Republican (it goes without saying) Assemblyman Guy Houston of San Ramon wants to slice off more than $3 million in state funding from Berkeley for their stance against Marine recruiting. He will introduce legislation to "withhold state transportation money until Berkeley rescinds its 'war on the U.S. Marine Corps.'" Jesus. In a move that will ideally hurt his political career -- since it's a waste of time, a symbolic prick move, and has little......

SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others. Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list. Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island. LAist received a Christmas present in the form of a drunk Santa Claus in a g-string. Bostonist launched......

A hurrah and a huzzah goes out to Raider Nation for not selling out Sunday's Raiders game. As a result, football fans throughout the area will be allowed to watch The. Biggest. Game. Ever. from the vicinity of their couch. ...

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts......

It was a deadly weekend to be famous, that’s for sure. As one commenter already pointed out today, famous people tend to die in threes: Bill Walsh, Tom Snyder, and of course, ABC 13’s Marvin Zindler from Houston, who -- while still tied-up with breathing tubes, in his hospital bed, and very pissed off at 24-Hour Fitness -- gave and gave until the very end. But another one squeaked in there among those three: Ingmar......

Man, let it not be said that Lew Wolff doesn't get sh-- done. First he said he was going to build a new stadium for the A's and he did. Then he said he was going to get us a new soccer team and he did. Today, it's been announced that the San Jose Earthquakes are back from the dead and will start up again next year as an MLS expansion team. The team was in San Jose up until a few years ago but moved away to Houston due to stadium issues. Naturally, in Houston, the nee Quakes won a championship. ...

A controversy was brewing, surrounding the dismissal of Hope Briggs, who was originally scheduled to sing Donna Anna, and her replacement with Elza Van Den Heever, in the new SF Opera production of Don Giovanni, which kicked off the summer season on Saturday night. The explanation for the switch from the upper floors of the opera house was rather laconic, which left the door open to wild speculations. Was it, as this Berkely Daily Planet op-ed conjectured, due to the new media suite, which will record every performance on high definition from this Don Giovanni on and thus will put some demand on the singers to look good, conjectures the writer? ...

SFist interviews Laura Veirs...

Improbably, almost impossibly, the Golden State Warriors' dream season continues tonight with game 1 of their Western Conference semifinal matchup with the Utah Jazz. The Warriors are into the semis by virtue of their historic six-game stunner over the top-seeded Dallas Mavericks; the Jazz eeked out a game 7 road win over the Houston Rockets.

The Jazz are the fourth seed in the Western Conference, but in our minds, its the Dubs that enter this series as the favorites. The Jazz are undoubtedly mentally and physically drained after their game 7 thriller on Saturday, while the Warriors are riding a wave of emotion that shows no sign of dissipating.

Let’s spend a few graphs on Hans Graf. He is music director at the Houston Symphony, and guest conducting the SF Symphony this week, Thursday till Saturday. Now whatever you may say about Texas, consider that he earlier had the same job at the Iraq National Symphony Orchestra, and all of a sudden, Houston sounds much more, well, inviting (truth be told, it was in pre-Saddam Baghdad in 1975-76, when it was actually a nicer......

It's time for American Football Spectacular's capsule reviews of the 2007 NFL Draft. Adventure, excitement,measureables!...

Here's todays sports news...

We're guessing most of you are hungover from St. Patrick's Day. We are too. But still, we're going to muddle on through our green haze and give you (drum roll please...) this Week In -ists....

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... ...

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond handicaps the SF mayor's race (they're becoming disenchanted with Matt Gonzalez?). It's the all Chris Daly news section: Chris on the How Weird Street Faire, Chris on campaign finance reform, Chris and the ethics commission. Why didn't they also ask Chris for a quote on the Mission street cleaning proposal? Cover article: "Where do stolen bikes go? Can they find their way home? Back to the open......

Valentine's Day is only a few days away, and we here across the Gothamist network wanted to express would like to tell you, in the spirit of the holiday, just how much we love you, our readers. Don't let it get to your heads, though. There are plenty of things we love, you included. Just be glad you're not amongst the things we hate. In New York, Gothamist isn't sure whether to love or hate......

Lucky in the Loin SF legend, Mr. Lucky appears at The Clap doing a live reading of Weekend Hippie at a night of movies and performances at Aunt Charlie's Mini-Discotheque (133 Turk at Taylor). Movies by Dave (Dog) Swan, including the trailer for Shackgirl, which sounds like a cross between The Hills Have Eyes and Lolita, plus clips from Dog Swan's legendary cable access show from late 80's early 90's The Doghouse, which featured appearances......

