Entries from SFist tagged with 'publicinterest'
August 3, 2007
It's now been ten days since C.W. Nevius went off on the Gav for letting people camp in Golden Gate Park. Things shook out pretty much as you'd expect: follow-up articles , reactions from the Supes, letters to the Editor, promises from the Mayor, frothy commentary here on SFist, and a new issue du jour: what to do with all of the used heroin needles that turn up everywhere? The Chron article explores two possible......
Continue Reading "Homeless Kerfuffle, Day Ten: Syringes, Syringes, Everywhere"August 2, 2007
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......
Continue Reading "Homeless People Swept Up At Golden Gate Park "July 31, 2007
There aren't a hell of a lot of Wendy's left in SF. The one on 658 Market closed all too soon, and we're dying to sample the Baconator. (We really are.) Although we appreciate the noble and expensive slow-food movement, we'll always prefer Wendy's square-cut meat patties cooked in record time. Except this redhead group won't: the NAARP, National Association for the Advancement of Redhaired [sic] People (or perhaps the marketing division at Wendy's International,......
Continue Reading "Baconator Hate: Wendy's Protested By Evil Redheads"July 20, 2007
Since it's bound to open soon and we'll certainly never be able to step foot inside of the million dollar-plus apartments in SF's new and phallic-y One Rincon Hill -- biggest apartment building west of the Mississippi, damn straight -- the scary-sounding and fancy-named Telstar Logistics snapped some shots from inside the budding building. Enjoy them while you can, plebeians. (Images courtesy of Telstar Logistics)......
Continue Reading "Vertigo-Inducing Views From One Rincon"June 7, 2007
Hey, have you seen that giant, ugly monstrosity of a wall on Haight Street between Laguna and Buchanan? That's the old UC Extension campus. Yep, the one that's been closed since 2003 and has been fallow since. Why are we bringing this thing up now, ruining your beautiful June morning with mental images of a dilapidated, graffiti-scarred bit of lovely urban blight right in the middle of the city? Because there's a meeting tonight to......
Continue Reading "Tonight: Saving - or not - the UC Laguna campus"May 17, 2007
You may recall our presence at a lower Haight neighborhood meeting back in January after a spate of gun violence galvanized the area and turned out hundreds of folks along with news cams and Heather Fong. Well, during that meeting Supervisor Mirkarimi promised that he would somehow find the city funding for a security camera at the corner of Haight and Webster, which is kind of the locus of all things crack-deal in the area. Well, the camera went up! ...
Continue Reading "No Cameras Allowed Near The Security Camera--But At Least We've Got One"March 6, 2007
A reader of SFist sends word that another great SF place will close, that place being Canvas, the coffe shop/art gallery/what have you in the Iinner Sunset. Word has it that like the John Barylecorn, the lease was up and the landlord sold it to the Pacific Catch, a seafood chain. ...
Continue Reading "Another One Bites the Dust"January 31, 2007
Last night was a meeting about the spate of violent crime and shootings in the Lower Haight. In attendance were various officials from the SFPD, including Heather Fong, as well as supervisors Ross Mirkirami and Bevan Dufty. Dan From Burritophile was in attendance and gives us a report, after the jump. To see photos of the event, click here....
Continue Reading "Last Night in the Lower Haight"January 4, 2007
rom SF Party Party comes word that a movement is afoot to make the ice skating rink at the Embarcadero a permanent thing. In the winter, it'll be an ice skating rink and during the spring and summer, a roller rink. ...
Continue Reading "I've Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates"December 10, 2006
Not everyone is afraid of answering questions from people as MUNI, of all groups, is holding a series of Open Houses to talk to you, the rider, and hear what you have to say. And if Gavin thinks taking questions from Chris Daly is scary, how would you like to be in MUNI's shoes and have to listen to disgruntled riders. The meetings are being held by the Transportation Effectiveness Project, you know, the one's who declared war on the "transit-dependent" so here's your chance to fight back. ...
Continue Reading "MUNI Goes Where Gavin Fears To Tread"December 8, 2006
Welcome to This Is Good, a new recommendation column for SFist about things that are good. If something is good, we'll tell you. Simple as that. * http://AlertSF.org Is Good. AlertSF is a emergency services network used to send out emergency alerts and "post-disaster" information via text-messaging from the City & County of San Francisco....
