The "!" is because we've been out of town and we're so, so excited to be back. So, it looks like folks are settling nicely into the new comments system. While we appreciate those of you making "guest" comments as well, we especially appreciate those of you that are taking the time to register. The Top 5 for last week were:...

Say hello to your new next door neighbor: a parking garage. Petitioners are currently collecting signatures for a "build more parking" petition, but the terms are insane: it wouldn't just allow developers to install big garages, it would require that all new homes build on extra parking, at the expense of living space. Require! As in, the government says that you don't have a choice! More room for cars means less room to house......

A mortuary in Rohnert Park got a restraining order filed against them when it was discovered that they kept decaying bodies on their premises. The authorities were tipped off to the problem when people in the businesses next to the mortuary realized that the awful smell that was coming from next door was decaying bodies and not the KFC/Taco Bell also in the strip mall. So the city sent a couple of inspectors in to check out the sprinkler system and before you could say "abra cadevar," discovered two decaying bodies by a swamp cooler and two others in a garage area. Lest you think the mortuary, that being Abby Chapel of the Redwoods Mortuary, did nothing to prevent the bodies from decaying, the two by the swamp cooler were covered in baby powder. ...

A couple of weeks ago, there was a minor kerfluffle over parking meters in relation to the MTA, mainly that they weren't collecting enough money. Which is what happens when the city doesn’t check to see if people are putting money into them. So today, we get two stories about the latest. ...

Stadium issues aren't just affecting Bay Area professional teams, but college teams too. There's a fight going on about renovating Cal's Memorial Stadium that's been going on for the past few months. And it's even taken an "Only in Berkeley" angle: to protest the planned cutting down of some Oak trees, activists went all Julia Butterfly Hill and camped out on them before the Big Game. ...

Dr. John York, the accidental owner, met the press to detail the whys and whats of his announcement that he's leaving San Francisco and taking the team to Santa Clara. The reason? It's too expensive here, the schools are falling apart, and it's better to raise a family in the Peninsula and not the city....

We have mixed emotions about Diane B. "Dede" Wilsey's pet cause, the new M. H. de Young Memorial Museum building. For years the antics surrounding that concourse -- museums moving, buildings being torn down, garages built -- have provided pages and pages of entertainment in the local press. More recently, the unfinished structure loomed darkly over John F. Kennedy drive like an aircraft carrier that somehow made it inland from Ocean Beach (and we're......

SFist was having trouble getting to sleep last night, and we figured that short of the narcotics available down the street, actually reading the MTA's recently approved Fiscal Year 2006 budget would probably do the trick. We figured maybe an insomniac blogger could find something juicy that would really piss people off, like the two-dollar hike for cable car fares. Will the remaining locals who ride the cable car please step away from the......

The on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again fight over the parking garage for the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park is back on following a lawsuit and rally protesting plans to create a southern entrance to the now-being built parking garage, the most controversial aspect of which is the proposal for turning Martin Luther King Drive into a four-lane road from it's current two-lane-ness. The additional two lanes would be for MUNI and garage access only. Unlike......

Last week, according to the Oakland Tribune, the Emeryville City Council voted unanimously to put two community-initiated referenda regarding Pixar's planned expansion on the November ballot instead of waiting until sometime in 2005, as had previously been expected....