Earlier this month we mentioned that The Decemberists' five-night engagement at the Fillmore was canceled. It was going to be the highlight of our week, but we guess tofurkey will just have to do. This week, our picks are Travis who are playing with Maximo Park at the Fillmore tomorrow night. Friday night at the Fillmore, The Drones (listen to "Shark Fin Blues" here) are opening for Band of Horses, an indie-rock band based......

As we only learned from reading the comments on our whiny post about the weather, there was just an earthquake in Berkeley about 30 minutes ago. It was a 3.0, centered near Claremont Ave. in the hills. That other quake yesterday was in Berkeley too. We didn't feel a thing (we never feel earthquakes unless something starts rumbling), but if you did, you can report it here.......

Photo and discussion of new reusable plastic shopping bags offered for sale at local stores...

SFist Nick forwarded along an unintentionally-hilarious article by professional provocateur Christopher Hitchens from earlier this week in Slate. In this article, Hitchens mostly complains about Conrad Black, the Canadian press tycoon recently convicted of corporate fraud, but check out this kicker at the end! Postscript: I am writing this from the San Francisco Bay Area, where all summer a local politician named Ed Jew has been in trouble over his filing of an allegedly bogus......

Did anything happen at all in the San Francisco Bay Area today? All we've been doing is monitoring the Paris Hilton back to jail news! MOOOOOOM!!!!! --Beer and wine are okay for the North Beach Festival next week, but no hard alcohol. --More folks are getting laid off from the Chronicle. The Chron has launched a Portraits In Grief-like feature. --The Special Olympics are in Berkeley this weekend. --An old theater on Market Street (the......

Every now and then, when the sand moves, you can see the remnants of shipwrecks on the shore of Ocean Beach -- and yesterday, folks enjoying the warm weather at low tide caught a glimpse of the remains of the King Philip clipper ship. A pirate ship? A tragic capsizing? What's the word? Well, the King Philip sailed in the mid 1800s, and primarily carried guano or lumber. On its final voyage, it (she? Is......

So hey, we've got some sad news. SFist is sorry to report that our beloved sports guru and fun-loving grammar anarchist Jon Shurkin is stepping down as editor. We're going to miss him and his dyspeptic-with-a-twinkle style. (No hate in the comments, please -- we're very sad!) BUT: our loss can be your gain! Do you want to edit SFist? Gothamist HQ is looking for an editor with a point of view about the......

You'd think that after our ungrateful sniping about the way we were (without our knowledge) nominated for a "Pubby" award, that the San Francisco Bay Area Publicity Club would blacklist us from all future events. However, it was not to be, as we just recieved notification that we were nominated again this year! (This is the part where we'd link to the award information on the BAPC site, but they barely mention it as of......

Although the real-estate bubblewatchers got a head start on the festivities some time last year, we have been waiting until there's a whole lot of data before we begin the "Woe is us!" chant over our monthly (fixed) mortgage statement. That data has all fallen into our laps in the last two days. Zillow issued a report on how well the San Francisco Bay Area did, real estate sales-wise, for this year's second quarter. After......

Shoppers trying to enjoy the a/c at the Oakridge Mall in San Jose on Sunday afternoon got less cool air than they were hoping for when the straining mall transformer outside the movie theater blew up. Witnesses reported seeing the lights flicker, hearing a huge boom, and then seeing sparks. In light of the panic and lack of power for the mall, Oakridge threw up its hands and decided just to close for the rest......

Man, every day in 2005 had some kind of good San Francisco Bay Area news story -- whether it was the lady who planted the finger in the Wendy's chili, Bill O'Reilly, explosions downtown, anarchist yutzes in the Mission, and nude art in bars, to pick some totally random examples we pulled from a disorganized riffling through the SFist archives search engine. How can we pick just one favorite news story for the entire......

Last week we featured some of the more usual holiday fare, but the San Francisco Bay Area is known for its unusual holiday shows as well....

We have been thinking of the late 90s lately. One reason is that we feel this space has shifted paradigms: we haven't been reviewing restaurants for the readers lately, doing R2R as the Bloombergs of the world would call it if there was any money to be made; we have been going one step up in the pyramidal scheme, reviewing reviewers and now two restaurant guides focusing on our city. The two books, below......

