Torontoist visits the site of a new Frank Gehry structure, stalks "the elusive Bahamas streetcar", and watches Tom Green get surgery. Phillyist rejoices in the Phillies' wild card chances, mourns the injuries sustained by Eagles defensive end Jevon Kearse, and goes pirate on our asses. SFist notes that Guns and Roses were in town, that San Franciscans are taking over reality TV, and that the San Francisco Chronicle's skills of original nomenclature could use some......

Someone call ESPN2, because we've found the next new hot nerd-sport craze -- the Exploratorium is hosting the 2006 International Rubik's Cube Competition this Saturday! As the calendar announcement proudly states, "In past years, many world records have been set at such tournaments including the 3x3x3 cube single solve (11.75 seconds), the one-handed solve (23.76 seconds), and the blindfold solve (1:58:32)." We're not entirely sure why the event lasts from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. if everyone's going to solve the cube blindfolded in less than two minutes, but they seem to have had fun last year. Anyone can enter for the price of museum admission, but do note that you'll be going up against such cube luminaries as:

Jessica Fridrich, the creator of the most popular speed cubing system, the Fridrich Method; Lars Petrus, 4th-place finisher in the 1982 Rubik's Cube World Championships representing Sweden; Shotaro Makisumi, a 14-year-old freshman from Japan attending high school in Pasadena and number one in the world of the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube, average solve at 14.52 seconds; and Tyson Mao, holder of the blind solve record at 1: 58:32.

First MUNI announced they wanted to raise fares. Then Caltrain hopped on board the fare raising train (ha! we made a pun). And now BART. Why, raising fares is the new black. Thanks to the usual assortment of reasons- budget shortfalls, rising employee benefits, mismanagement- BART is now facing a budget deficit of $53 million dollars. Unlike MUNI, the BART Board doesn't want to cut service, but is proposing a combination fare hikes, cutting discounts to children and seniors, staff layoffs, and raising parking fees. Oh, and introducing valet service at some of the more popular parking lots. Yes, valet services and no, that doesn't sound elitist at all. At a meeting last week, BART directors heard from the horde of angry commuters who raised the fairly decent point that with gas prices so high, raising fares to make BART prohibitively more expensive might not be the smartest thing to do (maybe it's because we only got a C in economics, but if there's a belief that lowering prices can increase profits by making it cheaper for people to buy things and crack dealers often sell their crack at a low cost to get more people hooked, wouldn't that also be true of public transportation? Like if you lower fares, maybe more people would ride and more money would be brought in? But what do we know?) The Board of Directors pretty much shrugged their shoulders in response. ...

In the "No s**t, motherf**ker" department, John over at the Legal Reader recently posted an excerpt to an AP story which points out that under California's weapons registration law, the chances you'll get a felony rap is in linear proportion to the amount of milk you need to add to coffee to resemble your skin tone. Black coffee? Felony. Cafe-au-lait? Felony. Just milk? Misdemeanor. The study of the law was initiated by state Attorney General......