Now that absinthe is back and more tipsy-inducing than ever, it only makes sense for them to take on practical lollipop form. Which is why Lit Absinthe Lollipops are the perfect stocking stuffer or gift for that 21-and-over kid in your life. Or better yet, the perfect gift for you while dealing with stereotypically cranky in-laws, assorted family dysfunctions, and all that other holiday-related stress, joy. Made with nothing more than sugar, corn syrup,......

As the last night of Hanukkah approaches, we would like to take this opportunity to reflect on this past week's Jewy events and provide a few tidbits of what we shiksas have learned from this year's celebration. 1. Hanukkah has multiple spellings: Hanukkah, Hanukka, Chanuka, and Chanukah. 2. It's important to double check (using a calendar, not a person) which is the actual first night of Hanukkah. We accidentally lit our first candles on Monday,......

Ah, today should be a citywide holiday, it really really should. December 5th marks the 74th anniversary of the end of Prohibition, just a tick of the geological clock since that final state (Utah, who else) grudgingly ratified the 21st Amendment. You couldn't really blame the Prohibitionists for their distaste for John Barleycorn. A flood of cheap corn whiskey in the early years of the nineteenth century changed the way an already soggy American......

Oh is it a voting day or something? It totally sneaked up on us! It still feels like Monday today. Actually it also feels like October. Anyway, you should probably vote yes on A and no on H, because that's what everyone else is doing. Prop A will protect The Mt Soledad National War Memorial and do something to the air force? and will transform some colleges. Also, Aristotle endorsed it it. Proposition H......

If you are the primary caregiver for an ailing brother, sister, granddaughter, grandson, or your pesky in-laws, the guv basically says, Who Cares? Arnold has vetoed two bills that would have expanded the Family Leave Act, which allows employees of medium to large companies to take 12 weeks of unpaid leave or 6 weeks of paid leave to bond with babies, take care of sick spouses, domestic partners, children, or parents. Adding extended family......

Last week's winner, the deceptive SF Weekly. Letters abound, either outraged by the fake Barry Bonds story or entertained by the elk. Why don't the negative letters have the names of the authors? Are you now questioning all the journalism you read in the Weekly now, or did you just think it was a good joke? Matt Smith says Gavin Newsom is supporting a cult. No, not the cult of Gavin, though no doubt Gavin......

In case you missed it, President 25% Approval Ratings was able to ram through some legislation revamping all those FISA laws you keep hearing about. It's hard to make heads or tails of what the bill says as the administration, in a surprise to no one, won't tell anyone what it says, but it involves making warrants kind of unnecessary, the monitoring of anyone suspected as a "terrorist" and-- get this-- the oversight by one Alberto "Fredo" Gonzalez. That's more than letting the fox guard the hen house, that's letting Michael Vick run the SPCA. ...

Photo of dog aggression in San Francisco's Alta Plaza park....

SFist Nick forwarded along an unintentionally-hilarious article by professional provocateur Christopher Hitchens from earlier this week in Slate. In this article, Hitchens mostly complains about Conrad Black, the Canadian press tycoon recently convicted of corporate fraud, but check out this kicker at the end! Postscript: I am writing this from the San Francisco Bay Area, where all summer a local politician named Ed Jew has been in trouble over his filing of an allegedly bogus......

After quitting his job at Oracle, Rajeev Samant moved back to India to grow wine. The India Times/Economic Times has the story on Samant's journey from Stanford student to Oracle employee to a winemaker. He started his winery, the likes of which has never been seen in his native country before (and, in fact, was illegal according to some state laws), back on his family's 30-acre plot in India. ...

The Chronicle called Ed Jew's office today, and his legislative aide Barbara Meskunas said he wasn't in because he was sleeping. Jet lag, you know. According to the Chron, Tapioca Ed, did, however, have the time to pen an essay for the Sunset Beacon (which has not yet put Jew's essay online, but you can read last month's), in which he says he wants to "clear the air" about the allegations. In the essay, he......

Even when Tapioca Ed's out of the country, the news keeps popping up! Here's today's latest Bobagate news. --So you know what that $40,000 would've bought the Quicklys? A letter from Ed Jew to the Planning Commission to get a business permit, the Examiner says. The Quicklys' rival bubble tea shop Wonderful got a letter from Tapioca Ed and a permit shortly afterwards -- and adding insult to injury, Wonderful didn't have to pony up......

Have you guys seen all those "Click It Or Ticket" signs they've had up on the LED signs on the highway about how they're enforcing the seat belt laws this month? Well, Oakland City Attorney John Russo didn't, and got nabbed on Piedmont Avenue for going beltless. We pretty much always wear a seat belt now because that dinging noise that the dashboard makes if you don't have it on drives us mad. Russo says......

