Step right up! Step right up! The Gavin Newsom San Francisco carnival is coming to town! SEE .... the horrors that abound in the San Francisco Housing Authority! GAWK..... at the desperate lives of people trying to get by in the sub-standard apartment units provided by the city! GASP..... at the pitiful amounts of money residents try to live on! And then.... open your wallets! Won't you help.... for the children? We're not even really......

--Pride was fun! (Have you noticed we always have great weather for Pride?) [Chron, ABC 7, CBS 5.] --Who were the bloggers floating the Newsom coke rumors? We don't think it was us. [Chron.] --They're trying to apply the lessons from the Kim family search in looking for the Alameda County woman and her priest friend. [KTVU.] --Cal students getting hyphy. [Clog Blog.] --Don't try and fix the worst house in San Francisco yourself......

Some group out there with the name NewTithing Group got their hands on some 2004 tax returns, crunched some numbers, and determined that our rich people ain't that giving. In fact, LA's rich people totaly kicks our rich people's asses when it comes to giving, like twice as much. And we all know how much it hurts when LA kicks our asses in anything....

Last week, somebody gave us a copy of the new 7x7 magazine and once we saw it, couldn't resist opening it up to take a look. How could you not resist any sort of "Hot 20 Under 40" articles. We love those kinds of stories! Is there anything more interesting and important than reading about what is hot? Especially about what is hot here in the city? Because as 7x7 says, "While celebrity culture generally favors the very rich or the very gorgeous it's different here. Style itself counts for only half in SF: You've got to have substance too." So who are these hot people? Do we know any of them? How does one become hot? Are we hot? ...

We don't care if your voter information guide isn't here yet -- we can't wait any longer! It's that time of the quarter again -- for SFist's shallow surface summaries of the important issues of politics and public policy facing our city and state today that we're voting on next week. Thank goodness, there's only two state propositions and four SF ones. Don't forget to vote on 6/6/06. 6/6/06! Marilyn Manson should be running for......

We thought we'd update you on the latest brouhaha being currently ha'ed about in the city which is the Fairmont's announcement a week ago that they were kind of sort of thinking that just maybe they'll convert some of their luxury suites into condos. This announcement quickly got Aaron Peskin's panties in a bunch and he immediately announced he was going to come down against it and introduce a ban into the Board of Supes. First he played the "landmark" card but then quickly switched to the "jobs" card when he realized that the section of the Fairmont that the hotel wants to convert is not the part everyone thinks of when they think of the hotel, but the ugly stepsister portion of it. The jobs card is an especially potent one because all of this is taking place amidst the backdrop of the still going on hotel workers strike. We can see how announcing a new plan that could result in a loss of jobs while in the midst of a strike could be seen as a bit inflammatory. We can also see, however, the confusion caused by Peskin in that he recently led the charge in preventing a waterfront hotel to be built over a certain height despite the fact that larger hotels mean larger work forces and smaller hotels lead to smaller work forces. ...

In other cities we've lived in, the actual density of the ethnic Chinese population matters little to the density of Chinese restaurants. Seattle? The population is rather spread out, but the vast majority of Chinese restaurants are still downtown in the International District. New York? No matter what neighborhood you're in, you're never far from a Chinese restaurant. But in San Francisco, the restaurants seem to follow the community in general -- ya got......

A weekly exercise in keepin' it real about the San Francisco drinkin' scene, by your local barrespondent, Drew. Whenever you're out knockin' back a few, it's always good to avoid the three 'C's. Crowds, Cleanliness and Cost. If you can spend a night out in the city and avoid all three of these evils, then the world is yours and all that's in it (or at least what remains in that dusty bottle of Macallan......

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......