San Francisco is a great coffee town. In addition to our many wonderful coffee shops, we're awash in high-end roasters that set national and international trends. Blue Bottle, Sightglass, Four Barrel, and Wrecking Ball are just a handful of the players making our city a haven for all those who take it black (or otherwise). And so it is with a raised eyebrow that we notice the Chronicle picked up a study released yesterday which claims we're not even in the top five cities for "coffee lovers." No, according to financial services company Wallet Hub, San Francisco comes in sixth — right behind Orlando and Pittsburgh.

Wallet Hub took numerous factors into consideration when compiling their list — think number of independently owned shops, preponderance of ethically sourced beans, various roaster awards, and — JUST KIDDING — they didn't look at any of that stuff. Here are the actual factors study authors looked at (emphasis and parenthetical notes added):

• Average Price per Pack of Coffee (and who doesn't purchase their coffee by the "pack"?)
  
• Average Price of a Cappuccino
  
• Average Price of a Starbucks Butter Croissant (yup, this metric totally makes sense)
  
• Percentage of Households that Own Coffee Makers (how do you even measure this)
  
• Number of Affordable Coffee Shops, Coffee Houses and Cafés Rated 4.5+ Stars per Capita
  
• Number of Coffee Shops, Coffee Houses and Cafés per Capita
  
• Number of Coffee and Tea Manufacturers per Capita
  
• Number of “Free Wi-Fi” Coffee Shops per Capita
  
• Number of Donut Shops per Capita
  
• Google Search Traffic for the Word “Coffee” (because not knowing what coffee is, or where to find it, is surely a metric positively correlated to coffee lovers)
  
• Number of “Coffee Lovers” Meetups per Capita
  
• Presence of Coffee-Centric Events

Wallet Hub released the study to coincide with National Coffee Day, which is some made-up thing reportedly happening today. What they apparently didn't realize is that in San Francisco, a city for real coffee lovers, every day is coffee day.

The top ten cities, in descending order, are Portland (Oregon), Seattle, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Orlando, San Francisco, New Orleans, Madison, Cincinnati, and Scottsdale. Oh, and Oakland comes in at #11.

Related: Bay Area Goat Shows Disappointingly Plebeian Tastes In Coffee

Parking in SF is an expensive hassle — we all know this. But a new report out of UCLA picked up by Curbed suggests that the financial burden manifests in ways other than the nonstop stream of broken car windows. Specifically, the study's author claims it costs $29,000 to build a single on-street parking space in our great city.

An underground spot? Well, that will cost you $38,000. Oh, and neither of those estimates include the cost of land.

"If that surprises you, you’re a little naive," the study's author, Dr. Donald Shoup, explained to Curbed. "Try digging a hole three stories deep in San Francisco and filling it with concrete and see how much it costs you."

Well, sure, but what about on-street parking? Shoup says the numbers he used to estimate that cost come from a respected consulting firm, and are widely agreed upon to be accurate.

Now, perhaps obviously, this number is an average — building a spot downtown may be one price while building a spot in the Sunset another. The larger point, however, that every single parking space costs SF not just in opportunity costs (giving up land that could be used for bike lanes, parks, housing, etc.), but in actual dollars, is one Shoup thinks is important to keep in mind.

His study, titled "Cutting the Cost of Parking Requirements," makes this point. "Like the automobile itself, parking is a good servant but a bad master," he writes. "Parking should be friendly—easy to find, easy to use, and easy to pay for—but cities should not require or subsidize parking."

Besides, according to a report out earlier this year, there's already plenty of parking in SF — just drive on over to Noe Valley.

Related: No, Most Mission Residents Are Not OK With Median Parking On Sunday

A new study looking at the availability of parking by neighborhood tells us a lot of what we already know about San Francisco — parking is terrible! The study's intended purpose is to inform car-owning potential renters what neighborhoods are the most accommodating, however, the data also tell us where street parking is purportedly most available. Perhaps the largest takeaway is that, at least according to this study, parking in Noe Valley is relatively easy.

The report was compiled by residential real estate site Trulia, and the company attempted to combine street parking data with availability of garages for rent to form a complete picture of where owning a car is difficult and where it is easy as San Francisco pie.

"For example," the study reads, "San Francisco’s exclusive Noe Valley neighborhood actually had relatively accommodating parking, and ample listings with private parking, while Sea Cliff, Potrero Hill and the Mission neighborhoods were stingy even by San Francisco standards."

Weirdly, the study lists Stonestown as the most difficult area to find parking, but as that is such a tiny patch of SF we're going to move to number two on the list: SoMa. Also noted as difficult when it comes to street parking is the Bayview. And what 'hood has it apparently the easiest? The Presidio.

Block-by-block data can be found in the map embedded below, ensuring that you can zoom in on the street where you live and confirm your nagging suspicion that you really do have it worse than everyone else when it comes to trying to find a spot within walking distance of your apartment.

Have fun!

Related: Ten Years Of Bay Area Traffic Fatalities Mapped

Here's a big news flash that ought to blow some minds: According to a study conducted by researchers at UC Berkeley, people who drive expensive cars in the Bay Area are four times more likely to drive like complete jerks when compared to other, less flashy local motorists. As a car's sticker price increases from say, a Honda Civic to something like this fine German automobile, so does the likelihood that its driver will cut you off at a four-way stop or refuse to wait for a pedestrian in the crosswalk.

To get their data, researchers hid near an intersection in downtown Berkeley, observing the make and model of passing cars and noting whether or not the drivers properly waited their turn to enter the intersection. Their findings, which became part of a larger National Academy of Sciences study on the unethical tendencies of the country's upper class (broken down by our pals at Gothamist over here), led researches to conclude that there is "a significant correlation between the price of a car and the social class of its driver." Which should surprise exactly no one.

When asked whether or not his team over in Berkeley was engaged in class warfare with their research, the study's author noted, "Berkeley has a certain reputation, so yeah, we get that."

These findings also suggest that Guy Fieri must drive like a complete asshole.

[LATimes]
[Gothamist]

Conducted by the Thailand Ministry of Public Health, a new vaccine study has shown "modest" benefits in preventing HIV. Said results show that we could have a "safe and effective" preventive vaccine at some point in the near future. According to CBS 5/AP, "The vaccine—a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines—cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok."

Nat: This journey is complex, out of the box. Transformation process. Ontime performance, environmental issues.

Judy Kirshbaum: As program manager of Transit Effectiveness Project, I'll be doing more community outreach. Six more workshops coming up with public.

Our take on all this: it sounds like a good start. Eliminating stops is a great idea; eliminating entire lines would be even better. Muni's always tried to accomplish more than it's able to; and so just like anyone whose to-do list is unmanageable (or like Apple before the return of Steve), Muni needs to delegate some of its bloat to someone else, eliminate the bullshit, and focus on its core competency of moving people from one place to another.

But here's what we'd like someone to cut: lengthy, meaningless, buzzwordy speeches by officials that are just grandiose daydreams instead of specific promises. Just do the damn study, give us the damn findings, and then make the damn changes.