*MUSIC: Hotel Utah launches a brand spanking new party, YEAR. The night is being labeled as an "innovative branded concept," hosted by KUSF radio personality and creative director for the Mill Valley Film Festival, Dennis "The Menace" Scheyer. Each month at YEAR, one year will be celebrated -- ranging from 1956 to 2006 -- and the playlist for that month's event will be the top hits from that year. Which year will be the......

Cosco Busan Update: ...

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? If you recall, Ruiz went missing in early December, reportedly "despondent" after a recent break-up with her boyfriend. A massive search for her ensued, but was called off since it produced no results. Until this week, according......

-- Crime in Choir: CIC rocks it. Hard. For reals. Big time. One of the purest sounds coming out of SF these days, really. Brave the chill and head down to Potrero Hill to check them out. You won't regret it. Pink Mountain and Science of Yarba open at this anniversary party for Frenetic Records. The music starts at 10 p.m. at Bottom of the Hill; $10. -- It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine:......

The search for Mill Valley resident, 25-year-old Veronica Ruiz, was called off today by police. She had been reported missing since Monday night after she reportedly went on a hike in the Mount Tamalpais area. Over 100 police and civilians had been looking for her since Tuesday morning. That is, until the hunt for her was called off today. Described as "despondent" since a recent break-up, according to NBC 11, Ruiz is "of Asian......

By day he's an Alight Electric employee. By night? A Ford F-350 Super Duty hero. It seems that last night on the Golden Gate Bridge, John Beatty of Mill Valley saved the day, so to speak, after noticing a woman unconscious in her Jeep, moving into oncoming traffic. At around 6:50 p.m., Sylvia Durrance, 62, came to a stop while driving southbound in the No. 2 lane. She appeared lifeless, her body slumped over......

Wild turkeys are taking over Marin County. ...

After yesterday's fog-induced Cosco Busan/Bay Bridge crash -- resulting in 58,000 gallons of fuel and 8,000 gallons of "heavy-duty bunker fuel oil" spilling into the Bay -- Baker Beach, Crissy Field, China Beach, Kirby Cove, and Fort Point beaches (or "beaches" to some of you purists out there) have been closed. Large blobby slicks as big as 50 yards long and 20 yards wide have been spotted off Tiburon and near Mill Valley's Bayfront......

-- They're not mad at you, they're mad at the dirt: unkempt offices at the Chronicle and elsewhere. [SFBG] -- Fire danger in Mill Valley. Hot. [SFGate] -- More on Milk Club Migden Madness. [BeyondChron] -- Bonds Responds. [Examiner] -- Soprano Katharine Tier playing ping pong. While looking amazing. [CCBlog] -- "Payback's a bitch." [Chron] -- Ka-blam! Man detained at Fremont home for possible blowing-up-bomb-like behavior. [Oakland Tribune]......

-- John officially wants SF throne. So does Josh. [Laughing Squid, JW] -- Dublin-Pleasanton BART station closure times, dates. (Our apologies for posting this unforgivably late.) [BART, Chron] -- Pirates beat Giants. Arrr, indeed. [Examiner] -- Fish sandwiches and bean pies: what could have been but never was. [Chron] -- 12 shootings in 24 hours in the city of Richmond. [ABC 7] -- Friday's gunfire in SF threatens the lives of two. [Chron] --......

Your Black Muslim Bakery update: the business is being liquidated in an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding (they have almost $1 million in debt) after a number of unnamed potential buyers dropped out, and the 19-year-old arrested for shooting journalist Chauncey Bailey now says (video clip) he was beaten and coerced into a false confession to the murder. The Oakland PD homicide officer assigned to the case says that's false and they have a taped confession where......

As promised, the San Francisco Mime Troupe performed in Dolores Park for the public last Wednesday and last weekend. It was the premier of the group's show "Making a Killing," which lampoons the current administration. We dropped by the Sunday performance; the photo above is during a charming ditty where "Condi Rice" and "Dick Cheney" were arguing over who was more popular. ...

For the past few seasons, the Warriors primary marketing slogan has been, "A Great Time Out". Brimming with hope after Tuesday's trade, SFist decided to catch a game at the O-rena to find out for ourselves.

