The Usual Suspects passed us the following note in homeroom recently: Word is that a high-level staffer is departing the Mayor's office. But since none of the Real Media have confirmed anything, we won't name names, because we're too chicken to do so. But stay tuned - we'll post links as soon as some reporters and editors agree it's worth running with... But who, you ask? Well, according to San Francisco Sentinel (An aside:......

With its umbilical sliced, face slapped, and shivering body wrapped in a toasty blanket, the new Muni double-decker bus has finally arrived. San Francisco Sentinel has the story (as well as a few more images) for you. And we must admit: the buses are not that bad looking. With the little spray of hearts at the tail-end? Not bad at all. Your thoughts? The buses will (temporarily) go into action on December 12. Enjoy......

While reading the San Francisco Sentinel, we couldn't help but notice that Pat Murphy has made himself an extremely awesome personalized SFist t-shirt! (we don't have the rights to run the picture here, but it's the last picture on the page). LOVE! The San Francisco Sentinel IS First-Ist! Thanks for the support, Pat! Anyways, if Pat's shirt inspires you to make your own personalized SFist gear too, check out our Spreadshirt.com shop, which should be......

Breaking news on a Friday afternoon -- Gavin Newsom's chief of staff Steve Kawa has resigned. Stated reason: "I want to spend more time with my amazing family." Okay, an announcement made at 3:42 p.m. on a Friday, the spending more time with my family excuse -- obviously this is really big news! Problem is.... we have absolutely no idea what the significance of this is to the Newsom administration. Is this good for Newsom?......

Happy Thanksgiving! --Speaking of Thanksgiving, thanks very much to Pat Murphy of the San Francisco Sentinel, who was nice enough to pass along William Wilson's picture of Gavin and squeeze of the moment Jennifer Siebel. Here's another picture of the couple at Stanlee Gatti's art exhibition. --It looks like after the provisional ballots are counted, incumbent Johnnie Carter may just squeak by John Rizzo (the Green Party candidate) for the SF Community College board,......

You know, we never got that string of silver anti-Daly beads from Pat Murphy.... Pat Murphy, as you guys probably know, edits the local political blog San Francisco Sentinel, the publication that showed us how Chris Daly rolls, and which provided us with some stiff competition for our prestigious Pubbies award (it was of course an honor to be considered among such an august group). The combination of Murphy's elliptical Variety-style gossipy prose and the......

Otherwise known as stories we missed while we were on vacation... -The last time we heard from Krissy Keefer, the Green candidate for Congress, she and some of her gal-pals were banging the Taiko drum and handing out cookies to celebrate her official entrance into the race. We maybe a little fuzzy on our American history, but we think Lincoln started that way too. Anyways, we hadn't heard from her since then but last week, she and her Merry Band of Dancers took part in a celebration of Fidel Castro's 80th birthday, which the San Francisco Sentinel described as a "spectacular evening ensemble of music, song, dance and poetry." Keefer's dance troupe performed and Keefer performed the monologue during the performance. You know, nothing says "striving for mainstream political acceptance" like staging dance performances to celebrate Fidel Castro. While it's not official, word has it that Keefer is in talks to take part in a new VH-1 reality show "Dancing With Dictators." It's not know yet who'll she be dancing with, but we here the Stacey Keibler/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad team will be pretty hard to beat. ...

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......

So, Gavin's been pretty chatty about Muni lately, hasn't he? First up, he's alleging that some cable car operators are stealing fares, "because on three occasions he rode the cable cars and handed over his $5 cash fare but never received the required receipt." He's also brought up hiring more fare inspectors, which we hope is not the same thing as the once proposed plan to allow Muni drivers to make fare citations. The Mayor's......

What's everyone got against the San Francisco Sentinel these days, anyways? It's got beautiful photography, keeps an ear firmly planted on the ground of City Hall, and runs a fairly-entertaining gossip column to boot! Well, sure, there was that H. Brown controversy, but that seems to have resolved with H's summary axing from the site, right? Well, not quite. So all in this week, editors Pat Murphy and Luke Thomas are besieged on all sides. So SF political newssite Usual Suspects dropped the Sentinel from its blogroll this week. No reason was given, but Murphy's weekly gossip column seems to imply (if you can get through the obscurantist prose) that Alex Clemens said the Sentinel runs articles based on advertiser preference and doesn't get balancing quotes from all sides before running stories. But SFist is on the Suspects blogroll too and we don't get quotes from even one side before we run anything! What gives? Do we need to start reporting now or something too? On the left flank, Supervisor Chris Daly revives his smoldering feud with Murphy and reports that he's gotten a letter from the City Attorney that he believes makes clear that the Sentinel should be considered a political committee and thus should disclose all its donors to the ethics commission. And Supervisor Aaron Peskin wrote a letter to the Sentinel (scroll down) accusing it of being a Gavin Newsom love machine, to which the Sentinel accused Peskin of just being sore that the Sentinel broke the news of a secret Supervisor powwow he didn't want out. So what's going on? Is this some kind of H. Brown-related fallout? An upsurge in anti-Newsom sentiment? An increased call for media accountability for the holiday season? Or did we just lose our copy of the memo announcing that it's Everyone Hates Pat month? ...

