Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

A warm spell is rolling into the Bay Area -- so it's time for our perennial post complaining about how much we haaaaaaate it when it's hot. Bring back the fog! Bring back the fog! So it's going to be stiflingly hot for the next few days (yes, we know, it's not as bad as it is in every other part of the country, but that's why we don't live in those other parts of......

Tomato crops haven't fared well in California's recent heat wave, which might explain why market stalls aren't overflowing with the iconic summer vegetables. We spotted some recently, and took some home for a tomato tasting in the SFist test kitchen. Honest, we came up with this idea before the New York Times ran an article about a similar tasting . We used tomatoes from the Grand Lake Farmer's Market and stored them at room......

It's our column about the dramarama of the November District 6 election! This week's episode: Everybody Hates Signing Things. After we made so much fun of Chris Daly's signature-gathering for the ballot last week, we feel duty-bound to report that we got a triumphant email from his campaign headquarters (that had some weird spacing in it -- but we attribute that to our webmail browser) announcing that he'd collected 1200 signatures in support of his......

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival organizer who introduced 51 Birch Street at the Castro Theatre on Saturday said, "welcome to our high class shvitz." The bubbie sitting in front of us turned around and asked, "do you know what a shvitz is?" We wanted to tell her that if you looked up "shvitz" in Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish you'd see a picture of our shvitzy Korean-asses shvitzing like crazy all over the......

Was it not enough that we broke Dogster? (Get well soon, SFist Ted! We need you to cover the upcoming heat wave!) We've got even more bad dog news to report. Local animal shelters and pet rescue groups are asking Craigslist not to post ads for dogs and cats for sale, claiming that the website makes for easy access to a marketplace for the dreaded "backyard breeder," making a quick buck by selling inbred and ill-socialized pit bulls. The East Bay SPCA found in one month 183 listings for unneutered pit bull puppies, some as "human-aggressive." And the dog-loving number-crunchers have finished their reports, and found that pit bulls account for 27% of all known dog attacks since 2003, even though they constitute only 6% of the licensed dog population. The statisticians warn that it could be that people are likely to report pit bull attacks and less likely to register pit bulls, but still. Out of 900+ bites since 2003, 626 were traced to a specific dog. Of that 626, 169 were traced to pits. That was more than the next three species combined (German shepherds with 69, labs with 58, and rottweilers with 34). A man also tells a harrowing tale of being attacked by a pit bull in the DVD section of the SoMisPo Best Buy. Uh, who brings a pit bull to Best Buy? Were they checking out TiVos? ...

Bling bling, shorty. £3,600 for that thing? Damn! Anyway, it's still hot as hell up in this joint, but it's Tuesday, so the Essefficist is back again to answer all your questions and resolve all your quandries. Aiiigghhht! Today we're looking at your questions about the ongoing heat wave, condom life expectancy, a social blunder, and the elusive Craig's List hookup. First we turn to Jordan, who asks "When is this heat wave going to......