Hey, it's another Polk post, folks! We're thankful to Flickr user Lulu Vision for giving us a heads-up in the SFist Contribute section regarding tonight's Lower Polk Neighbors meeting with SF Fire Department Chief Joanne Hayes-White about Fire Station 3 and how they're trying to make us all go deaf with their sirens. Hilariously enough, this fire station is located right next to Diva's and Grass Roots. Why would they ever want to leave? From......

It's our week up on the weekly-reading duties! Last week's winner from SFist Sarah L, the SF Weekly. A letter writer says: "While Matt [Gonzalez] may not be the next Picasso (but don't count him out)..." It doesn't matter what the rest of the letter says. The SF Fire Department gave a bad test. Cover article: We hate baby boomers and their dirty self-centered hippie ways. Carnivorous plants! Yay, the SFIFF! A flyer fell out......

One hundred years ago this month, San Francisco survived an earthquake. You may have heard of it. Well, despite the odds (and the sky-high earthquake insurance rates), people keep moving here, and San Francisco's celebrating 100 years of rebirth and survival. The big day is April 18. And there's no shortage of things to do! Just to pick events randomly: the Commonwealth Club is holding a panel discussion about the 1906 quake on April 17. The SF Fire Department's historical society is sponsoring the 1906 Expo at Pier 48, from April 15-17, which will feature historical exhibits and modern-day preparedness events (and a costume party!). And City Hall will host a photo exhibit about post-1906 rebuilding (and a show about the PUC and Hetch Hetchy. It's so Bay Guardian!). And, like they have for the last 35 years, history buffs will meet at Lotte's Fountain on 3rd and Market, and then paint gold the one hydrant in SF that didn't fail in 1906 (on 20th and Dolores). Warning, though, the fountain meetup starts at 4:30 a.m., because that's when the quake hit. Adding insult to injury (if the quake itself wasn't injurious or insulting enough), they're expecting huge crowds for this event, to the tune of giant screens on Market Street showing the scene in closed-caption. The fountain gets painted at 7:30 a.m. We sincerely hope KRON 4 labels this program clearly so we can just TiVo it to watch later. Lots and lots and lots of other events after the jump -- we'll try and update this periodically as the big day gets closer. Let us know if we've left anything out too! Picture of the post-quake Financial District from the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco...

Ready, aim.... and look out for firebugs this Saturday at the Noe Valley Farmers Market, as the Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) and the SF Fire Department highlight this month's safety theme, "Light My Fire And Put It Out Safely Month." (that's an awesome theme.) So along with your organic oranges and leafy greens, reps from the fire department will be setting fires in the parking lot and inviting local residents to put them out. You're encouraged to bring your home fire extinguisher so you can practice using it too. We're so intrigued by this combination of "what a great idea!" and "what a terrible idea!" that this represents that we've gotta check this out. NERT runs free disaster-prep training classes throughout the city and works with neighborhood groups to coordinate emergency plans. For instance, NERT, working with the Noe Valley groups, learned that their plans to use the James Lick Middle School parking lot as their post-disaster staging area was in conflict with the school's plans to use that same parking lot to gather students. It may not matter, though, because both NERT and the school then subsequently learned that city experts are saying that the parking lot's retaining wall may collapse in an earthquake anyways. Note to self: don't go into the James Lick parking lot after an earthquake. ...

We're kind of on a pro-BART kick today -- which may be due in part to the fact that we've been taking the BART down to Millbrae all week. We understand that not too many of you are doing that, which may explain why we haven't heard very much about the coolest station art ever, these totally rad pictures/murals on the walls of the South San Francisco BART station. The picture above doesn't do it justice, but they're holographic scenes. They show these little pictures of local scenes, like sailboats and California history -- but as the train zips by (or as trainwaiters walk by), the pictures change! They're like art versions of flipbooks! Animated murals! IT IS SO COOL!!! For example, one of the pictures is a series of photos from the South SF Fire Department showing a firefighter sliding down a pole. Other pictures include the changes on South City's Grand Avenue, factory workers, and the biotech industry (we haven't seen that one yet, but we hope it's a DNA strand undergoing transcription and translation). How'd they do it? Is it something about polarized glass? The only news article we could find about it says something about "multifaceted glass tiles," but isn't that just like our kitchen counter? It doesn't show us scenes of South City. Could someone please explain it to us? Meanwhile -- if you're heading down South Bay-wards, or just glumly staring out the window with your roller bag wedged between your knees on the way to SFO, make sure you look out when you get to the South City BART stop. Public art at its best! Picture from the South SF city site...

