Flower seller in Lucien Labaudt's 1936 mural in the Beach Chalet. A tulip's life is short enough, particularly in the far westerly reaches of our city/county. We seem to remember that in past years, the tulips at the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden (in the shadow of the windmill in Golden Gate Park) didn't quite until the official beginning of spring. This year, though, the GG Park folks say that "tulips are expected to be......

Each Tuesday we will feature new music that should (or whatever) be on your radar. Standouts: 1. Magnetic Fields - "Distortion" - From what we can tell, Magnetic Fields are a huge hit in San Francisco as their two-night stint at Noise Pop 2008 has been sold out since December. (The only way to get tickets is to buy a badge!) Now we haven't had the pleasure to actually preview/review this album, but with a......

Councilman Gary Cloutier-- you know, the Vallejo mayoral candidate who was arrested in Palm Springs just this past week for public intoxication -- won the coveted title of Mayor of Vallejo today after the final vote was counted. In a race that was too close to call weeks after November's election, the final (and unofficial) results are "Cloutier with 5,722 votes and Davis with 5,718." That's a four vote difference. That's...insane. (Official should be......

-- The Virgin Spring and Through a Glass Darkly: Ingmar Bergman's rape/revenge flick (oh, we know that it's much more complicated than that, we're sure) The Virgin Spring inspired Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. And Through a Glass Darkly was described by Bergman as a "chamber film" for its allusions to "both to the chamber plays of Strindberg, and to chamber music in general." They screen tonight at 7 p.m (TVS) and......

Each Tuesday we will feature new music that should (or whatever) be on your radar. Standouts: 1. Thrice - The Alchemy Index, Vol 1 & 2: The juxtaposition of fire and water is felt on these two separate EP's that Thrice entitles, "The Alchemy Index." Thrice's investigation into nature doesn't stop with Volumes I & II - they'll continue on with Volumes III & IV in Spring of 2008. Pushing their musical boundaries, Volume I......

MTT's conducting of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde is so good, it should be recorded and kept for the posterity. But wait! It was! The series, which concludes tonight, will be taped and processed, and included in the Mahler recording cycle, the on-going endeavor to put all of Mahler's symphonic work onto a CD. MTT's take on Mahler, a forcefully engaged and expressive rendition, has been observed here quite a few times. We expect......

It was a deadly weekend to be famous, that’s for sure. As one commenter already pointed out today, famous people tend to die in threes: Bill Walsh, Tom Snyder, and of course, ABC 13’s Marvin Zindler from Houston, who -- while still tied-up with breathing tubes, in his hospital bed, and very pissed off at 24-Hour Fitness -- gave and gave until the very end. But another one squeaked in there among those three: Ingmar......

Here are some of your favorite NBC stars from many, many years ago, singing one of the weaker ditties from Dreamgirls. Who knows? Maybe this will jumpstart cast members from The Office and Heroes to promote their shows with something from Spring Awakening. (And could someone tell us where we can find Marla Gibbs' luscious jacket?)......

Much like "the Sopranos," our week-long look at the A's this season concludes with a look at pitchers and outfielders, as well as some closing thoughts on the A's from Christy. FYI- there's nobody gets whacked in this write up ...

Who needs a little culture after a weekend of mayhem? (We do, we do!) Here are a few things going on tonight that might pique your interest. Spring Art Auction at Mezzanine Visual Aid and Academy of Friends presents the sixth annual spring art auction to benefit locals AIDS service organizations, with cocktails, wine from Napa and hors'd oeuvres before the live auction. Over 50 works of art were donated by well-known artists, galleries and......

SFist interviews Jolene Garcia, creative force behind Penny and Maude...

It's another fine mid-Spring night in San Francisco: 51 degrees, foggy, swirling winds. So what do people do? They put on their parkas and head over to Mitchell's Ice Cream in the Mission for some late night licking. On a cold Tuesday night with some 40 customers milling about, it seemed to be the hottest place in town.......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. ...

Spring is when we get busy here in the Ist-A-Verse. Very busy. But, after staying bundled-up indoors all winter, it's nice for us to be out, about, and collecting things to write about for you. Here's a glimpse at what's been keeping your favorite citybloggers busily away from home and out of bed. For LAist, strong winds attacked LA on the same day the Feds raided the Crips. Not to fear, though: the Japanese version......

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyways, onto the -ists....

Yesterday was the first day of spring so we decided to celebrate a day late with a YouTube clip of Tchaikovsky's Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" from Disney's Fantasia. Then we realized that's the boring one where all the dinosaurs die and who wants to watch dinosaurs die? So we found this instead, Amilcare Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" featuring the dancing hippos. What says spring more than dancing hippos? Besides, who doesn't love......

Last month's winner, San Francisco Magazine: Cover: Spring '07 Style Forecast. Is it just us, or does the model on the cover look a whole lot like Carmen Electra? Sadly, it's not, but we love the orange Prada dress she's sporting. Short Stories: spring's super-short dresses are fabulous, and inspire us to do more squats. (But we think we'll stick to knee-length, because the world has seen enough hoo ha lately to last a lifetime.) href="http://sanfranmag.com/home/view_story/1534">Deconstructing Eco-chic: Tips on how to dress green, and still look good. Style Counsel: An interview with Mellisa Ceria, the founder of ShareYourLook.com, a personal style website for anybody too shy to ask a stranger, "Cute bag. Where did you get it?" Not that anybody ever asks us that every day. ...

