We’re well off Broadway — actually, we’re just off Lombard — in the toppermost reaches of North Beach. In fact, we’re not far from where the old neighborhood abuts the landfilled tourist stronghold that stole North Beach’s shore years ago. It’s OK — we’re safe here from Crazy Shirts etc., although there’s a Bay Quackers vessel rolling by a few steps away over on Columbus. A moment later, an artist — shirtless, but sleeved — emerges for a smoke from Tattoo City at Mason and Lombard on this pleasant spring afternoon. He spots the amphibious truck carting visitors up North Beach’s diagonal commercial drag and can’t disguise a mild scoff. San Francisco loves its visitors from Cincinnati and beyond; it just gets a bit hrumphy when groups of them venture south of Bay St. in bright yellow military transport vehicles dating from World War II. Perhaps it’s not such an unfair reaction. But today, that debate’s beyond our scope and interest. We’ve landed on this residential block around the corner from Joe DiMaggio North Beach Playground and Pool, and we’re totally looking for action on a sunny Saturday. We find it: live music, street retail, plenty of pedestrian traffic, even a preening housepet....

MUSIC: As we already mentioned, Why? is performing this evening along with Dose One, Cryptacize, DJ Odd Nosdam, DJ Jel. 8 p.m. // Great American Music Hall [859 O'Farrell] // $13 *THEATER: Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning play the Vagina Monologues -- featuring such monologues as I Was Twelve, My Mother Slapped Me, My Angry Vagina, My Vagina Was My Village, The Little Coochie Snorcher, and more -- takes the stage in the Castro for......

*MUSIC: You know that song at the end of Juno, "Anyone Else But You"? The one Ellen Page and Michael Cera sing to one another? And it's all cute and sad? Well,it was co-written and originally recorded by Kimya Dawson, former half of the Moldy Peaches, and she's over in the East Bay tonight at 924 Gilman. She performs along with Angelo Spencer at this all-ages show. (No booze allowed, by the way.) .......

This philosophic message/challenge adorning/"besmirching" Caffe Trieste's bathroom wall in North Beach last November comes to us from Seven Morris via the "sfist" and "found" tags. Sometimes a blank wall is miles more eloquent than anything that might besmirch it. Well, the wall is no longer blank though, is it? Oh, you clever, bathroom philosopher/ tagger, you. Send your Bay Area finds to found [at] sfist [dot] com or tag them "sfist" and "found" on Flickr!......

It looks like Survivor: Cook Island winner Yul Kwon won't get to serve you air-pumped, sugary, dairy-like deliciousness. After getting ready to set up a Red Mango chain in North Beach, and after being granted a building permit and signing a lease, his permit was pulled after he was "told he ran afoul of the strict North Beach ordinance against 'formula chain' stores," or so says the Gate. Kwon went on to say, "I......

Phil Bronstein steps down as editor. Say what? [SFGate]Julius Castle closes amid allegations of fraud, misrepresentation, and lease issues. [Tablehopper]1015 gets a (much-needed) makeover, will feature live bands. Well, it's about time. [SF Weekly]Don't forget about the croc. [tehdely]Do you subscribe to sfnewsletter? [The Front Steps]An alcohol ban for all new businesses in North Beach? The Supes vote on what was surely a moment of clinical insanity tomorrow. [Eater]Sting nabs bomb maker in Fremont. Ka-fzzz.......

Mayor Gavin Newsom says that one of his "top priorities is to ensure that every San Franciscan has a safe and happy New Year. Riding Muni is a smart and green way to ring in the new year." (Thanks, Gavin!) And with a firm flick of his wrist, this New Year's Eve, starting at 8 p.m., Muni will be free all night, which is about what it's worth. The free rides come to a......

When Francis Ford Coppola isn't looking lovingly over his cineaste dynastic family, running a cafe, publishing fiction, or distilling making wine [sorry! we're not a vintner!], we understand that sometimes he makes movies too. Where does that guy find the time?? Anyways, for those of you who either admire multitasking or great American cinema, Francis Ford Coppola will be speaking this Saturday after the 7:20 screening of his new movie, Youth Without Youth at the......

