A small shaker hit The Geysers near the border of Sonoma and Lake counties at 6:28 a.m. this morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. No one was hurt. It was a mere wisp of a quake, really. But these small shivers are always a good reminder to get prepared for The Big One. Tips, emergency numbers, do's, dont's, etc. are as follows: -- For more safety information about emergency on tips surviving an......

Police believe that a Santa Rosa man, who recently stabbed himself with a homemade spear just seconds before the fuzz burst through his front door early Sunday morning, is possibly connected to last Thursday's carjacking and rape incident involving a 29-year-old mother. According to the Gate, "Aristotle Quadra, 30, faces charges of carjacking, kidnapping, sexual assault and attempted murder. He is being held at a Santa Rosa hospital while being treated for self-inflicted stab......

Between the oil spill and Barry being his Bonds self, crime has been a wee bit sloooow over the past few days -- well, at least reports of foolish mischief seem sluggish. -- Santa Rosa fuzz have a suspect in the robbery/shooting death of Gurdip Singh, which took place at Bill's Market far away in the land of Santa Rosa this past Monday. Javier Pena, 37, is now in custody. Good ol' CBS 5......

Why, we've been so preoccupied with murder right down the street from SFist, we forgot that the rest of the Bay Area is also littered with shootings and bloody tomfoolery. Forgive us, won't you? Ahem: Two employees of Bill's Friendly were shot last night during a botched robbery attempt. One of the store's employees was killed, the other taken to a nearby hospital. (At right: the lone gunman's fierce image.) Another shooting in the......

-- The Breasts of Sherry Glaser: The protest-y Miss Glaser's comedy and peace activism show runs the gamut from her unsheathed mammary glands to an interpretation of 9/11 and the Twin Towers falling down. Oh my. (Warning: audience participation will occur!) Starts at 7:30 p.m. at The Marsh; $10-15. -- The Velvet Teen: The Velvet Teen rocks. Hard and with perfection. Because that's what they do in Santa Rosa. Be sure to see them......

We've got some follow-up news on Blotter items covered previously! In response to allegations by deceased Stanford engineering grad student May Zhou's father earlier this week that his daughter's death was a homicide and not self-inflicted, the Santa Rosa police released additional information from their investigation. Namely, they said they have videotape and receipts of her buying four bottles of sleeping pills from local drugstores in two days, and they have an email she sent......

More blotter-type news today -- sorry they're kind of downers. First up, remember May Zhou, the Stanford graduate student who was found dead in her car trunk in Santa Rosa? Well, her father remains convinced it was not a suicide, and cites a private autopsy report he's commissioned that shows blunt force trauma injuries. The offical police report, by contrast, showed no trauma injuries but did indicate toxic levels of Benadryl in her system. Zhou's......

That may be our favorite performance-disclaimer ever, surpassing even "the front rows WILL be splattered with watermelon." The theater department at Santa Rosa Junior College is launching an ambitious presentation of a Norwegian fairy tale that is, in their words, "Lion King-like." Ooh! Creepy masks and giant puppets are promised. (Santa Rosa's a little burg close to Calistoga and Guerneville, in case you were wondering.) Here's how the story of "East of the Sun......

Here's todays news...

Here's todays news...

Let's face it, in the peloton of American spectator sports, cycling got cracked off the back on the first climb out of town and is just now working its way back into the rear of the pack. Even with eight straight years of Americans winning the Tour de France, the biggest event in the cycling world, cycling has only the most tenuous of holds on the American consciousness. O'er the pond, the Europeans have more than a century of rich road racing history and cultural lore out front making a passionate pace.

One of the problems is that American race promoters and fans haven't quite figured out how to wrest maximum entertainment value out of a professional cycling race. Organizers of the 2007 Amgen Tour of California (TOC) understood this issue and came up with a great solution: circuit laps to finish the stages. Brilliant.

Stage 1 of the Amgen Tour of California (TOC) started out in the brilliant sunshine of Sausalito but ended 156.2 kilometers (km) later under a cloud of controversy in downtown Santa Rosa. In between, riders faced heavy winds, multiple crashes, and an entertaining collection of breakaways and points sprints. When it was all said and done though, Levi Leipheimer was still the hometown golden boy.

