Ice cold marble floors and Bond villain ambiance can be yours for a mere $42 million dollars (or your soul). This 70th floor, 6,941-square-foot penthouse at 181 Fremont Street features five bedrooms, five and two-half bathrooms, two kitchens, a see-through fireplace, and, as the highest home in San Francisco, offers a striking view directly into the pearly gates of heaven.

The ridiculously high-end residences that take up the top 17 floors at 181 Fremont were designed by Orlando Diaz-Azcuy, a San Francisco-based interior designer who looks exactly like the rich guy in Contact who gave Jodie Foster enough money to communicate with aliens. Diaz-Azcuy is a 1988 inductee into the Interior Design Hall of Fame and designed the interiors of Levi Strauss' offices and the Sir Michael Kadoorie residence (!?!).

All of you planning to purchase this penthouse should be aware that you won't be able to move all of your junk in until 2018 because it takes a really long time to build something so classy and emotionless.

View a gallery of the 181 Fremont residences here. Each penthouse room will be RUINED by one personal framed photo, much less by your bobble head collection and "I Love You To The Moon and Back" reclaimed wood wall art.

Fingers crossed this place ends up on a very special episode of "Hoarders."

We don't usually read the Op Ed pages of the Chronicle, because it's always either rehashed columnists from other papers or something like "give birth control pills to deer in Point Reyes" -- but can you believe it? The Chron actually got someone local to write about a local issue today -- if we're going to build out the MUNI underground, why not actually build it out and have a subway that runs to Fisherman's Wharf?

None of this will come as a news flash to anyone who actually lives here (Newsflash! The 30 Stockton is crowded!), and it's sort of depressing that the state of public transportation is so bad here that we're only just now, in 2008, possibly contemplating building a subway that hooks up to one of the city's most popular tourism areas.

In addition, the editorial, written by a public policy person at SPUR, is a little light on how we'd pay for this extension, or whether or not the moneyed residents in the tony Pac HeightsRussian Hill/Telegraph Hill area would actually agree to allow their streets to be hacked up for years to put a subway in (which is what we had always assumed had killed off any previous discussion of this idea in the past), but hey, we're just glad to see an actual opinion on the op-ed page that we're interested in learning more about!

Friday night, there's a tie between three different shows. You can head over to Slim's to see Melee, a strong favorite of our local radio station, Alice 97.3. Don't be late because this show has equally good openers featuring one of our favorite bands, Until June, that we featured on New Tunes Tuesday back in November and Matt White, a New Jersey native. White has been featured on several TV shows with his hit single, "Best Days." Of course, if you are a bit strapped for cash, you can always head over to Hotel Utah and for six bucks you can check out The Papersons, a San Francisco rock band. Another local favorite, Magic Bullets will be at Bottom of the Hill. So many great bands on one night; we recommend them all!

Check out the jump for the full listings and recently announced concerts...

So, it's the eleventh hour and you've decided against crushing up a couple of Ambiens into a mug of fume blanc and calling it a year. Instead, you've turned that frown upside down, choosing to see what's happening tonight on New Year's Eve 2008. Good for you. And to help you out, here are some last-minute events for each neighborhood in the San Francisco. Just follow links for more info; they will provide you with more in-depth details.

And remember, we care about you guys, so remember to drink plenty and drink often tonight.

• Haight: Club Deluxe NYE Comedy Extravaganza (Stand up comedy while betting buzzed off of gin martinis.)
• Fisherman's Wharf: New Year's Eve Peace Party at the Wax Museum (NYE at the Wharf? Why not.)
• Bayview-Hunter's Point: Cyclecide Bike Rodeo New Year’s Eve Show at Ace Auto Junkyard (Dear God, run for your life-- um, we mean, this will be a most festive, cyclist-friendly bash.)
• Downtown/Rincon Hill: Diplo (DJ/genius spins at Temple)
• Fillmore-Pacific Heights: Count Basie Orchestra with Ledisi (We love us some Ledisi. And she sings for the imbibed masses at Yoshi's SF.)
• Tenderloin: Bearracuda New Years' Eve (Party in cracktown for large and/or enthusiastically hairy homosexual men.)

December has been an unfortunate month for Bernal Heights and fires. One fire that we haven't discussed yet is one that happened on December 22nd. In this Bernal Fire, Rocket Dog Rescue founder Pali Boucher became homeless and lost three fostered rescue dogs all in the blink of an eye.

Since 2001, Boucher has been rescuing otherwise doomed doggies from Bay Area shelters, nursing them back to health, finding them temporary, and then ultimately permanent homes. So far, the organization has saved an impressive 1,900 dogs.

Rocket Dog Rescue is asking for some extra help through their "Fire Emergency Fund." Long-term foster homes are needed, as well as funds for a new space where Boucher can live and continue rehabilitating dogs.

