Wide receiver Javon Walker of the Oakland Raiders was severely beaten, robbed, and left in a daze after a night of heavy partying in Las Vegas. Stripped of "large amounts of cash" and some jewelry, the football player was, it seems, blowing off some steam at such sexily-titled Sin City clubs as Tryst and Body English. According to the esteemed TMZ Walker was last seen "spraying pink champagne into the crowd" over at Body......

It nice to see that the farming and ranching traditions of Livermore's past live on to this day. You see, seven men were nabbed this past Sunday in connection with a cockfighting ring on the 4000 block of North Livermore Avenue. Ick. Busted while a fowl fight was in progress, officers arrested three gentlemen from Alameda, two blokes from Livermore, one from San Jose, and another from Las Vegas. Police officers also uncovered "300......

Let's face it, underneath all of our progressive thinking and alleged altruism, we're a vain city. Thank God. After all, we are Californians nestled in a land of impossible waistlines and beauty. That said, is the above image what the double decker buses will look like? (Minus the tasteful Las Vegas backdrop, of course.) Hmm, we really didn't think this through. We thought that we'd be seeing ever so charming red double decker buses......

Growing up west of (the) 5 freeway, the heavy metal sound fo the '80s escaped us. But while vacationing in the far off land of Riverside County during the holidays as a wee tyke, we would listen to our cousins' heavy metal tapes with envy and detached amusement. This was one of the songs we enjoyed most, Quiet Riot's "Cum on Feel the Noize." Sadly, their lead signer, Kevin Dubrow, 52, was found dead......

Friday! The night before the night when no one watches television! There's only one new show premiering tonight and we're going to pull out an old chestnut because we just can't resist, and when you're dealing with a show that's as stale as this one, it's appropriate. The show premieres at 9 p.m., is called "Moonlight," and it sucks. OK. Maybe we should explain that. The show is about a detective in L.A. who......

Today's the day! They've finally restarted Southwest service out of SFO, so those of you who hate to schlep all the way to Oakland so you can stand in line for a non-guaranteed seat assignment can rejoice. Gavin Newsom said it was good for the environment to have Southwest at all three Bay Area airports so people can go to the airport closest to their house. We hope Gavin's taking BART or Caltrain to his......

Andrew Frame was recently named by BusinessWeek as a "top entrepreneur under the age of 30". He's aiming to fulfill that promise with ooma, a company he founded in 2005 that has a whole new take on telephony. It enables unlimited U.S. domestic calls to any wireless or landline phone number . ooma's gotten media play for a couple reasons -- for one thing, much has been made in the press and on the podwaves about the involvement of Ashton Kutcher in the company. ...

Campus tree residency news! At Cal, it turns out those people living in the trees to protest the UC's plan to cut them down themselves did significant damage to the trees in question by cutting off the tops of the trees to put in their sleeping platforms. Ah, the sweet smell of irony. Meanwhile, at rival Stanford, they've finally evicted a veteran who's been living in the tree grove off Palm Drive for almost 10......

--Hey! Did you ever do coke with Gavin? [Fog City Journal.] --Chris Daly explains himself. [SFGov.org.] --What's fun doing for Pride Weekend? [SFPartyParty, Bay Area Reporter, SF Weekly's All Shook Down.] --They busted JT Leroy. [Chron, via the AP.] --No more bottled water for the City and County of SF. [CBS 5.] --That local kid who tried to blow up the UC Riverside graduation? It was so he wouldn't have to tell his mom......

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Transportation dotted the eyes and crossed the tees for Sir Richard Branson's airline, Virgin America, to begin flying out of SFO, which will actually be its home base. Huzzah, more local jobs! The company is planning a mid-summer launch....

Okay, we're still freaking out about the Macarthur Maze collapsing, but here's the other news we were trying to compile when we found out about it this morning. --Civic Center SFMike went to check out Impeach Beach and caught this picture of an adorable doggie! Thanks for letting us use it, Mike! --Bevan Dufty said something mean about Gavin Newsom. He's since called to apologize. --Biotech's moving to San Francisco. --Liveblogging the baby eagle......

You know how they say, "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?" And you know how it's mainly true? Well, it is, for the most part, except, of course, when you're involved in a police sweep. At a brothel. And you're a cop. ...

-The NBA's 2007 All-Star Game is tonight in Las Vegas. Excitement aplenty, to be sure. Yet there're no Golden State Warriors on the West All-Star team....

Because we're heading off to Las Vegas this weekend, we thought we'd celebrate with a little bit of the King.......

We're positively reeling from anticipation of all the fun and excitement promised by this weekend's events. Not since we spent Halloween weekend in Las Vegas a few years back have we done so much reeling - though that was mostly due to our alcohol consumption and our difficulty finding an exit out of the New York New York casino. Tonight Hey, it's Halloween weekend, how about a creepy movie: Street Trash, described as "Eraserhead......

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......

It's not too early to make plans for Halloween weekend, and if you want to make this year especially memorable, hop a plane to Las Vegas for the Vegoose Music Festival. It's an impressive lineup of tons of bands in one place: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Mars Volta, The Raconteurs, Cat Power and the Memphis Rhythm Band (we'll see about that), Gomez, Fiona Apple, Jenny Lewis, BRMC, and a bunch of those jammy/jazzy......

