Is this for real, or one of those ridiculous made-uppy New-York-Times-imagined-it problems? Apparently, the times reported a month ago that in SF, there are some low-income students who would rather starve than accept government-subsidized food. And now, at last, the SF Schools Blog offers a loooooong rebuttal with loads of context. Here's the gist: yeah, it's a problem, it's a problem everywhere, but we already knew about it and we're trying solve it. (The......

Zombie Time has a chortle-worthy review of the Propaganda III art show -- a not-so-mildly anti-capitalist (and surprisingly anti-Semitic) exhibit -- which was held at, where else? The always-chic Bambuddha Lounge! You know, that sanctuary of fine dining, poolside lounging, and choice beats in the middle of dingy, deplorable poverty? The place where Gavin and a smattering of Trainas get shoved into a pool for an annual charity benefit? (Total hoot, anyone?) Anyway, it's......

Submit your Bay Area finds to found [at] sfist [dot] com or tag them as SFist and found on Flickr. Let us know where and when you found the item and any other interesting info. This letter was found in 2004 by SFist reader smallerdemon. It was posted near a window of a downtown bookstore that had books by black authors on display. Some Thoughts Is it my hyper-sensitive poverty of imagination or is......

Friend of SFist judy b. is moderating a discussion about San Francisco's criminalization of poverty at the Little Roxie tonight, which is co-sponsored by the People of Color Coalition of the SF Green Party, POOR Magazine, and the SF People's Organization. Sup. Ross Mirkadreamy is scheduled to speak, as is PD Jeff A-Hotty-dachi. 6:30 p.m. and $5-15, but since it's about poverty, no one will be turned away for lack of funds). (Note: the......

Hey, there's lots of stuff going on this weekend! And in exchange for telling you about it, we're going to ask again for a favor in return -- if you go to any of these events, would you mind terribly sending us your pictures of them, and we'll show them off on the site for you? Tag 'em SFist on Flickr, or mail them to editor-at-sfist.com! --It's time for the Bring Your Own Big......

Bipartisan legislators introduced a bill in the California Senate Wednesday that would grant every child born within the state a $500 savings account, earmarked for higher education, a home downpayment, or retirement. We appreciate the idea of teaching young 'uns how to save for the future, sure. And we appreciate that people are working to counteract California's poverty. But, come on . . . finance lessons from the folks that have put California in the red?...

If a visit from Barrack Obama Superstar wasn't exciting enough, today we were blessed with a visit from New York's Senator, a Hillary something. God, we've never heard of her. Who is she again?...

And so begins our second-to-last comix review here on SFist. It's been fun, but it's time to try new things. And now, on with the festivities: How is it that you've never heard of The Ballad of Halo Jones? It's been around for about 20 years, so you have absolutely no excuse for not diving into this unjustifiably unknown sci-fi pleasure. The year is 4950 or so, and life sucks for a group of young......

Well, we're sorry to report that everyone's day jobs managed to succeed where Wade Crowfoot did not -- namely, in preventing anyone wearing a chicken suit from gaining access to the city's very first Question Time before the Board of Supes! What is democracy coming to? Doesn't mean the board didn't manage to thoroughly amuse itself, though -- to laughter, Board prez Aaron Peskin jocularly asked Sup. Sean Elsbernd if he'd like to stand in......

Special treat this week, kids: a review. Oh, yeah, and the usual previews too. Passing Strange at Berekley Repertory Theatre The best theater experiences happen when you go in not knowing what to expect, and then the show blows you away. If you agree, then stop reading right now and buy tickets to Passing Strange before it heads to New York. If you need more convincing--or just love your Stage Fog--read on. Now, we......

-Dick met Bush yesterday and in one of his speeches Bush talked about how he's going to end poverty and bring world peace. No, just joking, he talked a lot about terrorism, Iraq, 9/11 blah, blah, blah. But that's not the big thing. No, the big thing is, and we kid you not, there is an actual George W. Bush Elementary School in Stockton. And the library is the Laura Bush Library. We'll leave it up to you to make with the jokes, but if you want a starter joke, the obvious one is if the library carries "My Pet Goat?" ...

