As the story of Bob and Sally attest, they shouldn't. The cute and clever film above was produced by Angry Renter. Basically, they're a bunch of apartment-renters who are pissed that while they've been doing the fiscally responsible thing by saving up, the government now wants to tax them to bail out the people who took risky gambles on adjustable-rate mortgages. It's as if the state were to step in and confiscate your lunch......

Today is the final day, folks. Have you finished your taxes yet? Yeah, neither have we. (Math is hard.) But for all you anal retentive types who, like, know how to balance a checkbook and look at your receipts, Whole Foods can help alleviate some of your tax-day worry. Today they're paying the sales tax on any and all items at Whole Food stores in Nor Cal and Reno. So, basically, now would be......

Everyone's favorite San Francisco rabblerousers, Matier & Ross, wrote an article on a proposal to raise parking meter violation rates. If approved, violating a meter's time downtown could result in a $60 ticket. Under the plan before the Municipal Transportation Agency, all tickets under $90 would go up $10 - including the ever-popular street-sweeping ticket, which snagged 664,361 people last year and would increase to $50. ... Increasing tickets by $10 translates to an extra......

Yesterday we mentioned the delightful work trip/vacation San Francisco supervisor Bevan Dufty and city treasurer Jose Cisneros took to Australia for Sydney's Gay Mardi Gras. Trannyshack founder Heklina was there, too. And many readers fretted about whether or not city tax dollars went to pay for this trip down under -- an excursion, it should be mentioned, that will reportedly bring in much-needed tourist dollars to SF. Anyway, according to Dufty's office: No San......

Remember that budget surplus? Remember when we were flush with cash and we decided to go on this spending binge and Chris Daly got into a fight with everyone because he wanted to spend the money his way and not everyone else's way? Well goodbye to all that because Gavin announced that we know have a whopping $229 million dollar deficit....

Proposition D is a library bond initiative. Let's be clear: we love the public library. Sure, the main building is a little weird looking and they've been restoring it for two years and it functions as a daytime homeless shelter, but...everything in there is free, and if you are trying to find something, the staff knows pretty much everything. The city library is a fantastic resource, and functions a heckuva lot better than, oh,......

Ah, beautiful Diviz. Is there no boulevard more perfect, more blissful? When we think "nice places to take an afternoon constitutional," we are drawn instantly to its divine charm. It is, simply put, an Eden. To alter it would be to play God. But SOME PEOPLE want to change all that. The out-of-touch bureaucrats in City Hall think that the stretch from Haight to Geary needs to be improved. Strange terms like "greening" and......

Good news for students of the struggle of the proletariat: even if you don't have time to read Marx, there are alternatives. Like Paul Krugman, Harpers, Howard Zin, Noam Chomsky, the Guardian of London -- and even our very own home-grown SF Bay Guardian. This reading list is the result of a conversation that started innocently enough on the SFBG's blogs, in a post about homelessness in Golden Gate Park and, tangentially, the Spanish......

Although the billionaire hotelier once allegedly (the help is never a reliable source) uttered the words "only the little people pay taxes," Leona Helmsley today paid her biggest tax bill of all, breathing her last breathe in Greenwich, Connecticut. One has to hand it to Helmsley for making it all the way to the age of 87. She had a rough time of it in the late '80s with all that tax evasion, employee......

Associated Press' Scott Lindlaw reports that at yesterday's federal building grand opening, as Nancy Pelosi was in the middle of playing the time-honored role of ribbon cutter, "anti-war protestors" audibly chanted such gems as "Impeach now" and "How about cutting the funding for war?" What's more, they unraveled a large banner reading "Impeach" in front of the day's speakers. But here's the best part: master of ceremonies and Bush administration official, Peter G. Stamison, tries......

The Chron reports that Gavin's forming a panel to look into ways to raise money for Muni. Hey, great idea! In fact, it's such a good idea that SPUR already did it over a year ago. Remember March of 2006 when we wrote about the report entitled "Muni's Billion Dollar Problem"? It was about how Muni's budget shortfall will total a BILLION dollars in a few years if they don't get their act in gear.......

Here's todays news...

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. ...

On Tuesday, the 49ers unveiled their shiny new plan for a stadium in Santa Clara. The whole thing will cost about $854 million with Santa Clara pitching in what is said to be $160 million, although Santa Clara still might have to throw down for another $20 million to move the substation that's on the grounds of the proposed stadium. The rest of the money, $694 million, will come partially from the Niners ($363.3 million) and partially through the usual assortment of things, mainly naming rights and fan gouging. ...

More mysterious criminal events in Fremont! This time, someone dropped a five-foot tall safe off a truck in the middle of the road. The safe had been pried open, revealing...... a collection of about 70 Star Wars action figures, still in their original packaging. Somewhere, a broken-hearted fan weeps. The yutz alert is on high after the horrific Virginia Tech tragedy: the UC Berkeley law student who posted a fake threat on a blog that......

One of our favorite episodes of "the Simpsons" is the monorail episode, the one where some con artist (voiced by the late, great Phil Hartman) convinces Springfield that the one thing they need to do to put themselves on the map is a monorail. Of course, it all goes to pot when the guy takes off with some of the money and Homer somehow manages to become the monorail's conductor. So what does this have to do with the 49ers? Because at a meeting yesterday with the Santa Clara City Council, a consultant hired by the 49ers painted such a rosy picture of what would happen if Santa Clara builds them a stadium, we can't but help think about the episode. ...

Here's a listing for tonight's events...

This weekend we started our taxes, so we are now feeling particularly poor. In need of activities that that will suit our penny-pinching ways, while also distracting us from the cold hard reality of our financial state, we turn to Albany, a little town north of Berkeley. ...

