What a pretty name for a barge, yes? Morning fog, it seems, has temporarily delayed the investigation into yesterday's Richmond-San Rafael Bridge fender bender. Last night, while being guided by tugboats, the Cascade smacked into the east piling of the western span of the bridge. This comes on the heels of the Cosco Busan oil spill, which happened after the container ship rammed into the Oakland Bay Bridge. Read more about yesterday's non-harrowing incident......

According to the Coast Guard, "a barge has hit the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge" around 6 p.m. this evening. Yikes! The barge, reportedly carrying 63,000 barrels of heavy black oil, hit the east piling of the west span. So far there are no reports of any injuries or leakage. Ah, a light day. Anyway, according to ABC 7, this isn't the first time that a barge has smacked the bridge in question. It seems that......

While not on par with Christmas Day tsunamis, this storm is pretty nifty, huh? Golden Gate transit buses have stopped, power has been knocked out to hundreds -- yes, hundreds! - of thousands of people, and surely snow is falling really hard atop a mountain somewhere. But what must actually suck is this morning's nightmare traffic caused by the raindrops falling on our heads. Ahem: Marin/Contra Costa County: E-580, Richmond-San Rafael Bridge closed due......

What a perfect meeting of past, present, and future glories. Former Santana guitarist/now-and-forever Journey member Neal Schon is coming back to the North Bay (where he grew up and leaned how to strum) to help launch the first-ever Gibson Robot Guitar. Just what is the Gibson Robot Guitar, you ask? We have no idea. But let's go to the press release to find out! Ahem: it says that it's -- get this -- "the......

Readers responded with light speed and razor-sharp accuracy (more or less) when it came to detailing last night's devastating -- body-wash-plummeting-to-the-earth devastating! -- 5.6 quake. We will all look back on October 30, asking ourselves, where were we when the great 5.6 quake of '07 hit? Well, after sending out the we-hope-you're-still-alive-and-kicking call to the SFist team at large, they responded. Here are a few of the shattering moments in the lives of some......

Bay Area polluters (that's all of us, kids) are responsible for contaminating the Bay with such nasty toxic materials as sewage, flame retardants, and Teflon. Mother seals who eat contaminated fish, pass the chemicals through placenta, and then through milk to those adorable little seal pups we all love so much. Harbor seals near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge are now being studied to determine the effects of such exposure. Researchers hope that this new......

San Rafael-based Edutopia Magazine, which is brought to us by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, looks to the future in its latest issue, identifying 10 ideas or trends that its experts believe can improve K-12 education. We found them thought provoking, and hope you agree. ...

From the SFist Tips line: yet another daytime shooting yesterday, this time at 23rd and South Van Ness around 1:45 p.m, by the post office, and fatal. In a particularly brazen act, the shooters then drove by the SFPD Ingleside Station to drop off the body about an hour and a half later. You'll all be pleased to hear that the cops did at least manage to catch the person driving the car. Those activists......

SFist Wendy skips Harry Potter for the SF Jewish Film Fest! Who woulda thought. . . . we weren’t the only ones not completely immersed in isolation with the final Harry Potter book this weekend... although we did see a couple books neatly tucked under the seats at the Castro Theater on Saturday at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. If you weren’t there, well, then you missed out on a couple of good romantic......

We could've gone with a YouTube clip of the video for Love Is A Battlefield (totally one of the best videos ever), but we went instead for the Benatards doing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" at the Eagle Tavern -- that's right, Pat Benatar's playing a show tonight! If you can get up to the Marin County Fair in San Rafael, Ms. Benatar and her husband Neil Girardo will be performing hits like......

Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and RiffTrax returned to the Bay Area this holiday weekend for two live shows. We went to the Sunday show at the Rafael Film Theater in San Rafael, (a much more comfortable place to see the guys than Cobb's, even if it is booze-free). Like their previous San Francisco engagement, the shows were sponsored by the San Francisco Sketchfest, and we hope......

Okay, when those wayward whales were in Sacramento, we were like, whatever -- but now that the mommy and baby are past the Carquinez Bridge and going in the correct direction, we're all excited! (Over here at excessively-locally-focused SFist, you gotta get into our media coverage zone before we start paying attention.) So here's the progress report: they've got around 30 miles to go before they hit the ocean, and as the water gets more......

