Filmmaker and billionaire George Lucas has withdrawn plans to build a 263,700-square-foot digital production studio in Marin for which he originally got approval in 1996 due to the ongoing resistance from neighbors. Since getting approval for an even larger version of the project in Lucas Valley, connected to his existing Skywalker Ranch, a group of NIMBYs in the Lucas Valley Estates subdivision have gone to war trying to characterize the project as an eyesore and out of character with the bucolic surroundings of Lucas Valley. more ›

A woman's prized gold necklace, which she accidentally flushed down the toilet last fall, was returned to her this week by a San Rafael sanitation worker who fished it out of a city sewer pipe. Yes, he washed it off first. more ›

Yikes. So, a 59-year-old San Rafael woman died in recent weeks of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and a second woman in Marin County has been diagnosed with it. According to ABC 7, there is no known connection between the two women, however cases of the disease have been so rare that the proximity of two cases like this is cause for some intrigue, if not panic just yet. more ›

Novato has been terrorized by 50 separate, small, suspected arson fires in the last three days, most of which have been in garbage cans or on small, four-square-foot patches of grass or brush. They've been concentrated in two distinct parts of the city, and the rapidity and proliferation of the incidents calls to mind the recent cat-and-mouse chase around Los Angeles for that suspected carsonist — albeit on a Marin-County scale with far less damage and far less actual drama. more ›

Gavin Newsom has finally found a quaint new suburban home to call his own, the Chronicle's Leah Garchik reports today. The new house, in the overwhelmingly caucasian town of Kentfield, California, is the Siebel-Newsom clan's first private dwelling since the city's favorite hair model sold his Ashbury Heights home back in June to move in with the in-laws. Kentfield is just a stone's throw from the grandparents in Ross, and after rolling up the driveway of their recently purchased abode, the Siebel-Newsoms reportedly gushed, "Wow, this is it." more ›

A charming gay couple, recently transplanted from New York City to San Rafael -- in part for economic reasons, in part because the gays have got to start to think about their golden years at some point -- have found it a little tough adjusting to the 'burbs after spending decades together amidst the buzzing streets and Broadway marquis of the Big Apple. Meet Douglass Christensen and Vincent Zappacosta, who are flying back to New York in September to get legally married at their favorite infused-vodka lounge on West 51st Street. more ›

"8 Black people who live in Ross" - from the "Home, Swank Home" sidebar item that comes along with yet another reaction to news that Gavin Newsom would be moving up to Marin County. Ross, California's total population is 2,415. [SFEx] more ›

You know how Marin County is pretty much entirely white? Well, HUD (the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development) actually has a problem with this, because they've been giving the County money for quite a while to build and maintain public housing projects, and a recent review found that the County had failed to adequately reach out to minority populations to fill this housing, and failed to document which minority groups benefited most from it. more ›

A 13-year-old boy was found early yesterday morning having apparently killed himself in Marinwood, in San Rafael. He was in an exposed public area along Grande Paseo, and was found by another student walking to school. The cause of death and the student's name have not been revealed, but a school district superintendent insists, "He was a very popular person." The eighth-grader's death follows the suicide of a fifteen-year-old girl from nearby Terra Linda High School last week. more ›

Residents near Muir Beach in Marin are up-in-arms over a certain man who frequents Little Beach, the unofficially clothing optional area adjacent to Muir Beach, and proceeds to pleasure himself in broad daylight. While this sight might be all too familiar to residents of the Tenderloin (or certain alleys in SOMA), it is wholly unwelcome to these Marin denizens who have logged at least four complaints of "unlawful sexual activity" with the Sheriff's Department. more ›

In a bit of late-breaking news, teenagers are apparently illegally(!) drinking(!) underage(!). Marin County held a townhall meeting in Kentfield last night to discuss this very recent, out-of-control phenomenon amongst teenagers. Parents and teenagers (sober, natch) voiced their concerns about underage drinking and wagged their fingers at certain areas of town where drinking runs rampant at city high schools. more ›

According to Marin County officials, about "1,500 gallons of raw sewage" was dumped into the San Francisco Bay today near Point San Quentin. Grody. According to the Gate: more ›

Described as a wiki of stupidheads, jerks, and self-awareness-free men, the Wikipedia parody site lists notable dickslices such as homecoming queen murderer O.J. Simpson; sexist boor Donald Trump; the Gisele Bundchen-impaling Tom Brady; that fat Arctic bastard Santa Claus (mean!); and Marin County's very own Harvey Milk impersonator, Sean Penn. The nerve. more ›

Oh shit. more ›

No more salmon in Muir Woods? more ›

Oh, those crazy hot-tubbing, wife-swapping, Al Qaeda-loving Marin County folk. It seems that now they're scalping their own children in an effort to tidy up the remaining Cosco Busan oil spill disaster. Students from Larkspur's Marin Primary and Middle School have willing lopped off locks of hair from their nubile heads, then donating said hair to Eco-Cuts, "a program designed by Marin Primary to help in the cleanup effort triggered by the Nov. 7 oil spill in the bay." Their dirty, dirty child hair will then go to Matter of Trust, a San Francisco-based environmental nonprofit that "weaves the hair into mats to soak up oil." According to the Marin Independent: more ›

