What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they......

Saturday.... in the park... wish it were the Fourth of July! (That's the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra performing the Chicago classic above). Here's your events for today: --Supervisor Dreamy, Ross Mirkarimi's picking up litter and planting trees as part of the Community Clean Team in the Inner Sunset today from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. Meet at the City Parking Lot on 9th between Irving and Judah. --Close out the month-long National Queer Arts......

Hope y'all had a Merry Fitzmas. -After the umpteenth and fifth non-sell-out, the Oakland Raiders "brain-trust" have started to think that maybe all their ticket trouble could have something to do with the fact that a lot of people are kind of afraid about going to Raiders games. After all, Raiders fans have a reputation for being a little on the dangerous side. Some would even say drunken hooligans who like to beat the......

Friday: Sometimes, we want free wine, and it seems like too much work to go to church. Virgin Vines is helping us scratch that itch tonight with a wine tasting event at Potrero Hill's Il Parata from 6-7 tonight, then again at North Beach's Bocce Cafe from 8:30-9:30 (that portion of the event's been cancelled, which is fine because North Beach on a Friday night is best left to the heartier than we). Parking's......

Say this for Al Davis, while other teams spend their off-season whining and moaning about the salary cap, paralyzed by numbers and arcane cap legalisms, the Raiders aren’t. After officially signing one of the best receivers in football, it’s looking like the Raiders are going to make their next big move and sign free agent running back, LaMont Jordan. Jordan, Curtis Martin’s backup on the J-E-T-S, is the best running back available on the free agent market, or at least the best one not smoking the kind green and dabbling in holistic medicine. Although his numbers aren’t great, many people in New York felt he should have been starting instead of Martin, one of the best and most underrated running backs in the league. This will bulk up one of the worst running attacks in football and one that was bound to get infinitely better just in having Moss playing. The best part of the move? Unlike other free agent signings, Jordan is neither old, over the hill, or a malcontent. Is Davis losing his touch?...

First off, SFist would like to say that while we've been seriously grooving on Indie Fest, we would like to recommend that the people who do the Indie Fest Web site tweak the shopping cart a bit so one can confirm their tickets before finalizing the purchase. While SFist has no problems going to some super divey café in Oakland, that wasn't really what we had planned. Of course, we could have paid more attention......

SFist interviews Jason Blalock...

Even by 3:45 on Saturday, the lines were so packed around the Roxie that we had to walk onto 16th Street to try and read the (extremely poor) signage on the box office before the Indiefest double bill screening of Oakland Raider Parking Lot and 24 Hours on Craigslist. Over and over again: "Is this the line for will call or is it the wish line?" (FYI for future attendees -- buy tickets online, pick them up at the box office, wait in line to the right of the theater, on the Dalva side. If you didn't buy tickets, wish line goes to the left, on the Truly Med side.) The mob was so big, we missed all the other 'Fisters we were supposed to meet (sorry, guys!). Everyone feels at least a little bit proprietary about Craigslist -- that's where I hired a DJ/got moving boxes/signed up for marketing focus groups/paid through the nose for Arcade Fire tickets -- so it would only be fair to expect a movie showing the stories behind one day of the site's postings (August 4, 2003) to attract an unusually devoted crowd eager to see just who their compatriots are. Meet the couple trying to sell six strollers! The dog owner applying for a room! A woman looking for a gay sperm donor! See SFist Cheshire! (We won't spoil the surprise and tell you where he is in the movie, but he is neither the heavy metal chef, nor the guy with a big bottle of formaldehyde in his basement. Ask him in the comments if you want to know.) So... we got out of the movie around 6:15 (thus the title of this post). And how did we like it? Picture from the 24 Hours on Craiglist website...