In case you don't know, today is Earth Day. (Please go stick a sapling in the ground, or whatever.) And more than any other day, really, today is San Francisco's day to bask in its green, self-righteous, CO2-reducing glory. Or is it? LA Times scribe Margot Roosevelt threw down the gauntlet today when she asked, which city is greener? According to Nancy Sutley, Los Angeles' deputy mayor for energy and environment, we just don't......

As seen in the graphic above (pulled from the LA Times), and because of last week's fatal attacks, tiger security improvement is needed. Soon. In 30 days, according to the Gate, SF Zoo will have a brand spanking new tiger-grotto security system. The architect who created the zoo's Grizzly Gulch exhibit, Sam Singer, will also now design the safer new tiger grotto. Although no details of the new tiger grotto designed have been released, we're......

A sad week for LAist as they lose their trusted and amazing editor Tony Pierce to the LA Times, but what a blast his last week was. He shared his 25 Favorite CDs of 2007 and wrote a great review of just a good movie, No Country For Old Men. At UCLA, thousands of students celebrated the end of their quarter by running around campus in their undies (lots of photos in a two-part......

The cold weather - and holiday festivities - descended upon Gothamist. The Rockefeller Christmas tree was lit, Broadway stagehand finally ended their strike, and NASCAR decided to run their victory lap through Times Square. There were disturbing photographs revealing the working conditions in which many city manholes are produced and ninjas were also a hot topic, either robbing homes or entering into alibis. But the city was really rocked by how Rudy Giuliani's visits......

After paying up last year for disclosure violations, Senator Carole Migden is once again under investigation for not disclosing or itemizing credit card charges that total $397,000. According to the LA Times, she faces $60,000 in administrative fines if she's in breach, our Miss Migden has investigators looking all up in her credit card charging for over the past seven years. Yikes. The main cause of concern for not keeping tidy books is that......

But some good news: The LA Times has a helpful breakdown worth a moment of your time, on how you can help people (and pets!) in need right now. We've re-printed it for your convenience: ...

LAist began the month with a new food series exploring the popular and unknown late night eats around town. If a Top Chef winner opened up a late night spot in Los Angeles, denizens would flock it, yet the LA Times and other media might be wary. Turning to sports, the Dodger season was quite memorable in the way that it imploded and the LA County Sheriff's Department made some games of their own such......

Charles Hurth, city attorney for the tiny town of New Haven, Mo., is one of the main men behind the push to make California Electoral College votes more Republican-y, a confusing ploy that would split the votes by congressional districts. But Hurth also has another claim to fame: Charles "Chep" Hurth III was best known for a headline-grabbing incident a decade ago in which he bit a young female law student on the butt in......

And now for another big city's mildly retarded view of San Francisco: Too much ink has been spilled and too much bandwidth used to praise/bury Critical Mass in length. Now the LA Times gets in on the action. We'd love to break it down for you, but it's a long article and we don't bike or drive; more or less, it's stuff you've heard before. So, we present to you some choice quotes from......

Dodgers 6 Giants 4- Before we begin the fun, we'd like to draw your attention to a pretty interesting article by the LA Times' Bill Plaschke who writes how that two game series in '97, the Brian Johnson series, completely ruined the Dodgers for ten years. Long story short, the series devastated the team that season and knocked them out of the playoffs, making it easier for Fox to buy the Dodgers and promptly trash the franchise. Good stuff. Anyhoo, the Enchanter got Cained (our new verb for when a pitcher pitches a good game only to lose due to the Giants ineptitude) as the bullpen gave up four runs in the eighth to lose the game. The damage was done by Messer’s Kline and Messenger and is it us or does Randy Messenger look like a taller, skinner Turtle from "Entourage." As for Bonds, he did nothing of much importance but we couldn’t help but notice that when he hit what looked like a decent shot at hitting the homer, the fans stood up in excitement only to see it turn into just another fly out. When he was taken out, a huge portion of fans left the stadium and yes, it is fairly typical of Dodgers fans, but it was still a 3-2 game at the time. ...

San Francisco transplant surgeon Dr. Hootan Roozrokh was criminally charged on Monday with "dependent adult abuse." He's accused of prescribing way, way too man drugs to speed up the death of a developmentally-disabled man. Why? So he could harvest his organs. (Ew.) You can read SFGate's breakdown here or the LA Times' story here. It seems Roozrokh "is believed to be the first doctor in California ever accused of criminal charges in connection with......

The Chron, giving you the news from the animal point of view! They settled the Alameda County garbage strike lockout! After a nine-hour mediation, Oakland mayor Ron Dellums announced late yesterday night that all the parties had managed to resolve the four-week dispute. No one can disclose the details, but the union will vote on whether to accept the proposal this Saturday. If the union approves the deal, regular garbage pickup could resume as early......

