Ride your bike at the San Francisco Zoo without fear of ejection or arrest on the BikeAbout tour. ...

Patrick Frost, 35, and Christopher Gerwig, 32, of San Francisco are still nowhere to be found since reported missing since reported missing last Saturday night at Alpine Meadows, just north of Lake Tahoe. Described as "expert skiers," Frost and Gerwig were last seen on Saturday morning at an Alpine Meadows bar "listening to advice about different outlying areas to ski." New snow layers blanketing the mountains this weekend, as well as high winds, have......

Surely looking to turn us all into latter-career, Catalina-vacationing Natalie Woods, it looks like the rain will fall down (and wake our dreams) and won't stop until god knows when. Flooding, high winds, high tides, airport delays, glacial weather, and mass hysteria are all expected to bring us some mid-winter cheer. Santa Cruz will be getting the brunt of it, or so says the radar, so grab your spot at Pergolesi early and hold......

Remember how we told you that today there would be snow? Well, we decided to check it out for ourselves up on the north side of Mt. Tam. The photo above is from Potrero Meadow. That white stuff coming down? It ain't rain, kids. 'Twas wintry mixy up there today, and the trails were near-deserted. Can't say as we blame those who stayed home - we were dehydrated and a tad hypothermic when we......

Yesterday's near perfect weather is now but a sepia-toned memory. Reports of a strange, icy substance, often referred to as "snow," is falling on Mount Diablo, Mount Hamilton in Santa Clara County, Mount Hamilton, and (any minute now) Mount Tam. It's also blanketing the eerie Santa Cruz Mountains, resulting in the closure of Highway 9. It looks like many of you will have to take Highway 17. If you dare. Oh, and be sure......

(Look at us, getting all PETA on you with that headline. Gross.) While two snow leopards at the San Francisco Zoo were in the process of being moved from their pen to another location "for routine maintenance," one of the male snow leopards, Gurja, almost escaped. Gulp. According to CBS 5: The unidentified source told KCBS Radio the male leopard, named Gurja, had its head and front leg through the hole when the zookeeper......

What with last week's and (and presumably this week's) manic storm activity, John Vlahides at 71Miles reports that this week is the week to play hooky. Reporting that the Sierra Crest is "dumping over ten feet of feather-light snow," why not take a day or three off of work to head up to higher altitudes and frolic in the cold? Places like "Squaw Valley," "Kirkwood," and "Heavenly" - terms typically overheard from the mouths......

Can you believe it's been a year since James Kim died in the Oregon mountains? We're very sorry to pass along the news that another Northern California family is missing in what we're hoping is not going to be another family holiday tragedy story. The Dominguez family went out last Sunday to cut down Christmas trees in the Sierra mountains: the father, Frederick, and his three children, Christopher (18), Alexis (15), and Joshua (12). That's......

SFist interviews Kenneth Ryan, Prop Master of the San Francisco Ballet...

Let's hope no oil tankers crash into the Bay Bridge this week -- Gavin's out of town again, this time bundled up for snow as he campaigns for Hillary Clinton in Iowa. Not quite as temperate in the middle of the country right now as it was in his last two vacation spots this month -- guess Gavin still owes the Clintons for backing him in 2003 against non-Democrat Matt Gonzalez, huh? The Republicans......

Reporting from the snow-dappled streets of Chicago, it's your American Football Spectacular preview for this Saturday night's battle at The Stick as The Queen City's feline football franchise comes to town....

The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryan Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,......

Three square meals a day is finished. Heartiness plunged to its death from the Golden Gate Bridge. The entree, sadly, is dead. At least according Kim Severson of the New York Times it is, and we couldn't be more delighted. The article interviews chef Tom Colicchio who says, "I think the entree has been in trouble for a long time...[e]ating an entree is too many bites of one thing, and it’s boring." Love it.......

Although we've been in the snow only a fistful of times in our lifetime, maybe some of our ski-bunny readers can fill us in on this superstition: placing your skis (or snowboard or sled) under your bed in order to increase the chance of local snowfall. This seems like unnecessary clutter. Isn't this why we have clearly more logical rain- and snow-dances? Image credit: Telstar Logistics......

By day he's an Alight Electric employee. By night? A Ford F-350 Super Duty hero. It seems that last night on the Golden Gate Bridge, John Beatty of Mill Valley saved the day, so to speak, after noticing a woman unconscious in her Jeep, moving into oncoming traffic. At around 6:50 p.m., Sylvia Durrance, 62, came to a stop while driving southbound in the No. 2 lane. She appeared lifeless, her body slumped over......

