This week's installment of SFist Memoirs comes from Jim Doeppers, the uncle of this contributor. In 1973, Jim drove his hippie van from the Midwest to San Francisco at the tender age of 23 and instantly immersed himself in the counter culture of the time, where he remained for the next twenty years. From growing his own crops in Humboldt County and being Jerry Garcia's friend and drug connection to working the houseboat docks in Sausalito, and then ultimately ending up in rehab, Jim has experienced the party lifestyle inside and out. Let's start from the very beginning, shall we? more ›

Despite the recent declaration by Sam Singer, spokesman for Jon Handlery, that the The Gold Dust Lounge is definitely closing on March 6th, the folks behind Save the Gold Dust Lounge haven't given up. As the Snitch reports, the group filed paperwork yesterday requesting that the city recognize the space as a historic landmark. more ›

SFist is beginning a new series in which Bay Area natives and long-time residents can share their stories from bygone eras. Our inaugural story comes from Bev DeBeaumont Warnecke, who worked at Baruh Wholesale Liquors in the late '50s, a job that gained her a unique view into the social lives of elite Bay Area business owners. Take it away, Bev! Warning: The last photo in the gallery is not suitable for work (NSFW). more ›

SF Sketchfest presents Comedy Noir's The XXX Factor: The Ultimate Dirty Joke Competition told via the troupe's trademark "Mockulebrity/ Impersonafacations," followed by... more ›

FILM: The "fascinating and even-handed documentary," Cleanflix, explores the world of the backroom entrepreneurs in Utah who clean-up racy Hollywood films to suit the puritanical Mormon community, resulting in "twists, turns and a sex scandal that surely would disqualify it from rental shelves around Salt Lake City." (7pm and 9p.m., Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street) more ›

The decades tick on, but the nation's fascination with and collective grief for John F. Kennedy's assassination remains constant, even today as we mark the 48th anniversary. Above you can see a stabilized version of the famed Zapruder film, still the best document we have of the event -- a fact which in itself is mind-boggling, given how a Presidential appearance these days would be shot from every angle, by fifty or eighty news outlets, not to mention every bystander's cell phone camera. more ›

Documentary filmmaker Michael Stabile, who chronicled San Francisco's birth as the Smut Capital of America in a short film last year — and who has brought us amazing archival footage of Dianne Feinstein railing against porn and took us on a tour of The Magazine on Polk Street — publishes a piece today in the Bold Italic about the often amazing things he's found while digging around in the dusty archives of our local GLBT Historical Society. He's working on a full-length feature, you see, about the life of Chuck Holmes — the founder of pioneering gay porn studio Falcon, and the namesake of S.F.'s LGBT Center Charles Holmes Campus. more ›

In our capacity as head of an agency that delivers pertinent pigeon dispatches, allow us to remind you that on this day in 1914, the last known passenger pigeon--named Martha, after George Washington’s wife--died in captivity in Cincinnati, Ohio. more ›

FILM: The Red Devil Lounge has a weekly cure for the Monday blues with their ongoing free movie screenings. This week's film is the classic family flick, The Goonies, starring Sean Astin, Josh Brolin and Corey Feldman. (7 p.m., Red Devil Lounge, 1695 Polk Street) more ›

Another locally-owned, neighborhood theater bites the dust today. The Haight-Ashbury's beloved Red Vic is set to close its doors for good after tonight's final screening of the endearingly morbid Hal Ashby classic, Harold and Maude. Naturally, both shows are sold out. more ›

This week, the Tenderloin Geographic Society investigates the first time a mayor who didn't really want to job ended up in office and how a Steamboat captain spent two terms presiding over the city. more ›

MUSIC: Aesop Rock and Kimya Dawson bring their collaborative sound, which might be described as "folk-hop" to the Independent tonight, along with Rob Sonic and DJ Big Wiz. (8 p.m., The Independent, 628 Divisadero Street) more ›

Oaklandish reports that on this day, May 4, in 1852, the California state legislature incorporated the town of Oakland. Previously, according to Oaklandnet,com, the "hamlet" was previously known as Contra Costa and consisted of just 75 people. more ›