In North Beach fights breakout and mild vandalism occurs after bars close at 2 a.m. This chaos, typical for any city, makes some of our sensitive city dwellers cranky before bedtime. Or whatever. So, the City Planning Commissioners somehow got it into their heads that closing pizza parlors on the the Broadway strip, pizzerias that normally stay open until 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., before 2 a.m. will solve a slew of problems. According to the Examiner:...

-- Laura Gibson: We'd hate to genre-ize her lovely sounds, but neo-folk songstress Gibson -- who uses such tools as trumpet, viola, and musical saw in addition to her sublime vocal cords-- sings delicate siren songs that will have you crashing at her feet. She performs along with Musee Mechanique (Portland) and Snowblink starting at 8 p.m. at Rickshaw Stop; $8. -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti: You know the man, the legend, the poet, the beret......

Among San Francisco’s myriad neighborhoods, few are as widely misunderstood as the Outer Sunset. Location certainly plays a role. To your average Upper Haight resident – to say nothing of your average South of Market or North Beach resident – this beach-adjacent community may seem as distant as Honolulu, with an N-Judah trip that may rival a flight to Oahu in terms of travel time. But it’s sometimes easy to forget that San Francisco is a mere seven miles wide, and that the folks out west do have phone numbers that begin with 415, rather than 808....

Owner of the now-closed hungry i -- which booked such talent as Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Mort Sahl, Bill Cosby, and the Kingston Trio, to name a few -- and the beloved Enrico's, Enrico Banducci, died in his sleep this morning at 85. We love Enrico's. One of the first places we visited when we started venturing into North Beach terrain while reporting on SF nightlife, we recommend you head over there tonight or......

Photo of Blue Angels practice...

Cover your eyes fellow progressives. We're about to get even faggier. A reader would like your help: Can you recommend any popular blogs in San Francisco with a queer voice? thanks, [presumed homosexual's name withheld] Well, we can't recommend any "popular" Bay Area blogs laced with shrieking voices. And all gay writers think that they're popular. (Alleged popularity is the life-blood of homosexuals and local politics.) We love Gayface, but he never updates these......

Seeing as how they have nothing else going on, this week the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on a city proclamation honoring John Barleycorn Pub, calling for its preservation. The bar is set to close, and as already mentioned on Yelp, your local watering hole plays a large part in the aesthetics and feel of a neighborhood, so it's a good idea to pay attention to when these things start closing down around you....

Film Night in the Park Union Square...

Ann Sherry's North Beach mural "Gold Mountain," a work that depicts Chinese influence to San Francisco and American history, fell victim to hooligan defacing. Specifically, the recent addition of Betty Ong, a San Francisco flight attendant who died in the World Trade Center attacks. While it doesn't seem like an intentional hit on Ong's heroism, 9/11-ness, or whatever -- because murals in this city get defaced the second the paint starts drying -- it is......

Bad series of news items for the SFPD -- the rookie cop who accidentally shot himself at a party earlier this month when trying to demonstrate tips on gun safety was legally drunk (just barely), and that cop, Jesse Serna, who keeps (allegedly) beating up people like Barry Bonds' trainer and Willie Brown's friends in North Beach just got the city sued again, this time for beating up a doctor starting his residency at Harvard......

After Supervisor Sandoval introduced a resolution to brand hyperbolic grandpa Michael Savage as a hate speech-spewing loon, it wasn't voted on unanimously yesterday, care of SFsit's favorite coverboy, Ed Jew. (Ah, World Net Daily, where we go to get all of our fair and balanced news, drizzled with a infusion of organic Nazism.) On July 5, after Savage predictably asked that students undergoing a weeklong fast for immigration reform (and, bonus, to slim down......

-- KrOB'S Film Farm -- Faust (1994): Jan Švankmajer's version of Faust, using Goethe's and Christopher Marlowe's tales as well as heaps of surrealism, screens tonight at 8 p.m. at Chez Poulet, Cesar Chavez (Army) and Mission Streets; free. -- Minnie Driver: Why should you see her? Well, she has an Oscar nomination under her belt. Granted, it's for the XY-heavy emo-porn shitfest Good Will Hunting -- but Driver's got an Oscar nomination nonetheless.......