This was a stage for cycling geeks to Tivo and watch over and over. From a rolling start, the peloton quickly pulled a Category 4 climb up and over the shoulder of Mt. Tam and down the Panoramic Highway to Stinson Beach, following Highway 1 through beautiful West Marin. Local roadies finally got a chance to see how the international cycling elite handle our regular rides. On the Versus network television coverage, legend Phil Liggett praised the beauty of the Panoramic Highway, but commented that it was a little narrow to ride when open to vehicle traffic. Ha!

For most of the day it looked like a total Cinderella story for unknown Jason Donald, but when the very last rider of the 2007 Tour of California (TOC) prologue crossed the finish line Sunday, it was Levi Leipheimer who had tears in his eyes.

A Credit Agricole rider suffers his way up the last 300 meters to the finish line atop Telegraph Hill. Photo from SF_Chris.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the national anthem, Jean-Marc Marino of team Credit Agricole rolled down the starting chute at 1:00 p.m. sharp and the prologue was on. In a time trial like Sunday's prologue, riders race alone and against the clock rather than against each other en masse. Following Marino, 144 more riders attacked the course at one-minute intervals for the next two hours.

Clip in sports fans, between the weather and the Amgen Tour of California (TOC), it's going to be a great weekend for cycling in the Bay Area.

Whether you're tackling Mt.Tam on your Saturday morning club ride or comparing yourselves to the pros with a summit of Stage 3's infamous Sierra Hill climb, pack the sunscreen today and leave the rain shell behind.

On Sunday at 1:00 p.m., the TOC starts with the prologue, a 3.0 kilometer time trial from the Ferry building to Coit Tower.

A Stanford graduate student missing for five days was found dead in the trunk of her car in Santa Rosa, in what authorities are saying looks like a suicide. She was an PhD candidate in electrical engineering with two degrees from MIT and held several patents in the field of digital imaging. Her grieving parents only learned of her death when reporters contacted them. Okay, after that, we're going to keep the rest of the......

-Falun Gong not allowed in this year's Chinese New Year parade. -Almost half of the hospitals in California won't be earthquake compliant by 2012. -A car crash on Highway 101 near Santa Rosa kills four and injures two others. ...

>-Steve Jobs might still be in a little bit of trouble. -It may not be as cold as a witch's tit, but it's still pretty damn cold. ...

We got two interesting web sites/Google Maps to let everyone know about. ...

-Berkeley joins in on the Stadium fun. -Dems already start in with in-fighting: Pelosi backs John Murtha over Steny Hoyer. What kind of name is Steny anyways? ...

It is kind of silly to assign politics to restaurants or diets. But Cha-Ya, a relatively new Japanese restaurant serving only vegan food, struck us as a magnet for people left of the Kucinic wing of the Democrat party. Maybe Green party supporters or unrepentant Chomskyists. Or just basic wanna-be commune-living combi-driving Berkeleyans, as Cha-Ya is the sister restaurant of the similarly named Shattuck Ave eatery. Of course, this being SF, the place is packed.......

Some time ago, we met Steve Ford, who, among other things pulls a great shot of espresso. We met him during his tenure with the stalkerriffic Blue Bottle Coffee Company; since our encounter, he's moved onto another coffee-related venture as a roaster at Ecco Caffe in Santa Rosa. Steve recently had a not-so-pleasant experience--he fell out the third-story window of the Burlington Hotel in Port Costa, Calif. ...

For 127 of the best road cyclists in the world, it was five minutes of pain. For Americans Levi Leipheimer, Bobby Julich, George Hincapie, and Floyd Landis, it was a little less. For the American cycling peloton, veteran cycling announcer Paul Sherwen called it the Holy Grail they've been seeking. For the spectators, it was an instant classic....

A 3.4 magnitude earthquake hit the Hercules area of the East Bay around 10 a.m. this morning. But we didn't feel anything here in San Francisco, how about you? This report states that it was felt "as far north as Santa Rosa, as far east as Rancho Cordova, and as far south as Redwood City", so maybe we're just not that observant. BART was shut down briefly as a precaution, and the Contra Costa......

We don't know that it'll necessarily have any bearing on the discussion over the landmarking of San Francisco's Doggie Diner sign, but SFist wanted to note the passing of the sign's designer last weekend. Harold Sherwood Bachman designed the giant rotating dachshund heads for Al Ross, the owner of the chain. According to the Chronicle's obituary: "Mr. Bachman picked a dachshund because the menu featured 'wiener dogs,'' he said. 'I just made the drawings,'' Mr.......

