Taking a cue from the East Bay's recent restaurant robberies, an armed gunman entered Valencia Street Italian eatery Beretta (formerly Last Supper Club/Radio Free Valencia) on Tuesday morning and robbed the joint. The restaurant was filled a with 10 patrons at the time....

Choppy footage: San Francisco Police Department via the Chron And speaking of cameras... While Chicago has seen crime rates plummet to their lowest numbers in over four decades due to the windy city's Big Brother program, San Francisco's attempt at panopticon-ish camera security is failing. Ever since the 68 city-funded cameras started rolling, our city's surveillance program has resulted in a single arrest. That was over 19 months ago. Why the lag, you ask?......

It turns out that the man who was brutally gunned down in the Mission on Monday night recently ditched a witness protection program. Justin Lee, 40 - who was shot to death after being chased down on 26th and Mission Streets - just left the security of a safe house in another part of the state on the same day. Yikes. Going back a bit, it seems that in 2005 Lee had "taken the......

Peter Hartlaub thinks our favorite thinspiration, Keira Knightley, is overrated. Well, then. [SFGate] Iraqi war critics' darling Cindy Sheehan moves to the Mission District. Congrats on the hip new digs, Cynthia. [FCJ] Big-cat attack victims "lay low." Hmm. [Examiner] Raiders lose it. Again. [Oakland Tribune] Three - three! - people murdered in Oakland within 12 hours. Ack. [CoCo Times] Oakland fuzz feared Your Black Muslim Bakery? [Oakland Tribune] Beth has a new drinking-binge buddy?......

So much to do, so much not to do. What's a girl to do? Well, here is just a smattering of what's going on tonight. (An aside, is there any reason to buy bags of fun-size candy anymore to hand out to costumed tykes? We haven't seen a trick-or-treater in ages. Sob.) -- Hellgate Halloween: Vice magazine (SF's no. 1 fan) is throwing a bash with a complimentary bar (!) and tunes by Chromeo......

Members of the exclusive Norteño gang in the Mission District got capped with a civil injunction today, barring them from hanging out each other in a 60-square-block area and from loitering after 10 p.m., according to a report in the Chronicle. Those who are subject to the preliminary injunction...can be arrested in the 60-square-block zone -- and face up to six months in jail -- if they engage in one of a number of......

"Tales Of Mere Existence" By Levni R. Yilmaz Esq HEY! I'll be selling books at the SF Zine Fest Friday & Saturday. Friday, October 5 from 2:00pm - 8:00pm Saturday, October 6 from 11:00am - 7:00pm The Women's Building 3543 18th St. (between Valencia and Guerrero) in the Mission District of San Francisco Email Lev. Buy a Comic/DVD set from Lev! http://www.ingredientx.com/buy/main.htm For more comics, animations and correspondence, kindly visit http://www.ingredientx.com If you gravitate......

Ritual Coffee Roasters' two locations are only about three miles apart. Not so bad on a bike, right? Well, what if you're biking with 130 pounds of coffee? Yeah, a little tougher. This Saturday, popular cafe Ritual Roasters, in conjunction with Bikes to Rwanda, is having a wacky, multi-tiered charity event that involves bike-race betting, film-watching, a raffle, and the consumption of both of our favorite beverages: booze and coffee....

From time to time, we get entertaining stories from you the readers. Here's the latest, on the woes of postal service in the Mission! So it seems that the Post Office in San Francisco, or at least the Mission District, is so inept that local branches no longer handle package pickups after a failed delivery attempt. Now anyone who misses a certified letter or an Amazon package in the Mission needs to trundle down to......

It’s like someone threw a net over the Mission District circa 1972 and moved it south a couple miles. An overly simplistic description of this block at the heart of the Excelsior? Perhaps. But it’s more accurate than you might think. Didn’t some leisure suit-clad wiseguy in a Corvair convertible blaring an 8-track of Cosmo’s Factory just turn right onto Ocean Ave.? Or did we imagine that? The no-nonsense block of Mission St. between Brazil and Persia Sts. coldly swaps out the Beauty Bar for a dimly lit tavern called Pass Time, and Medjool for four austere Chinese joints and a closet-sized Filipino place specializing in palabok. Awnings could use an update. Shop fronts are less than shiny. There is no valet in sight. This utilitarian swath of businesses and budget eateries may not take home the crown if pitted in a glamour pageant against its celebrated rival up the way, but it stands a good chance to win the boxing match in a 15-round TKO....