Read more about the tragic fire here. To find out more about Rocket Dog Rescue, visit their website. To make a donation to the Fire Emergency Fund, click here.

Image credit: Rocket Dog Rescue

A two-alarm fire at Bernal Heights home caused the displacement of two elderly folks. The blaze happened at 266 Nevada Street around 6:30 p.m. this evening. According to the Gate, "[f]irefighters found the home's two residents inside and brought them out to safety." Aw. Our heroes!

Anyway, other than one of the rescued Bernal residents suffering from breathing trouble -- who was hospitalized for a short period of time -- no other injuries were reported. The Red Cross is giving the two shelter until they can return back to the hill.

He hasn't gotten the attention that a few others in the race have, but that will probably change soon for 2008 and beyond. So, see Joe Alioto Veronese here.

-- Perverts. [ASD]

-- San Francisco to go solar. [Curbed]

-- SUV rampage remembered. [SFGate]

-- Bernal Heights robbers? Oh noes! [The Snitch]

-- The McKesson Corporation sued. Also, SFBG's got the love for the Examiner? [SFBG]

-- The handitards over at Best Buy apologize for sending Scott Beale an inane cease & desist missive. Classic stuff, folks. [Laughing Squid]

-- Blueprint -- it's not a good thing. (Eh.) [ValleyWag]

Exploring San Francisco through the lens of city blocks, Blocker is a weekly series by Charles Hodgkins. Look for it on SFist each Wednesday, around the lunching hour.

View the map of all published Blocker episodes.

Blocker, No. 26: Amethyst Way in Diamond Heights

Certain blocks speak to specific eras. While the local architecture can play a significant role, perhaps the most crucial factor is one that can’t be defined. It’s a mood we begin to sense as we sift around an area - what we imagine it to have been like so many years before, and in the case of certain places, perhaps how little it’s changed in the years since.

Mission St. in the Excelsior had us thinking 1972 or so. Sturgeon St. on Treasure Island seemed rutted in about 1987. Country Club Dr. in the Parkside had 1954 down pat.

By the same metric, Amethyst Way in Diamond Heights feels like 1966.

We got word today from an anonymous source that two residents of Bernal Heights -- including a former President of Golden Gate Audubon Society -- spotted a burrowing owl a block from their house on the southeastern side of the hill. The (sub?)species was confirmed by another Audubon-er.

So, why does this matter? Because at the moment there is construction going on in the same area (i.e., landscaping improvements such as steps, etcetera) where the owl is kicking it. According to Wikipedia, for what it's worth, "[t]he burrowing owl is endangered in Canada, threatened in Mexico, and a species of special concern in Florida and most of the western USA." ("Species of special concern." Aw.) Burrowing owls usually live in ground squirrel holes, according to our source, but so far the bird has been reported up on the Hill, in a tree for the last couple of days.

We talked to the former Audubon president today about the birdie finding, and the Bernal resident wants to know more. To find out if an environmental-impact report was done on the area before current construction, they tried calling the Mayor's office, 311, Tom Ammiano's office, and the City Attorney's office. So far, no one has returned any calls. They also discussed the issue with various fish and game associations, with not much luck there either.

If any of you have further info, we're sure that she (as well as the GG Audubon Society) would love to hear from you, readers. (Also, no little baby kittens better get hurt with this construction, damnit! Kitty cats = sheer darlingness.)

Hey, remember that Question Time thingy? You know, that non-binding measure that voters passed which called for Gavin to appear in front of the Board of Supes and answer questions thrown his way while the rest of us get to kick back and watch the fun? Well, if you remember, Gavin kind of refused to do it and instead staged fake Question Time, "Town Hall" meetings throughout the city and wound up killing any sort of conflict over the issue by basically boring everyone to death. Even the chickens got bored and stopped attending.

So the supporters of Question Time, mainly Chris Daly, are trying to get a new measure passed, Prop E, which states that Gavin absolutely, positively has to show up-- no buts. In response, Gavin is rasing money from supporters to fight the measure on the ballot. Call them the No-E coalition, although they're calling themselves the "Let’s Really Work Together Coalition.” Or, for you kids out there, the-- "Let's Totally Work Together, For Reals, Coalition." Gavin has lately been going to Pacific Heights and raising money with his peeps to beat back Prop E. Lately, he went to a fund raiser at Dede Wilsey's home to get some of the $100,000 to $150,000 those in the know say he'll need to raise. And wouldn't it be great to have the kind of money that you can just throw around willy-nilly like that to beat back some totally silly ballot measure? Isn't there anything else they could throw money to? Where's Bono when you need him?

Once enough money is raised, the campaign, as they say, "is on." Gavin's people are going to play the Daly card and say an No-E vote is a vote against Daly. As for Daly, he's pretty much whatever about the whole thing and points out that it's a simple measure and that since it passed last time with 56% of the vote, he's sure it'll pass again.