hen we last wrote about the San Jose Sharks, we were wondering where the hell captain Patrick Marleau's game went. It looks like he found it around the trade deadline (more on that below), and has been on a pretty decent stretch since then. As have the Sharks....

Although we're only occasional smokers (read: when we're drunk or feeling awkward at a party), we sympathize with the need to have a cigarette. And while the smoking ban at bars and everywhere else has kept everyone relatively secondhand smoke free, the constant browbeating smokers receive from non-smokers is enough to make the anarchists in us want to light up in front of all the naysayers. That's when this article on bars working around the......

At around 11:30 a.m. today at Digital Pre-Press International (DPI), located at Mariposa and Minnesota, a woman died while on the clock. It seems she "became enmeshed in the massive piece of equipment" at the San Francisco-based printing press. SFFD Lt. Ken Smith told CBS 5 that although his crew was successful "extricating her from the machine," she failed to recover from injuries sustained in the accident. As of now it is unclear as......

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Attrition has been one of the Warriors' best pickups this offeseason. While the Warriors have taken some baby steps forward, many of the Western Conference rivals have been moving in the opposite direction.

When looking at the Warriors chances to make the playoffs this year, it runs from the bottom up....

A loyal fan of the child-rearing arts -- she had taken nanny jobs at least twice before, even a job in Turkey, after answering online ads in the past; and even recently played Maria in her church community theater's production of The Sound of Music -- Katherine Ann Olson, 24, answered a Craigslist ad posted last week, looking for a nanny. The CL ad ultimately would lead to her death. Last Thursday, in Savage, Minnesota,......

All of you YouTube addicts out there are probably familiar with many of the "absoludicrous"* found video clips from Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett's touring Found Footage Festival (*Mr. T makes an appearance in the "Celebrities Who Teach" series). The critically-acclaimed event will be in San Francisco tonight and tomorrow night at the Roxie Red Vic at 7:15 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. and this Sunday at the Parkway in Oakland for a 5 p.m.......

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts......

It's time for American Football Spectacular's capsule reviews of the 2007 NFL Draft. Adventure, excitement,measureables!...

The Sharks dispatched the Mustard Men in 5 games, which makes the series seem a lot less close than it was. 3 of the games were decided by one goal, with Game 1 in double overtime. Even Game 2, the Predators 5-2 win, was not decided until late in the 3rd period. Nashville's undisciplined play (they led all playoff teams with almost 30 minutes of penalties per game) was their undoing, even though the Sharks power play was more or less ineffective, and often frankly ugly to watch. But it was one more way to wear down the Nashville defenders, and keep their skill players on the bench. Patrick Marleau again scored some big goals, and Joe Thornton took the first step toward erasing his playoff-choker reputation with dominating play and 6 points in the series. Nashville wasn't the only team to distinguish itself with dirty play in this year's playoffs. The Calgary Flames managed to steal the spotlight by having their backup goalie come in to play lumberjack to the Detroit Red Wings Johan Franzen's, umm, old growth redwood late in Game 5 of their series (Franzen, fittingly, scored the series winner in Game 6). Then the Flames' Jarome Iginla and Daymond Langkow got in the act late in the game (cross-checking plus slashing and sucker-punching, respectively). Classy. Brad May of the Anaheim Ducks got a 3 game suspension for sucker-punching the back of Minnesota Wild defenseman Kim Johnsson (who is both emphatically not a pugilist, and happened to be Minnesota's best D man), which then caused a multi-player dust-up between the Ducks and Wild during the *pre-game skate* of Game 5 in their series. ...

Over the last 12 years, nobody has really accused the Warriors of having their act together. They've burned through a litany of coaches, a couple of really bad GMs, and more than one first round draft choice with nothing to show for them but more new coaches, front office suits, and first round draft choices.

Another hallmark of the modern-day Warriors' mean mean stride has been their fast starts, awful middles, and decent finishes. Even in their worst years, the Warriors managed to finish the season on an uptick, perpetually giving false hope for the next season – even if that hope was just a Lottery pick.

This year had all the looks of more of the same, but a funny thing happened on the way to the cellar: the bottom fell out of the middle of the Western Conference.

-San Jose gets back to where it all belongs with a 3-0 victory over the Minnesota Wild. The Sharks appear to be playing up and down lately-- a win here followed by a loss there-- and this is definitely one of the up games. ...

Warriors, baby, we need to talk. With Monday night's double kiss off -- a demoralizing loss to the Nuggets in Denver and the news that Baron Davis is going under the knife -- our relationship in on the rocks. Again. Sigh.

As such, we find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma. Should we shoulder the slings and arrows of the last month and give you one last chance to make it up to us with a playoff berth, or should we go ahead and change the locks on this season?

There's a whole bunch of golf stuff out there which we are going to skip entirely as we hate golf. -Golden State was routed by the Minnesota Timberwolves 121-93. Boy, this road trip is going well, ain't it? And how's that trade working out for you these days? This all makes Golden State of Mind play "You Know You're In Trouble When..." Well, some good news is that Stephen Jackson had his trial date pushed......

