We are super creeped out right now. We've had a few mysterious, little bites appear on our wrists that itched like a bitch the first day and have stuck around for two or three weeks. They have consistently snuck up on us, occurring about a week apart and causing our night terrors to go medieval a few times, until we finally got ahold of ourselves somewhat, thankyouverymuch. We hate to say their name because we......

Cabbies are upset. Again. What's else is new? But: This time the crankypants are concerned about limousines and towncars that illegally -- illegally? oh please -- pick up passengers at hotels, bars, clubs, or wherever to grab extra cash. Makes sense on the higher-end autos part. But as cabbies scrounge for customers -- or so we've often heard them complain -- they hate seeing other (and fancier) modes of transportation swipe passengers. According to......

Photo of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom behind the wheel of a Tesla Motors Roadster protoype in Fisherpersons Wharf...

You know, maybe Tapioca Ed wouldn't have problems with fire if he had running water. Bobagate heats up -- literally! Matier and Ross report today on some issues regarding yet another house that Ed Jew owns. Ed Jew owns so many houses he didn't even report this one to the Board of Supes! (By the way, who owns this much property in San Francisco? If he were playing Monopoly, Ed could put up a little......

You've got one week left to drive your car up and down Jessie Street. On May 11th, the street closes between Mint and 5th Street, to be turned into a pedestrian thoroughfare with trees and cafes and planters and niceness. This conversion is a process known as "hey, let's make that place suck less." Judging by some of the concept art, it'll look very pleasant; even the clouds in the beautiful blue sky will......

Photo of four members of the S.F. 49er Gold Rush cheerleading squad on a sunny day...

As 2006 ends and 2007 begins, the -ists look back not at the past week, but at the past year. So here it is, your Best of 2006 Spectacular. And from all of us at the -ists, happy New Year!...

And now, the story you've all been waiting for anxiously, it's the latest in Treasure Island! We know, we know...you can't say SFist doesn't bring the excitement....

We admit that we're not as diligent about our food consumption as we should be. Being raised as good Catholics, this causes us a judicious amount of guilt. (Which is different than merely feeling bad about eating bad food--after all, Jack in the Box has its own special way of punishing you. . .) We spent this weekend on a trade show floor in Las Vegas, eating candy from the booths and dinner at......

Hope you weren't planning on driving 1) to the Metreon, 2) to the Westfield mall, 3) to the W Hotel, or 4) to the Gold Club for the next eight days -- 800 pound gorilla Oracle has managed to convince the city of San Francisco that it is essential to the success of their Oracle OpenWorld convention that they entirely shut down Howard Street between Third and Fourth to traffic, because they need the space......

We're begging for your help here, readers -- begging! Can someone with a digital camera PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go to this event and send us your pictures of Chris Daly getting thrown into a swimming pool? We'll throw in some SFist swag if you do! We'd go ourselves, but admission is $125 (and we don't have a digital camera anyways). The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Center is sponsoring their 16th Annual Celebrity Pool Toss this Tuesday......

We over here at SFisT have been waiting on tenterhooks -- tenterhooks! -- for the launch of the Chronicle's totally not trademark-infringing new glossy publication focusing on travel, design, and fashion -- called "SFiS." You know, SFiS.... exciting! SFiS.... glamorous! SFiS... nothing at all like the name of a certain local blog! Oh no, not at all! Editor & Publisher reported that the t-less "SFiS" will feature writing by SFisT cult fave society writer C-Big,......

We are big fans of drinks that come with their own props – little plastic monkeys swinging off the rim, entire servings of fruit contained on one tiny sword, paper umbrellas. We still think fondly of the many times we walked out of the Caribbean Zone with a purse full of little cocktail tchotckes. We are thrilled that the Tonga Room is still going strong. However, we are not big fans of negotiating BART after......

With SFist Rita's report yesterday about Apple settling with Creative, Apple fanboys can console themselves with the news that Microsoft is also getting dinged for even more money in a patent infringment suit. Meanwhile, retail workers who downloaded the development version of Apple's new OS, Leopard, are getting canned left and right (scroll down). But BusinessWeek thinks good iPod news is on the way, while Wired News explores the back alleys of Chennai in search......

Yes, folks, she writes about more than food! Contributing SFist Mary Ladd is concerned about San Francisco's Olympic dreams, and we can't blame her! We’re considering booking our dream vacation now if the Olympic Games will be in San Francisco instead of Los Angeles or Chicago in 2016. Maybe it's a chance to try apartment or home swapping. The prospect of Olympics in SF gives us pause. We have always loved living in the Bay......

The good news is that vacancy rates are low across the hotel business in San Francisco. The bad news is that at least some of those rooms may be off the rolls as they are being fumigated. When we wrote our original post on San Francisco's growing bedbug infestation, we were at a loss to come up with direct reports of encounters with the parasites in some of The City's hotels. Well, Hotel Chatter dropped......

Some time ago, we met Steve Ford, who, among other things pulls a great shot of espresso. We met him during his tenure with the stalkerriffic Blue Bottle Coffee Company; since our encounter, he's moved onto another coffee-related venture as a roaster at Ecco Caffe in Santa Rosa. Steve recently had a not-so-pleasant experience--he fell out the third-story window of the Burlington Hotel in Port Costa, Calif. ...

This week we're giving away a night of rock n' roll debauchery. Fans of good, old-fashioned, muscular rock like T. Rex and Thin Lizzy should listen up: there's a show at Cafe Du Nord next Friday (4/21) that's right up your alley. Living Things is a band of brothers out of St Louis who really have it all: lyrics with social awareness, grimy riffs that make you move and last but not least, swagger and......