Since the Merc's Tim Kawakami couldn't make it, we figured we'd step in for Saturday's game against the Cavaliers. This team now has new hope, and SFist was eager to see if there was a new buzz to go with it.

Our audit considered 11 different categories: parking, Oraclelization, concessions, personnel, entertainment, the crowd, new players, visuals/lighting, the seats, music/sound, and the game itself. Each category was ranked from 1 to 10, with 10 being Pac Bell/SBC/ATT park and 1 being, well, Candlestick.

San Francisco has a hot theater scene, but that doesn't mean the rest of the Bay Area doesn't sizzle as well. ...

A 26 year old man in Mill Valley called in a bomb threat to Walgreens because he was upset about how long his prescription was taking. Unfortunately, the person who answered the phone recognized his voice and called the cops -- but not before the Walgreens was evacuated and thoroughly inspected by a police dog. That can't have sped matters along with the caller's prescription. Neville Gittens took a break from discussing the hit-and-run guy......

Hey, time to fuel up that ol' SUV and drive with the freon-leaking A/C on to see local filmmaker Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, opening on Friday at the Embarcadero Center (and at the Sequoia in Mill Valley). MoveOn.Org is asking people to buy tickets in advance to pump up the buzz, and Paramount has announced it'll be donating 5% of the profits to the Alliance for Climate Protection. Thanks, Green Party, for making it......

Because Spike & Mike don't hold the monopoly on sick and twisted....

Boom! The San Jose federal building was evacuated for three hours yesterday afternoon after a federal employee found a suspicious-looking backpack-like object outside the building near South First Street with a note on it that said "boom." The bomb squad detonated the bag, which contained a metal box that made a loud crack (audio of the crack! Go Merc News!) heard through downtown. After an almost two-day search, firefighters finally found the body of a......

These aren't your garden-variety "my first sexual experience" or "the day I came out to my parents" solo shows. ...

OK mountain bikers, it's raining this weekend, and that means most of the trails out there are muck. Yeah, sure, some trails like the Bobcat and Miwok trails in the Marin Headlands , the Mitchell Canyon and Deer Flat roads on Mt. Diablo, and the North Peak Access Road up Montara Mountain are probably still rideable, but beyond that, the trails are just too fragile for responsible riding right now....

San Francisco seems a little darker this week, with the passing of former Chronicle photo editor Bob McLeod this Monday. This SFist only knew Bob a little bit. Our most vivid memory of him is from a night we spent in the Chronicle building, the night the Pacers and Pistons got into it. We were hanging out in the photo lab (which we're prone to do), watching the fight and subsequent replays of it......

To update you on where we're at on the two biggest crime stories in town: the Chron fronts a frightening photo montage of the teenager who allegedly killed Pamela Vitale (check it out on the newsstands -- yikes!!), and acquaintances say he kind of began a downward spiral after his older sister was killed in a car crash. And Lashaun/Lashuan Harris (spellings vary), the woman who threw her kids off Pier 7, reportedly told her cousin that she was going to feed her children to the sharks and left the house. The cousin tried to stop her but couldn't. Harris had apparently been saying this for some time, and other family members thought she would never do anything to hurt her children. Her family had been trying to get custody of the children, but had been denied. The VIllage People cop who got busted for crack failed to show up for his arraignment in Daly City, and a warrant's been issued. Hey, have you checked out the YMCA? And third graders in Mill Valley are happy again, after their classroom pet turtle, Myrtle, was anonymously returned after disappearing a few days ago. The principal isn't talking, but they think the turtle was returned by the turtlenapper's parents. The children are philosophical about not learning the identity of the thief, saying the teacher had "made a deal," which made sense because if they knew who did it, "a lot of people would be mad at him or her." The children then went back to encouraging Myrtle to eat the snails in her terrarium. "Go for the snail! Go for the snail!" ...