--They reopened the Macarthur Maze! And of course, now the bridge is backed up. --TiVo is getting a lot of angry emails after the triumphant conclusion of American Idol was cut off by recorders not padded with extra time. Always pad your live shows, people! --Left In SF notes that no one sees Tapioca Ed Jew in either his Sunset house or his Burlingame house. --There's a hilarious picture of Al Gore at his reading......

Oh hi Al Gore! Welcome to San Rafael, land of pleasure and delight. While you're here, don't miss the Marin Center Veterans' Memorial Auditorium. It's a lovely place -- just right for Keynote presentations and beards. But what's that? You're going to be speaking there on Wednesday, May 23 at 7PM? About your new book, The Assault on Reason? And you'll be signing copies? And we can buy tickets at http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1C003EA7BF17AF23?artistid=1126516& majorcatid=10005&minorcatid=104? That certainly......

Drove out to China Camp State Park with Sufjan Stevens on the stereo singing about Chicago. The air sat heavy with oil from the Eucalyptus trees and salt from the Bay....

As we mentioned earlier, those winds from last night's storm were awfully loud and when the wind is awfully loud, that means they're awfully strong. Like between 40-50 MPH strong. We're actually a little surprised we still have power as usually the power goes out at SFist HQ if there's even a mild gust. But while we still have power, there are plenty of people who don't have any right now. According to the latest news, about 52,000 people around the Bay Area are just this very minute wondering what one does without cable TV and the internet. This includes about 17,000 in the Santa Cruz and Monterey county areas and about 1,400 here in San Francisco. ...

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express. Rad dream cartoon this week. Feeding your pets raw meat. Are people trying to sneak into the Berkeley school system? Cover article: not sending juvies to jail. The Dixie Chicks play Oakland this Friday. The Slits are in town. A review of Xyclo -- Oakland Vietnamese restaurant, with a cool name. Old people went to the Rolling Stones show. And Tenacious D. Next up: the Bay Guardian. Nancy......

Call it the calm before the storm, or a brief respite from the dudely bravado of the District 6 and other election campaigning, but we are thrilled that we have multiple women's literature events to attend tonight: The Madrone Lounge (500 Divisadero at Fell) presents a joint reading with The May Queen contributors and editor Christina Amini and contributors from Before The Mortgage. The May Queen describes itself as a "fascinating collection of 27......

Yo, we've all thought about it, but it's not right to go and do it: irate MUNI passenger punches a bus driver, sending the driver to the hospital. The passenger's girlfriend got stuck in the rear door (it's unclear whether she was getting off or sneaking on) and the driver started driving. When the driver stopped 15 feet later, the boyfriend hit the driver in the face. The boyfriend faces felony charges. Ah, the always-reliable......

As if the Cal Greeks didn't have enough to worry about with the undercover cops swarming in -- the ladies of Alpha Omicron Pi got an unpleasant surprise as they answered their door yesterday morning at 2:30 a.m. to a young man, who then died from a gunshot wound. The Berkeley police had received a tip that there might have been a shooting earlier that night at the site of the former Tower Records on......

Man, if you want to go drag-racing, don't kill members of a royal family -- the 18-year-old suspect burst into tears after a judge in San Mateo County refused to lower her bail from $3 million. The DA was unmoved, saying, "Highway 101 is not a video game and it's not a racetrack." That's right -- that's what 280 is. A rash of bomb threats! Yesterday, the Hall of Justice was evacuated and the bomb......

Submissions go to Yvesdroppings at gmail dot com. Girl in Brown Velour Jumpsuit: "I haven't been alone for 4 years. How long were we friends-with-benefits for -- 3 years?" --From Luisa/On a flight up to Oakland Very Audibly Ranting Old Guy: "All of San Francisco is one big psycho ward." blah, blah, blah... "San Rafael, they got their stuff together. This place? It's just one big nuthouse." -- From Mark/Cafe Triste in Northbeach He Wasn't......

