In San Francisco’s continuing battle of needs vs. wants, Sacramento St. between Walnut and Laurel proudly sides with the throng promoting antique galleries, fancy-dan hat shops, and other finer things. Everyone knows it can’t be soup kitchens and public libraries on every block in town. Just the same, every city worth its salt has a well-coiffed neighborhood or set of blocks where it’s OK to fly one’s sophistication flag high and proud. San Francisco is endowed with several such areas, and if Presidio Heights’ business district isn’t at the head of the class, it’s at least kissing the teacher’s ass a hell of a lot to get there....

You probably remember that brief brouhaha about the CD price-fixing antitrust case, where that judge was going to give everyone who'd ever bought a CD from 1995 to 2002 $14.99 if they sent in their name and address, right? Well, as part and parcel of that settlement, all the CD companies agreed to send free CDs to public libraries across the land. Well, hey -- our beloved San Francisco public library just got its Columbia Record Club shipment, and received: 91 copies of Ricky Martin's Sound Loaded, 81 copies of Jessica Simpson's Irresistible, and 68 copies of Celine Dion's greatest hits. We're going to reserve ours online right now! Jaundiced athenaea-nauts are grumbling that the record companies appear to be dumping poorly-selling records on libraries (Irresistible, for instance, is the second Jessica Simpson album, the one that came out before Newlyweds), but cheerier librarians are storing, say, their 106 copies of Lenny to give away as prizes for summer reading contests. Check out what everyone else in California is getting. (For instance, San Francisco Unified (.pdf) is getting 51 copies of Whitney Houston's "Star Spangled Banner," 7 copies of "Carmen: A Hip Hop-era," 5 copies (clean) of The Wu Tang, and a smattering of Kronos Quartet and John Adams CDs, among many, many others)....

Salinas is closing its public libraries because the public wouldn't vote in a sales tax hike. That's ok, at least it will prevent them from burning any more of Steinbeck's books....

SFist is so thankful to be living in the greatest freakin' city in the world! One of the things that makes San Francisco great is our fantastic public libraries, from which we can quickly and easily reserve whichever books we'd like. We're also thankful for our great local independent bookstores, where we can buy, sell, and trade or books and other media. SFist Rita just got The Georgetown Ladies' Social Club (just out in paper)......

Sfist is just sick over several of the election results, and is eager to take advantage of our public libraries while they're still here. Reserve a book today, for you may not be able to tomorrow. And if you want something for keeps, may we suggest making your purchase from one of our local bookstores? SFist Emily is reading a now tear-stained copy of Studies in Ethnomethodology by Harold Garfinkel (Another book so esoteric......