File Under: Terminal Shopping Spring is springing all around us (Hello, Sunshine!) and while we can't afford to go on a real vacation on our salary, we can afford to dream. Which is why we love Flight 001....

As if we don't have enough wars going on, the first shots were fired in yet another war, that being the War on Easter. Five years ago, at the behest of a Jewish resident, Walnut Creek decided to take the Easter out of Easter and replace it with spring. So the Easter Bunny became the Spring Bunny, Easter Egg Hung the Spring Egg Hunt and so on and so forth. This was no big deal until somebody wrote into a newspaper complaining about it. And somewhere out there, Baby Jesus started crying. ...

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... ...

The Warriors' forward/Vice President Of Basketball Operations Chris Mullin is among the finalists for the NBA Hall Of Fame this year. Savor it, Warrior fans......

--Google stock hits $509.65/share, making it the second most valuable company in Silicon Valley behind Cisco. Apple also hits a record high. --Who knew two-time Dancing with the Stars winner Cheryl Burke was from Menlo-Atherton High? There she is, dancing with Menlo-Atherton vice principal Matt Zito! --Josh Wolf won't be home for Thanksgiving. --New market with fancy-food cred opening in Glen Park. --The SF Board of Supes raises salaries for cops and condemns the......

For a while, we could not write a post about modern music without quoting the influence of Igor Stravinsky. Eve, then our dear editor, even made fun of us. Tonight, we will be vindicated. Not to ruin the suspense, but today’s episode of Keeping Score, the SF Symphony award winning behind-the-scene program, will highlight Stravinsky as a revolutionary. If MTT says so, we can keep mentioning Igor every time we want, he must have been influential. ...

Saturday: At noon we're hitting the 3rd annual GAMA-Go Spring sale at the Rickshaw Stop, then going to the The 16th SF/ Bay Area Mural Awareness Festival & Awards Ceremony at Precita Park from 1-5 p.m. Sunday: We're going to see Pizza: The Movie, a film about the World Pizza Championships, at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. Atkins is for suckers. Monday: Our pals at Heeb Magazine want everyone to come to an......

In an effort to stop slumping sales, Old Navy is hoping to recapture their sales magic of the late 90s by enlisting a new canine mascot. You may remember when Old Navy was a hot brand, nearly every commercial featured “Magic”, an Airedale mutt rescued from the streets of San Jose. Since Magic was forced out of his job in the Spring of 2001 (press releases cited ‘creative differences’) Old Navy same store sales......

Usually when we think of Napa, we think of Range Rovers and froofy wine-tasting tours that inevitably get sloppy and end with a brutal hangover and two cases of overpriced Chardonnay. But this weekend, there's a different type of intoxicant going down in the NA-PA -- cross-country mountain bike racing.

A rite of Spring in the tiny hamlet of Angwin, the 2006 Napa Valley Dirt Classic rolls to the line this Sunday on the beautiful campus of Pacific Union College (PUC).

Beginning at 10:30 AM on Sunday, rain or shine, close to 400 racers will venture into the verdant forests of Howell Mountain in search that perfect bouquet of singletrack, adrenaline, and pain. The 22-mile course snakes through the private lands of PUC on a kaleidoscope of different trail types, textures, and topographies.

To do well in the Classic is to know the course, and baby, the legs on this course . . .

Happy Spring! Which means its time for Spring cleaning. While we here at SFist are all in favor of small rent-controlled studio apartments, we're not so fond of the small kitchen. Justin Spring, courtesy of Heidi Swanson, taught us some ways to organize our confined kitchens more efficiently and also had some good tips for non-lethal cleaning supplies. A new blog for us this week is Sweet Napa. She's attending culinary school in Napa and......

A large portion of Western literature doesn't make sense to California kids. Specifically, we don't get all those poems about springtime, because it just doesn't feel like that big a deal. This is not to say that "there are no seasons in California." Rather, we mean that spring is nice, sure, but so are summer and fall, and Indian summer, and hey, winter isn't really that bad, either. There seem to be more poems......

We're pretty excited about the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, which opens tonight at the Castro. Featuring a great lineup of new films from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, the festival runs until Wednesday, the 18th. Tonight's opening features Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (watch out for Flash), a film about the German passive resistance movement during World War II. We hear it's pretty good, and the director, Marc Rothemund, is expected to attend the......

All day long, our colleagues at our day job have been asking why we look so nice today. Ignoring what this implies about our usual appearance, and marvelling at what a difference a shower makes, we have responded to these complimentary remarks with "It's Fashion Week! Duh!" That's right, San Francisco Fashion Week opens tonight and runs through Sunday the 28th. Featuring scores of Spring 2006 collections, rad parties, intriguing workshops (check out Catwalk......