It seems that Travis has been declared the band "that paved the way for bands such as Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol." We are very thankful for this (as the three aforementioned bands are some of our favorites) but we are confused. Why is it that more people know those bands, but not the trailblazer, Travis? Take the jump to see what we thought of the concert, with videos.........

The loss of Simone in last week's episode of "Project Runway" leaves us with one local left to root for. (Although as Rita pointed out in her recap of the show, Jack went to U.C. Berkeley, so that kind of counts. But we'll see how well Chris does before we set our sights on him...) At the beginning of the episode we were put through the always boring selection-of-the-models ritual. This could be a......

In Los Angeles, LAist most definitely celebrated Thanksgiving like no other. After all, one has to keep up all the energy to keep on walking the line at the Writers Strike and fighting the unfortunate return of the wildfires in Malibu, which single handedly destroyed over fifty homes within the first 24 hours. National outlets may be covering the fires, but CNN also found it is easier to buy a gun than fruit and......

The Arcade Fire came through Mountain View's Shoreline Amphitheatre last Friday. We have the pictures to prove this. A suddenly-rather-popular independent rock band, it's surprising that this little-group-that-could is suddenly playing arena-size venues. And what does The Arcade Fire sound like? Figure that the group's music is like some sort of 10-person raucously ad-hoc mix-up of Neutral Milk Hotel, Slipknot, Springsteen's E Street Band, and The Coen Bros' Hudsucker Proxy shrieking songs of broken/renewed faith......

Photo of Christmas goods on sale in mid-September in San Francisco...

Here's todays sports news...

While it's no longer the biggest secret that on Craigslist, and elsewhere on l'Internet, the hapless verb "to ski" has become synonymous with "to do fresh, energizing, powdery lines of flake." In order to steer clear from the fuzz, "skiing" is the operative word. But aside from the stuff looking similar to fallen snow, La Cieca from the opera site Parterre, of all places, found this clip that possibly proves how "skiing" and "skiiiiiiing" met.......

Week Around The -Ists...

Guess where we went for dinner last night? That's right -- we went with friends to support our local public corruption whistleblowers, the fast food bubble tea and salty fried foods empire of Quickly. And of course, we had to go to one of the Quicklys in Tapioca Ed Jew's district! (there's two -- this one on Irving and 22nd, and another on Taraval. Extra bonus: check out that last picture at the link......

Yay, Tapioca Ed! We're counting down the days until he's scheduled to get back! (5 days to go.) Today's Chronicle runs a story about how Ed Jew's travails have been covered in the Chinese-language local media. Man, we are sorry we didn't study the characters harder in our Mandarin Chinese classes (which -- fame whore alert!! -- we took with a certain elected Newsom city official) because their coverage sounds awesome. The World Journal reports......

After games like last night, Sports Talk radio can kind of be essential listening. Misery loves company after all and there's a lot of misery out there in Giants Land. Yes, the baseball season is 162 games so one loss don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world but sometimes one game means more than others. Like last night's game. ...

We knew very little about the SF Int'l Film Fest's Private Fears in Public Places but were intrigued by the title. Turns out the play is based on an English play by the same name (which explains the British subtitles), and the French movie is actually called “Coeurs” or “Hearts,” which is definitely not as good of a title. The film turned out to be almost soap-operish with its sad music and shots of......

Here's todays news...

It's been forty-nine years of great cinema for the SF International Film Festival (SFIFF), and starting April 26 through May 10 2007, it'll be fifty! To celebrate their gold anniversary, the SFIFF is not only presenting the always-dazzling film festival itself, but hosting a huge array of events as well: from tributes to Spike Lee (and a screening of When The Levees Broke), and awards to locals George Lucas and Robin Williams, an address about......

The Pond's horrible ice and Teemu Selanne's illegal stick helped the Sharks avoid being down a man in overtime against the Ducks last night. Selanne was called for unsportsmanlike conduct at the beginning of overtime, negating a Craig Rivet penalty that was carrying over from the end of regulation, and San Jose went on to win the shootout for a 3-2 victory. The Sharks came back to even the score after being down by 2 goals in the first period, and both teams helped their playoff positioning against the Dallas Stars. ...