Well, it's official -- Dan Gillmor's "citizen journalism" project is here -- and it's called Bayosphere. Well get to that in a second. First, we'll let Dan introduce the project in his own words: The promise of the Internet was simple, but incredibly powerful: to be a medium through which we could connect and collaborate, for mutual benefit. It's happening. As the Net matures, we are learning to write as easily and fluently as......

SFist loves local magazines, from Bitch to Other to Dwell. (And before all you "Wavefans" from the same IP address write in, the answer is "no".) We're so happy to welcome The Skinny, a new Bay Area publication, to the mix. According to their site "The Skinny is a quarterly guide to the San Francisco Bay Area that caters to an underserved group of residents and visitors between the ages of 18 and 34,......

San Francisco's favorite but least read Q&A columnist, the Essefficist, answers questions about simple math, bay windows, and the Transbay Terminal....

We have to be transparent about such things, so we'd just like to let our readers know that SFist has been purchased by SF Metblogs, who in turn have been purchased by Yahoo. What does this mean to you? Absolutely nothing. We'll still bring you the eight to ten or more posts everyday on issues that are important to folks in the San Francisco Bay Area. Why did we sell out, do you ask?......

It was just off the plane at LAX when the urge to trade business cards took hold... So begins our sordid tale of nerd debauchery here in Austin. The San Francisco Bay Area is representing to the fullest extent of the law here in Texas, and we've had a hard time keeping up on all the panels featuring Bay Area blog superstars. Even Jeffrey Zeldman's keynote address on Saturday, which was a one man......

A weekly escape from the humdrum world of going to bars without writing reviews of them. By stalwart barrespondent, Drew. I believe several months ago we put forth the notion that "Pirate" was the new "Tiki." Well, since that time "Pirate" has become the "Old Pirate" and "Tiki" has taken back its crown as... well...as "Tiki." Of course in Canada the whole thing's flip-flopped, but we digress. The San Francisco Bay Area, along with......

Sometimes, SFist likes to dress up as a pretty, pretty princess. We're so cute afterall. When we're really feeling pathetic we put on our old prom dress, the one we wore when we lost our virginity like the cliche we are, and remember the good old days of drinking under the bleachers and cutting class to go to the mall. Why, yes, we did grow up in Mayberry, why do you ask? Well, after we......

Ask Jeeves bought Bloglines. Honestly, we're surprised any of these dot coms still has the cash to do that sort of thing....

Ack. The camera broke. Far be it from the Trimethyldioxypurist to post a coffee shop review without a photo. Time for a bit of a screed. After the discovery of the holy grail of Bay Area coffee last week, it's a good time to sit back and take stock of why we do this. And how we go about it. Is it time for a change in format? After a mere three months? And......

Ah, it’s raining today and for those of us working, nothing quite sums up the first day back after the holidays like it being grey and miserable outside. It looks like it’s going to be grey and miserable for awhile as five-day forecasts call for rain, rain, and more rain. When it rains, there’s nothing quite like the high-comedy that comes with watching the local news broadcasts as they spend what always feels like......

SFist's eclectic group of contributors includes a member of Impact Theatre. This means we've gotten to see this and past shows for free, but we still look at them from our traditional candid perspective. We continue to think Impact Theatre is cool and wish them all the success in the world, for we feel their mission to "fill an unmet need for community, storytelling, and direct experience for younger, underserved audiences in the San Francisco......

New York is such a big city full of bright lights and superstars, and you can get anything (and we do mean anything) you want delivered to your door at almost any time of the day or night. Great parks, bars, music venues, weather. Well, not so much on that last one. There is, however, one thing you're going to have a hard time finding in Manhattan, or most of the tri-state area, in......

Everyone out here talks so contentedly about how we live in our little idyllic utopian blue-state liberal/progressive/left-wing bubble -- so it comes as that much more of a shock to learn that a pro-choice doctor who works for Planned Parenthood in Contra Costa county has been targeted by Operation Rescue. ...

The fight between Mayor Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors over renaming Candlestick by Monster Cable, Inc....

SFist had a great time at Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies, Impact Theater's ninth season opener. If you don't know Impact Theater, they're a Berkeley-based company focused on "producing new plays by emerging playwrights that are relevant, interesting, and provocative", their market being the "younger, underserved audiences in the San Francisco Bay Area". (In the spirit of full disclosure, a member of the SFist staff - not this reviewer - is deeply......