Regarding that meteor that may or may not have struck the Earth near Lake Tahoe this past weekend, NASA now has a better estimate of just how big that flying chunk of colorful flaming space rock really was: Roughly the size of a minivan, except it was over 40 times heavier than your standard Plymouth Voyager (space joke) and it blew up over California's Central Valley with the energy of a 5-kiloton explosion. more ›

Around 8 a.m. Sunday morning, reports of a loud explosion and a fireball streaking through sky over the California/Nevada border had local law enforcement agencies, astronomers and doomsday soothsayers alike all scrambling for answers. The fireball was spotted as far as away as the Bay Area and Las Vegas before the meteor broke up over the Sierra Nevada and reportedly crashed to Earth in Nevada, just over the border from South Lake Tahoe. more ›

Oh dear. A hefty-sized earthquake hit northeastern Nevada this morning. You know what that means, don't you? Time to sound the alarm for everyone in the Bay Area to get prepared. more ›

The three boys who took part in the shooting death of Ichinkhorloo "Iko" Bayarsaikhan in Washington Park in Alameda last Halloween, and then reportedly boasted about it, were sentenced in juvenile court today. One of the teenagers, the 16-year-old, will spend seven years behind bars, but the other two first-degree killers, the unidentified 15- and 13-year-old, were ordered to attend the Rites of Passage program, which is "a structured camp in the Nevada wilderness." more ›

Hillary Clinton's Inner Tracy Flick more ›

A two-alarm fire at Bernal Heights home caused the displacement of two elderly folks. The blaze happened at 266 Nevada Street around 6:30 p.m. this evening. According to the Gate, "[f]irefighters found the home's two residents inside and brought them out to safety." Aw. Our heroes! more ›

Maybe Tony Hall needs to put a yellow sticky on his campaign credit card and label it "FOR CAMPAIGN USE ONLY" -- the SF Ethics Commission has decided to proceed on charges against the former city supervisor based on the alleged misuse of funds in his star-crossed attempt to run for mayor last year, and his defense is that he used the wrong credit card. more ›

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Looks like there's one more fall premiere to deal with tonight on CBS, and boy howdy, is it a doozy. It's called "Viva Laughlin," and it premieres at 10 p.m. before moving to its regular timeslot this Sunday at 8 p.m. more ›

During last night's total lunar eclipse in Black Rock City, Nevada, someone set the Burning Man figure ablaze prematurely. Chortle. more ›

-- SF Macarons versus Macaroons. [Gridskipper] more ›

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The wildfire raging up near Lake Tahoe reminded us of our dear old cousin Mark. Mark Twain, that is, and what we remembered was his own brush with accidental arson up Tahoe way. It's a little-known fact, if "fact" be something that can safely ascribed to Twain's baroquely embellished reminiscences of his years out West, that he was solely responsible for a horrendous forest fire on the shores of Lake Tahoe. It was 1861,... more ›

It seems like every week, there's one of those Top 10 lists that come out trying to let everyone know what cities are ranked where and why. In fact, we've seen enough of these in the past few years to wonder if there are any Top 10 type lists that haven't been done yet. Top 10 Cities to Buy a Bong? Type 10 Cities to Get Drunk and Wind Up With A Tatoo In? Top 10 Cities to Get Gonarehea? Well, this week's Top 10 list is Top 10 Most Walkable Cities and guess what? San Fran clocks in at #3. more ›

How do you feel about holiday music? We thought that KOIT started playing their 24/7 holiday programming a little early this year, but we do love randomly hearing Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" in our car. There are two holiday albums out this year that we've been enjoying. If you're a fan of Sarah McLachlan, you should buy her holiday album Wintersong. The CD has several traditional holiday tunes, but we were pleasantly surprised by a cover of "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" and "Christmas Time Is Here". And while no cover of Joni Mitchell's "River" can really improve on the original, it was still a nice inclusion. The other Christmas collection we highly recommend is Sufjan Stevens' Songs for Christmas. For around twenty bucks, you get 5 CDs gorgeously packaged with stickers, a poster and a singalong book. That's over 42 Sufjan Christmas tunes. more ›

Yikes -- that's not the kind of boost we wanted in our Jamba Juice! Our local healthy smoothie company recently discovered that one of its supplier's strawberries were possibly contaminated with the listeria bacteria. more ›

Saints 34 49ers 10- For 49ers fans, this was a tough loss. And not just because the 49ers came up lacking against their first really good team in awhile. It's tough because it also turned out to be the official Reggie Bush coming out party and for the rest of the week, Niners fans will have to watch in horror as clip after clip after clip of their defense giving it up to Reggie will be played. One should wonder why it is that every other team was capable of bottling the dude up but the Niners couldn't. more ›

In the time of chimpanzees there was a monkey.... -Old stuff coming to U.C. Berkeley more ›