Marin County coroner's office identified that the body found atop Mt. Tam this past Sunday afternoon as female and, yes, Veronica Ruiz. It seems that she "the Internal Revenue Service agent's service weapon was found at her side and her U.S. Treasury Department photo identification was found in her purse at the place of her death," according to a report on CBS 5. (IRS agents have issued arms? Huh.) It appears that she died of "an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head." more ›

A body turned up on Mount Tamalpais this Sunday afternoon, and authorities (as well as your favorite rabid media outlets) are wondering: is this the body of distraught Mill Valley resident and IRS investigator, 25-year-old Veronica Ruiz? more ›

While not on par with Christmas Day tsunamis, this storm is pretty nifty, huh? Golden Gate transit buses have stopped, power has been knocked out to hundreds -- yes, hundreds! - of thousands of people, and surely snow is falling really hard atop a mountain somewhere. more ›

Wild turkeys are taking over Marin County. more ›

We used to think we couldn't stand Sean Penn, but he never really did anything to deserve our ire. He's talented; seems to have similar political to ours; married to her, wonderful her; surfs; from Southern California; lives in the Bay Area; and above all else, is attractive. Then we figured it out: we didn't hate Sean Penn, we feared him. He seems like the kind of guy who could and would kick our ass right-quick if he ever encountered us. more ›

...And that's not even the curviest part! A car chase that started in Marin County around 3:00 a.m. Monday morning ended abruptly when the driver, speeding at around 75 mph over the Golden Gate Bridge, overshot the turn from Doyle Drive onto Lombard Street and flipped over. A open fifth of Hennessey was found in the car, and the passengers are in SF General with non-fatal injuries. more ›

A photo of harbor seals frolicking in the shallow waters of Bolinas Lagoon more ›

Authorities are worried that the violent weekend is a harbinger for a bad July 4th. With 12 people dead (two more people were shot after the articles about 10 people killed went up), and half of those killings in Oakland, the Oakland PD is going to be upping patrols this Wednesday. more ›

We could've gone with a YouTube clip of the video for Love Is A Battlefield (totally one of the best videos ever), but we went instead for the Benatards doing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" at the Eagle Tavern -- that's right, Pat Benatar's playing a show tonight! If you can get up to the Marin County Fair in San Rafael, Ms. Benatar and her husband Neil Girardo will be performing hits like "Heartbreaker," "Invincible," and "We Belong," among many others starting at 7:30 tonight. Concert is free with fair admission ($13), at 10 Avenue of the Flags. more ›

--Killer squirrels on the attack! A menacing critter stomped into an open classroom in a South San Jose school and bit a first-grader on the finger and two adults in the classroom. They called 911, but when animal control arrived, the squirrel had fled -- or in their words, "He it outta there." Har! The school took pains to say that they don't usually have a problem with vicious rodents, unlike those other attack squirrels in the Mountain View park. more ›

Han Shin showed up in court in Contra Costa County yesterday to plead not guilty to the charges that he tried to run over an ex's roommate with his car in San Ramon. He smiled and wished the judge a good day. Meanwhile, the authorities also arrested an Oakland man who's been stalking Schwarzenegger. more ›

This would have been even more awesome if it had been on top of a moving train. The police in Berkeley used a hook-and-ladder truck to conduct a manhunt on Telegraph Avenue rooftops after the robbery of a Noah's Bagels at around 6 a.m. Monday morning. After what was described as a tense "building-by-building, rooftop-by-rooftop search," the man was located on top of a building and arrested without further incident. more ›

Last Saturday, a fight broke out at the "Hyphy High School Bash" at the Marin County Corte Madera Recreation Center. The police raced to the scene upon hearing reports of gunshots and a Golden Gate Transit bus being blocked on Tamalpais Drive by 80 teenagers. They couldn't confirm whether shots had been fired, but someone had sprayed pepper spray into the crowd and around the same time, someone broke into a nearby elementary school. Hilariously, the Marin Independent Journal describes hyphy as "a music and dance expression that grew out of the Bay Area hip-hop scene," and one Corte Madera parent says "It's really ironic. We live in Marin, and I feel safer sending my daughter to San Francisco." Ooooh, not dangerous San Francisco! Hyphy hyphy hyphy hyphy (or, as they call it in Marin, "a music and dance expression"). more ›

Here's what's opening this week: Wild Hogs About four wannabe bikers who stumble into a chapter of Hell’s Angels, the film looks like an updated (and not-so-yuppie) retelling of City Slickers. Wild Hogs features Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, John Travolta and William H. Macy. A huge event for the Chinese “Year of the Pig” saw all four of the film’s stars in some sort of parade on the Embarcadero. There were supposed to be floats-- and motorcycles, of course. We hear you couldn’t pay press to attend. Let's hope the same can't be said of the movie. more ›