After last week's dueling press conferences and memo-leakage, the Homeless issue is becoming the Issue du Jour, leading to a full-fledged reporter dogpile. First came CW Nevius who weighed in with yet another story on the issue, this time saying that even in liberal, tolerant, San Francisco, residents might not be feeling so liberal and tolerant when it comes to dealing with the homeless. As evidence, he points to one of those online polls SFGate ran about the issue in which 90% of the people said they wanted something to be done. We, as a rule, hate those "polls" because it's actual scientific value is nil as it's all determined by people who were motivated enough to play along and doesn’t factor in those who were too lazy to. more ›

You think Gavin means it when he tells Ken Garcia that it's kind of freaking him out that no one's running against him? Well, there's one more down: ABC 7's Dan Noyes has the scoop that Tony Hall has dropped out of the race too. more ›

more ›

What's Ed Jew doing today, now that he's been excused from jury duty? This has got to be the first time anyone's been to get San Francisco jury duty, ever. more ›

Since we had so many questions asked of our Muni Security Guy last week, we decided to split his comments into two. Today, he answers the few remaining questions that were asked. And away we go... more ›

more ›

--Our sources report that only like four non-media people showed up for the anti-Jerry Falwell protest (picture above, and two more pictures after the jump). more ›

Today marks the third anniversary of "Care Not Cash" and as a result, homelessness is having the Best Week Ever. In honor of the anniversary, Team Gavin has launched a full court press showing that despite appearances, things have improved. Question: what is the proof? Answer: according to Trent Roher, about 1,800 homeless people are now people formerly known as homeless. Those who go into the program mainly stay in the program. Of course, numbers can be spun all sorts of ways and there's been different interpretations of those numbers. more ›

In the latest attempt to do something, anything, to improve the Muni's timeliness as dictated by the Transit Effectiveness Project, the Powers that Be are contemplating adding cameras to Muni buses to try and catch people who double park in bus-only lanes. The reason, of course, is that people blocking buses from going down the road cause some of the delays. Both Gavin and Ken Garcia looked at early footage taken and said they were amazed at all the double parkers they saw. They also agreed that while the dialogue in the footage was great, they thought the whole thing was too derivative of Godard. more ›

-The Bay Bridge will be even costlier and will take longer to build, all due to issues around Yerba Buena Island. more ›

Believe it or not, two people were charged today in the Baker's Dozen New Year's eve melee. The two people charged were Richard Aicardi and Brian Dwyer. Aicardi, the instigator and the one who gave us the such classic lines as "this is the 415" and "I'm 20 deep, my boys are coming" is being charged with two counts of felony assault and one count of battery. Dwyer is being charged with felony assault and battery. The two were charged for the beat down of singers Evan Gogel and William Baile. As for Sharyar Aziz Jr., the one who got his jaw broken, nobody has been charged yet for what happened to him. Police say they don't have enough evidence to convict anyone for what happened. more ›

-In a poll, local residents say their biggest pet peeve is traffic. -San Francisco school board wants to go small. more ›

There's a lot of transporation stories today, so here's your compendium, if you will, of stories. more ›

While there's nothing big going on with the story, there is some more details coming out. Actually, there's a theme to all of this and that theme is frustration. The lawyers are frustrated that the three Marines are overseas and can't be questioned by the cops, Dan Noyes is frustrated that Kamala Harris won't answer any questions, the families of the singing group are frustrated no arrests have been made, and Ken Garcia is just plain frustrated. more ›

There's not much going on in the Gavin front today, for which we praise the heavens for. Yes, we're as tired of this as you are, and, actually, that's got to be considered good for the Gavster as the more bored we are by it, the less we'll care about it. So today, we have Gavin paying Alex Tourk, the latest on Gavin's re-election chances, and Ken Garcia putting Gavin on the couch. more ›

We really dread to be doing this, again, but here it is, your recap of the reaction to Gavin's admission that he's seeking counseling for booze. Or, as the NY Post puts it, "S.F. Sex Mayor In Booze RX." You know, we used to joke with our fellow -ists about how exciting our Mayor is compared to their boring, dreary Mayors (Gothamist's biggest scandal concerning Bloomberg was that he has bad fashion sense) but we're kind of over it. more ›