Aw, come on -- Greg was a U.S. attorney! The man who confessed to killing his 5-month-pregnant girlfriend and their two daughters, and then set their house on fire pled not guilty to all charges. He had previously been convicted of domestic violence against the same woman in 2002, and completed (but did poorly) in an anger-management type class. When the police arrived at the scene, they found the man watching the fire, smoking a cigarette. What is it with people torturing bunnies? The House Rabbit Society in Mill Valley is now looking after a pet rabbit named (ironically enough) Phoenix that was set on fire in Vallejo. The humane society has contacted the juvenile they believe did it. In more positive news, a woman in Oakland with her 4-year-old twins in her car successfully fought off a carjacker yesterday morning. The man jumped in her car as she was strapping her twins into their car seats and tried to make off with the car. The woman managed to pull the key from the ignition, hit the panic button in the car, and in the struggle for the steering wheel, steered the car up on a traffic island, all while shrieking at the top of her lungs for help. The carjacker then grabbed her purse and ran out of the car. She and the boys are fine, but a little shaken. Cops called her actions "heroic." ...

On a hot tip, SFist has learned that Bay Area rock legend Les Claypool (of Primus fame) will be presenting his new project, "Electric Apricot," for what we think is the first time ever at Mill Valley's Sweetwater Saloon tonight. Word on the street is that Les won't be playing bass, but drums! Tickets are $12, and the show starts at 8:30 with opening set by Gaby La La. Couldn't get tickets for the......

See The Lineup and Dirty Harry tonight at the second-to-last night of the Balboa's Reel SF film fest! A disgruntled former employee stormed the Conard Community Services Center at 9th and Mission yesterday morning and shot a caseworker dead. It could have been much worse, but for the quick thinking of another employee, a man coming by to pick up a public assistance check, and a third homeless man in the area, who wrestled the shooter to the ground and disarmed him. The shooter was carrying a handgun, a shotgun, and an axe. Y'know, coming back and shooting up your former office just confirms that they were probably right to let you go in the first place. The finger lady's back in town! Anna Ayala was arraigned (check out that smirk!) in Santa Clara Superior Court yesterday, with a cheering crowd of 12 present. (They were asked to cover up their homemade INNOCENT shirts before entering the courtroom.) Ayala waved big and repeatedly mouthed "I love you" to them and the cameras, and let out a big whoop when the judge set bail at $500,000. Meanwhile, the cops are now searching a ranch in Mexico. And the student leader of the gay-straight alliance at Tamalpais High in Mill Valley has confessed to faking incidents of anti-gay vandalism at the school, saying that she just wanted some attention. The school had been investigating anti-gay graffiti on the walls and doors of openly gay teachers, and the vandalism of the gay-straight alliance student leader's car. The school has stripped the student, a wrestler, of her award for Best Student Athlete as a result. ...

San Francisco's favorite but least read Q&A columnist, the Essefficist, looks into the local culinary delight that is the It's-It....

See Arnold Run, the biopic of our Governator (we never get tired of it) that debuted tonight on A&E is like a high school production of A&E's standard-bearer Biography series put on by the wrestling team....

Of course, any sort of discussion about flooding caused by rain in these here parts must always be tempered by what happened in South-East Asia, but due to all the almost biblical amount of rain going down in the area, flooding is becoming a problem. Today, parts of the Embarcadero were closed and huge parts of Marin were completely covered in water. Which, of course, meant huge traffic jams onto the Golden Gate Bridge and......

Hey -- it's winter; the flu is running rampant, colds abound -- why not give the gift of health? Okay, so it's off the beaten path. But this is EssEff, what would be more appropriate? Vitamin Express is a great place for vitamins (duh), supplements, healthy snacks, lotions, aroma therapy, gum, and more. Why is this one of the best places to shop in SF? Well, it's family owned and operated, there's a wide selection,......

Well no, not really. However, according to SmartsCo's new SexSmarts game we are. San Francisco-based SmartsCo, founded in 2002 by Jennifer Elias and Julie Tucker, has created informative, fun games about wine, food, chocolate -- and now sex. SexSmarts consists of having players or teams answer questions having to do with all areas of sexual pleasure. The cards used fall into one of four categories -- Bodies, Dirty Talk, Carnal Culture, and Wild Card. The......