Results tagged “hotels”

Just in time for your lunch hour, a woman who received more than 400 bedbug bites during her stay at San Francisco’s Ramada Plaza Hotel has received $71,000 to settle her claim against the downtown hotel. The out-of court settlement is the largest ever paid to victims in similar bedbug-attack cases.

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.

Cabbies are upset. Again. What's else is new? But:

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!

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 become magically fluffier.

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.

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 for their caterers. You're going to make caterers make canapes on the street, Larry Ellison?

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).

like the name of a certain local blog! Oh no, not at all!

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 having indulged our affinity for drinks that come with their own props. What is an East Bay resident to do when seized with the urge to drink something out of a big hurricane glass, then chew on a few rum-soaked pineapple chunks?

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 of smuggled iPods and Powerbooks.

If changes aren't made, there could be problems housing the athletes. What dumbass decided to put the athletes up at the old Hunters’ Point shipyard in an “Olympic Village”? Why house people in an area that already is saddled with impressions that it’s unsafe and filled with crime? The weather's warm, but it's a neighborhood said to be in need of re-developing -- more business, more programs, more support. On the other hand, maybe the Bayview Hunter’s Point district would magically get the funds, attention and police coverage it needs, along with more services for its residents. With the whole world watching, we’re betting the higher ups would get it all cleaned up just in time. In between our own elite training exercises of raising our fork and lifting beer bottles, we'll be watching.

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 us a note to point to this tale of abject terror:

But by the morning of the 27th, my arms, legs and other parts of my body were full of bug bites (I took some pictures of the bites). As I was sitting on the edge of the bed putting my shoes on, I saw something crawling on the pillowcase. I carefully took a zip-lock type plastic bag and caught the little bug. I knew right away what I was dealing with.

Continue reading "Bedbugs, Bedbugs, Whatcha Gonna Do?"

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.

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 recently caused us to wonder why we had resolutely decided to never give the restaurant at San Francisco's W a chance. The answer to the question was clear to us. Only tourists eat at W hotels, don't they? Why on earth should we play and pay at being tourists in our own town?

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 2005 are a mess of musicians, including our own Green Day at number five.

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.

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.

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 to help people get off drugs. Oops.

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 give Phil the benefit of the doubt, as they're probably just friends from way back. Either that, or he's polyamorous, and we're not the types to judge (at least in that regard).

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 trend toward luxury spending -- rooms with sweeping views and plush amenities are expected to cost from $269 a night for a basic room to $650 a night for a suite. The Hotel's website boasts:

199 spacious guestrooms and suites, at this newest San Francisco landmark hotel, many with expansive water views, spa-styled bathrooms and a sumptuously soothing interior design

Full service luxury hotel with 24-hour room service, twice daily housekeeping service, valet parking and Wi-Fi in all guestrooms

Circular Suites with panoramic 270 degree "infinity views" of the San Francisco Bay that can be enjoyed from the bed or deep soaking tub