It's come to that point of the season -- make or break time. Backed up to the edge of seasons past, the Warriors find themselves heading off on a six-game East Coast road trip with a must-win mentality.

The right-coast swing, which includes two sets of back-to-backs and games against Indianapolis and playoff rival Minnesota, is the kind of mid-season road trip that has buried lesser Warriors teams of yesteryear. Like, say, lasteryear's team.

This year's squad hasn't fared particularly well on the road either, limping to a 4-15 record thus far. Warriors fans are a confident, if not resilient bunch though.

So imagine you have a job. And imagine you're really good at your job. You know it, your coworkers know it, and your bosses know it. Now imagine that there's a management position that opens up which would be a great promotion for you. So you apply for it. You think you would be great at the job, your coworkers think you would be great at the job and your friends think you would be great at the job. Now imagine that instead of you getting the job, the head of the company give it to some snot nosed punk straight out of school with no experience. Welcome to Rob Ryan's world...

Coming to you from Shannon Arms in the Sunset while watching Michigan vs OSU, it's American Football Spectacular's National Football League week eleven preview!...

The National Football League's Week Nine of the 2006 regular season is upon us here in the Bay Area, as well as the first tinge of wet weather. Curl up on the couch with a mug o' soup and a blanket: it's time for American football....

This afternoon beneath overcast skies at McAfee Coliseum, the 2006 Oakland Athletics continued to defy expectations by smacking the Minnesota Twins 8-3 in a fashion befitting a potential World Series team. The entire game was a literal composite of the A’s season: solid pitching, timely defense and amazing clutch hitting. ...

The A's might have wrapped up their playoff spot days ago, but the big question of who they would play was still up in the air. Finally, this afternoon, the A's got their opponent, the Minnesota Twins. ...

We headed to Cafe Du Nord last Friday to catch the sold-out early show by Emily Haines and The Soft Skeleton. By the 9pm showtime, the band was still soundchecking behind closed curtains and didn't start playing to the crowd until an hour later, but it was worth the wait. Haines crouched behind the keys, bird-skinny and soft-voiced, embodying the delicate yin to her animated Metric persona's yang. Eerie old black and white film clips......

Man, things couldn't get much worse for Stanford football fans. Not only did they lose to lowly San Jose State last weekend, 35-34, but the infamously irreverent Stanford band has been put on provisional status after a series of incidents culminating in vandalism of the 'Band Shak' last July. Meaning that the only horns blaring at Stanford Stadium this weekend will be playing for the Navy's Midshipmen. Don't be surprised if you see a maudlin......

These are not good days for the Stanford University Cardinal. In an upset with all sorts of subtext, the Cardinal lost to San Jose State University, 35-34 as SJSU came from 20 points behind. This is a huge victory in the same way it was a huge victory when all the slobs beat the snobs in those early 80's teen comedies. Stanford turned the ball over three teams in the second half-- one of them being an interception in the end zone-- and were completely unable to stop a rampaging Spartan running game. With two minutes left in the game, Stanford drove down the length of the field only to have Spartan defender Rakine Toomes knock the ball from WR Evan Moore's hands. SJSU is now 1-1 and Stanford is 0-2. ...

This SFist was actually kind of excited about the chances of the college football programs around the Bay this season, with the Pac 10 looking wide open. Then Cal got whipped like cream by Tennessee, getting nothing from potential superstar Marshawn Lynch (whom we've been watching closely for years), while Stanford was creamed like butter by Oregon, saddling themselves from the start with a conference loss. So when we were asked to write a weekly......

Money Magazine has published its annual list of "Best places to live" in these here United States, with the highest ranking Bay Area city coming at number 31. While we've never visited the winning city of Fort Collins, Colorado, we have read that Thomas Frank book, and we're highly skeptical that Overland Park, Kansas (#6) is somewhere we'd like to call home. And weather wimps that we are, Boise, Idaho (#8) and Eden Prairie, Minnesota......

Joe Goode manages in Transformation, this summer's first fully-staged production of the SF Opera Merola program, the opposite trick as in his own shows: instead of getting dancers to sing, he got singers to dance. It helps that his cast is youthful, -- Merola singers are between 20 and 34-- full of energy, and willing to take risks. But his direction enlivened an opera which, since it is a sequence of a prologue plus nine......

Our little Craigslist is growing up! Craigslist went from around 200 to roughly 300 sites this last week with the addition of 97 new and exciting Craigslist locations. While a cynic might view this expansion as a way to get a foothold in other places before competition from Google and Microsoft comes stopping in, we think that it has more to do with people clamoring for these locations. Of all the new cities out......

Thursday night the Castro Theatre looked like a giant faculty meeting of humanities professors from some crunchy liberal arts university. But what can you expect from the West Coast premiere of a Robert Altman movie based on an old timey public radio show that originates in Minnesota of all places, don't cha know? A Prairie Home Companion closed the San Francisco International Film Festival Thursday night to a sell-out crowd. Despite the fact that......