One day after Gavin's big My Bad moment, the big question is what does this all mean for him, the city, and his reelection bid. After all, as bad as this all sounds, politicians getting caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar falls into the realm of been there, done that.. Willie did it and nobody batted an eye. Guiliani did it and he's considered one of the big contenders for the Republican nomination. Gavin is still popular, the election isn't until November, and this is San Francisco and it's not like he's the only San Francisco politico who did something really stupid. But the one thing that seems to be sticking in everyone's craw, the one thing that could hurt more than anything else, is that he did this to one of his closest aides and friends. As somebody put it (we searched but couldn't find the link), this whole thing could be summed up by this eternal axiom: bros before hos. In other words, Gavin broke one of the cardinal rules of guydom. more ›

In today's Chron, there's a big story about the events that occurred on New Year's Eve. To do so, they interviewed a whole bunch of witnesses (most of whom are anonymous) and put it together into a cohesive whole. And guess what? Everybody corroborates the story of the Baker's Dozen choral group. Everybody. Which makes you wonder why nobody's been charged yet or what's up with Ken Garcia and why is Heather Fong lying but that's neither here nor there right now. more ›

-And I don't understand why I sleep all day/And I start to complain that there's no rain more ›

Bear with us as SFist is experiencing technical difficulties this morning, mainly in that we're really hungover. more ›

Because we've started the column "Who's Attacking Newsom Now!", we figure it's only right to start the counterpoint column next: Who's Defending Newsom Now!. So who's Mayor McDreamy got on his side? (beside these young ladies in the picture above, that is!): more ›

--Are the A's moving to Fremont? more ›

--We're still not ready for an earthquake. (Bonnie Eslinger's article about this at the Examiner isn't online, though Ken Garcia's is.) more ›

With the sun finally appearing, it's time to think about our favorite springtime city activities. Like street fairs. Our favorite street fair? The North Beach Festival. Nothing we love more than hanging out in Washington Square Park, downing some brews, then drunkenly stumbling into the maelstrom for more food, booze, and White Boy Blues. Man, what fun. Oh wait, there's going to be no booze allowed this year? Nevermind. more ›

Well, the buyout offer the Chronicle gave former columnist Ken Garcia must not have been enough to retire on. Either that, or he missed having a public forum to laud Gavvy-Gav and harrass The Daly, and like a champion boxer wanted back into the ring:

"This is a great chance for me to write about what I love: San Francisco and the Bay Area and all the politics, personalities and eye-opening exploits that entails," Garcia said. "I'm looking forward to the competition and helping The Examiner grow in its role as the must-read local newspaper. It will be fun to be in a position again to really stir things up."

Things got a little ugly on Fifth and Mission yesterday, as the World Can't Wait protestors struck a blow against George Bush by tossing Molotov cocktails at the right-wing bastion of the San Francisco Chronicle. ....but Ken Garcia doesn't even work there anymore! The Molotov cocktails did no damage to the building, but lit an SFPD officer's shoulder on fire. He was rapidly extinguished, but we can't imagine that improved the mood of the public safety officers any. Plus, we saw on the local news that the cocktails themselves were made out of Crystal Geyser Juice Squeeze bottles. We hope someone at least drank that refreshing lightly-carbonated pink grapefruit spritzer before filling the bottle with gasoline and lighting it. Picture from the commondreams.org site more ›

more ›

As you can probably tell, we have kind of a love/hate thing going on with the Chron over here at SFist HQ. But since it's Raves Thursday, we're highlighting the love! And you know who we love the most? No, not Jon Carroll. No, not Ken Garcia. We love Bad Reporter!!! God, we love Bad Reporter! Marry us, Don Asmussen!! Who else can monitor the state of San Francisco hair gel politics so trenchantly? Who else could draw Dick Cheney's pottymouth with such an adorable snarl of the lip? Maria Shriver's cheekbones! Gavin and Kimberly on the rug!! FROM WHAT SICK WELLSPRING DO YOUR GENIUS IDEAS ORIGINATE????? We can only stare, awed and envious, at the heights of brilliance to which Mr. Asmussen reaches on his always-changing publication schedule, and then, silently, move down the back page of Datebook to read the new Dear Abby's advice. ("Have you considered seeing a therapist?" It's always "have you considered seeing a therapist.") more ›