women's clothing was found stabbed to death in his backyard. Investigators have no leads and tentatively suspect that some kind of hate crime was involved, but also note that the man had not been robbed of his jewelry and had not been sexually assaulted. ...

Starting today and running through Sunday, the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library are hosting their 40th annual Big Book Sale, at Fort Mason. ...