We here at SFist tip our Tom of Finland (faux) leather cap to the Peter Berlin Look-A-Like contestants at last Friday's Opening Night Gala for That Man: Peter Berlin, because it was freakin' COLD. As we stepped out of the Castro Muni Metro stop, clad in coat and gloves and other things we thought we'd left behind in the Midwest, we spied folks in teeny shorts and mini dresses, all gussied up for the......

Blog nerds better go buy the kids at Technorati a drink or two tonight, as they're celebrating the rollout of their new look and features at the House of Shields (which has wifi!). Tomorrow night is the SFlickr Drinkup at the BigFoot Lodge for those of you who just can't wait another two weeks until the next 'official' meetup. Not gay enough for you? Well, you can be serious and consider the issues surrounding......

The scene at the Kabuki for the last night of the Asian-American Film Festival was jam-packed, with three movies all starting at the same time, and people dressed to the nines for the closing party. We were in attendance at the sold-out show for part three of the thirteen-part series Chinese Restaurants, a labor of love for Chinese-Canadian director Cheuk Kwan, who has eaten in Chinese restaurants around the globe -- including Israel, South Africa, Mauritius, Cuba, and Turkey -- and sought to learn the stories of how the proprieters came to live in these unexpected places. Chinese restaurants are a constant source of fascination -- the co-sponsor for the screening was the Chinese Historical Society, which is currently showing an ecstatically-reviewed photography exhibit of Indigo Som's pictures taken in Chinese restaurants in Mississippi. (You may also remember Som's other project, collecting all the Chinese takeout menus from across America.). The movies screened on Thursday -- Three Continents and two shorts, BBC House Special and Selling Louie's Village -- all explored the role of the Chinese restaurant in representing the Chinese diaspora. Egg Foo Young, a Chinese restaurant in Norway, and Chinese people with Liverpudlian accents, after the jump. Images from ...

Hey! Have you wondered what the heck that big building across the street from the parking lot for the Metreon at Fifth and Mission is? Why, it's the Old San Francisco Mint! The original SF Mint was established by President Millard Fillmore in 1850, to facilitate the quicker minting of all the "that there's gold in them thar Sierra hills" business. The mint was then moved to the Fifth and Mission building in 1874, which survived the 1908 quake, but was then deemed too small for the vast coinage required for our great land, at which point the Mint moved to its current location, the bunker surrounded by barbed wire behind the Market Street Safeway....