-- 4.2 tremor slightly moves the Bay Area, donuts. [Chron, Yahoo, Examiner, FCJ] -- Ron Russell on Chron business writer David Lazarus' new LA Times gig. [The Snitch] -- One Rincon Hill tops off. [KGO] -- Cal swim coach/Olympic gold medalist gets job back, $3.5 million in gender-discrimination lawsuit. [Chron] -- Antioch police accused of racism. [Courage Campaign] -- Final Harry Potter installment arrives tomorrow; controversy surrounding spoilers today. [Valleywag] -- Seagulls still reigning......

--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......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. ...

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....

The Chronicle has been doing a lot of back-slapping over their work in the BALCO case, turning their two reporters, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, into full and official Martyrs of the Constitution, complete with the victory lap around the newsroom. Yay, Chronicle. But maybe they shouldn't be so excited....

A little bit more of those tapes that the Angelides camp got their grubby little hands on months ago were released and if you dial a 1-800 number you could listen to them. No, wait, that's the new Arcade Fire song, not these tapes. Either way, the Governator's people aren't happy that they got put out there. But since the CHP deemed nothing illegal on what happened, there's nothing they can do about it....

So, according to the LA Times, Barack Obama spent his early college years smoking dope, listening to new wave music, and taking classes in Marxist theory and gender issues. In other words, can we vote for him yet? Just the thought that he could be the first President to have ever squatted down at the "down...down...down..." part of "Rock Lobster" makes us want to vote for him. We still, however, await the first presidential candidate who could quote from Snoop and Dre. ...

It's the return of our column where we compile all the attacks and defenses of Gavin Newsom in one handy place! This week it's all attacks, though. Send your Newsom defenses here! (or post 'em in the comments.) So... who's on this week's list? Let's bring 'em out! --Aaron Peskin and Ross Mirkarimi!: Luke Thomas at Fog City Journal reports that Supervisors Peskin and Mirkarimi decided to take advantage of Gavin Newsom's much-touted "open door......

So yes, we have a predilection for hitting up Fox News occasionally. We like to look at it as testing our mental fortitude, a way to see how far we could go before our blood pressure rises to the point we have to throw things. Somehow, this weekend we missed Matt Gonzalez appearing on Fox's "The Lineup" to talk about the Yale Choral Group story (Yalegate? Doughgate? Choirgate?). Oh, and your host of the Lineup? The former Mrs. Gavin Newsom, Kimberly Guilfoyle. ...

With it being 2007, there's a whole bunch of new laws that are either to start right now or will be slowly phased in. Some of them are big deals, some of them seem fairly obvious, and some of them make you wonder what the hell. ...

Josh Wolf's Ninth Circuit appeal is officially dead, and it looks like he's stuck in jail for the next 18 months -- unless he wants to turn over his video footage. And in other grand jury contempt of court news, an animal rights activist is scheduled to stay silent before the federal grand jury today, and the LA Times laments the fate of Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada. Remenber the drunk ostrich killers in Half......

Since we've been doing a bunch of postings about our super-exciting congressional race, we'd love to come up with some clever title along the lines of "Everybody Hates Chris" but we are coming up with nothing. Sorry-- we're a little jet-lagged these days. Needless to say, we do have some Pelosi & Pals news today as the Washington Post has a big feature on some anti-lobbying bill she's been working on for awhile that could see the light of day if she does become Madame Speaker. Lots of bans on travel and gifts are involved and we'll see what happens the moment she does become Madame Speaker. Our guess is that it'll pass with loopholes a' plenty....

Picture of DiFi attending the Senate's bi-monthly "Good Sex Tips & Tricks Brownbag Lunch" from the LA Times, via Wonkette...

So it's looking like the Schwarzenegger taping story (Hotgate?) is actually a big story. That's because it turns out the tape was leaked to the LA Times by the Angelides campaign, probably the only clever thing they've done so far. Or maybe not. ...

For whatever reason, politicians like to record themselves for reasons of "posterity." Like someday, some historian or what have you, will find the tapes and be so dazzled by the intellectual fortitude of the office debates that they’d write positively glowing reviews of their administrations. This despite the fact, it never goes well. For anybody. Your latest victim of taped recordings is our Governor who is occasionally taping himself for all the future historians out there to document his governing genius...

Celebrate Ben Franklin's 300th birthday with the Bikini Bandits and Phillyist! (NSFW). Speaking of Mr. Franklin, send in a picture of Ben (or Ed Rendell) with a red tongue and win a free t-shirt. And they might have the next YearlyKos in Philly. You know who's going to be upset about those Bikini Bandits? The Houston school system. Houstonist also reports on some redevelopment shenanigans over a landmark theater. LAist's sex advice column on......

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......