Similar to the fatal accident that happened in November, another pedestrian -- engrossed in a phone call, ignorant as to what was happening around him -- was stuck and killed by a train in San Leandro. According to the Chronicle, it seems that: The victim, a man who was not immediately identified, was struck at 12:30 p.m. by a northbound Capitol Corridor train at the Alvarado Street crossing, about 8 miles south of the......

-- Tastes of the City: Help raise money for the George Mark Children's House in San Leandro by attending this culinary bash. Young and "philanthropic-minded" guys and gals meet and mingle while binge eating on food and wine from such places as Andalu, Jack Falstaff, and more. Goes from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Forum at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; $60. (!) -- Mathematicians, Madame Blavatsky Overdrive, and Odd Nosdam:......

-- Good God, Genesis (alas, the band) is back. [BeyondChron] -- HA! Even bunnies know that square-mouthed Giada De Laurentiis is a wee bit porn-y at times. [CHOW] -- San Leandro teen killed in car crash on (the) 680. [Chron] -- Gap laptop stolen along with the personal data of over 800,000 retail queens. Whoops. [Examiner] -- Party poopers: Apple brings down the hammer on hacked iPhones. (Dear AT&T, Hate you much. xo, us)......

-- Gross, sticky, exhausting, hot weather begins. But! Ride public transit for free tomorrow during a Spare the Air Day. [Examiner, SFMTA] -- Gang members, extortion, and THC.. [Bluoz] -- 12-year-old Jose Trujillo of San Leandro dies after a skateboarding accident. Sad. [Chron] -- Mick LaSalle laughs hysterically at cute, young, blonde girl's misfortune. [Chron Blogs] -- Closet-case Senator "has never been gay." He's just a guy who digs other guys, dude. [CBS5] --......

The last of our slightly less-than-timely coverage of the Alternative Press Expo, which took place last weekend, focuses on folks telling their sequential art stories in a longer form. Which, as much as we love the other stuff, is really what we dig the most. We focus on Ted Naifeh, Dave Dwonch, Joseph Costirlos, Von Allan, Jaimel M. Hemphill, and Javier Gonzalez....

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express. A Oakland teacher beats up a social worker and threatens her students -- and still can't be fired. Why can't you get a free weekly in San Leandro? Cover article: The agony of med students waiting to find out where they're going to be doctors. (It's done by computers.) Do you think male poets read Bitch Magazine? Goat meat on International Boulevard. Irish rockers on St. Patrick's Day.......

There was an evacuation of trains on the Fremont and Dublin-Pleasanton BART lines after a fire at a substation knocked out power to part of the system. The fire started at about 10:15 this morning near the Coliseum stop, eventually knocking out power between the Fruitvale and San Leandro stations....

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express. Strong feelings about Superintendant Sheila Jordan! Some land deal involving Ignacio de la Fuente. No one wants to be a cop. Cover: Get someone to buy you an illegal gun at Trader Sports in San Leandro. Strangers with Candy is weird. Jonathan Kauffman's last review before he heads out to the Seattle Weekly. Godspeed, Jonathan -- godspeed. And music venues' insurannce rates have skyrocketed. ("Insurannce" is deliberately misspelled......

When will people learn that when it comes down to train vs. car, the train always wins? This one is especially sad: a man suspected of being in possession of cocaine apparently attempted to evade capture by an Alameda County sheriff's deputy by pulling in front of stopped traffic at the 66th Avenue and San Leandro Street Amtrak crossing. The train hit the car, killing him and an unrestrained toddler. What is going on in......

Meat may indeed be murder (or perhaps suicide), as the erstwhile Sausage King of San Leandro, who was convicted of murdering three meat inspectors last year, was found dead in his San Quentin jail cell early this morning. An autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death. And the annual race to the final murder count begins, as SF hits murder number 96 in the early am hours of Boxing Day, with a shooting outside the Velvet Lounge on Broadway. Oakland is fast on our heels with murder 93, with two shootings over the weekend in East Oakland. ...and hey, number one on the threatdown -- bears! Vinters in Napa have started asking for permits to shoot the bears that munch away on this year's cabernet grape harvests. The Aetna Springs Vineyard shot four bears after the owner began to fear for the safety of his workers (and after his fences and vines were damaged) -- but the woman who owns the golf course down the street from Aetna Springs calls it "wine for blood, life versus profit," saying that it's wrong to move into a wildlife area and then kill off the wildlife. Other neighbors think the bears are "neat." ...

Traffic on southbound 880 was backed up for five hours yesterday after a CHP officer shot and killed a delusional man in Fremont. The 30-something year old man was being taken to the hospital by his parents because of his suicidal behavior, when he jumped out of the moving car and rolled into a ditch on the side of the road. His parents pulled over and were attempting to coax him back in the car when the CHP officer showed up. The man, who weighed about 230 pounds, then began grunting at and lunging at the officer, who first pepper-sprayed him, then shot him when he didn't stop. Traffic backed up for 10 miles, all the way to San Leandro. More anarchist fallout -- SF police chief Heather Fong is personally reviewing all the 911 and radio tapes from last month's Black Block G8 protest fiasco, where a cop ended up with a fractured skull. The tapes show a number of frantic Mission residents reporting rocks being thrown into cars and a dispatcher that kept getting 22nd and 25th Street mixed up. Poor Officer Shields -- the tapes show that he was so overwhelmed and alone, he had to call in his own broken skull to HQ. And eeps, the Oakland PD is investigating a mysterious kidnapping, attack, and sexual assault on an Oakland girl, who was left for dead on a cul de sac in a Hayward neighborhood. The 16-year-old girl, who was drifting in and out of consciousness, reported that she had been stabbed in the heart. ...