Ever misplaced a grocery or to-do list? Your lost note could appear in Lost and Found in the Mission, a play based on true stories salvaged from scraps of papers found around the Mission District. The production, by Boathouse & Co., includes songs, dancing, beat-boxing and mass hallucinations. Tickets are available on a sliding scale ($15-$25), here, show starts at 8pm. Mama Calizo's Voice Factory in the Jon Sims Center for Performing Arts, 1519......

Here's a funny stor about an alarm, an SUV, and a tow truck...

Haight Ashbury Free Clinics' ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Integrated Care Center...

You didn't think that our recent distractions would prevent us from forgetting about our NIMBY neighbors down by the armory, would you? In case you had forgotten, kink.com has valiantly attempted to purchase a building which has stood empty for 35 years for the purpose of making porn, much to the chagrin of their potential neighbors. Other than a few local groups planning on protesting the move today (Thursday) at noon, there isn't much......

SFist Melissa went to today's immigrant rallies in Oakland, and was kind enough to pass along these awesome pictures of the event. Over 1000 people marched for 7 miles in Oakland, while several hundred marched in the Mission District, and over 4000 showed up in San Jose. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country have turned out to support granting US citizenship to illegal immigrants, with 50,000 in Atlanta, 500,000 in Dallas, and......

It's a sad for us at SFist when we see a journalist even lazier than we are, but we've found one in The New York Times' Nathan Lee. In a move that seems almost calculated to make The San Francisco Chronicle entertainment coverage seem less lame, Lee makes himself sound kind of silly in his review of locally produced film Quality of Life. Here's how the piece opens: The Mission District of San Francisco......

"Our friends pitied us when they saw this place," says Eileen Hassi, co-proprietor of red-hot Mission District cafe Ritual Roasters. "They told us we were doing everything wrong." Jeremy Tooker, her co-proprietor, agreed. "We had too much space, they said," he says. "We'd never fill the tables. The streets around here were dead before 10 a.m." What may have seemed a series of missteps and misadventures to Hassi and Tooker's peers turned out to be serendipity -- the stuff that goes into the best of origin stories. Stuffed into the back office, under the eyes of a giant millipede for whom the gang was pet sitting, the Eileen and Jeremy talked to SFist about how and why they got their start, what it's like to run a small business in one of San Francisco's hippest 'hoods, some of the keys to their recent success, and what's next to come. ...

We decided to cheat a little for the letter S. Instead of choosing a restaurant name, we settled on an entire cuisine - from S is for South of India. By the end of the meal, at popular new spot, Dosa, we realised that the initial of the day would more aptly describe S is for "Secret" recipes. The menu is apparently full of them. We detected a wave of excitement fluttering through San......

Hey, the party's not till Monday, so check out some crazy characters hitting SF stages this weekend....

Across from the homeless shelter on Capp street in the Mission District, at the Space180 venue, there was a cosmic convergence. The first ever (it should be held again) Lap-Pop event from Locus Arts, curated by Min Jung Kim was a smashing success of nerds, alcohol, wifi, digital photography, and blogging. Who knew that a live blog reading featuring bloggers of blog-worthiness, Ernie Hsung (of little.yellow.different.) and Glenda Bautista (of Agendacide), could be so......

In which SFist eats our way around the Bay Area in alphabetical order. You know how it is - sometimes you hear so much buzz about a restaurant, you are not quite sure why you still haven't tried it. The more good things that are written, and whispered, about it, the more you wonder how much of it is hype and how much of the adoration is truly deserved. In the back of your......