Okay, did someone just flip a switch inside the brains of Bay Area pit bull mixes to the "kill the two-legged ones" setting? (Yes, we know, it's just excessive media attention and not some kind of new sinister trend.) Yesterday, yet another girl was attacked by a pit bull, this time in San Francisco, and a (neutered) pit bull with a history of aggression in Rohnert Park bit its owner and attacked two other dogs. Meanwhile, the pit bull that attacked the Santa Rosa girl last week (the one on the cover of the Chron) will be euthanized, but no criminal charges will be pressed. Authorities hypothesize that the dog just didn't like the little girl. Is that seven pit bull attacks in the last month? Well, if it's not pit bulls attacking children, it's San Francisco attacking smokers: don't forget the ordinance banning outdoor smoking in city-owned spaces goes into effect this Friday. And hey! Eric Anduri, the dude who threw the beer on Jason Giambi at the A's game last month pled not guilty. Not guilty? Didn't he do this in front of 20,000+ fans? Is he going to plead self-defense? Don't you think his father, the mayor of Lafayette, should be advocating a more manly acceptance of responsibility for his actions? ...

Well, we all knew it was going to happen -- SF DA Kamala Harris is bringing charges against Maureen Faibish for felony child endangerment. As Harris said at the press conference, "We are not in the business of vilifying parents, but in this city, we are also not in the business of allowing children to be placed in situations where they are killed when it is completely preventable." Sure. Meanwhile, a girl mauled by a pit bull in Santa Rosa the other day is recovering, and an elderly man successfully fled a pit bull attack in San Jose. The SFPD has released the 911 tapes (audio) of Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White's husband's subsequently-recanted tale of spousal abuse. "My wife is JOANNE HAYES-WHITE, THE FIRE CHIEF!!! Ow! No! Don't come near me again with that pint glass!! Don't hit me again! Aaaaaaaaagh!! Did I mention my wife is JOANNE HAYES-WHITE, THE FIRE CHIEF???" And the feds indicted 19 people in the medical marijuana enforcement action, or, what they're calling "Operation Urban Harvest." Kevin Ryan, the Bay Area's US Attorney, claims that the people busted were using medical marijuana stores as a front to sell $5 million of pot to healthy people. ...

SFist interviews Carlton Evans...

No, not that Deep Throat. Or the documentary. Via Chris Lopez, we've learned that Vanity Fair is reporting W. Mark Felt, former FBI second-in-command, revealed himself to be the famous anonymous source for Woodward and Bernstein in a recent interview. Felt was initially adamant about remaining silent on the subject, thinking disclosures about his past somehow dishonorable. "I don't think (being Deep Throat) was anything to be proud of," Felt indicated to his son,......

You have no idea how refreshing it is to see in an age of teenage angst, apathy, and rap music, that a group of high school students are ready to take on the torch left by Carlton Banks and Alex P. Keaton and take a stand against the unchecked, unabashed left wing jew loving welfare giving homosexual deviant lifestyle living peacecorp volunteering organic food eating commie pinko liberal media conspiracy infiltrating our young people......

The San Francisco Bay Area is considered the 12th largest metropolitan area in the United States. We have beautiful hills and ocean views, economic opportunity, diversity of opinions, and great food. But you know what we don't have? A top 40 radio station!!! We can't believe this. Ever since the death of our beloved Z 95.7 (for a classic rock format, which was then later changed to country), there's no place in San Francisco to tune in for those naggingly-catchy Kelly Clarkson and Ashleeeeee (so many e's!) Simpson tracks. (There's a station in Fremont and a station in Santa Rosa, but we can't get them in SF proper). How are we supposed to participate in pop culture if we can't even hear that abysmal new Britney Spears strip-joint song? We try to keep up by watching MTV Hits, but -- man, those kids on TRL are annoying. Sure, we can hear the slower mainstream pop tunes on Yawn 101.3 and we can catch the crunky on our Clear Channel hip-hop affiliates -- but part of what we like about top 40 radio is the cross-genre mixing! We like hearing the new Mariah next to the new Eminem next to the J.Lo next to the Ciara! And while we can download what we like on iTunes or Musicmatch, we're certainly never going to spend even 99 cents on schlock like Ryan Cabrera or Jesse McCartney, so we'll realistically never really listen to them anymore -- and thus we can't even be as fully contemptuous of them as we might be if we sort of absorbed them while stuck at a red light or finishing up that last 3 minutes on the Bowflex. We're being hampered in our snark! So someone, please -- like Ms. Spears-Federline says -- Do Somethin'! (na na na na na na, na na na na NA na na na). ...