The POP2012 electronic music fest, which is the latest incarnation of the party that contributed to the MDMA-related deaths of 23-year-old Anthony Mata and 25-year-old Trung Nguyen in 2010, is set to happen this Saturday at Oakland's Oracle Arena. The Cow Palace, where the 2010 edition was held, has since banned ravey sort of things, for fear of a repeat of the events of May 30, 2010 and the repeat wave of E-related hospitalizations in October of that year. more ›

Oh, jeez, here we go again. Santa Clara County health officials have put together a PSA warning teens about the dangers of ecstasy, in response to some surveying that found that one in four teens in the county had tried the drug at least once. more ›

The State assemblywoman, whose district includes the Daly City home of the Cow Palace, has introduced legislation to ban those all-night bamp-bamp dance parties from public land across the state. Unsurprisingly, it's called the Anti-Raves Act of 2011 and it seeks to ban any "public event at night that includes prerecorded music and lasts more than three and one-half hours.". more ›

As expected, Cow Palace in Daly City will no longer host "music and dance parties" after a slew of booze and drug overdoses at parties there. While the Cow Palace board "voted unanimously on Tuesday in favor of a moratorium on the events according to AP (via KTVU) it didn't specify any length of time. Which is to say, they could very well host more glow-stick dance parties in the near future. more ›

Once again it's time for an installment of this mildly confusing feature, in which we ask those ensconced too cozily in your SF bubbles to take a step back, summon your inner C.W. Nevius, and try to understand why some in this great country of ours (certainly not us!) might look askance at the way we do things here — if for nothing else than to enjoy an ironic chuckle at our own expense. If all of this seems too difficult, please refer to our other recurring feature, 7 Reasons to Love San Francisco, and be on your merry way. more ›

Trung Nguyen, 25, died on Sunday at Washington Hospital in Fremont, making him the second fatality after Memorial Day weekend's infamous Cow Palace rave. Nguyen was a graduate of Overfelt High School and UC Davis graduate. more ›

Though toxicology reports are still two weeks off, the San Mateo County Times wants to be the first to shout it from the rooftops that last weekend's post-Cow Palace, drug-related death and multiple hospitalizations were the result of an overdose, not of tainted drugs. The journalist in question writes that Anthony Mata "took a fatal dose either before or during the POP 2010 The Dream festival," but nowhere in the article do they or doctors say what this might have been a fatal dose of. more ›

Apparently, raves are still going strong, as 20,000 people attended the "POP 2010: The Dream" party on Saturday night at Cow Palace. more ›

But that's the entire point! Anyway, RicardoSF tells us in the comments section here that: more ›

We had been a proud, satisfied owner of an Apple PowerBook for a little over two years (and a blue-and-white G3 for five years before that) when it all went quickly downhill last November. Our computer started making these frightening, crackling, static, grinding noises, accompanied by nonsensical beeps, and then it crashed hard. We did an "erase and reinstall," which bought us about two weeks. Then, we had to pay our first somewhat quick... more ›

Hey kids, remember Critical Mass? Did you know it still happens? Why, we haven't heard that much of them since the Great Bicycle Uprising in 1997 when they (or the police) staged a mini-riot after His Willieness tried to crack down on them. Today, they're back in the news as a new story of wild behavior is making the rounds. The story comes from today's Matier & Ross and to make a long story short, a nice, typical mini-van owning, suburban family was out in the city celebrating a birthday and got caught right smack-dab in the middle of Critical Mass. According to the story, it quickly devolved into Bikers Gone Wild. more ›

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. more ›

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We're so delighted by Little Otsu that we're posting a Rave on Friday! more ›

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. more ›

And we so love the Power of the Blog! more ›

We're kind of on a pro-BART kick today -- which may be due in part to the fact that we've been taking the BART down to Millbrae all week. We understand that not too many of you are doing that, which may explain why we haven't heard very much about the coolest station art ever, these totally rad pictures/murals on the walls of the South San Francisco BART station. The picture above doesn't do it justice, but they're holographic scenes. They show these little pictures of local scenes, like sailboats and California history -- but as the train zips by (or as trainwaiters walk by), the pictures change! They're like art versions of flipbooks! Animated murals! IT IS SO COOL!!! For example, one of the pictures is a series of photos from the South SF Fire Department showing a firefighter sliding down a pole. Other pictures include the changes on South City's Grand Avenue, factory workers, and the biotech industry (we haven't seen that one yet, but we hope it's a DNA strand undergoing transcription and translation). How'd they do it? Is it something about polarized glass? The only news article we could find about it says something about "multifaceted glass tiles," but isn't that just like our kitchen counter? It doesn't show us scenes of South City. Could someone please explain it to us? Meanwhile -- if you're heading down South Bay-wards, or just glumly staring out the window with your roller bag wedged between your knees on the way to SFO, make sure you look out when you get to the South City BART stop. Public art at its best! Picture from the South SF city site more ›

We here at SFist not so fondly remember our adolescent quest, our desire to find the true essence of rock and roll. With a puberty induced punk rock fervor, we wanted to be rock stars that would catch panties thrown at us with our teeth, smash our equipment, mosh with the gnarlyist metal heads, and captivate audiences with our own brand of rock and roll mayhem. What we got instead were guitar lessons from new age gurus and burnt out Vietnam veterans. Instead of learning how to rock, we played 12-bar blues and learned to pluck "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Our young idealist upstart selves needed to feel the raw emotion of rock. Even if our dumb fourteen-year-old selves just wanted to learn how to play "All the Small Things" by Blink 182. more ›

