-- Laura Gibson: We'd hate to genre-ize her lovely sounds, but neo-folk songstress Gibson -- who uses such tools as trumpet, viola, and musical saw in addition to her sublime vocal cords-- sings delicate siren songs that will have you crashing at her feet. She performs along with Musee Mechanique (Portland) and Snowblink starting at 8 p.m. at Rickshaw Stop; $8. -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti: You know the man, the legend, the poet, the beret......

Bad day on the transportation front yesterday: so someone got stabbed on a MUNI bus yesterday afternoon around 1 p.m. at 16th Street and Mission, and on the morning commute, southbound 880 near Hayward was completely snarled after people discovered body parts all over the highway. Turns out a person walking on the highway was hit by several cars early in the morning. And on Wednesday night, an AC Transit bus was in a seven-car......

After Supervisor Sandoval introduced a resolution to brand hyperbolic grandpa Michael Savage as a hate speech-spewing loon, it wasn't voted on unanimously yesterday, care of SFsit's favorite coverboy, Ed Jew. (Ah, World Net Daily, where we go to get all of our fair and balanced news, drizzled with a infusion of organic Nazism.) On July 5, after Savage predictably asked that students undergoing a weeklong fast for immigration reform (and, bonus, to slim down......

-- Greg Behrendt: SF-native, author of He's Just Not That into You (comfortingly known to many a confused single gal as a symptom of Peter-Pan Syndrome), and comedian takes a break from his talk show to make you snicker/slap your knee. The sheer hilarity starts at 8 p.m. at Cobb’s Comedy Club, 915 Columbus; tickets are $25. -- Blur, "Transgender & Gender Variant" Support Group: Pretty much what it says right there; a good place......

At the behest of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a piazza that will take up a block of Vallejo street is in the plans for 2007. The piazza will be located on Vallejo Street between Columbus and Grant, by the St. Francis of Assisi. If we can remember our North Beach geography through our fuzzy, alcohol drenched memories of North Beach, that's right by Busters (home of yummy Cheese Steaks) and Caffe Trieste. The piazza will include benches, trees and a "starving poets podium" for, well, starving poets. If we can remember our geography through our fuzzy, alcohol drenched memories, isn't there something like that in London? Says Tony Gartner, the president of the North Beach Merchants Association a nice restful place for "people to come and rest their souls." ...

It's almost exactly fifty years later, and it still smacks you upside your beret-wearing cool-cat bongo-beating head, man -- Allan Ginsberg debuted his classic poem "Howl" on Friday, October 7, 1955, at a jam-packed Six Gallery on Fillmore Street. His passionate reading brought tears to the eyes of the crowd, and is widely viewed as having kick-started the SF Beat Movement of the 1950s. On the actual day of (which coincidentally is also a Friday), Howl publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti's a href="http://www.citylights.com">bookstore and literary festival are sponsoring a Howl Redux, where they'll play film footage of Ginsberg himself reading Howl. Afterwards, contemporary San Francisco area writers will read the works of other revolutionary San Francisco area writers (so Daniel Handler is reading Gertrude Stein, Jerry Brown is reading Jack London, and Armistead Maupin is reading Mark Twain, among others. Pick up tickets here. ...

Why is it that when people do readings, they get that weird This-American-Life tone in their voice? And what is it about the quality of polite clapping at bookreadings that makes it sound so poignant? Contemplate these thoughts as you hear your favorite local authors starting tomorrow and going all next week in San Francisco's local literary festival, Litquake. ...