Christopher Wilson, The kid who was driving the getaway car in the strange shooting of Dartmouth student Meleia Willis-Starbuck in Berkeley after a confrontation with several Cal football players this summer pled no contest to felony accessory to murder, and will testify against shooter Christopher Hollis. Wilson faces up to three years in prison. The facts of the situation that night get murkier and murkier, with people saying that Willis-Starbuck was "amped" and that she announced "That's my little brother right there" as the first shot was fired. For his part, Wilson says Hollis proudly said, "I just scared them cats away" after they took off, not realizing that he had shot his friend. Folks who can't just let the past be the past up in Marin -- a recently-graduated senior from San Marin High school pled guilty to causing $140,000 damage to his alma mater by turning on all the fire hydrants and releasing about a million gallons of water, which flooded the library, while another man was arrested for violating a stay-away order and kidnapping his ex-girlfriend on the campus of Dominican College in San Rafael. Fellas, you just gotta move on! And a man quietly eating an early lunch on Pier 28 (probably at Red's Java House) on Wednesday morning looked out over the beautiful blue bay and saw.... a floating dead body. Aaaaagh! Authorities are trying to identify the body, a 5'8" male weighing 175 pounds and approximately 25-40 years old. ...and after the jump, a summary of all your Blotter photos since November. Previous summaries here, here, and here....

As many legal observers expected, Gov. Schwarzenegger denied Stanley "Tookie" Williams's request for clemency, ">stating that (.pdf) there was strong evidence supporting the jury's guilty verdict, and that he doesn't really believe that Tookie has really reformed (various Nobel Prize nominations notwithstanding) because Tookie has never apologized for the killings for which he was imprisoned, and has never explicitly apologized for the murders committed in the name of the Crips. (Also, Tookie still supports George Jackson, who the governor says shows that Tookie continues to advocate for "violence and lawlessness."). Williams's attorney will file a renewed petition for clemency this afternoon, and can still appeal to the US Supreme Court. Meanwhile, his supporters are planning a 8 p.m. rally outside San Quentin. There's also a "walk for abolition," which started at 7 a.m. today at the Palace of the Legion of Honor and will end at San Quentin at 6. They should be around St. Paul's Church in San Rafael right about now if you want to meet up with 'em. We can't find any info on any pro-death penalty rallies but presumably, they'll be happening around the same time and at the same place as the anti- ones. ...

We here at SFist are looking forward to the The 21st Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema, which runs from Nov 3-9 at the Kanbar Hall and the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco, at the Parkway in Oakland, and at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. Film Arts and Larsen Associates are offering free passes to several of the Fest screenings to SFist readers, starting with today's giveaway of passes for you and......

Our pals at Larsen Associates have come through again, giving us run of engagement passes for Reel Paradise, which opens tomorrow at the Lumiere in here in the city, the Act in Berkeley and the Rafael in San Rafael. John Pierson, author of Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes, moved his family to a Fijian to operate a movie theater for a year. Documentarian Steve James (of Hoop Dreams renoun) joined the family to chronicle......

Stuck with a mini-van, the Trimethyldioxypurist ends up at a place where there's good parking and even better coffee: Cafe lo Cubano in Laurel Heights....

26 years ago there wasn't a single Film Festival celebrating the Jewish experience -- 25 years later, there are hundreds of them! As with so many things, San Francisco's was one of the first, bringing audiences a great mix of International Jewish cinema. This year's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is no exception, with a with a lineup of films from all over, special guests, and parties. You can catch films all over the......

SFist Amanda, presently on maternity leave, calls in with this report: Breaking news from Marin! Apparently, there was an attempted murder in Kentfield today, as two men in their 20s wearing white football jerseys shot and injured a resident of Upper Tonyon earlier this afternoon. The assailants escaped, and the area has been locked dopwn by Marin PD and S.W.A.T., all the way down into Gerstle Park. Wolf Grade into San Rafael, among other......

When we heard children's book author Jarrett J. Krosoczka, author of Good Night, Monkey Boy (a favorite with our nephew) had a new book out, we wondered how he'd top the wacky brilliance of Baghead, a story any of us who have trimmed our own bangs can relate to. Then he emailed us about his newest opus, Punk Farm. He told us, "I'm especially excited about it, so any plug that you could give......