You have got to love the food bloggers -- they have a real sense of community, perhaps more so than any other blogging group we have come across. Today we are raving about this bunch who, spurred into action by local girl Pim, have gotten together to raise money for the vicitims of the Earthquake in India and Pakistan. You would not believe the selection of irresistable Bay Area foodie prizes that are on offer, in return for a donation to Unicef. more ›

Yesterday we were ranting about the fact that stoopid SBC had decided to reduce the status of our internet connection from DSL to dial-up. It kind of pissed us off and we were starting to think we might have to give up blogging altogether. But then we remembered reading about the Sprint PCS Aircard 580 which has saved our blogging life. more ›

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 more ›

When the Virgin Megastore on Market opened, the top floor contained a restaurant we spent hours in. Overlooking Market and Stockton streets, we sat there with our textbooks (while frequently reading magazines, don't get us wrong) swilling coffee and taking in the view. In fact, some of our first dates with our now life-partner took place in the Virgin Cafe, back when our lives weren't dominated by local-interest websites and Citizen Kane. And then one day the Virgin Cafe was gone, blocked off and empty. more ›

We sympathize with you. We too get completely freaked out whenever we hear the unexpected roar of jets passing over the City. We go into panic mode and run to the windows expecting the worst. But the key word there is "unexpected." For when we KNOW that the air is going to be filled with flashy jets, well, we get excited. Indeed, there are those of us who actually love the sounds of those powerful planes as they roar above--sometimes so close to our rooftops that we can see the pilots sleeping--uh, we mean waving. more ›

Our guardian angel (not the kind with the beret) Jen sent us a link (free registration required) to our new favorite commercial, "A Street Car Named Dockers". more ›

Put a brimful of Asha on your iPod ride! The Asha Bhosle who's name-checked by the Brit band Cornershop and is renown as the voice of Bollywood, has released a CD with San Francisco's best arbiters of new music tastes, the Kronos Quartet. Kronos has always sought to redefine classical chamber music from Viennese ladies doing the minuet to encompass all types of sonic sensation -- from contemporary pieces by Philip Glass and John Adams to Hendrix covers, Latin jazz, Argentinean tangoes, and African world music. Their latest record, You've Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman's Bollywood, features string quartet arrangements of songs from Bollywood films. Bollywood films are famous for their extended musical numbers, many of which were written by Asha Bhosle's late husband, R.D. Burman and performed by Ms. Bhosle, to be lip-synched by famous actresses in the actual movie. Burman and Bhosle are said to have sold more records than Elvis and the Beatles combined. And the album's a lot of fun! It's basically a Burman/Bhosle greatest hits collection -- Kronos and their posse of world musicians basically fade into the background and Bhosle lets it fly (check out the audio samples). The tunes are insanely catchy and -- well, we don't approve of listening to world music to feel exotic, but we did find ourselves hankering for something cardamom-flavored as we listened through. Kronos will be performing with Asha Bhosle on September 22 and 23 at the Yerba Buena Center. We hope they'll synch up some movies with the songs! more ›

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While our tenure as a ship's captain was short lived, as we didn't know how to tack and ended up drifting downwind until our angry father found us and rescued us from a beaching on Seattle's Seward Park. Since then we've relegated ourselves to mate status, and generally just try not to drown, knock anyone overboard or tie knots without proper supervision. more ›

So there you are, wandering around one of San Francisco's bountiful neighborhoods when all of a sudden you get that calling from nature. You start to look around for a place to go only to realize that-- horror of horrors--there is no place to go. Because there's never really a good place to go when you have to go. This city is lousy for loos. Which is why we here at SFist have came today to praise secret bathroom spots. What's the secret bathroom spot? That's the spot in any neighborhood that you know you can use when the time comes. And it's secret because, well, if you told people about them, they'd tell other people, and they'd tell other people, and you can say goodbye to secret bathroom spot. more ›

Okay, we're a little late to the party on this one (what? We thought your party started at 9, not 7! Our bad!) -- but our new favorite TV channel's got to be the C-SPAN of San Francisco politics, SFGTV Channel 26. Yes, we know, you can download specific meetings to watch on your computer, or check out the DVDs of particular meetings from the library -- but what we're totally loving about Channel 26 is your total lack of control about what shows up! Where else could we totally just randomly turn on the TV and see..... Gavin Newsom joking with reporters...? ....Tom Ammiano telling the Board of Supes that "I've been out for years"....? ...or Chris Daly shouting out, "ONE COUNTRY, INDIVISIBLE" over everyone else's "under God" during the Pledge of Allegiance? It's like old-school MTV, only with Sean Elsbernd (and no "wubba wubba wubba"). Day or night, the videotapes of justice whir on -- whether Chris Daly's boredly twiddling his pen, or Gerardo Sandoval's running into a meeting right after he's marked "absent" on the roll call, or SFist Jackson pleading to get us a press pass -- it's awesome. Hey, any chance SFGTV could start airing Animal Care and Control dog hearings too? more ›

It's a nightmare that probably ranks second to the IRS screwing up your federal taxes -- the California Franchise Tax Board doing the same to your state taxes. more ›