Ain't no better way to celebrate the Fourth of July than by watching the Coney Island Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Competition: our buddies at the mothership Gothamist even liveblogged the whole thing! (yes, yes, it's terrible that Americans waste so much food when people in Africa are starving. We promise to give money to Jeffrey Sachs's End of Poverty program to atone for our rapacious delight today, okay?) And what's our local connection? Second-place eater and up-and-coming American star Joey Chestnut, who almost dunk-and-swallowed top dog Takeru Kobayashi out of first place with a strong start out the gate. Chestnut's a San Jose State engineering student! Yay Area whut! Alas, Chestnut started to flag about 6 minutes in, allowing Kobayashi to peristalsis his way back up to the top at the end. A nail-biter, to be sure -- but now Chestnut's claiming some malfeasance might have occurred -- at around dog 50, people noticed that Kobayashi might have suffered what the eating competition circuit delicately terms a "reversal of fortune," which is an automatic DQ from the competition. Witnesses say that Kobayashi spit up into a cup, but that he (warning, it's gross) swallowed it back down before it hit the table -- which doesn't count. Chestnut's decided to view it as a bad refereeing call, and promises to be back again next year. This summer, Chestnut's training regimen included drinking 2 gallons of warm water every morning to stretch his stomach; eating 40 dogs a day 3 days a week, and the day before he left for New York, he ate 54 dogs in a practice run. We may be betraying our Bay Area affiliation here, but we're hoping they were Rosamunde dogs. Picture from the Chron by Laura Morton....

What better way to celebrate Independence Day than with new plays that unapologetically explore the state of the nation?...

We were going to blame our missed post on Hurricane, Tropical Storm, Summer Shower Albert, but you see how that went, so we have to level with you. We were in Orlando last week on business, holed up in another convention center, this time without a laptop. We were supposed to be sharing one with someone from work, but if you've ever had to do that, or if you've ever had siblings, you know how......

Our Little Ms. Possible Future Speaker of the House is up for a very special election today on Wonkette, the Congressional Catfight Contest. The point of the vote is to determine, via brackets and seeds, just who is "The Biggest Beeatch" in congress. ...

If you think your life is bad, Grain in the Ear, the story of an ethnic-Korean kimchee peddler living in China, will either put your own misery in perspective or overwhelm you with the bleakness of grinding poverty, the Sisyphean nature of our existence and the realization that most people suck. We hope it's the former but after watching Grain in the Ear, we were ready to just crawl off to some quiet corner......

A battle has been raging behind the scenes at Wikipedia. No, it's not over copyrights or veracity or how well an article explains its premise. It's over whether or not the entry on San Francisco's Marina District should include an explanation of the term Marina Girl (and, by extension, Marina Guy). The main arguments for deletion is that it's a stereotype and that the content of the article is heavily biased against the Juicy Couture......

Thanks, SFist Jackson, for the bang-up Photoshop job showing what the union of Mr. Newsom and Ms. Milos might look like! (Scientology Sea Org cap added by Jackson.) And keep those name-the-couple entries coming! We picked "CSI: Plumpjack" from the comments but that's not necessarily an indication of who's going to win! As we do our part to keep up the famed "blog chatter" on Gav-boy and Scientologist Sofia (including a shot in this week's US Weekly as a "hot new couple"), Newsom's released a frantic statement: "I'm Catholic! They didn't talk about Scientology at that dinner I went to, just psychiatry! I wasn't even listening because I was focusing on playing footsie under the table!" (okay, we made that last part up.) "I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and get back to focus on things that matter in this world, like homelessness, housing and poverty," our mayor said. Well, all right, Mr. Mayor, let's do that. According to the latest survey (as reported by anti-Newsomites Beyond Chron, even though the poll itself hasn't been officially released), Newsom's approval levels have dropped to about 50%, from his high of 80%. Beyond Chron speculates that it might be related to Newsom's inconsistent performance on crime and the SFPD. And folks on the sfwall.net are saying that apparently Newsom looked surprised on Channel 2 News this morning when they confronted him with the numbers later. Hm.... maybe talking about Ms. Milos instead (video) doesn't look quite so bad now in comparison! ...

Summertime of Poverty pens a lyrical reflection on the modern world, but the title says it all. On that note, Ron Gonzalez gives a final state-of-San Jose speech, and San Jose Inside readers take the opportunity to lament his tenure. Up north, Michelle Slatalla plays with new real estate tool Zillow, but while intrigued, is not impressed by the inaccurate data. Kim Knox at Left in SF goes over the details of Arlene Ackerman's......

Dark greens last week, turnips this week. If you need proof that winter is here, the produce at local farmer's markets drives the point home. On the other hand, Kitchen photographer Melissa spotted a late batch of strawberries at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market, and we've spotted tomatoes recently as well. And we wonder why other parts of the country envy our markets. Oddball summer produce aside, root vegetable season has returned, and carrots,......

Over the last week in Oakland, shops have been laid waste, a store has burned to the ground, and a controversial religious organization has been implicated but denied its involvement. While our headline could be all too common, our personal experience makes the recent crimes all the more troubling. According to the Oakland Tribune, last Wednesday, a number of men in black suits, white shirts and bow ties vandalized two liquor stores in West......

