Honestly, we don't know if we really want to live in a San Francisco without pink plastic bags. While they still live on, today they moved closer to obsolescence. Today plastic bags were outlawed in chain drug stores and pharmacies. Nice. (Although we buy some embarrassing items at Walgreens now and then, so it's a bittersweet victory.) San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi's plan to eradicate the landfill-clogging carry-alls--which began with their removal from San......

We already decided to only leave the house for essentials this weekend, like liquor and toothpaste, so we were thrilled to stumble upon one last 'best of' list for 2007. Craftster, the hub for all things handmade has compiled the most comprehensive list of the best craft projects from 2007. A bonus of this forum-based site is that most crafters post step-by-step instructions and photos for making the projects they list. We're bookmarking this......

With tomorrow's official switch from plastic bags to paper bags looming, news stations have their top cameramen (or the more PC "camera operators") hitting grocery stores across the city, sticking their cameras in your face at the checkout stands. We ourselves were just shot (without permission, BTW) at Whole Foods on 4th and Harrison. Thank goodness we remembered to bring our reusable frayed-green Whole Foods tote. With stations like KTVU reporting live at the scene,......

As promised, non-mayoral candidate Chris Daly's proposing his nonbinding resolution to ban the Blue Angels from flying over San Francisco at the Governmental Audit and Oversight Committee meeting today. Daly, who's been working with Code Pink, Global Exchange, and Veterans for Peace on the resolution, is asking that San Francisco elected officials work to reduce unnecessary military flyovers in the area, saying that the loud jets are a threat to publich safety; upset pets,......

As we were waiting to pick up our lunch today at the excellent Chinese food place across the street from our office at the to-go table, we were idly flipping through this month's issue of Costco Connection magazine, the in-house publication of everyone's favorite roast chicken/toilet paper/gigantic muffin supplier, that they had lying around. Well, how surprised were we to see, nestled in among the articles about Kirkland brand disposable diapers (page 61, they're now......

--What is going on in this town? There was a mob-style shooting near the 5th and Harrison 80 off-ramp this afternoon. Someone shot 17 bullets into a rented blue Dodge Charger around 1 p.m. today, as both cars were getting off the highway and stopped at a light. The shooters sped off up Fifth Street in a green minivan, which hit another car in the getaway. The victim suffered life-threatening injuries but is as......

We don't think he'll attract quite the crowds that Conan amassed last week, but another TV personality has decided to broadcast from our fair City. Charlie Gibson is anchoring ABC's World News from San Francisco this week, and the newscasts are focusing on the Bay Area's varied attempts at "going green." Insert Conan's marijuana/plastic bags joke here. In other local TV news items that have managed to make their way into our In Box,......

We are SO THRILLED thatGavin wants to rescind parking passes and also to have all city vehicles impounded and converted into community gardens. Not only does that mean fewer cars on the road, but it can only mean that Gavin himself is shyly edging towards getting on a bus someday! Gav, we cannot WAIT for the day that we board the 38 and glimpse you wedged between Fillmore hipsters and little old ladies with pink......

In the spirit of the plastic bag ban we thought we'd weigh in with some of our own suggestions. We think CNN's Glenn Beck needs a new dress. Maybe when he sends all the plastic bags he's so sweetly collecting for San Francisco we can knit him one. The Craft blog always has what we're looking for and that's where we saw this amazing 1950's dress knit completely out of plastic grocery bags, wouldn't it just be darling on Beck? The dress was made by Cathy Kasdan, she created it for her thesis project and we encourage you to read her explanation of it on the Craft blog. Craft also has links to some fantastic tuturials on how to make yarn out of plastic bags you can read about them here and here. You can also read a great tuturial on how to crochet with plastic bags over at Craft Central . And because the things people have created out of plastic bags are so impressive (and we're still a little jet lagged from our trip back east) we thought we'd stop typing and just give you some pictures of what we found. . . ...

