(By Travis Jensen) The S.F. Skate Club, a youth skateboarding program dedicated to providing children with skateboarding lessons and mentoring, hosted an art show last Friday in Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s office at City Hall. The show featured a series of hand-painted skateboard decks by local youth skateboarders, ages 8 to 13. Although none of the artwork was for sale, the club was hoping the show would help raise awareness about the need for a skateboard......

Cris takes some time off the Bonds case to support her lady. No one pulled out a bitch's clump of hair. That's the big news. Oh, and some other stuff happened, ahem: The Club's membership voted tonight on the February 2008 ballot and the June 2008 State Senate primary, and the endorsements are... Prop 92 (Community College Funding) - Yes Props 94 - 97 (Gaming Compacts) - No Prop A (Neighborhood Parks Bond) -......

Remember, if you ask it, our readers can answer it. Why, even these guys are getting in on the quizzical fun, too! (Be sure to ask Eve how to fit your logo inside the ball; she created it. We're all thumbs when it comes to graphics.) But we received this urgent question from someone about a park we've neither seen nor frolicked in. Maybe you have an answer regarding this mystifying Scott and Waller......

-- Ross Mirkarimi, sole supe against Clear Channel. [SFBG] -- Out-of-town drug dealers bring their goofballs and china white to SF. [Examiner] -- Stupid TV can't ever get us right, or so says the Streets of San Fauxcisco. [Culture Blog] -- San Jose kills cigarette smoking at city parks. [SJ Merc] -- SF is numero uno according to Conde Nast Traveller. [The Snitch] -- And yet we can't crack the top-ten as a prime......

Some of our readers and us came across Park(ing) Day parks. The ones we went to had some of the friendliest frolicking individuals we have ever met who were sober. And these are all sort of downtown-ishy, but if you have images of today's parks elsewhere in the city, tag your photos in flickr with sfist to share them, won' t you? Or visit Park(ing) Day's account here for loads of images. Park(ing) Day could......

Last year's Park(ing) Day at Ritual Coffee Roasters on Valencia Street. It's Park(ing) Day, folks. Today's the day REBAR, a San Francisco-based art collective, thought of taking parking spaces and turning them into public ones by creating fun-sized parks. Now cities all over the country are getting in on it. It's a fun idea and we recommend you check any number of these spaces out today before this happens to them. Community Walk has a......

-- Norman Nsu to return to Redwood City. [ABC7] -- Beth Spotswood writes in real-time about this year's Macy's Passport, with SFist aluma Eve Batey as the Virgil to her Dante. [Chron] -- Ed Jew trail delayed. [Examiner] -- Press conference of San Diego's mayor reversing his decision on same-sex marriage after his daughter comes out. Really, it's amazing footage. [CBS5] -- The U.S. (well, the South) keeping us safe from teens' exposed underwear.......

Today, the Oakland City Council voted to ban smoking in "ATM lines, parks and other public places," which is smurfy, health-conscious, makes the bitch behind you at the ATM line stops her self-righteous fake coughing, will result in animated birds singing on your shoulders, etcetera. And although we understand that it's a private establishment, this always brings to mind the fact that we can no longer smoke at Denny's. One should still, always, and......

So many characteristics contribute to Pacific Heights’ identity: affluence on eager display, giant square parks, commanding views, boutique shopping, dogs! dogs! dogs! But, one element up here is continually overlooked. Of course, we’re talking about portable latrines on sidewalks. With home construction such a constant in this district, and with so many laborers needing to “tend to personal business” throughout the long workday, it’s no wonder Pacific Heights walkways are lined with blue or turquoise fiberglass toilets. Jackson St. between Pierce and Scott, where three of the nine buildings on the block are currently undergoing some sort of makeover, and where each construction site features its own port-o-let, demonstrates our point as well as any in the area....

Not since peanut butter and chocolate have two such conflicting tastes been bought together to (what will be) major acclaim: baseball and dance. Sure, Damn Yankees did it, and did it well. But there are no Faustian themes in this show, or worse, the Yankees; it's just about the all-American Pastime. (Hey, the name of the show!) Local, Izzie Award-winning choreographer Chris Black takes nine dancers and breaks down the game of baseball into......

Earthquakes and Sabers and Sharks, Oh My! It's been a busy day in the Bay Area. We guess that JAWS was feeling a little bit left out of all the action and thought today might be a good day to take a bite or two out of a surfer. Todd Endris was minding his own dang business near the Marina State Beach when the 12-foot white shark attacked. Holy Nemo! Endris bravely fought off the......

A photo of the soon-to-be-terminiated Panhandle Bandshell...

As part of a proposed $185 million dollar bond issued to help revitalize our parks, Park & Rec head cheese Yomi Agunbiade, announced that a major emphasis of the bond measure will be brining in new bathrooms. The reason for such a decision is the obvious third-worldyness of current park bathrooms. Twenty points for Gryffindor. ...

