It's Saturday the 26th and the iPhone says we have 26 minutes to wait for the 26 Valencia bus. This is the kind of magic we have always associated with the 26 Valencia, the bus line of which we are most inordinately fond. It's not like the 14 Mission, which we need, or the 33 Stanyan, which we respect, or the 38 Geary, which we fear (in a Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit kind of way).......

*CLUB: Check out Rock Out Karaoke over at Amnesia. What is Rock Out Karaoke? Well, it mean that you will hear neither a Righteous Brothers cover nor a note from everyone's least favorite musical, Grease. And isn't that what you really want in a karaoke night? Of course it is. (Glenny Kravitz hosts.) READING: Sorry to throw another Valencia Street happening your way, but: author and artist Ian Philips, of Suspect Thoughts Press, reads......

Class and Power in Queer San Francisco: Come hear poets Meliza Bañales and Solidad de Costa, circus performer Keith Hennessy, and writer Michelle Tea push forth the homosexual agenda. Mwa ha ha. They will also touch upon the "schisms between different classes" among the queer community. That is to say, being poor and gay, like, really sucks. Starts at 7:30 p.m. at CounterPULSE; free. Secret Sunshine (2007): South Korea's official Oscar entry is a......

Serialized gem / siren song Tales of the City drew many folks to SF. Well, it brought us here, anyway. And the character of Mary Ann Singleton acted as a temporary stand-in until many of us arrived. To wit: Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time. She came to the city alone for an eight-day vacation. On the fifth night, she drank three Irish coffees......

Try drowning Dave Eggers, Michelle Tea, Stephen Elliott, Beth Lisick, Barb Bersche, Eileen Hassi, or 826 Program Director Erin Neeley, via a dunking booth, this Sunday afternoon at the first 8/26 Day Festival. The literary bash will feature live performances, cartooning, Everett Middle School's dance troupe, readings, local writers (pardon me, novelists), paper flower making, haiku writing, bon mots flying to and fro, and much, much, much more. The festivities go from 1 p.m.......

--Audacia Ray, the editor of the sex worker zine $pread and a Fleshbot [nsfw] contributor, talks at Modern Times about the commodification of sex on the Internet. 7:30 p.m., 888 Valencia (x 20th) --Kearny Street Workshop, Intersection for the Arts, and Galeria de la Raza are throwing a reading and book release party for their 2007 Intergenerational Writers Lab collection, at Capp180 (180 Capp Street 3rd Fl., x 16th and Mission). $5-15 sliding, 7 p.m.......

As part of the National Queer Arts Festival, graphic artist and memoirist Alison Bechdel is speaking at Michelle Tea's Radar Reading Series at the SF Public Library tonight! We've been huge fans of Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For for, like 10 years now (we're latecomers -- she's been drawing the strip since 1987), and her first graphic novel, Fun Home, about her relationship with her closeted gay father totally blew our mind with......

Here's a listing for tonight's events...

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......

A passel of literary events tonight: LitPAC & Laughing Liberally Lab-SF Present a benefit for Slain Iraqi Comedian Walid Hassan featuring renowned writers Daniel Handler of Lemony Snicket, Andrew Sean Greer of Confessions of Max Tivoli, Michelle Tea of Valencia and Rent Girl, plus comedians, Joe Klocek, Sal Calanni of sketch group Tossing Alice, Ali Mafi of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, Samantha Chanse, Kurt Weitzmann and more. The benefit will be hosted......

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. Save Chris Daly! Rob Black's dirty Swift-Boat campaign tactics. PG&E (sigh). Cover articles: What's happening with Halloween this year? TELL US! Also, where'd our fun gay Halloween go?, and (non-SF) themed costumes. What, no Alix Rosenthal costume? Maybe Steven T. Jones edits the costume section. Sonic Reducer's days behind the counter at Tower. Lit section: books about seedy SF, and Michelle Tea's interview with the editor and publisher of......

As part of its ongoing 10th anniversary celebration, local nonprofit indie publication Bitch Magazine is throwing a benefit silent auction this Friday, Sept. 8 at 6 p.m. at the Women's Building (18th St. between Valencia and Guerrero). And we've got two tickets to give away! The auction features art from Bitch contributors and Bitch supporters (including a collage by one Mr. Matt Gonzalez), homemade jewelry, an hour's time with local women's tattoo salon Diving Swallow,......

