We've been fans for awhile, and now NBC 11's Traci Grant -- who seems like a lot of fun, and someone should throw a local Emmy at her -- has also picked up on the awesome public art piece Muni Hot or Not of the Now over at Nature abhors a vacuum. At the very end, anchorwoman Lisa Kim totally throws shade James' way, to which we say: Lisa Kim, hot or not?......

Before & After Save for the tagging still remaining on Obscura Digital's door--leave them be, racialists!--the Neo-Nazi public art has all but disappeared. Sigh, we hardly knew ye. The culprit of this week's spray paint melee was possibly uncovered and hotly debated by our fantastic sleuth readers. While we won't point any fingers as to who decorated Stillman Street with eye-popping Neo-Nazi flair, and the Vacaville-based MySpace page supposedly harboring the young hate monger's identity......

Well, this was unnerving. We came across these, um, public art pieces while walking down Stillman Street. Shot earlier this evening, the paint was fresh yet gooey. If we had to guess, one to two days old, maybe? What these images lack in whimsical mischief--like last November's bout of graffiti that marred a Los Gatos church, which somehow made Bay Area headlines--they make up for in fear and fright. Anyway, we're curious: what exactly......

-- 177 Townsend's promise of public art delivered, raised. [Curbed SF] -- Grace Cathedral almost burned down last night via an infamous Burner. [CBS5] -- Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner: thin, pretty. [BeyondChron] -- Gavin Newsom's address. [SFGov -- ETA for video of the speech...?] -- Fog City Notes on NextBus. Also: the handsome South Asian chef speaks! [FCN] -- Gap Inc.'s rigorous employment program for youths. [SFGate] -- "Fog City Journal, without h., is getting......

Let the bourgeois battle begin: Green Connect and SF Community Clean Team are looking to clean up Warm Water Cove, the waterfront park at 24th and Michigan Streets, this coming Saturday morning. (And want you to wakeup up before 9 a.m. to pull weeds?!) Many an art school student brandishing a can of spray paint and local musicians like this place for 'spressing themselves or for throwing afternoon concerts. While others are understandably looking......

The Haight/Ashbury intersection was once marred by a Gap, but no longer -- the monster closed down a couple months ago, and it's just been a vacant storefront ever since, which isn't totally awesome but is at least an improvement. And then, this weekend some enterprising muralists took it upon themselves to amaze us with some public art on top of the plywood, leaving behind the message you see above: "GMZEEO," it seems to......

It's mostly this guy's fault. Jackson West, who was the first editor here at SFist, got the ball rolling with this post, "The City that Knows How." He helped to grow the site with his wit, feel for the city, and a small group of contributors. As we zero in on SFist's third anniversary, we thought it would be a great time to see what Jackson's been doing since he last graced these pages,......

--Civic Center's SFMike reports on a Hayes Valley-themed mini-golf public art installation. That's the eponymous Mr. Hayes (not Rutherford B., but another guy named Thomas) to your right. --Gavin's now all pretending he meant for Theresa Sparks to get on the Police Commission after all. --The Merc News names its top five area Venture Capitalists under 40. --The KFOG KaBoom fest sounded like fun last night. --Pat Murphy shares his tips on keeping maggots out......

We've been noticing lately that there seems to be not only lots of construction crews out on Valencia Street but big, huge squares of road missing. What this means is that either the roads are even more of a mess than usual (possible) or they are actually fixing Valencia Street. So, we checked out the Better Valencia Project and discovered that it's twue, it's twue-- they're repaving the streets. ...

We mentioned this in Tuesday's Day Around the Bay, but there are some new bits to the story so we're going to do a full post on it. Plus, it's kind of a fun story. Anyways, this is about the guy in Alameda who did some public art in front of his house that features a cardboard cutout of the President with a knife in his head. Well, the Secret Service were not amused and came to give the guy a visit. ...

We see it all the time, and we are fairly certain there is good money to be made doing it - public art is the topic of tonight's workshop in Southern Exposure's SoExchange series of artist-led workshops. How Do I Make My Art Public Art? features panelists, Seyed Alavi, Louise Bertelsen, Packard Jennings, Wang Po Shu, and Rigo 23. It takes place at the Mission Cultural Center (2868 Mission St at 25th) and covers how......