FILM: Werner Herzog tells the true story of The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, one of his most compelling films, about a young man who had been held captive in a dungeon his whole life and was mysteriously left in a square in Nuremberg in 1828, unable to speak or walk, and bearing a strange note. A non-actor, Bruno S., was chosen to play Kasper, delivering a mesmerizing performance. more ›

HISTORY: City Lights and Speak Out celebrate the publication of Clarence Lusane's The Black History of the White House, which illuminates the central role the White House has played in advancing, thwarting, or simply ignoring efforts to achieve equal rights for all. more ›

After a contentious 6-5 decision last week—in which allegiance non-pledger Jane Kim cast the deciding vote—Richard Johns was appointed to the historian’s seat on the Historic Preservation Commission. more ›

If the San Francisco Eats exhibit at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library has whetted your appetite for more than food, do yourself an instructive favor and spend a few minutes poking around the California Ephemera Project, a fascinating, searchable stockpile of all things inventively printed and inadvertently collectible from the city’s archives since roughly 1850. more ›

Hoss Zaré, owner and chef at Zaré at Flytrap at 606 Folsom, posted this image of the same restaurant back in 1911, when it was at its former address, 515 Golden Gate Avenue. more ›

A100-year-old time capsule was opened yesterday at Cleveland Elementary School, much to the delight of current and former students and faculty. The time capsule, which was in the form of a copper box, had been discovered a few months ago embedded behind the cornerstone inside the front wall of the school. It took a while to dig it out of the concrete. more ›

You heard about that big mob bust late last week on the East Coast? Well, NBC went to local crime author and retired policeman Kevin J. Mullen to find out why we haven't had any real, juicy mob activity out here. Mullen says that Al Capone sent emissaries out to San Francisco in 1931 to case the joint, but decided it was "too tough" a town to crack. That may just be a proud cop talking, but Mullen says it's an easier town to police, given its size and geography, and the transcontinental railroad terminated in Oakland, after all. more ›

PHOTOGRAPHY: After this month, cult-favorite Kodachrome slide film, which stopped being manufactured in 2009, will no longer be processed (which brings a fat tear to this photography-loving contributor's eye). RayKo Photo Center celebrates the glorious and richly colorful life of Kodachrome with a juried exhibition featuring images by 23 different artists from across the country. It truly is the end of an era. (Sigh.) If you have any undeveloped Kodachrome film sitting around, get it processed at Dwayne's Photo by 12/30/2010. more ›

SF Weekly's All Shook Down hooked us up with some rare footage of the final Sex Pistols concert, in its entirety, which took place at Bill Graham's Winterland Ballroom in 1978. (The Winterland meltdown is also featured in the rockumentary The Filth and the Fury.) more ›

FILM: The Castro presents an Arthur Penn Double Feature screening of Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the psychotic bank robbers who terrorized the midwest in the Great Depression, and Night Moves, featuring Gene Hackman as a world-weary private eye on a bi-coastal search for runaway Melanie Griffith. more ›

ART: Bay Area artist John Belingheri will exhibit his calming and mesmerizing collection of oil and mixed media paintings on canvas, which "express an interrelationship of form, process, contradictions and turmoil". more ›

by Rebecca and Quinn Miller We grabbed two delicious veggie burgers from Sparky’s 24 Hour Diner, regaled by our statuesque server on how his psychic powers were coming unveiled by the full harvest moon and the autumnal equinox. Heads full of moonlight, we headed over to the Swedish American Music Hall for a book reading by Joe Boyd with musical embellishment by Robyn Hitchcock. Boyd was a man in the right place at the right time - 60’s London, where he discovered, signed and produced some of the greatest English bands of the era, as detailed in his memoir White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. more ›

Update: Sorry about that -- the show has been cancelled. more ›

MUSIC: "High-NRG" electronic band Extreme Animals present a mash-up of live music, video, staged theatrics, and "global meltdowns" as they "delves into the world of tween culture and the current obsession with the infinite hall of mirrors known as 'forever young'." more ›

FILM: H.P. Mendoza, the creator of Colma: The Musical, brings us another acclaimed musical, Fruit Fly, which has been described as "flashy, trashy, and brazenly fun," about a performance artist who moves to San Francisco and discovers she might be a "fag hag." more ›

Eric Fischer found this original BART logo, which was then posted to BART Diaries and has since made the rounds today. Pretty cool. Kinda ugly. Very Tomorrowland. more ›