Today Gavin Newsom announced that "a series of public hearings on the fatal Christmas Day tiger attack" that resulted in the killing of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. will start as soon as this Friday. After these hearings, the Recreation and Parks Department Commission will "make a set of recommendations to improve the agreement that allows a nonprofit to run the public zoo." Or something like that. Although it's an attempt to appease the mayor who would like "'to know how this incident happened and what measures are needed to prevent this type of incident from occurring ever again,'" it sure sounds like a lot of busywork for the sake of busywork. Anyway, according to the Gate, Marisa Lagos deftly explains how the zoo is run,similar to a broken home. more ›

The best sports, we say, combine beauty and ridiculousness, and that’s why cycling is a favorite of ours. But, like many others in the Bay Area--too many, it turns out--we’ve recently discovered cyclocross, a form of Pure Sweet Hell. Others have written eloquently on the attractions of this "bike-riding amalgam of roller derby, steeplechase, mud wrestling, and ballet" -- so let us just say here that, as a spectacle, it combines all the beauty and ridiculousness of your standard road race with an added beautiful/ridiculous component of leaping on and off the bicycle to surmount the various natural and artificial obstacles by sadistic (and therefore beloved) race promoters. more ›

Two months after Newsom became the umpteenth Mayor to try and roust the homeless from the parks the Examiner checks on in to see how everything is going. The answer? Just swell says Recreation and Park Department General Manager Yomi Agunbiade. According to their stats, the city has torn down 380 encampments and placed 66 homeless people in housing and 33 have been given services. They also tallied who was in the park and discovered that the majority of them are between 18 and 34 and between 30 and 40 percent were from out of town more ›

Julius Kahn must have done something right to have the 'Fistiest park in the city named after him. Whatever he did*, his best accomplishment is to have this playground to his name. Nested in the south side of the Presidio, facing the mansions of the well-to-do, it breathes the charme discret de la bourgeoisie. And it is a city park, so even you can afford it too. more ›

ABC 7 into supposed slacking of city gardeners aired in December, the head of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department has vowed to crack down on the abuses. From here on in, there will be quarterly reviews of staff employees and they will have to sign in and sign out of their assignments. To further make sure gardeners actually work, managers will start visiting the sites more often to check in. Acting Rec and Park general manager Yomi Agunbiade has also created a new phone number so that neighbors of the park can call in and complain whenever they see loafing gardeners. more ›

The fight between Mayor Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors over renaming Candlestick by Monster Cable, Inc. more ›