We were on the 7 a few days ago and four gutterpunk types were complaining about how the city had taken their stuff from camps in Golden Gate Park. One of them, a long-haired fellow with a small backpack and very large pants, went on and on about how he was going to get a grant to put GPS chips in all of his things so he could get them back. Who, exactly, would pay......

In all the marches in of the cities in all the world, a march to City Hall is taking place today for one of the most noble causes in San Francisco to date. 100 or so golfers will be marching to the Board of Supervisors meeting to demand their voices be heard on the topic of shutting down public courses in the city. 100 golfers – wow. Is Van Ness wide enough to handle......

The city provided a continental breakfast of "coffee, bagels, orange wedges, and blueberries" (delicious!) as well as temporary encampment tents for those that they evicted from Golden Gate Park at 4:30 a.m. this morning. (You can read Chron's article about it here, and SF Examiner's here.) SFPD and city outreach workers sounded the alarm for this election-year effort to clean-up the park. And "after eight hours' work, 44 people accepted the offer of a roof......

C.W. Nevius continues his Homeless Encampment 2007 Tour with a visit to Corona Heights. His verdict? Not so good. He found twenty possible separate campsites as well as broken bottles and needles. Neighbors let it be known that the ever-popular "human feces" could also be added to the list. To make matters worse, there's a school, the Rocky Mountain Participation Nursery School, at the bottom of the hill and, well, won't somebody think of the children? ...

Photo of dog aggression in San Francisco's Alta Plaza park....

Everybody found the famous hillside slides very entertaining. Remember to bring your cardboard! The Koret Children's Quarter in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park had its Grand Opening Celebration this morning. A relaxed Mayor Gavin Newsom was on hand along with Supervisors Jake McGoldrick and Ross Mirkarimi to welcome the large crowd. You could even ride the carousel for free. Things appeared to go smoothly today, in contrast with one report of parental bird flipping and......

It's the Fourth of July! Streamers! Bunting! Brass bands! And in San Francisco.... the opening of the hotly-anticipated SF Mime Troupe production in Dolores Park! The acidly-political theater group (note: not actually mimes, though it would actually be hilarious if one year they did do an entire production in mime) is putting on free performances of "Making a Killing" every weekend at local parks throughout the area until October. This year's play is about......

Sorry we're late on this one! Not much to report, just that Board of Supes president Aaron Peskin has named himself the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee after firing Chris Daly from the position, and proclaimed his intent to make it a "no-drama" budget approval process this time around. Peskin and the rest of the gang then went ahead and approved a bunch of the proposed budgets for various departments, including Rec......

First of all, a big sloppy THANKS! to SFist MattyMatt for yesterday evening's Oh No Ed Jew news update! We were out. So what's the latest on Tapioca Ed for today? Well, he did make it to the Board of Supes meeting yesterday, where he said he wouldn't resign and refused to take any other questions unless they were about his trip to China. At the meeting, Jew was the only person who voted against......

We considered calling this post "And then they came for Jew, and we said nothing," but decided that was in poor taste. So what's been up with our favorite beleaguered conservative Sunset Supervisor? Well, as everyone knows by now, right as Ross Mirkarimi's Friday art party was starting, Ed Jew's City Hall office was raided by the FBI, based on charges that he'd accepted $40,000 in $100 bills from businessmen seeking to get permits from......

Drove out to China Camp State Park with Sufjan Stevens on the stereo singing about Chicago. The air sat heavy with oil from the Eucalyptus trees and salt from the Bay....

Belmont (the Utica to our Manhattan, if we may make such a daring analogy) is an on-the-go suburb, in love with its cars and asphalt, and with no time for such frivolities as parks and people and conserving water. Mayor Coralin Feierbach is one of the only Bay Area mayors to refuse to sign the Sierra Club's Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, objecting to the pledge to "reduce sprawl, preserve open space, and create compact,......

--They tore down that house everyone's laughing about. --The Niners got San Francisco to cough up money originally intended for parks to go to fixing up Monster Park instead. They're just going to move to Santa Clara anyways, guys! --Mission Bay bores Chron architecture critic John King. --Fiona Ma sponsors legislation to make it easier for, say, Gavin Newsom to change his name to Gavin Newsom-Siebel. --Aaaaaaa-choo! --The SF Sentinel's photo tips. Also, they......

We hope we've worked you into a frenzy with all these free passes to SF Int'l Film Fest movies this weekend! Here's our last set -- after this, you're on your own to catch all the fantastic films they're screening from now until May 10. (Don't forget to check back at SFist for our reviews of the movies too.) Want to check out some film this Sunday afternoon? The Unforeseen, a documentary set in one......

What with all the budget debate going on, the issue of golf courses has been in the news a lot. Mainly that they cost a lot of money but don't take in a lot of money. Hello, budget deficit. So now the question on everyone's minds is what-to-do, what-to-do. ...

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