It's not too early to make plans for Halloween weekend, and if you want to make this year especially memorable, hop a plane to Las Vegas for the Vegoose Music Festival. It's an impressive lineup of tons of bands in one place: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Mars Volta, The Raconteurs, Cat Power and the Memphis Rhythm Band (we'll see about that), Gomez, Fiona Apple, Jenny Lewis, BRMC, and a bunch of those jammy/jazzy bands that people seem to like, including Widespread Panic, G. Love, MMW, and more. more ›

This dispatch comes to you from Black Rock City, Nevada, where we've heard tell that in the past, there's been a sign at the entrance reading: "If you've been here before: no explanations necessary. If you haven't been here before: no explanations possible." This is truth. No matter how many times you hear playa stories or see playa pictures, you can't understand what it is to be a citizen of this city until you've spent a week on the playa yourself. You've got to breathe the dust, feel the heat, behold the naked bodies, and take in the mindbending neonesque cityscape at night. There are no words to fully describe the conditions, the look, the sound, or the vibe of this place. We think this is why we've met so many people who have crossed not only this continent but oceans to be here. more ›

We were busy geeking out in the Sierra this weekend. Luckily, you won't find yourself covered with hundreds of tiny leeches after diving into any of these events. more ›

SFist interviews Barb Traub, author of "Desert to Dream: A Decade of Burning Man Photography" more ›

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SFist reviews Architecture in Helsinki at Great American Music Hall May 23, 2006 more ›

MySpace implicated in crime again! Two bored teens in Novato were arrested for setting off firebombs in a vacant air hangar. They were busted because they had posted footage of the explosions on their MySpace pages. Other MySpace crimes include three kids busted in Nevada for posting footage of themselves defacing someone's car, and in San Bernardino, the authorities caught a 48-year-old guy who was sending passionate emails to a fake MySpace page three guys set up as a prank. Ha! We all know rock beats scissors and paper beats rock, but who knew knife beat machete? A man camping in La Honda attacked a campground official with a machete when he was asked to leave the grounds -- but the official struck back with a small knife, and a Beat It style fight ensued (we're speculating here about the Beat It, before you angry commenters attack; "it doesn't say either of them had on a red leather jacket.") The knife guy got in some slices to the machete guy's face, and it turned out Mr. Machete had an outstanding warrant for auto theft in Wyoming. And they had to call in the mechanical robot when security guards at Intel saw someone slip a plastic briefcase underneath an employee's car. No bomb, but no one knows what was in the briefcase or why someone put it underneath the car in the first place. more ›

As a child, this SFist spent a portion of nearly every summer in our mother's hometown, Rock Springs, Wyoming. Perhaps because of this involuntary desert quality time, we've never really "gotten" Westerns -- to us, they seemed to have nothing in common with the quirky, arid, and occasionally desparing West we knew firsthand. However, , director Wim Wenders' newest film (which opens today at the Embarcadero), freakin' NAILS the West, or at least our West. more ›

What an ambient summer week it's been and it's very likely to continue through the weekend. In fact, turkey wings crossed it will extend clear through the Thanksgiving weekend food coma. What do we owe this warm air, absence of damp Pacific winds and non-chilly evenings to? A giant high (pressure that is) holding court over the massive expanse of the Great Basin Desert (aka Nevada) which is pushing warm inland air over the western North American continent clear out into the Pacific Ocean. This high is expected to stay, getting reinforcement from a smaller high moving west from the Rockies. more ›

Ooooh-weeeee-ooooooh! The Air Force is dismissing panicky claims from residents in the area that they saw some weird spooky lights over the cross on Mount Davidson last night. People across the state and folks in Nevada all reported seeing something ......weird. One SF resident described the flashes in the sky as "a series of solid lights that appeared to be hovering. When viewed through binoculars, the lights appeared to vibrate." All Air Force bases say there were no flights scheduled that would have caused that effect. Hmmmm. Hey, let us know if you see people suddenly disappearing today, okay? Clearly the folks we hang out with aren't going to be going anywhere if it's the Rapture, so we can't use them as a gauge for anything. more ›

Man, we're running out of pictures and titles for the ongoing ski jump saga in Pac Heights. So the big day's tomorrow! Skip work and watch Jonny Moseley zip by multi-million dollar homes and their angry occupants! (If you go with a digital camera, send us your pics!) Today's latest outrage: the amps are coming back! Previously, the city entertainment committee (that's gotta be a fun committee to be on, like "social committee" for your dorm) denied Moseley a permit for loudspeakers and music, with a vote of 3-3. Based in part on the quieter noise levels, the transportation subcommittee approved the request to close off the streets for the jump. But -- oho! Much like with Superintendent Ackerman's pay raise, the entertainment committee then called a special meeting to reconsider the issue on a day where one more committee member was available. This time, the vote passed unanimously. Kick up that bass! Angry, angry! Pac Heights residents have hired an attorney, who tried to appeal the decision but found out there is no appeal right for a traffic commission decision. The attorney has found out that the company sponsoring the jump is not in compliance with corporate regulations in Nevada, and the company that was hired to clear out the snow is in default on a civil judgment against it. more ›

In case you missed it, here are a few stories that fell through the proverbial SFist cracks last week: more ›