It's mostly this guy's fault. Jackson West, who was the first editor here at SFist, got the ball rolling with this post, "The City that Knows How." He helped to grow the site with his wit, feel for the city, and a small group of contributors. As we zero in on SFist's third anniversary, we thought it would be a great time to see what Jackson's been doing since he last graced these pages,......

Assembly Bill 684 seeks to legalize the growing of hemp for industrial uses -- rope, cloth, oil, all that good stuff. It's not for smoking, okay? Okay?! In fact, the bill. which passed the assembly and heads for the state senate shortly, defines "industrial hemp" as "an agricultural field crop limited to the non-psychoactive varieties of the of the plant Cannabis sativa L."...

The Chron reports that Gavin's forming a panel to look into ways to raise money for Muni. Hey, great idea! In fact, it's such a good idea that SPUR already did it over a year ago. Remember March of 2006 when we wrote about the report entitled "Muni's Billion Dollar Problem"? It was about how Muni's budget shortfall will total a BILLION dollars in a few years if they don't get their act in gear.......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

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. ...

Due to all those recent stories about how much money the city is by not doing anything about enforcing parking laws (something for which SFist claims complete innocence of), the city is announcing steps to try and get more money out of parking. ...

An update on the rare snowy plover birds in S.F....

Here's the daily wrap up of the news...

We're covering for SFist Jon today! --Left in SF asks progressives to play nice in the Migden-Leno race. Hilariously, Chris Daly refuses, twice. --Beyond Chron gives the lowdown on David Latterman and Rich DeLeon's SPUR talk about recent city voting trends. --PartyParty is unhappy about Gavin Newsom's plans to veto the 6 month trial of car-free Saturdays in Golden Gate Park (despite reports saying that it doesn't reduce the number of park visitors). --Getty v.......

That pilot program that's being tried out on the 1 California is now going to be tested on the J Church. Which is kind of a good thing as it's not only the most unreliable of all the MUNI metro lines, but one of the five least favorite MUNI lines in our Worst MUNI Line Poll. Oh yeah, it'll now be the go-to line to get people to and from the Caltrain station. ...

Did you know that Chinese New Year is celebrated for 15 days? The last day, March 4, 2007, is the Lantern Festival. So, we're not too late in getting this crucial holiday food news to you: Your celebratory moon cakes could be a danger to your health. ...

A recent wave of immigration sweeps (or, as Indy Bay calls it "Gestapo Immigration Raiders") is creating a bit of a fuss not only in San Francisco but throughout the Peninsula and East Bay. There's talk of protests, organizing, sending out nasty press releases, and even the creation of new laws. In Redwood City, there's talk of creating an "Immigration Sanctuary" in San Mateo County and in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors will debate a resolution tomorrow condemning the sweeps. That'll show them. Hell, even Gavin's jumped into the fray with his very own press release tut-tutting the raids. All of this has brought the Minutemen into the action as they held a rally in Castro Valley to call for closing the border. It wasn't until a few days ago when we realized the Minutemen were named after our Revolutionary soldiers and not their sexual dysfunctions, although one could probably explain the other. ...

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond says the progressives need something to do (so why not run a mayoral candidate?). Too many skyscrapers. Wi-fi and sunshine laws, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, cars in Golden Gate Park, and SF is totally unprepared for global warming. The gay porn Oscars! Cover articles: Noise Pop! SFist Elaine says to check out Scissors for Lefty. Dude, there's like a review for every band playing! Yay Noise Pop! L.E. Leone......

Lest we forget, the Gavster is also up for re-election this year and there's a few stories taking the temperature of his campaign, not least of which is Matier & Ross' story that Gavin still has 70% approval ratings, even after l'affiare du Tourk....

The Chron today has an interesting story about all the effects of recent laws being thrown on small business, mainly restaurants. The recent laws in question are the rise in the minimum wage, sick paid leave, and the new health care initiative. All these laws sound great, but restaurateurs are not quite thrilled about them and so they've been particularly aggressive in fighting the resolutions, even getting in Chris Daly's grill about it. Ha! We made a pun. Anyways, they've sued over the health care bill to keep it from taking effect. ...

In some ways, we're kind of happy that we here in California have no say in any of the Presidential elections. Sure, it would be nice if our vote counted but at least we can turn on the TV without fear of being bombarded with that many campaign ads. We actually feel sorry for places like Ohio or Iowa and all those swing states for having to put up with all the attention they get during the elections. It's not fair they have to take the brunt of it. ...

A plan to step up street cleaning in the Mission was officially kyboshed as the Board of Supervisors agreed with Tom Ammiano's resolution to ixnay the idea. The plan called for increased street cleaning from once a week to three times a week. The reason why they wanted to step it up is well, do we even need to say why? The area in question, a two hundred-block area from Portrero to Valencia Street are considered the cities dirtiest. We can't believe they keep stats on these things but according to said stats, the amount of garbage has tripled over the past year. ...