Special "SFist Rita is out of town, so bear with us" edition. So sad. The San Leandro police department is on the hunt for one Irving "Gotti" Ramirez of Newark who is suspected of killing a SLPD officer. The officer was responding to a complaint about noisy loiterers when Ramirez and an accomplice allegedly drove up in a Thunderbird and shot him in the head. The officer, a three year veteran, leaves behind a wife......

All East Bay edition! An elderly man walking to his daily mah-jong game was killed in Oakland's Chinatown last Thursday morning by a big rig racing through a turn to get onto 880. Heartrending details: his wife happened to see his body as she was running errands; she identified him by his baseball cap; and he was eagerly anticipating the birth of his first great-grandchild in two months. The big rig driver may not have realized what happened, since the truck paused briefly but then sped away. For once, the Raiders are trying to get out of a lawsuit -- the Silver and Black filed papers asking to be dismissed from the lawsuit between Marcus Williams and Bill Romanowski concerning Romanowski's possibly steroid-related attack on Williams during a training session last year. Romanowski had attempted to drag the Raiders into the suit, claiming that the team should also be responsible for his having pulled off Williams's helmet and breaking Williams's eye socket. And authorities are investigating charges that counselors in Alameda County's San Leandro juvenile hall have been forcing incarcerated teens into "unauthorized wrestling matches" with each other late at night. Wrestlers were reportedly rewarded with candy bars, drinks, and time outside of their cells. ...

...while we wait for the inauguration protests to start! Last week's winner, the Weekly. Matt Smith: did you know it's illegal for dogs to have sex in public in the City? Cover article: using California state procedural laws to stymie the rights of people molested by priests. Meredith Brody lunches like a lady at the Neiman-Marcus Rotunda. A pullout guide to your New Year's Resolutions: the usual list: weight loss, playing an instrument, things to do in the city (hey, have you taken one of these nifty cable cars?) and a list of phone numbers for kicking substances. OK Then's list of the next new "hyooj" bands for 2005. Also, OK Then got ticketed on a MUNI even though he had a transfer. Man, what gives with the MUNI cops lately? You should be exempt if you voted for Newsom's tax increases. Not our fault they didn't pass! Savage Love: three-ways, childhood traumas reemerging as sexual fantasies, humping someone's leg, and the word "santorum" wins a linguistic prize for 2004. The EBX: The dream cartoonist illustrates a dream featuring Donnie Wahlberg as an acting teacher. East Bay versus South Bay in the stem cell wars. Trash in the San Leandro watershed. Cover article: folk singer Dave Dondero at the Golden Gate Fields racetrack. An Alameda winery is moving to Brentwood. A profile of Mike Park's peace-promoting label Asian Man. The Guardian and the Weekly of the Week after the jump. ...

Tune into KALW 91.7 next Tuesday at 1 p.m. to hear San Francisco's first female fire chief and first female police chief (pictured at left) speaking with SFist political reporter crush Adriel Hampton through the Commonwealth Club Broadcasts series (or stream it live now). Slippery criminals! A bank robbery suspect waiting to be interviewed by the FBI pried open a screen in the Federal Building in Oakland and then casually walked out past the U.S. Marshals office and out of custody. We hope he was whistling as he did it. The FBI re-caught the guy at the San Leandro BART station. And the Los Gatos police have made an arrest for murder in a missing persons case that's been unsolved for three years. The victim had gone out drinking in June 2001, met two guys at a bar, and then disappeared. The police finally solved the case when, about two years after the disappearance, someone living nearby contacted the authorities and said she'd found a rug matching the description of a rug missing from the victim's house. The police were able to trace fibers from the rug to the murder suspect. ...

Nothing the like Jesus' birthday around the corner to get juries in the hangin' mood, apparently. We understand that getting home to your family for the holidays after a long sequestration would be a priority, but they could decide just as quickly to let them rot in a cell, tortured by their guilt (and fellow inmates). We sure think that any extended stay in San Quentin or Pelican Bay would probably be worse than......

Meredith Brody takes a couple of reader tips (oh boy, there are sure a few tips we'd like to give her), highlighting two relatively new but little known sushi joints, Oz and Amasia Hide's Sushi Bar. Both sound pretty good, but we'd still rather spend our money on the kaiseki omikase at Minako any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Bonnie Wach waxes poetic over the Park Chalet, although a little EssEff......

Bay Area crime roundup...

EssEffist's coworker spent weeks in Oakland's jury pool waiting to find out if he would have to serve on a jury for five months. He couldn't talk about the case until he finally got rejected, but when he did, it was rich....