The election last night wasn't the only big decision being made around here. Yesterday, the Board of Supes finally got around to voting on the Home Depot debate and by a 6-5 vote, approved the environmental impact report, thus making the Home Depot store a go. The swing vote came down to Aaron Peskin who voted for it because he thought he should respect a neighborhood's authoritah. Progressives are not amused. ...

Thursday night was night number two of the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The Exit Café, Fringe headquarters, wasn't very busy, but they had the beer and free pretzels ready (you can eat and drink in the Exit's theatres). Lily, the Exit's nonchalant dog, was on dropped-taquitos patrol. First up on our Fringe itinerary was Show Me Where it Hurts by Karen Ripley and Annie Larson with the Gallimaufrey Orchestra (Dan Wortman, JX Jones and......

As the saying goes, Muni helps those who help themselves, so if you're hoping for some kind of fare relief any time soon, don't count on getting a hand from our fearless local transit agency. As you surely know, fares go up to $1.50 starting Thursday, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Luckily for the Bob-Cratchety among us, Muni's introducing a "Lifeline" bus pass this month, at a rate that's reduced by......

"Takin' it to the streets, takin' it to the streets" by the Doobie Brothers played in the background as the governor confidently strode into a residential San Jose neighborhood to pave a pothole and attempt to get some positive press for his plans to use the new money he found in the budget for transportation. Well, it doesn't seem to have worked. The San Jose Mercury News's coverage appears to be limited to commentary that the governor shouldn't wear white pants if he's going to be working with hot asphalt and tar. And the Chron did some digging of its own and found out: 1) DPT specifically dug a pothole earlier in an otherwise-well-graded street that morning so the governor could have something to fix (though "there was a crack" there before); 2) as one resident put it, "For paving the street, that's a lot of lighting," as the gov's crews set up klieg lights on the block; 3) the governor is billing the city of San Jose for the trouble he caused; and 4) despite the governor's best efforts to avoid protestors, they found him anyways, and started taunting the special election. Poll numbers for the special election are at 62% against, and over 10,000 people showed up yesterday in Sacramento to protest the governor's policies. Here's the rest of the Doobie Brothers' lyrics: Take this message to my brother You will find him everywhere Wherever people live together Tied in poverty’s despair You, telling me the things you’re gonna do for me I ain’t blind and I don’t like what I think I see. Photo by Karen T. Borchers of the Merc News...

If this review were an Edgar G. Ulmer movie, it would be covered in fog, have a sweeping orchestral score (public domain of course), and SFist would be a nihilistic outsider desperate for acceptance. One-out-of-three ain't bad. Edgar G. Ulmer, the Poverty Row director responsible for such ultra-low budget classics as Detour, The Man From Planet X, and The Black Cat, has gained a cult following amongst film geeks and independent filmmakers because he......

When the Guardian did their piece on the "New Bay," as coined by the EA-Ski-produced Frontline, maybe they didn't quite get it right. Does "New Bay" refer to a resurgence in local hip-hoppers getting record label contracts, or is that "New Bay" an allusion to G-New, AKA Da Mayor? Why do we presume that Gavin is secretly a hardcore MC? Well, there's the bling-bling appearance -- slick hair, tight threads. There's the oratorial magnificence.......

Last week, the Giants asked the city assessor's office to reassess the Ballpark at 24 Willie Mays Plaza for tax purposes. The point being the Giants are claiming that their four year old park is already starting to get a little less shiny and a little less new and therefore the Giants should pay less money in taxes. Currently, the Giants pay $4 million a year in property taxes plus another $6 million or so......

Why does the Bay Area hate George Bush so much? Is it really about partisan machine politics or an innate culture of dissent? SFist thinks it's more a matter of self-preservation. The fact is you could probably plan the administration's policy strategy in advance by taking the expressed concerns of the majority of Bay Area voters and doing exactly the opposite. And sometimes it seems they screw us out of sheer spite. While political strategists......

"I'm proud to have been a Yankee. But I have found more happiness and contentment since I came back home to San Francisco than any man has a right to deserve. This is the friendliest city in the world." - "Joltin'" Joe DiMaggio Welcome to SFist. We're here to sing the praises of one of the fairest ladies in the world, beautiful San Francisco. Ours is a city of sun and fog, food and drink, poverty and riches, urbanity and parochialism - the blessed terminus of a hilly penninsula which protects the Bay to the east from the Pacific to the west. We are truly the Golden Gate....