We don't usually read the Op Ed pages of the Chronicle, because it's always either rehashed columnists from other papers or something like "give birth control pills to deer in Point Reyes" -- but can you believe it? The Chron actually got someone local to write about a local issue today -- if we're going to build out the MUNI underground, why not actually build it out and have a subway that runs to Fisherman's......

It’s the dead of San Francisco winter and 46 degrees — 46 degrees! — but that’s not stopping certain hardy residents of the sizable apartment structure at 1214 Polk from opening their windows and drying their laundry au naturale. We’re impressed. 46 degrees in San Francisco, particularly along this gusty urban corridor between Bush and Sutter, feels like autumn in the Yukon. This is the southern edge of Polk’s transitional zone, where it emerges from the sleazy chic of “nitespots” like Vertigo and Blur and slowly crawls toward more prim territory northward up into Russian Hill. The upstairs residences on this block are decidedly ordinary, but there’s a dichotomy at work between, for example, the stained glasswork at O’Reilly’s Holy Grail and the $5 haircuts and $20 facials across the road at the International College of Cosmetology II. Of course, Polk St. has always been known as one of San Francisco’s more diverse business thoroughfares....

Researching San Francisco history means spending way too much time sitting in the dark. In the library, we mean, staring at microfilm of old newspapers. Hours of scanning those scratched and blurry archives makes us a little punchy, so we blinked and rubbed our eyes at this gruesome headline from the February 13, 1902 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. We wondered momentarily if it was a prescient comment on the state of contemporary......

Yeah, we could hardly believe the headline ourselves. Do people have no shame? We missed this one, but yesterday Mayor Gavin Newsom's town car was vandalized by a parolee. Outside Newsom's Russian Hill apartment, Gregory Burgos, 41, was sauntering down the road, saw le Gav's shiny black car along with the two officers inside it (assigned to protect the Mayor), pulled out a sharp object of sorts, and scraped it along the side of......

Exploring San Francisco through the lens of city blocks, Blocker is a weekly series by Charles Hodgkins. Look for it on SFist each Wednesday, around the lunching hour. View the map of all published Blocker episodes. Blocker, No. 20: Broadway in Russian Hill It’s never achieved the kind of celebrity the fallen Berlin Wall did. It doesn’t separate clashing cultures the way Belfast’s Falls Road / Shankill divider still does. Roger Waters didn’t perform......

Photo of six kids in a huge stroller in Civic Center...

Photo of s sign prohibiting photography in Russian Hill...

Hey, tomorrow's Saturday. You were going to have a few stiff ones anyway, right? May as well have them at the John Barleycorn. From 1-5 p.m. tomorrow there will be a free BBQ at this the historic pub...

Here's todays news...

Quick -- which one of those pictures above is of Valencia Street in SF and which is of Williamsburg in Brooklyn? Bay Area blogger Overstated has put together his list of what New York neighborhoods correspond to which San Francisco ones. Check out his list, and let the great debates begin! Here's some calls we agree with: --Totally Williamsburg is the Mission. Last time we were on Bedford Avenue, honest to God we thought......

Those of us you who live or work near the Nob Hill/Russian Hill/Chinatown area are conveniently located near the biggest-bang-for-your-buck yoga in town. Yogic Motion's intro offer of $20 for 30 days of unlimited yoga is impossible to resist and a very smart tactic. "Everyone can go to the ATM and withdraw a twenty," explained Yogic Motion owner Brian Monnier. And for that $20 you can do yoga every day for a month. Then you will be hopelessly hooked. And hey, we gotta giveaway too. Start off your new year right and enter to win a free month of unlimited classes at Yogic Motion. ...

We know the frustration of driving around the block, constantly searching for a parking spot. We're guessing we’re not the only SFister who occasionally has to drive (for work) that may sometimes feel this way. Been there, done that. It’s likely not news to anyone, and we hope we don’t receive angry comments telling us we shouldn't be driving at all in our fair city. ...

Ever since the Examiner has been bought by religious arch-conservative Philip Anschutz, everyone has been waiting to see how the Examiner would fit it's publisher's political views into a free daily in the most liberal city in America. Sometimes they manage to do it (sort of) but every once in awhile, the veil is lifted as it were and the Examiner goes a little nutty. Like today. For their main editorial, they implore San Francisco to honor economist Milton Friedman. ...