Noted wit and CNN's suck up to conservatives, Glenn Beck is highly amused by our paper bag ban. Because making fun of helping the environment is funny, see. Maybe not Karl Rove dancing funny (have you seen the video yet? The whole thing is so scary we wished we were blind), but almost as funny. So he's got something going on to punk us here in San Francisco for being nothing but a bunch of smelly, tree hugging hippies who want to help baby seals from choking on plastic bags. ...

In honor of SFist Jon's recent karaoke catastrophe caught on tape, we, the arbiters of good taste at SFist, present you with the Backstreet Plastic Bag Boys' brazilliant idea for what to do with all of your old plastic bags. The video starts off a little slow, and kind of uncomfortable, but we were seriously dying when we first saw this. YouTube commenter ChuckNO says it all: "The Guy In the Foot Locker bag is SEXY!" ...

Not content to make owning a dog just a little bit more difficult, Ross Mirkarimi now wants to make it even tougher to scoop sh--. It turns out that his anti-plastic bag measure is just the start of his rampant war against plastic and wants to move onto those plastic bags that are wrapped around a newspaper when they show up on your doorstep. ...

Yes, San Francisco can now proudly claim to be the first city in the U.S. to ban plastic bags. Or at least in grocery markets and pharmacy chains as the legislation allows small corner markets to use the old school bags. According to the legislation sponsored by Supervisor McDreamy, grocery stores and pharmacy chaings now have to switch up and use either compostable bags made of cornstarch or bags made of recyclable paper. ...

We want a dog so bad we've taken to following strangers in the street in the hope that they'll stop at the “don’t walk sign” and let us pet Fido. One may wonder why we haven't run to the shelter to adopt one yet. The official reason we give the weary stranger towering over us while we crouch down to scratch his pit bull’s head is that our landlord doesn't allow pets. But truth be told, our common sense buckles at the idea of having to walk a hyperactive mutt called Schnitzel at 4AM when we just barely managed to crawl back home from the Orbit Room. Fortunately there is a heaven for lazy dog lovers and it is called Alamo Square. ...

SFist Jon's plastic bag story from last week prompted such a good exchange in the comments section, we thought we'd expand on them in a post. The mantra "reduce/reuse/recycle" is something many of us in San Francisco already practice, but as consumers, we need to pull more weight in the effort to make San Francisco "greener." Please feel free to add your ideas and feedback in the comments. ...

So here's the deal: over a year ago, the Board of Supes passed a measure that would cut down on the amount of plastic bags supermarkets and other big sized stores hand out to customers. Gotta save the environment. Now, according to that measure, stores were supposed to check in with the Board to let them know how everything was going. They haven't done it. And not only have they not done it, they got the state legislature to give them a few loopholes to not have to do it....

-Two men found shot dead in Vallejo home after anonymous tip. -Supermarkets pull a fast one on the ban on plastic bags....

With it being 2007, there's a whole bunch of new laws that are either to start right now or will be slowly phased in. Some of them are big deals, some of them seem fairly obvious, and some of them make you wonder what the hell. ...

Two people saved from gunshots by inanimate objects -- a deputy saved by his belt buckle, and a husband saved from his pistol-waving wife by his La-Z Boy. The wife of the man in the La-Z Boy tried to kill him by shooting him through the back of the chair, but the chair blocked the bullet. The man then got out of the chair and followed his wife into the kitchen, where she tried to......

Let's see, here's a list of things in San Francisco you can't do: -Smoke (tobacco, that is). -Put left-over food in a Styrofoam container -Go shopping with plastic bags -Stop somebody from taking a dump on the street And now we can add another thing to the list-- no more "private dancing" in private booths at strip clubs. All of this thanks to the Commission on the Status of Women who went and gone did it and passed a bill banning private booths. The decision is now up to the Board of Supervisors who have the final say on this as we guess the Commission on the Status of Drunk, Horny Frat Boys were too hungover to weigh in on the subject. And if there's anything out there that deserves to be put on a ballot and voted on we say it's this. We mean, wouldn't the campaign commercials (usually probably airing at like 1 in the morning) be awesome? "Biff's buddies wanted to get him a special lap dance for his bachelor party, but thanks to a bunch of freedom-loving Feminazis, he was unable to. Because of them, he had to have his bachelor party at Chuck E. Cheese...." ...