Tonight at Biscuits and Blues (401 Mason St.), legendary New Orleans pianist, Henry Butler performs solo piano, combining the classical and jazz elements he absorbed at Louisiana School for the Blind and Southern University with the gospel, blues and R&B sounds he heard growing up in New Orleans. (8pm & 10pm shows) Saturday Grab a boombox and head on over to Mission Dolores Park (18th and Dolores) for Unsilent Night 2006, composer Phil Kline’s annual......

First, the swanky: The MoAD Vanguard presents Preview at the Clift Hotel, (495 Geary St. at Jones) an evening of art, music and dance for a cause - the cause being MoAD and the arts of the African Diaspora. From the PR: groove to the global sounds of DJ Cecil (Relevant Sound, Bembe) while taking in the artwork of Amanda Williams, April Banks, Rah Crawford, Rosalind McGary, Emmanuel Pratt and Sydney James. Preview is......

In honor of Labor Day, we'd like to point out that every employee, freelancer and consultant in Silicon Valley has to bargain their health benefit terms on their own or take what the company offers, and many end up one of the 46 million Americans without. So this techie is rooting for Tom Ammiano to legislate health security, at least for San Franciscans. While individual entrepreneurial successes like the Mercury News' Matt "Silicon Beat" Marshall......

It's so much fun to complain about public transportation that we sometimes forget it's almost just as fun to take it (well, sometimes, anyways.) Here's two events that'll bring a bright ding-ding to your day. Tonight: NewMindSpace, an interactive public art group (one of whose founders writes for our Canadian cousin Torontoist), has put on bubble-blowing parties in New York, an Easter Egg hunt in Toronto, and a pillow fight in New York's Union......

Public art is often the butt of jokes and viewed with contempt, along with performance art and washed up aging rockers on the county fair circuit. Whatever your feelings are about the role of government in the arts, many people support public art in theory, and its civic impact is meager compared to contracts for garbage disposal, cable television, and towing. Public art controversies are noteworthy in that one sees people get twisted knickers......

SFist Jacob steps up to the blog pulse plate, while SFist Jackson's on hiatus. All anyone can talk about is the snow, snow, snow. (OK, those last two are actually tagged as "hail," but you get the point and the pics are pretty.) In our eyes, all this cold just means the onset of summer. Still, if you're jonesing for some tropical island loveliness, head over to the Humu Kon Tiki's San Francisco section to......

-Developers planning to build new housing in the SOMA area encountered a new concern last week as drivers complained that a possible eight story building on Harrison between third and fourth might obstruct views of the city. From the freeway. Turns out it's city policy not to build something along the freeways that would create a "canyon" effect and not allow drivers to see where they are in the city. To which members of the Planning Department banged their heads against their tables and threw their hands up in surrender. ...

Sfist interviews Nathalie Roland...

Those of you longing to start airbrushing flames on or supergluing action figures to the side of your car, it's your weekend! Starting today through Sunday, it's Art Car Fest 2004! Intended to celebrate "the quintessential public art of our times," art cars will be driving all over the Bay Area to show off their style, flash, and pizazz....

More Mission woe -- over the weekend, there was a drive-by shooting on 26th and Mission on Friday 8:30 p.m., a stabbing at that same corner a day later, and a shooting at 19th and Guerrero. Kamala Harris came by to check things out (and get a burrito). In other weekend crime news, a man stabbed his ex-girlfriend in the neck in the Haight at the McDonalds on Stanyan, and three men were stabbed in......

New York gets apples, DC gets donkeys and elephants, and Chicago cows - so naturally, San Francisco is filled with decorated hearts. I left my HEART in San Francisco, get it? (nudge nudge - sigh). Brought to you with a heavy hand by Cow Parade, the folks who previously left fiberglass cows all over America, there are approximately 130 5-foot-tall hearts scattered throughout the city, sponsored by the largesse of various corporate entities and decorated by an odd mix of artists, socialites, community groups, and random others (....why does the cast of Passions/Days of our Lives get to decorate a heart? Are they particularly committed to our fair city?)....