In 1950, the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler wrote of the contemporaneous critical response to his stories and those of James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, et. al. that: It takes a very open mind indeed to look behind the unnecessarily gaudy covers, trashy titles and barely acceptable advertisements and recognize the authentic power of a kind of writing that, even at its most mannered and artificial, made most of the fiction of the time......

Wednesday, you're doing a heck of a job! Tonight: Satisfy your craving for Germanic food and drink at Schroeder's, while also learning more about the development plans for Piers 27-31 with San Francisco for Democracy, a spinoff group from the 2004 Howard Dean campaign. The local Sierra Club and a rep for an anti-development citizens' group will speak; the corporation trying to develop the property cancelled at the last minute. Mmmm, sauerkraut. Thursday: Events listing fave Michelle Tea is at it again -- she's hosting a reading of underground and emerging writers in conjunction with the Gay and Lesbian Center at the Public Library. Authors Regie Cabico, Kaui Hemings, Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, and Horehound Stillpoint will be reading. 5-8 pm in the Latino/Hispanic Room at the Main Library. In the same area, Cindy Sheehan is reading too, at Clean Well-Lighted at 7 p.m. and Friday: The DeYoung Museum sponsors events on Friday nights! This week, Egyptian belly dancing performances! The dancers of the Al Masri Restaurant on Balboa and 42nd will perform a dance history of the raqs sharki dance from antiquity to today. 6:45 and 7:45, free with museum admission. The Egyptian Consul General will be present as well. ...

Tonight: We're running just down the street to Borders Books and Music (200 King Street at 3rd) for Making It: Writers on the Verge. Brought to us by our pals at Friends of the SF Public Library this event features Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea, and Stephen Elliott with moderator Oscar Villalon (SF Chronicle book editor) discussing how they started out and how they sustain their work. And it's free! Saturday: We're headed down to......

So much going on this weekend! Besides serious documentaries and awesome schlocky horror, there are also great bands and fun for the chosen people. Dang! In addition, The Dharma of Dollars, an autobiographical show about the search for enlightenment as one opens a yoga studio, is in its last weekend on stage at the Marsh. The Guardian finally got around to reviewing it this week -- but you heard it here first! The National......

With Dr. Hunter S. Thompson moving on to bigger and better things, writers, critics, stoners and other hangers-on are organizing tributes around the country and around the world. But we have a feeling that the only one Hunter himself would have attended would be right here in San Francisco at the Edinburgh Castle Pub. Sure, Jahn Wenner will probably throw some blockbuster event full of literary luminaries in New York, but we all know......

If you, like us, want to support our local arts community but aren't really interested in buying one of those Hearts of SF -- we're here to help! If you, like us, want something with a little feminist indie cachet to hang in your apartment, we're here to help! And if you, like us, search vainly on ebay for something -- anything -- cool to buy, and end up bidding instead on a scratched 45 of "The Super Bowl Shuffle", we're definitely here to help. Local nonprofit and independently-published feminist/pop culture zine Bitch Magazine is holding a benefit auction for the next two weeks, featuring art from its pages, and arts and crafts from its contributors. Where else would you be able to find Lynda Barry drawings starting at $30 (see above), an Alison Bechdel cartoon panel for $35, or Guerrilla Girls prints at the impossible price of $10 each? They're also offering a print of Rebecca McBride's photograph on the cover of Michelle Tea's book Valencia (which we used to illustrate that post on the DPT's proposals about the street just last week), and a collection of comic book anthologies signed by comic book historian Trina Robbins, among many other cool items (meet Michelle Tea! Get a portrait painted of your pet! A t-shirt of Valerie Solanas by Diane DiMassa!) Plus -- sold-out back issues, cover art and illustrations from the magazine, and -- special treat! -- the Bitch staff annotates an issue of Jane, the magazine we all love to hate. The auction preview begins today and bidding goes from March 6-13. All money goes to support the magazine. Art by Lynda Barry, available at an opening bid of $30. Disclosure: This SFist is on the nonprofit board of Bitch Magazine, but gets no perks at all in the auction bidding....

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. ...