As the world holds it's breath, teetering precariously on the cusp of the Superbowl (well, at least in America), the wheels of the -ists keep on turning. Austinist was in a musical frame of mind as they listened to the new Shins album, updated the SXSW band listings and got called "punk rock" for their efforts by MTV. And an ice storm swept through the area. Bostonist said goodbye to John Kerry's plans for......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

Happy New Year everyone! What We Did On Our Christmas Vacation After having our plans to fly to Denver thwarted by a sinister snowstorm, we headed straight to Texas. We spent most of the time in Houston with our family and managed to type out our top 10 albums of '06 while our nephews watched "Pirates of the Carribbean" for the nth time. One night was spent in Austin with one of our favorite people......

Happy Holidays! Chances are, you're reading this the day after Christmas, back at your day job after all-too-short a holiday, and the last thing you want from us is stuff about the holidays. But that's just too bad. Because, see, here in the Ist-A-Verse, we do things ahead of time. It might be December 26 for you, but that's what you get for not checking your Favorite Local Blog on Christmas Eve. ...

Hey, here's a couple of news flashes for you: on Wednesday night the Warriors won, on the road, by holding a fourth-quarter lead.

That's right, the team's road losing streak of eight games is over after a less-than-convincing 96-95 escape in Boston. Baron Davis carried the Warriors with 31 points and 8 assists, but the Warriors did everything they could to give the game back; it was really an assist from Celtics coach Doc Rivers that gave the Warriors the game. With 24 seconds remaining, timeouts in hand, down by one point, and with the ball, Rivers elected not to call a timeout. Instead, the Celtics ran the only play in their playbook: give it to Paul Pierce and hope for the best. Pierce is a great player, but everybody in the building knew he was going to get the ball, including the five Warriors on the court. They surrounded him and forced a jump ball with just 0.6 seconds left. Game over baby.

So that puts a tiny band-aid on the 1-3 road trip and slightly daubs the road bleeding this year (2-9), but it does nothing to address the Warriors number one problem: REBOUNDING!

What a stinking dog of a putrid rotting corpse of a disgusting disgrace of an abomination of a disgrace of a debacle of a sham of a fraud of a spectacle of a sham of an embarrassment. Or something like that. How else to describe the Warriors recent sleepwalk through Texas.

On Monday night, the San Antonio Spurs spanked the tribe like a teenager's monkey, 129-89; just 24 hours later, the Houston Rockets piled on and beat the living tar out of them, 118-90 -- neither game was as close as the scores would indicate.

Having the number one pick in the 2007 NFL Draft, that is. After losing horrifically to the Houston Texans 23-14 in a home game where the dauntless Raider Power Mullet defense limited Yoostun to 32 yards passing yards and still lost!...

* Houston vs. Oakland Sunday, December 3, 2006. 1:15 PM, PST. Week 13 The Battle Of The Trough After losing four straight games to every team in the AFC West and one franchise that used to be in the division for good measure (@SEA; DEN; @KC; @ SD), the Raiders limp home. In uglier times early on this season before the wins versus ARI and PIT, this Week 13 game against the flailing Houston Texans had been projected as the Raiders' best chance to get a win....

Don't go buying your brand new "San Jose of Fremont by way of 92" or "Bay Area 49ers of Santa Clara" t-shirts just yet because we're still a long way off from the moving trucks appearing. Things just ain't as easy as it sounds....

Cultural Learnings of Blogosphere for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of -Ist-a-verse Jagshemash! Borat is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. In Shanghai, Borat would be observing Inane Learnings......

Monday is our favorite day to do laundry, thus we are thrilled by the possibility of satisfying our dire needs for both clean socks and weird live music at once at the Brainwash Café (1122 Folsom St. @ 7th). The Jardin Noir Dark Circus Radio Project blends psychedelic jazz improv and world music with strange and compelling results for free. (7-10pm) We instantly got a craving for pancakes when reading about this one: CalHOP......

There sure are a lot of fans of The Decemberists, judging by the fact that they're about to play tonight and Friday night here at the relatively giant Warfield Theater. If you haven't heard their new album The Crane Wife, we're giving you a chance to win a copy of it plus a 20"x10" lithograph signed by all 5 members of the band. We'd show you a photo of the lithograph if we had one,......

More hijinks at the Lusty Lady, and this time, not union-related! A Cal football player has been suspended from the team after he got in a fight with a bouncer at the famed feminist strip club. Last weekend, the player allegedly entered into a video booth while his friend (whom the player called his "agent," even though the player's not currently represented) demanded they be given two prostitutes. When they were denied, Lusty Lady reps......