The dining scene in Hayes Valley got a little rough-and-tumble Friday night, as a car fleeing the scene of an accident on Oak and Webster smashed into Cafe Delle Stelle on Gough and Hayes. Fortunately, the car missed the front windows, but a bar from a street sign hit two pedestrians on the sidewalk, and three people were taken to the hospital with injuries as Delle Stelle employees and people from the restaurant next door extinguished the car fire that subsequently erupted. In the scene, no one managed to stop the two men who sprinted out of the car and fled the scene. A San Mateo man is recovering after an accident on Sunday, when he was run over by his own car. The man had parked his van on the street, but after he got out of the car, it began to roll backwards. The man then tried to jump back in, but fell out, and the van ran over his leg. The van rolled back about 70 feet and stopped after hitting a 1994 Mercedes. Emergency brake! ABC 7 is reporting that at noon today, a MUNI bus will go out of control in Russian Hill after a bus driver has some kind of medical-related blackout. Watch out around Hyde and Leavenworth in a few hours! (We assume this happened like yesterday or something; we in particular are really in no position to mock other people's typos.) And 30-minute BART delays this morning -- say it along with us: Switching Problems. Picture of car from CBS 5; picture of bus from ABC 7...

Well, the cat's out of the bag about the new blog from Gawker Media. We've known for a while, but have been pretty good about keeping mum about it due to this SFist's work with Fleshbot. As PJ Corkery revealed Wednesday, it's going to be called Valleywag, and it's going to be helmed by the affable Nick Douglas, who's moving on from his post as editor at Blogebrity. Last night Spot-On's Chris Nolan held......

Today, SFist would like to hoist a few for a man who has brought probably more joy and merriment to anyone over the past hundred years. In fact, one could argue that he's probably had more of an impact on people's lives over the past century or so than anyone. The man? Master Brewer Joseph Owades, inventor of Lite beer and Microbrews, the Thomas Edison of beers. Owades, a Bay Area resident who lived in Sonoma, died yesterday at 86. ...

In which SFist eats our way around the Bay Area in alphabetical order. Because they have free Wi-Fi connection, we could have written this review live from Nook, in the heart of Russian Hill. But, despite our internet addiction, we prefer to travel with a simple moleskin notebook (no lines). Nook is a quirky little cafe identified by rosy splashes of colour and warm red and dark woods that brightly fill the space previously......

Oh, you gotta check out the picture of this on the front page of the Chron this morning (not online, unfortunately). So a tourist is visiting our fair city, driving a rented SUV. You know how it is when you rent a car -- whoops, I accidentally turned on the windshield wipers, are those my fog lights?, etc. Well, this tourist smells a funny smell and notices that his emergency brake has been on the entire time he's been tooling around Russian Hill. Well, he stops on a scenic block, fiddles with it, and finally gets the brake off. As soon as he turns off the brake, though, the car starts rolling backwards downhill. Guess where he is? Lombard and Hyde -- the crookedest street in the world!! (yes, we know that street in Potrero is actually crookeder.) He loses control of the SUV trying to navigate the turns backwards, it flips over, and he and his daughter have to break their way out of the window. They're both fine, or we wouldn't be giggling so hard. In our two other obligatory crime listings, Anna Ayala the Finger Lady is reporting that people are sending her anti-Hispanic mail, and there was a murder in the Mission at 20th and Folsom last night. ...

We're not normally in the habit of endorsing tribe.net - it's a little too Burning Man for our tastes - but no SF-geek should go without reading this blurb about the origins of the neighborhood names. A fifth-generation Californian who goes by "Big Daddy" (not, we assume, his Christian name) has compiled the info on The Neighborhoods from a weath of resources, and it contains such nifty tidbits as: Russian Hill is named for the......

In what is becoming a near-yearly holiday tradition, the lights are out in the Marina, Pacific Heights, and Russian Hill. PG&E says 13,500 people have their power out, probably due to a problem at the Marina substation. No word yet on the cause - and we're certain that it has nothing to do with SF's oh-so-tasteful power conservation measures. Update: A roving correspondant (or possibly a stumbling drunk) informs us that lights are on downtown,......

The Chron today does a feature on the biggest architectural eyesores in San Francisco. ...