We find this latest spate of murder-suicides (his dentist????) too depressing to go into right now, and the Vitale murder just gets sadder and sadder -- so it's a Friday Blotter of Other Crime. Geraldo Rivera's brother Craig was arrested on a DUI in Walnut Creek. Craig Rivera was working with Mark Furhman on a story for his brother's new show, about the Pamela Vitale murder (of course). A jury sentenced Marques Lott to life in prison for the killing of a college student right outside the Rockridge BART station in 1997. The victim, Lisa Smith, was an English major at St. Mary's who was taking Chinese classes at Berkeley over the summer. Lott, who is schizophrenic, was off his medication and decided to kill someone coming home late at night. ....and care to try J. Lo's Glow? The SF Fire Department was called to Macy's yesterday afternoon after a number of patrons reported "very mild respiratory distress" from a mysterious odor. Macy's claims it wasn't coming from inside the store, but the SFFD couldn't tell either way. ...

Bad karma, man! Someone stole an SF Fire Department SUV while its legitimate driver was responding to a medical call early Monday morning. SFFD policy is to leave the cars in the ignition so they can leave the lights on (maybe time to revisit the policy), but lock the doors (which the firefighter forgot to do). The 'jacker hit five other cars before abandoning the SUV at Fillmore and Golden Gate and running off with a bag of medical equipment. Roll these up and smoke 'em: A pound of pot found in a jauntily-attired teddy bear (check out the picture!) in Rohnert Park, and Barrett Robbins arrested again for pot possession while awaiting trial on attempted murder charges. The reward fund for the 10 ducks killed at the car wash has grown to around $10,000. They've used the money to start a tip line, at (408) 866-2729. ... and so much news, the Blotter goes to four paragraphs today! It's kind of busy over there at the SFPD: a body found in Chinatown, a body found in Buena Vista Park, and the cops found a rocket launcher in an abandoned car at Pier 70 in Dogpatch. ...

Brian Rossiter, the owner of "the most famous hand in America," has begun lashing out at reporters, describing his life as "hell" since the news broke that he sold his severed finger to Anna Ayala and her husband Jaime Placensia for $50 to drop in a bowl of Wendy's chili. Rossiter's mood seems to have darkened from Wednesday, where he was reported to have gone to his favorite bar, waved his hand around, and got his buddies to buy him numerous shots of his favorite drink, Goldschlager. Goldschlager? A prominent doctor at SF General was found murdered in the doorway of his house in Diamond Heights. Police are focusing on cherry pits strewn around the house and outside in his yard as possible clues. And the police have a man in custody who set fire to a building across the street from the Old Mint in SoMA last night. The man was seen running out of the building with a jar filled with liquid and screaming that he was involved with the fire. The SF Fire Department rescued six residents in the building who were either trapped in their apartments or had fled to the roof. ...

We knew that bag of 100 IKEA tea lights would come in handy one of these days! Yet another fire at that same PG&E substation that keeps bursting into flames blacked out 22,000 customers in San Francisco on Saturday night. You may remember this substation as the same one that caught on fire on the last shopping day before Christmas in 2003, was left to burn for 2 hours as PG&E went into denial about the whole thing, caused a huge blackout throughout the city for over 24 hours, and was blamed for single-handedly ruining merchants' sales for the entire year (at a cost of $4 million)? PG&E claims they've learned from the past and called this one in as soon as the smoke alarm went off. (Can't slip anything by those folks.) However, the SF Fire Department is annoyed that PG&E told them it was okay to fight the fire with water, claiming that the fire was not water-safe, the water caused a huge explosion and increased the scope of the power outage, and fire fighters might well have been killed. PG&E, after first saying that this sort of thing should be expected when you're fighting fires in the first place, is now claiming no explosion actually happened. Hm. Any good blackout stories? We can report that we were in the Haight, where we didn't notice a single thing out of the ordinary because Amoeba Records was lit up like Christmas. Does Amoeba have its own generator or something? Picture of PG&E substation from ABC 7...

Bay Area crime roundup...