Continue Reading "This Is Good: AlertSF.org"December 7, 2006
An event will be held today in yet another effort to Free Josh Wolf. Wolf, of course, is the video blogger/journalist being held in jail for contempt of court for not releasing the hottest video out there that doesn't involve a celebrity having sex with somebody else. And thank God for that but we'd love to see the alleged video of Britney and K-Fed playing chess. ...
Continue Reading "Update on Josh Wolf"October 19, 2006
Ha ha ha ha -- they threw Chris Daly into a swimming pool! Commenter El Greco and photographer Drew Altizer earn a sweet spot in our heart for passing along their pictures of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Center Pool Toss event on Tuesday. As promised, Daly wore a suit. Pat Murphy of the Sentinel was also there with the color commentary, reporting that Daly went into the splash with his wife Sarah, for a bid......
Continue Reading "Political Junkie: Everybody Into The Pool"August 31, 2006
The 'Gate is reporting that Josh has been granted bail by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, to wit:In a brief order, two judges of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wolf was entitled to bail because the government had not shown his appeal of a judge's contempt-of-court ruling was frivolous or intended solely to delay the proceedings...The court said another panel would rule on Wolf's appeal of the contempt order while he......
Continue Reading "Josh Wolf Receives Bail"August 1, 2006
Screw getting Dooced, Josh Wolf has set the blogger bar a bit higher than getting fired. He's been jailed. Judge William Alsup, presiding over a federal grand jury case investigating the attempted burning of a police car and assault of an officer during an anti-war protest last year, has held Mr. Wolf in contempt of court, and ordered him imprisoned. The crime? Refusing to answer a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's office for raw......
Continue Reading "Journalist Josh Wolf Jailed for Video"May 26, 2006
We just got a note from Lauren Gelman at the Center for Internet and Society that Apple has been handed a total loss at the hands of "Does," AKA O'Grady's PowerPage and Apple Insider, who published leaked details of Apple's firewire peripheral for GarageBand. In other words, it was not within Apple's rights to wander around demanding that journalists reveal their sources, under trade secrets protections or any other law. SFist and the rest of......
Continue Reading "Online Journalists 1, Steve Jobs 0"May 6, 2006
By the time you read this, all the good booze will probably be gone, but it's still worth noting that the Cala Bell at the west end of Haight is having a ka-raaaaaaazy sale! All liquor 20% off! Miscellaneous grocery 10% off! Spices, for the love of God, 50% off! Lucky thing we're in a supermarket, because we're going to faint unless we can buy some paper bags to hyperventilate into! So we asked......
Continue Reading "The Cala Bell Tolls for Thee"May 4, 2006
The good news is that vacancy rates are low across the hotel business in San Francisco. The bad news is that at least some of those rooms may be off the rolls as they are being fumigated. When we wrote our original post on San Francisco's growing bedbug infestation, we were at a loss to come up with direct reports of encounters with the parasites in some of The City's hotels. Well, Hotel Chatter dropped......
Continue Reading "Bedbugs, Bedbugs, Whatcha Gonna Do?"April 4, 2006
Okay, he's not REALLY a CIA agent. But his posters say he is, and that if you tear them down, you'll "get SMACKED." For the last month or so, a quiet, stocky, late-20s guy with a shaved head and a heavy-metal goatee has been posting gibberish on telephone poles around the eastern end of the panhandle. He wears what look like hospital scrubs, which make us hope that he's getting some form of treatment......
Continue Reading "Local CIA Agent Threatens to Smack People"December 22, 2005
Kimo Crossman over at Webnetic tipped us to the release of the new, final request for proposals from The City on the citywide wireless initiative. Strangely, just last week the Local Agency Formation Committee (LAFCo) was asking to study the issue more before the Department of Telecommunications Infrastructure and Services (DTIS) issued the RFP. In other words, the mayor's office seems to be turning a deaf ear to recent public hearings on citywide Wifi,......