....video goo-goo, video blah-blah. Even as people continue to debate whether Officer Andrew Cohen's now-notorious film project, involving African-American officers eating out of dog bowls and Charlie's Angels parodies is racist/sexist, in poor judgment, both, or neither, the post-video postmortems have already begun. Newsom -- was he right to react so swiftly? Going overboard? Or just trying to distract us from the murder rate? Meanwhile, 8 of the suspended officers have been put back at their posts. One officer held his own press conference to state that his inclusion in the video (sticking his tongue out) was from outtakes from a training video they were shooting and he had absolutely no idea the clips would be used in a potentially-sexist manner. The latest? So remember how this whole thing started because "someone" leaked the clips to the press? Well, the San Francisco Sentinel is reporting that they have an email showing that the supposed leak was actually from director Andrew Cohen himself! Is this just to get attention? To get his co-workers in trouble? To get his attorney friend some more bad publicity? And why's Cohen got five separate lawyers in the first place? Funny, the video's not nearly as interesting as the subsequent drama. ...

A few days ago, Pat Murphy handed the keys to the San Francisco Sentinel over to another political blogger, H Brown of the SF Bulldog. In a Week in Review type column, Brown starts giving out grades to members of the Board of Supervisors, based on his opinions and how they measured up to his progressive beliefs. He gives Sup. Gerardo Sandoval an A- and writes this as the reason why: "For taking one for the team in fighting Donald Fisher pretty much alone. I feel almost responsible because I kept writing about the Jewish cabal of Fisher & Shorenstein & Blum & Goldman & Hellman and how they're playing Sim City with San Francisco. It's true that they think they're better than all of us. It's true that a big part of why they think they're better than us is because they're Jewish. That's all true. But, you better not say it if you have any property to lose. Or, a family to raise. ...

Members of SEIU Local 790 employed by the San Francisco Unified School District plan to announce their strike as early as Wednesday. We confirmed information posted on Indybay with a representative from the union yesterday. According to the Chronicle, the strike will not be legal under state law until ten days after a recommendation from a fact-finding panel is issued and considered by both the union and the district, which at the earliest would......

H. Brown is what we like to call a "San Francisco Character" -- the kind of person who makes living in San Francisco even more interesting and colorful. Love him or hate him, he won't water down his opinions or rhetoric for his sake or yours. He's run for office more often than Gavin Newsom, whom he cornered at Ross Mirkarimi's recent art fete in order to lobby him to mark the fresh-water reserves......

On Wednesday we relished reading Matier and Ross's column about a brouhaha involving the San Francisco Film Commission. Seems that while shooting days in The City are up, all is not well between the commissioners and the executive director, Stefanie Coyote -- whom loyal SFist readers will remember from her previous brouhaha with deposed Treasure Island impresario Tony Hall over the Rent production. So Stefanie gets in a fight with former deputy director Michael Billington......

Yes, that's our fair mayor washing the feet of a constituent at yesterday's Project Homeless Connect outreach event. Hundreds of volunteers and the homeless they aim to help were on hand to provide medical, counseling and housing services. The San Francisco Sentinel has more coverage up today on their homepage with great pictures from Luke Thomas. As tipster Kimo pointed out, "Whatever you think of Gavin – nice symbolism – I can’t imagine Brown......

It seems that after contributing to Pat Murphy's San Francisco Sentinel for nearly five years, Jim Meko, of the SOMA Leadership Council, is taking his point of view elsewhere, much to the dismay of Mr. Murphy. What happened? SFist Jon found Mr. Meko's column on the Beyond Chron website, calling it "a rosetta stone of local politics," as it definitely had a lot of great anecdotes about the whys and wherefores of who hates......

There was a whole lotta big news on the homeless the past week, long the Russian front of San Francisco politics. According to recent studies, we have fewer homeless people on the streets, fewer homeless people dying in the hospitals, and fewer homeless not getting help in services. These numbers, of course, are open to debate and are, but it's still exciting enough that we couldn't wait to tell the guy who's camped out in front of my apartment. The best news and the most controversial news was the report claiming that there are 2000 fewer homeless people living on the streets of the city compared to 2002. The census was undertaken by about 250 volunteers who scoured the streets, parks, underpasses and DeCroix toilets over a 12 hour period in January and is required required by Federal law as a way to measure funding over the next couple of years. The good news is that in reaching the numbers, San Francisco is eligible for matching federal funds. The bad news is that those matching federal funds are probably about to be cut by our compassionate President. ...

Mayor Gavin the N, fresh from meat-slicing duties, found his press conference on how he plans to use funds from Prop 63 (money for mental health services) upstaged by caroling progressives protesting the budget cuts, one of whom was wearing a Grinch mask and a nametag that said "GAVIN." One of the others was, of course, Chris Daly. Mirkarimi did his part too, accusing Gavin of deliberately scheduling his Prop 63 press conference to distract the press from winsome little Cindy Who. The San Francisco Sentinel, which will be shutting down soon, has some terrif pictures from the event. (We wish someone had dressed the dog up with those adorable fake reindeer horns, though, but these are minor details.) And as the Examiner reported, the man dressed up as the Grinch said, "I always get stuck in these dumb things. At least it's not 80 degrees out and I'm not Darth Vader." ...