Local hotels are all smiles as they prepare for cable news talking heads to storm the city en masse as our local politicians have put us in the cross hairs again. And what did they do to bring this upon us again? Go after a bunch of fresh-faced kids. Well, Jesus loving fresh-faced kids, the one's who were here over the weekend for their "Battle Cry for a Generation” shindig. We here those rallies were hookup city. ...

Our friends at HotelChatter.com pass along the following tidbit about, and YouTube footage of, third-string TRL band Simple Plan when they stopped by San Francisco.

We have footage of Simple Plan's lead singer Pierre Bouvier pulling some pranks at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco [the one at 5 Embarcadero] like throwing firecrackers into the lobby and hocking loogies. Then he randomly finds a party to dance at. Warning: This video contains annoying Canadian accents. Please mute the volume.

Sometimes we discuss the possibility of spending a night in the W hotel. It's no more than 2 miles from our house but the allure of their perfectly comfortable beds beckons to us from memories of happy nights we slept at the Ws in Seattle and San Diego. We fondly recall how Zoë at the W in New Orleans saved us many times from the dreadful food at the conference centre opposite, a fact which......

Let's start by kicking out the jams. DJ Icewater mixes the sounds of Yay Area soul from past to present for a a Shout Magazine Shoutcast. What's old to Swerbo but new to us are hi-fi recordings of The Slip and Surprise Me Mr. Davis show at the Independent in November. Nicole Lee suggests some music podcasts, including a podcast by geek-rock legends They Might Be Giants. And topping the Yahoo search charts for......

Our friend used to work as a counselor treating outpatients at a residential facility for treating people diagnosed with mental health problems and drug addiction. Sometimes her work required her to stay overnight, where she often slept on a couch at the facility. After a while, she began feeling itchy and developed a rash of spots. The problem? Likely, bedbugs -- little blood-sucking parasites that just love warm, sleeping people. After the New York......

We thought we'd update you on the latest brouhaha being currently ha'ed about in the city which is the Fairmont's announcement a week ago that they were kind of sort of thinking that just maybe they'll convert some of their luxury suites into condos. This announcement quickly got Aaron Peskin's panties in a bunch and he immediately announced he was going to come down against it and introduce a ban into the Board of Supes. First he played the "landmark" card but then quickly switched to the "jobs" card when he realized that the section of the Fairmont that the hotel wants to convert is not the part everyone thinks of when they think of the hotel, but the ugly stepsister portion of it. The jobs card is an especially potent one because all of this is taking place amidst the backdrop of the still going on hotel workers strike. We can see how announcing a new plan that could result in a loss of jobs while in the midst of a strike could be seen as a bit inflammatory. We can also see, however, the confusion caused by Peskin in that he recently led the charge in preventing a waterfront hotel to be built over a certain height despite the fact that larger hotels mean larger work forces and smaller hotels lead to smaller work forces. ...

So we're pro-union, as you well know. Which means we're on the side of labor in the ongoing hotel disupte -- just like Gavin! Which means we support the union's efforts to starve management by asking conference organizers not to book San Francisco hotels, even though some of those arrangements were made months before there was any public talk of a strike, lockout or boycott. Being pro-union, we also love public television. Especially the......

Today, Gavin Newsom put a lid on places that sell lids and called for a moratorium on marijuana clubs. And we bet we're the only one's in the -ist family who'll ever have to write a story like this about their Mayor. What caused the moratorium is news that came out last week that a new marijuana club, the Holistic Center, had opened right below one of those Care Not Cash welfare hotels set up......

That's right, we finally have an excuse to link to Page Six, just like the kids over at Gawker do every day. Seems like our beloved Phil Bronstein "looked awfully cozy" with Mick Jagger's star-crossed ex Jerry Hall (pictured) at the Finn & Porter in Austin's Hilton. Of course, the nice woman Phil was escorting home from the Edinburgh Castle Pub after the Hunter S. Thompson wake wasn't Ms. Hall, but we're going to......

This is sort of like if the native Americans in Mission Bay had noted on their blog Ohlonist that some crazy dude named Junipero Serra was having a party for his gang of buddies who called themselves "Catholics," but we feel obliged to announce that the Gawker Media juggernaut has boldly set foot on the frontier outpost that is San Francisco de Asis. New Gawker site Gridskipper will be covering "urban travel," or, in other words, providing reviews of various attractions in cities across the globe -- including SFist land. While they've only got reviews of hotels, the Columbus Cafe, and the Lusty Lady for now, how long will it be before they start covering topics like caffeine, bars, local music, and our hott mayor? Well, readers! Will our beloved publisher open the can of cityblog whoopass on Gothamist alum and Gridskipper editor Andrew Krucoff? What will What our sibling -ist blogs do? (What, no Chicago or Toronto?) Tune in next week, on As The Blog Turns. ...

Mark over at HotelChatter tipped us off to some anonymous photos taken from the inside of local hotelier Joi de Vivre's new boutique hotel on the Embarcadero, Hotel Vitale. While the project was initially given the go-ahead way back in 1997, delays have included the downturn in tourism after the dot-bomb and attacks of September 11th. Now that local tourist spending is on the rebound, Joi de Vivre hopes to cash in on a......

Who knew there was so much money in tribute bands? Local Mick Jagger impersonator Rudy Columbini has announced that he hopes to buy out a 18,000 square foot residential hotel at Bush and Larkin in the 'loin and transform it into Music City....