Continue Reading "City Releases TechConnect RFP"December 20, 2005
The very definition of a 'chilling effect' on free speech is when legislation or enforcement of new laws are so potentially onerous that people and organization self-censor out of fear and potential liability. Today, the users of Tribe.net were one of the first groups on the internet to feel that cool breeze, as Tribe have instituted their new Terms of Use with amendments to the provisions regarding mature public content, and presumably, any content......
Continue Reading "Big Changes at Tribe.net"December 13, 2005
The internet is strangely quiet about yesterday's Government Audit and Oversight Committee hearing. Not only were Daly, Peskin and Elsbernd arguing over whether or not they should be able to edit their own homepages on SFGov (can SFist petition to make it a crime to put sound, animated GIFs or blinking text on them?), they were also arguing over public oversight of the San Francisco TechConnect process. Sasha at Left In SF did liveblog......
Continue Reading "TechConnect Public Hearing"December 12, 2005
Last week we gave you some ideas for what to get the animal lover on your gift list. This week, we're going international -- looking at various international aid organizations that you might purchase a charitable gift from this holiday season. We first heard about microfinance a few years ago and have been fascinated by it ever since. It's so DIY and personal and operates on the level that we can really see making......
Continue Reading "SFist Cares Holiday Gift Guide: Jetsetters"November 15, 2005
Members of SEIU Local 790 employed by the San Francisco Unified School District plan to announce their strike as early as Wednesday. We confirmed information posted on Indybay with a representative from the union yesterday. According to the Chronicle, the strike will not be legal under state law until ten days after a recommendation from a fact-finding panel is issued and considered by both the union and the district, which at the earliest would......
Continue Reading "School District Employees to Strike This Week"November 9, 2005
Time to find out if all those "if this special election tanks, Arnold's political future tanks with it" prognostications are true. Because the Governator just got slapped by California voters like a redheaded stepchild. Every single proposition he endorsed has gone down in flames. Most troubling was Prop 73, which nearly passed with over 48% of the vote according to the latest numbers (though it went down 79-21 locally). It's times like these we......
Continue Reading "Arnold Big Loser, Gavin Big Winner"November 7, 2005
We all know by now that the latest reason to stay holed up in your apartment for the next half-decade or so is the avian flu. As if hating people and the sun wasn't reason enough. And sure, it's a scary prospect. But of more immediate concern, because we need to keep our day jobs, is the seasonal flu. You know, the boring old knock you on your ass variety. For the super paranoid,......
Continue Reading "SFist Cares ... About Your Health"October 24, 2005
SFist is a long-ass way out of kindergarten but some lessons learned then have stayed with us, like "don't eat paint", that's a good one. Or how about learning how to tie your shoes? Very helpful. But the best and most important lesson we learned is that it's good to share. Sharing is cool because SFist can't have everything but maybe if we share what we have someone else can share what they have,......
Continue Reading "SFist Cares ... About Sharing"October 24, 2005
How is it that our lives have come to resemble a Capital One commercial? "Be able to say 'No' clearly and easily, so that others are grateful and happy to honor your 'No,'" invites the blurb for "Giving Good No," an upcoming "experimental workshop." The phrase conjures images of Beaker and Dr. Honeydew wiggling their fingers over bizarre machinery; whatever it actually is, it's being conducted by WholeBody Wisdom, an organization that says "we......
Continue Reading "Word Has It That Brenda Sometimes Says Yes"July 18, 2005
SFist is sending out an APB to the world: are you a ravishing young woman? Do you drive a Jeep? Were you driving it around in the Sunset last month? If so, a young man named Luke really, really really wants to speak to you. Consider the dozens of missed connections that have been posted in the past few weeks by the local 30-year-old to be a series of love letters. True, he only......
Continue Reading "Life Imitates Dharma & Greg"July 12, 2005
En France, on est toujours en retard d'une vague. Les nouvelles idées nous arrivent, certes, mais sans se presser. Il n'y a pas le feu au lac. Tenez, par exemple, les internets. Il y a un Gothamist depuis Octobre 2002, il y a un SFist depuis Juillet 2004 (cette odeur que vous sentez? C'est le gateau d'anniversaire qui cuit dans le four). Et à Paris? On lit encore Flaubert et Balzac au coin du......
Continue Reading "Bienvenue, petite sœur"