Our vegan co-editor and labor-activist editor-at-large are going to kill us, and snide food snobs are already saying, "It's 99 Ranch," but our parents call it Ranch 99 (like our relatives call it King Burger) and we love it. Ranch 99/99 Ranch is the Chinese grocery superstore, busy putting smaller local shops out of business by (presumably) not paying minimum wage and exploiting immigrant labor. They also contribute to environmental pollution by insisting on putting everything in like fifteen different plastic bags and then tying them all together in an intricate stays-put fake square knot. We do like how they've made concessions to the earth -- not by using fewer bags but rather, by now using fifteen bags emblazoned with the message "Don't trash California." Plus, the last time we went to the 9-9, we had a good time reading their health code citations form; we've never seen one that went on for five pages before! So why do we keep going to Ranch 99? Four words: Fry Your Own Fish. That's right! You can buy a fresh fish and at no extra charge, they'll fry it for you to take home. It smells so good (and we presume the frying action kills off any bacteria that might have been introduced from the health code citations). Sprinkle a little soy sauce and scallions and ginger on top when you get home, and you've got yourself a meal. ...

Remember that totally awesome scene in Return of the King where the Witch King was leaving Cirith Ungol with the Orc army and Frodo started freaking out and then that big shaft of light shot out of the building as the people of Minas Tirith looked on with a dread that something great and terrible was coming? Replace Minas Morgul with the Moscone Center, the Witch King with Kevin Smith, and put a "d"......

The days of being bopped on the shins by little old Chinese ladies carrying pink and white striped plastic bags and suspiciously poking the flesh of fresh fish may be numbered, as DPW tries to pass a law banning overcrowded sidewalks and double-parked trucks in Chinatown. DPW notes that it's very difficult to walk on Stockton Street on the weekends, and the plethora of produce delivery trucks frequently brings traffic to a standstill. Well, suuuuuure -- but come on, DPW! It wouldn't even really be a Chinatown if proud vendors didn't get to show off their electronic chirping crickets outside their store, or the big basket of plastic slippers, or the huge stacks of produce with their colorful misspelled labels (we still love the one we saw in New York that said COC*NTS (we've omitted the offending letter)). How will tourists have an authentic Asian-American experience if they don't get to see, say, an old man in a windbreaker sniffing the butts of fresh crab? And we don't know what we'd do if the 45 bus could just zip on through to Union Square without the maddening stop-start wrenching of our shoulder out of its socket as Cantonese speakers glare at us for refusing to give up our seat. Life doesn't always have to be so plastic-wrapped and convenient all the time, you know! Sometimes we like that wave of nausea we get when the odor of the seafood bins wafts out onto the sidewalk! Picture of Stockton Street off an MTC website...

Cheer up, San Franciscans; all of the cities problems have been solved! Yesterday, Gavin Newsom announced that he had made a deal with major supermarket chains to cut down on those plastic grocery bags. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing. The deal says that over the next year, the supermarkets will cut down plastic bag use by ten million. Of course, there's no real explanation of how they'll cut down on them. Especially because as all of us who use those plastic bags know, you need two of them to make sure the bag doesn't rip and your groceries don't wind up all over Valencia Street (there's nothing really quite like picking up expensive gourmet food items right in front of homeless people). Nevertheless, the Department of the Environment will monitor the amount of bags being handed out and the stores promise to look into recycling efforts and selling re-usable bags. They will also give money to a citywide campaign to educate us all on the dangers of plastic bags. ...

Hey, did you think that local authorities wouldn't cooperate with federal agents who are out to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries? Think again! Impassioned opinion pieces by Kamala Harris and Board of Supervisor resolutions aside, seems that Lt. Marty Halloran was putting up a police line at the Alternative Relief Co-Op so that agents from the DEA, IRS and Treasury Department could ransack their offices. From Ann Harrison's 'On the Record' blog (she says to......