Starting today, eight Bay Area shelters are offering free spaying/neutering to pit bull owners. Although a few shelters, such as the East Bay SPCA offer the free service year-round, the organizers of Bay Area Pit Fix Week are hoping that by offering spaying/neutering this week, the lives of thousands of pit bulls (and the people they otherwise might maul if not for being fixed) will be spared. Thousands of pit bulls are euthanized in the......

Yeah. That's right. Another teenager, some more poor animals. Today at around 1:20 p.m., a 15-year-old girl crashed a beemer into a Sonoma County animal hospital. The girl was attempting a u-turn when she smashed into the El Verano facility. Thankfully, no one was injured. Read a little more about it here or here.......

When you're delivering 3 gallons of GHB (the “date rape drug”) from areas north to San Francisco, maybe you should stick to the speed limit. A fool from L.A. was pulled over for speeding in Sonoma County when cops found the offending liquid in the car. Homeboy probably would have gotten off with just a ticket, but instead decided to act all sketchy, causing the CHP to search his car. The GHB, worth around......

Famous for creating the Mitchell Brother(s) O’Farrell Theatre and then committing fratricide with a 22-caliber rifle, Jim Mitchell helped give San Francisco the sick reputation it still (sort of) maintains. Today he died at 63 in Sonoma County. Starting out by selling nudie pics with his brother Artie, the two built a porn empire (they're always "empires") with the help of such luminaries as local horny SF politicians, Marilyn Chambers, and lots and lots......

There's a big story in the Chron this morning over the conflict between the SFPD and the DA's office over prosecuting crime in the city. Basically, the cops are frustrated because the DA's office rarely prosecutes anything. The result is a lot of repeat offenders out there repeating offenses. In the story, the Chron even details how some of the shootings we've seen recently are done by people who have been in-and-out of jail and got off relatively easy. ...

As we think fondly back on our college days, we've come to the conclusion that alcohol is never going to taste as good as it did before we turned 21. That, however, may not be true for poor Brittanie Mountz, who just got busted by the Chronicle's Cecilia Vega for possibly drinking with the mayor while underage. According to Sunday's Matier and Ross (posted on the 'Gate Saturday evening, which is why this is going......

We were avoiding posting on this -- but given the local angles and our own horrified fascination with it, here goes. Authorities in Thailand, working with the Department of Homeland Security, have arrested John Mark Karr (at right), a former substitute teacher with a history of questionable behavior around children, for the murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey almost 10 years ago. As the story develops, though, people are starting to wonder if he's actually guilty,......

What do you know, Schwarzenegger was right for a change -- our levees are in terrible shape. Due to all the rain this weekend, a levee has broken up in Sonoma County and Highway 121 is flooded. About a half-dozen houses and a winery are in the path of the water. The levee is located on private property, there's about five square miles of flooding, and a couple of farm buildings are already under water. We'd just like to go on the record as saying we alerted Bush and Chertoff about this at 9:20 a.m. on March 6, 2006. Hey, either of you got any questions about it? Picture of flooding from KGO 7...

We neglect the North Bay sometimes, but it's not for lack of love -- it's just that we're not sure what the heck people DO up there sometimes. Whetever it is, it sounds classy; like the art exhibit at Roshambo Winery in Healdsburg, wherever that is. Todd Barricklow (ceramics) and William Smith (prints and drawings) from the Killing Time Studios will be showing off their work at a reception from 5pm to 8pm this Saturday.......

First the pit bulls rise against the humans -- and now it's the trees! A man sitting on a bench and minding his own business in North Beach's Washington Square Park was almost brained as a huge branch of the shade tree above him snapped off and fell. Fortunately, the branch just barely missed him. The tree will be humanely euthanized (i.e., cut down). Prurient brunchers have a new stop for eggs over easy: Sausalito is up in arms about reports of a nude swimmer sunning himself outside the windows of Spinnakers. To Sausalito's chagrin, he likes to flip over and do the backstroke. And Sonoma County Judge Elaine Rushing was sentenced to 10 days in jail and three years of probation for a DUI in June, when she was found with a .19 blood alcohol level, having driven her car with two flat tires into a wall. Because she was a judge in the county where she was arrested, the state attorney general's office handled the case. Cheap irony alert: Judge Rushing was noted in Sonoma County for the harsh sentences she handed down to drunk drivers. Rushing will perform community service in lieu of the clink. ...

A great, quick place to head at the last minute to get out of the city and have some fun is to head across the Golden gate and veer East into the southern edge of Sonoma County. We hit our first winery within an hour from the Mission, after just passing Infineon raceway. Going up the driveway to Roche Winery, we scared two vultures away from a a bit of roadkill. A rabbit that......

Bay Area crime roundup...

The forests of Northern California are some of the most beautiful in the world. SFist has been simultaneously awed and humbled by trips up north to visit our millenia-old friends the redwoods. So who in their right mind would ever want to cut these things down? SFist thinks it's people with really severe penis envy....