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly! Letters from people who say they are not in a cult. An article about former SFist editor Eve Batey's promotion at the Chron! Go Eve! Also, they called us a "sassy" local blog. We loved Sassy! Cover article: A guy who makes money suing small businesses under the ADA. A review of the Kiki & Herb show. The Simpsons movie is okay. Meredith didn't much like her North Beach......

Every tale about the band Slint begins with retrospect. A couple guys who’d known each other a long time got together in Louisville, KY, to make a band named after a goldfish. On their second album they created one of the greatest LPs in rock music, Spiderland. They came through Bimbo’s in North Beach last Monday....

--East Bay garbage workers still locked out. [The Trib, the Chron, KTVU, CBS 5] --White supremacists keep writing the SF Weekly about popular SFist topic Harmon Leon's story from two years ago. [The Snitch.] --Chris Daly feeds the trolls. [Daly Blog comments] --65-year-old man walking home in North Beach at 11 p.m. shot in a failed robbery. [Chron.] --They arrested someone in the Dolores Park fireworks fiasco -- they don't have enough evidence to......

You know you’re dealing with an isolated stretch of Montgomery St. when a driver can’t reach it without first leaving Montgomery St. And in an addressing quirk that must drive new workers at the North Beach post office bonkers, the northernmost apartment building on this block is actually 303 Greenwich, even though Greenwich as a cross street doesn’t exist here. After all, the only cross traffic up here on the precipitous eastern slope of Telegraph Hill is on foot. Stunning bay views, folial grandiosity, and hill-hugging construction schemes dominate this block of Montgomery, bookended by the famed Filbert and Greenwich steps. The street itself is a bi-level roadway divided by a tall center wall lined with numerous pine trees, not dissimilar to Lawton St. in Golden Gate Heights, or Arlington Ave. in the Berkeley Hills. It’s designed for neither speed nor mass amounts of auto traffic. Aesthetically, however, it’s nearly unbeatable....

--It's June 16, which means it's Bloomsday! Commemorate the day made famous in James Joyce's Ulysses with readings from the book, music, and a special Bloomsday feast at the Mechanics' Institute. 57 Post Street (x Market), $15, saloon opens 6:30, readings begin at 7:30. --LAist Zach is coming to town as part of the CalArtsf alumni art festival: dance, spoken word, world music, animation, paintings, and lots more artistic expression at Cowell Theater and the......

Did anything happen at all in the San Francisco Bay Area today? All we've been doing is monitoring the Paris Hilton back to jail news! MOOOOOOM!!!!! --Beer and wine are okay for the North Beach Festival next week, but no hard alcohol. --More folks are getting laid off from the Chronicle. The Chron has launched a Portraits In Grief-like feature. --The Special Olympics are in Berkeley this weekend. --An old theater on Market Street (the......

--As you may have heard in the comments to the latest Oh No, Ed Jew! column, MUNI is thinking about having the N go out to the Caltrain station again. Yay! We may cover this again on SFist later too. --It's BART's 50th birthday!! Oddly enough, it's soy sauce maker Kikkoman's 50th birthday too. Also turning 50 today: John Treacey, Irish athlete. (Today is also Angelina Jolie's birthday, but she's not turning 50.) --SFMike......

A truck filled with 60 cows tipped over in Contra Costa County yesterday. Ha! Despite our most diligent efforts, we are unable to find any pictures from the scene, so we're going with the "Cow Crossing" sign you see to your left. One person is dead after a dramatic shooting in the Sunset early Monday morning -- the shots were fired at a moving car, which then flipped over and crashed. The Chron has some......

Esther Hwang picked a bad day for a press conference -- normally, the media would be all over the former Willie Brown secretary turned cheesecake model turned San Francisco Law School student discussing the $1 million lawsuit she's filed against the SFPD for alleged brutality against her outside a North Beach bar -- but with everyone distracted by Ed Jew's flight from the law, Carole Migden's cancer-related bad driving, and in a city that now......

Monday nights are the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra Big Band nights at North Beach mainstay Jazz at Pearl's. They play the classic jazz orchestra works (Ellington, Mingus) and also some hard bop. Two shows (one at 8, one at 10), $15 + 2-drink minimum, 256 Columbus (x Pacific). Other events: --Salsa and swing dance lessons at Julie's Supper Club, with burlesque performers on the hour. 8-11 p.m., $6 after 8 p.m. (half hour lesson), $10 by......