But that's the entire point! Anyway, RicardoSF tells us in the comments section here that: In January's issue of The Advocate in the Rants & Raves section -- unavailable online -- "I think what goes on at that fair is pretty disgusting. Just because you are gay doesn't mean you support the Folsom Street Fair or go there. I don't." -- Openly gay Vallejo, CA, Mayor Gary Cloutier, when asked at a Vallejo religious......

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......

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. ...

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....

Just like other network effect services, a new Craigslist sites takes time to develop as people in the far-off reaches (say... Centre County, Pennsylvania) don't just wake up and start using Craigslist. But after a while, even the most languid of Craigslist locations will start to pick up, either filled with miss-postings (Why anyone in Israel would want to go to buy a 1975 Mercedes Benz 450 SL located in Los Angeles is beyond......

We're so delighted by Little Otsu that we're posting a Rave on Friday! So we've been meaning to check out Little Otsu since the switch from clothing products to paper, along with the move from 16th Street to Valencia and 19th. Having some free time this afternoon, we were casually strolling down Valencia this afternoon, with a plan in mind to maybe pick up a weekly planner to keep all those Wednesdays events straight in......

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. ...

And we so love the Power of the Blog! Do you remember, back in December we were ranting about SBC and how it had taken away our DSL and refused to discuss the implications of this with us, or indeed give any valid reasons for us being able to access DSL one day, before being forced to make do with dial up the next? We remember that Dark December well, it was a low point......

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...

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......

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......

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.......

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...

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......

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......

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". We don't necessarily consider ourselvespart of the Dockers target audience. Their web site sure is nice and all that, but they're...Dockers. It's just not the kind of clothing that fits into our raging rock and roll lifestyle. But this commercial makes us reconsider that stance. A man......

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! ...

[Ed. Note: We let guest contributor Molly Go Lightly go ahead and use the first-person singular so that she could explain her very personal experiences at Burning Man over the years. Enjoy this final post in our series of perspectives on Burning Man.] The miles between Reno and the Black Rock Desert are the most excruciating of the seven-hour drive from San Francisco. Once we turn off Highway 34 and head toward the gate,......

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. But that doesn't mean that we've lost our love for all things......

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. ...

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? ...

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. Are we shocked that a government organization screws up sometimes? Not so much. Insert stuff about underpaid (yet secure-in-job) workers, government bloat, etc. But we're certainly shocked when we get great service and a reasonable outcome when we seek help. In a world of Kevins, we......

As you can probably tell, we have kind of a love/hate thing going on with the Chron over here at SFist HQ. But since it's Raves Thursday, we're highlighting the love! And you know who we love the most? No, not Jon Carroll. No, not Ken Garcia. We love Bad Reporter!!! God, we love Bad Reporter! Marry us, Don Asmussen!! Who else can monitor the state of San Francisco hair gel politics so trenchantly? Who else could draw Dick Cheney's pottymouth with such an adorable snarl of the lip? Maria Shriver's cheekbones! Gavin and Kimberly on the rug!! FROM WHAT SICK WELLSPRING DO YOUR GENIUS IDEAS ORIGINATE????? We can only stare, awed and envious, at the heights of brilliance to which Mr. Asmussen reaches on his always-changing publication schedule, and then, silently, move down the back page of Datebook to read the new Dear Abby's advice. ("Have you considered seeing a therapist?" It's always "have you considered seeing a therapist.")...

We are getting very psyched up as the annual Stern Grove festival opens next Sunday. Every city in the world can offer free live entertainment, but only SF can do it with such spectacular backdrops. Fireworks, shmireworks, we say, unless we have the bay in the background. Bike races are boring, they run in circles, unless they follow the course of the Bullit car race. And summer concerts are just not the same when......

San Francisco has lots of great neighborhoods. But our favorite, by far, is the Mission. Maybe it's because The City started here in 1776. Or maybe because while westsiders are bundling up in the fog all summer, Missionites are soaking up the rays. Right now we're sitting outside the Brava theater in the sunshine, smoking a cigarette after polishing off a torta and using a friendly neighbor's wifi to post this while doing laundry.......

Every year it rules -- the Scripps Howard spelling bee. Is it that whiff of old world middle school mores? Is it the adorable freaked out word-geek kids, too young and frightened to disguise their feelings on stage? "Can I get a definition, please?" The rad ESPN "Under Pressure" ad? The snotty-voiced lady commentator? ("It's the schwa -- it gets you every time.") Naw. It's the bell! Today was the 78th Spelling Bee championship, broadcast live on ESPN, and dang it if we didn't watch the whole darn thing. Love it. Love it every year. Your obligatory Northern California angle? Aliya Deri, an 8th grade speller from Pleasanton who was sponsored by the Chron came in second (went out on "trouvaille" in the 19th round, like a champ). And the Contra Costa Times' sponsoree, home-schooled Evan O'Dorney from Danville, made it to the eighth round (going out on "athyriosis"). Our other favorite thing about the spelling bee? News articles laboriously attempting to use the championship word in the title. And yes, we love Spellbound too (which we saw first at the 2002 SF DocFest). Just for the marimba music alone! ...

Tostadas, where have you been all our lives? We're turning 34 next week, but it wasn't until recently that we discovered your glory. There we were, whining about how we couldn't decide what to have for lunch (oh, the cross we bear), when a colleague showed us her tostada from Mexico Au Parc (that link is all for you, George), and we decided to give it a try. Sure, we were skeptical. It looks......

SFist has not one, not two, but three weddings to go to this summer, and we needed a snazzy suit. Something dark, not too heavy, and cheapcheapcheap. So we went to Thrift Town at 17th and Mission because, well, we do almost all our shopping at Thrift Town. Hey, when you're an underemployed blogger, you've got to look good on a budget. When we lived in New York City, our favorite shop was the......

SFist interviews Sarah Lefton, owner of the Jewish Fashion Conspiracy...

Yeah, MUNI stinks on multiple levels. Bitch bitch bitch. All the more reason to give props where props are due. A few weeks ago we were taking the bus, the number and destination of which will remain anonymous as to protect the scofflaw driver we are about to give mad love to. A young man entered the bus; the female driver took his transfer -- then threw it away, telling him it had expired.......