Hey kids! Are you looking for a quick and easy entry into San Francisco District 6 civic participation? Do you long to get an email response from Chris Daly, but don't know what to say? Well, look no further! Political Junkie presents: a Mad Libs Letter to Everyone's Favorite Mission District Supervisor! Tenant? Landlord? Advocate for the homeless? An honorable-mention mayor for a major West Coast city? C'mon -- everyone can play! Okay, write down: 1) an honorific or sobriquet 2) an emotion 3) an adjective 4) a verb ending in -ed 5) an action verb 6) another Supervisor 7) an issue facing San Francisco today 8) pick either the word "do" or "don't" 9) a celebrity and read your letter, after the jump! ...

Well, okay, this isn't really a crime movie, but if an octopus really did attack San Francisco, heck yeah it would make the Blotter! The cops think a robbery in the Richmond's Ocean King restaurant on Tuesday (glad Gourmet de l'Ouest wasn't there when it happened!) may be linked to a robbery in Oakland at the Korean Bistro. Both restaurants were hit by a multiethnic trio of robbers (two African-American, one speaking with an obvious Vietnamese accent). Despite what you see in the movies, multiracial gangs are actually fairly rare, which made the cops think the robberies were linked. We can't decide if it's depressing, typical, or a good sign that criminals can't transcend race. The gun battle on Tuesday at 18th and South Van Ness outside a tire-rim store, which injured four people (one of whom was a bystander), has been traced back to two Western Addition gangs whose members happened to cross paths outside their usual area. The Mission gang force is annoyed. "In the Mission District we have problems with our own gangs. We don't need gangs from other areas coming to visit us," he told the Ex. And Oakland's coming back strong in the 2005 murder count, after a surge forward by perennial second-placer San Francisco, with three killings yesterday and two today. Oakland's total is now at 13 murders for 2005, and San Francisco is at 16 as of last week. Hey, there's a Blotter special today too -- since you've asked, there's a list of all the pictures we've used as Blotter illustrations since we started, after the jump....

Ah, Valencia Street. Who hasn't nearly been run over by a car, a bus, a biker, or frantic pedestrians running to make their reservations at Luna Park on the Mission District's own Fifth Avenue thoroughfare? Who hasn't either parked in the median, or gleefully snickered as cars parked in the median were towed away there? Well, the DPT is taking a small break from tyrannically chalking tires and booting cars to actually listen to community concerns about improving Valencia Street traffic flow. That's so weird and Chronicle-Watch-y! As part of the DPT's Livable Streets program, (non-helmeted) DPT employees are soliciting comments and suggestions on how traffic on Valencia Street can be improved. Previous Livable Streets projects include the Potrero Street corridor, Market Street, and Bernal Heights. Their first meeting was last December, and the next meeting is tomorrow, Feb. 24, at 6:30 at the Mission Police Station. Hott and contradictory proposals from December included median parking (love it, put trees there, keep the space for U-turns); bike lanes (keep up, ditch 'em, repaint 'em, move 'em); and parking (more! less!). In light of the recent pedestrian death on 17th and Valencia, DPT is particularly focused on foot traffic safety these days, but welcomes suggestions on any aspect of the proposal. If you've got thoughts, stop by tomorrow's meeting, which promises to be contentious in the best possible civic-awareness kind of way. Them bikers sure are feisty! Or, if you like, leave your thoughts in the comments, and we'll forward them all to the Valencia Street contact person at DPT, Nick Carr. ...

Ach. Is it Monday already? Where's the coffee? If you're in the Mission, you're in luck. Holy crap, man -- pass the sweetener! Straight up, before anything else is mentioned about Cafe Macondo, it must be known that this is a super dark, wickedly bitter cup of coffee. This is a good thing. Cafe Macondo, located in the Mission District at 3159 16th St. (between Valencia and Guerrero), was just bumped to the top......

In this week’s Girl Interrupted Angelina Jolie department, a woman at a Los Gatos mental institution was shot in the stomach by the cops for attempting to stab another woman patient at the hospital. A man died after falling off the Ocean Beach cliff Sunday morning, a little bit south of the Cliff House. Rescue efforts were impeded by the early morning fog and the steepness of the slope. A criminal investigation has been opened.......