If it weren't for our life as an -ist, we're not sure we'd ever leave our apartment. Fortunately, to fully -ist, one must seek out the new, the fresh, and the unknown. Brand new, or just new to us, that's what we're all about this week. Phillyist keeps it fresh by getting a new motto, learning to prioritize, and taking in an experimental indie rock show. Torontoist does their first post in franglais, gets ready......

Maybe it's just us but for some reason we read more in the summer than in the winter. It goes against expectations, sure, but something about the summer is just lazier than the winter. And as our ghostly white skin betrays, we hate sun, so it isn't all beach reading. Local bookstores are being helpful by providing a good slate of upcoming author events and we've picked a few faves below. Who are you......

There's a subculture of women in Japan who go bonkers for dudes with the Ziggy Stardust look. Or at least that's what we concluded after we saw the West Coast premiere of The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief (GHSTOLT) at the Women's Building on Saturday. Those dudes have some freaking crazy hairdos! Imagine a mullet mated with a peacock and gave birth to a Las Vegas showgirl head-dress. Really we......

This past Wednesday we were treated to part one of the two-part Top Chef finale, which takes place in Las Vegas. While much of our interest in the show had to do with its local, er, location, we're far too invested to back out just because the final is on a bigger, gaudier stage. ...

Ahhh parrots, lambs, and pepper monkeys -- welcome back to our review of the Top Chef animal farm. Another Top Chef episode in the can; the season will be over shortly, so watch it while you can. Although, as we told you last week, that the show's been picked up for another season, this is the last chance for this cast of characters (and this is the last chance to see the epitome of evil amongst food-based game show contestants. Sadly, there won't be much regarding our fair San Francisco in the next few episodes: tonight's episode is a reunion (and presumably something of a clip show), and the finals are in Las Vegas....

Go see Ladies They Talk About this Wednesday and Thursday at the Reel SF film fest at the Balboa! Santa Clara's high tech crime unit is preening itself after prevailing against a burglar who caused at least $750,000 in losses to local companies. A 6'5" African-American burglar with a shaved head (they called him "The Green Mile") was pretending to be a security guard, walking into companies like Cisco, eBay, Yahoo, and Google, and stealing......

Any post that starts "I'm in a light, summery mood today," in spite of the weather, well, that deserves to lead off the round-up this week. The rain's affecting everyone, including Cookiecrumb up in Marin, so we can only imagine the impact this is having on larger farmers and growers. For us, when the weather gets too awful, we always like tea. We like the steam and sweets and the way it makes us feel......

Our friends down at LAist beat us to the punch with the emerging news on kinda crappy Bay Area artist Thomas Kinkade. This LA Times piece asserts that, among other things, proudly Christian Kinkade "heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind." These allegations......

The Cali-KC rap war that began started with the murder of local raper Mac Dre in November 2004 escalated with the retaliatory killing of Kansas City rapper Fat Tone this past May. Andre "Mac Minister, Choppa, Chop" Dow, the prime suspect in the Fat Tone's murder was captured yesterday in a San Francisco apartment, by SFPD SWAT and FBI agents. There was a standoff for about 90 minutes, until a woman allowed law enforcement......

Our full-court IndieFest press continues today, as we now have passes to give away to Sunday's 7 p.m. screening of local filmmaker JP Allen's film Gambling. A man goes on a desperate journey through the Las Vegas night in search of a his girlfriend who has mysteriously disappeared - and discovers that he is under surveillance and is the primary suspect in a series of disappearances. At the same time, he prepares to make......

Once again, SFist is here to stick up for ol' Harmon, as he's run into controversy yet again in his most recent SF Weekly Infiltrator column, "Dieter Gone Wild." In this episode, Harmon's mission was infiltrating the AVN awards. Harmon must have gotten turned around on the highway, because the AVN awards were in Las Vegas, and Harmon seemed to end up at a nightclub in Los Angeles. You can understand that we're all a bit jumpy, considering recent events. After getting through to the switchboard via the classified sales desk, we left a message for Executive Editor Tom Walsh, whom we've contacted before. One unexpected grilling about who we were later (um, how about best local blog as chosen by the Weekly?), he let us know that they could verify Harmon was at the FOXE Awards in Los Angeles, and that they'll be issuing a correction. Harmon wrote to say, "[T]he copy editor got it wrong. It was the FOXE Awards and it happened a few years back. They were supposed to put that in the lead and didn't." Which begs the question: Why are we fact checking Harmon's work? We don't see an opening for fact-checkers at the Weekly, so the position must already be filled, right? It's not like it involves anything more than a familiarity with Google search. ...

1115.org weighs in with their analysis of last night's State of the State, and Capitol Notes' John Meyer takes folks behind the scenes. SF CityScape has high hopes for The City's promotion of interim Planning Director Dean Macris to a permanent post. And San Jose decides they want a city wifi network, too. Many Friends of SFist are down in Las Vegas this week, some at CES, some at AVN, most probably going both......

Your Cal Bears are off to Vegas to play BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl. Fun, right? Enjoyment and excitement in America's gleeful den of inequity, right? Stuff that'd make shorthaired guys in visors and Abercrombie shirts go "WOOOOOOO!" with arms upraised, right? Well, yeah, in part. As pointed out by American Football Spectacular's religious consultant Ms. No, Mormons aren't supposed to gamble. Further, according to the BBC's write-up on Mormon ethical practices, "Gambling in......