From the moment you first plugged it in, your home telephone has been waiting for the moment when its existence would be justified. And now! At last! The Gavin Newsom '08 Phone Bank is ACTIVATING! Six days a week, starting this weekend and running until November, the phone bank will will be harassing San Franciscans all over San Francisco: vote for Gav! As we know, he's got a pretty extensive collection of phone numbers,......

Number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 67. Number of people pictured whom we recognize: 9 (including 3 pictures of Gavin Newsom and 2 pictures of Dede Wilsey). Minority count: 5 (7.5%). Getty v. Traina: 10-8 (There's a spread about the LA branch of the Gettys in this month's Harper's Bazaar). Number of choice quotes concerning Gavin Newsom: 2. One by Dede Wilsey (re the Healthy Saturdays negotiations): "I learned that Gavin......

Peace in our times! Bikers and car drivers, with the help of none other than the Honorable Gavin Newsom, have worked out a permanent solution to the Golden Gate Park Healthy Saturdays impasse. We know, we're totally amazed too -- next, the mayor's office will say they've worked it all out between the Shias and the Sunnis; Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff; and Pat Murphy and Chris Daly. We're nominating Gavin for a Nobel peace......

A hearing was held with the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Economic Development Committee yesterday to discuss the whole Healthy Saturday's issue. On one side, biker enthusiasts and anti-carites. On the other side: advocates for the disabled and various friends of DeDe (FODs). At the end of the debate, Supervisor, main sponsor, and recall victim Jake McG, decided to postpone the vote until next week. The reason for a delay in the decision was because Gavin wanted to hold a sit-down with people on both sides to hammer out some sort of compromise. ...

There's going to be some more clipboard-wielding petition signature gatherers near Burma Superstar, as a group of Geary Street merchants filed the official paperwork to launch a recall campaign against District 1 (The Richmond) supervisor Jake McGoldrick, for being insufficiently car-friendly. Insufficiently car-friendly? He only just biked to work for the first time in 2006! The recall campaign, which is spearheaded in part by one of the six candidates who ran against McGoldrick for the......

It looks like there might be peace in our time as a deal is in the works over the whole Healthy Saturdays thing. Apparently, city officials are trying to work out a compromise between fans of the plan and supporters of the Dede Wilsey Shrine to Her Wilsey-ness. No details have emerged yet, but apparently Gavin has been meeting with both sides to figure something out. ...

-There was a protest in the Mission over the the latest bit of immigration raids. -Flaks o' Gavin on gay porn proclamation: we did what? Oopsie. ...

In light of the new study coming out saying that the closure of JFK boulevard on Sundays doesn't hurt attendance at any of the fancy new museums in Golden Gate Park, supporters of the Healthy Saturdays initiative gathered to renew the fight. In a press conference yesterday, Jake McG said he was going to reintroduce the measure to close the park on Saturday for a six month trial run. ...

It says a lot about the state of San Francisco politics that an openly gay politician has a baby with an openly lesbian friend and the openly gay politician is considered not progressive enough. But there you have it. Dufty has come under criticism for being too conservative for his progressive district and earned the enmity of the progressives for allegedly being anti-tenant and for his vote against Healthy Saturdays initiative. The Progessive Voter Index even breaks it all down by numbers. But despite the criticism, the District 8 race between Bevan and Alix Rosenthal hasn't quite achieved the level of vitriol and craziness that marks the District 6 election. Part of it is that both Alix and Bevan-- to their credit-- appear to be acting like adults. And part of it is that even Bevan's critics seem acknowledge the fact that Bevan is a really nice guy and does a good job of servicing his district. ...

Here's an update on a couple of stories we've been following. -After Gavin vetoed the "Healthy Saturdays" initiative, the Board of Supervisors voted to see if they could override Gavin's veto but couldn't. Once again, the vote came down to a 7-4 vote, not enough to override, with the Usual Suspects-- Alioto-Pier, Dufty, Elsbernd, and Ma-- voting no. The next steps are unclear at this point. McGoldrick says he's in negotiations with Gavin to come to some sort of resolution to the initiative but people are skeptical of Gavin's intentions. Maybe we'll have another ballot measure, but apparently this issue has been deemed too important to be left to us. BTW, we're a little confused about the fact that all the pro-bike people keep on saying Gavin vetoed the measure because he's the bitch of the rich. When did neighborhood activists and activists for the disabled and all the other people who came out against the measure suddenly become rich and powerful developers? Anyways, check out this hilarious interview with Gavin on the Bay Guardian's web site, an interview that takes place while Gavin and the reporter are riding bicycles to City Hall on Bike to Work Day. We imagine the reporter and Gavin puffing away, muttering curses at each other underneath their breath and trying desperately not to roll their eyes too much lest they accidentally crash into other bikers. ...