Tonight at The Lab (2948 16th St at Capp), it's the opening reception for the Corporate Art Expo '07, an exhibition of the "art lie" du jour - artists taking on the guise of corporations with the requisite branding, logos, and jargon, often as a means to critiquing capitalism and consumerism. Curated by Shane Montgomery, the exhibition features faux-corps: the Anti-Advertising Agency, Acclair, C5 Corporation, Davis & Davis Research, Meaning Maker, Death and Taxes, Inc.,......

Need a place to spend that tax return you have coming your way? Sore subject? We haven't done our taxes yet either, but we plan on spending our hard earned cash at some of these online boutiques, all of whom support small independent businesses and crafters. We've made a list of some of our favorites for you, so when you do get that fat check (we're being optimistic) you won't even need to leave your bed to spend it all. Etsy is like the biggest craft fair you've ever been too, but it's all online, so your feet won't get tired walking the stadium size market. Everything for sale on Etsy is handmade, and each seller has their own sort of storefront where they can post new items they've made and set their own prices. You can spend hours searching through the items for sale on Etsy, and you'll be able to find just about everything from hand crafted wooden headboards to a San Francisco penny necklace. We're thinking of showing a little SF pride and buying this jet set journal. Penny necklace from artisticprostitution's Etsy shop...

Last week's winner, the San Jose Metro. Gary Singh infiltrates a ladies' drinking circle, while Chuck Reed goes drinking with the Merc News. Do note, Gavin Newsom, that Reed only drank two bottled waters the entire night. Cover article: Making Redwood City fun again (land use edition). Italian food in Los Gatos. Lemon trees in winter. Women chanters. A review of the Justin Timberlake show. And the Straight Dope: are the magnetic poles going to......

And now, the story you've all been waiting for anxiously, it's the latest in Treasure Island! We know, we know...you can't say SFist doesn't bring the excitement....

Slowly and surely, our Governator is letting loose with his plans for the upcoming year, most of which came in an interview on "Meet Tim Russert." And let's just say Schwarzenegger is feeling a little cocky in light of his electoral stomping and all of the love thrown his way by the Democrats in the Assembly. So much so, he's getting flack from his fellow Republicans. ...

And concluding our series of Your Overly Simplistic Guides To The November 2006 Election, here's the SFist guide to the San Francisco propositions. (Here's our take on the state propositions and the Oakland city propositions, for those of you keeping track.) If you're looking for better-informed information than the cursory one-sentence summaries we're going to provide to you after the jump, check out the SF Dept. of Elections and the San Francisco League of Women......

We don't care if your voter information guide isn't here yet -- we can't wait any longer! It's that time of the quarter again -- for SFist's shallow surface summaries of the important issues of politics and public policy facing our city and state today that we're voting on next week. Thank goodness, there's only two state propositions and four SF ones. Don't forget to vote on 6/6/06. 6/6/06! Marilyn Manson should be running for......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly: Letters: Pro-sex worker letter, and a letter pointing out race- and class-based disparities in local coverage of murdering moms. Matt Smith on the DeYoung parking shenanigans. Ways to avoid paying your taxes (shouldn't this article have run before taxes were due?). Videojournalist Josh Wolf gets subpoenaed by the feds over last year's anarchist riots. Cover article: SFIFF. Improv actors pick the theater critic's how-we-met story to act out on stage -- hilarious. Meredith Brody takes more relatives out to eat. She has a very large family, doesn't she, Ced? Matmos. The Bouncer's not drinking this week -- take care of yourself, Bouncer! You sound a little down. And Savage Love -- whatever you do, don't burn your youthful hijinks onto a CD-Rom, fool! Next up, the San Jose Metro: San Jose should stop embracing sprawl. The Fly: Fast food politics, with a Subway application and some political donations shenanigans by King Eggroll. There's an excellent picture of a kid slaying a dragon in the California Theater Company's production of "The Reluctant Dragon," but it's not online. Curse you, Metro! Cover article: the San Jose downtown district 3 election. The chef from Campton Place's new restaurant in Mountain View. Project Runway winner Chloe Dao is in San Jose this weekend. SFIFF. Pick out the fake hyphy-related vocabulary words from this list. And SFist Eve's horoscope: rescue a talking parrot from a burning pet store. Get on that, Eve! The EBX, the Guardian, and the pick of the week after the jump. Picture from the Weekly's Sucka Free City column....

Just as the rain stopped, everyone has a new favorite blog topic--it's earthquake centennial madness! Eric over at and the Family Buick has a fairly lengthy write-up of the event, while Rangelife has a fever, and the only cure is--more cowbell. Sorry, wrong pop culture reference. We're still on the earthquake. Your favorite ex-bathroom attendant has a write-up on the plucky fire hydrant that saved so many, while sfdx has a different drink in mind. Mona has a beautiful pic of one of the survivors up on her blog. Some others, though, are more concerned about the effects of the next big one. Jennifer admits that she's been rattled by all the voice of doom coverage, and Jamison gets snarky over what he feels is unfair proactive re-distribution of blame. Maybe he should keep the turtle he found, a pet might make him feel better. Art makes us feel better. We love that we live in a town where art thrives. The Painted Ground of San Jose Avenue posts protest art this week, while the California Department of Corrections went big time and Kvatch takes over Market Street. This poster--literally--thinks locally. VJ Culture isn't protesting anything, but we do lament the fact we'll never be as cool and smart--at the same time--as he is. On the other hand, we have jerks here, too, as chronicled this week by Ed, in addition to Thomas Hawk's ongoing struggles with building security guards. So is it any wonder that sometimes we just go a little goofy? And sometimes, when the stars are aligned correctly, we have smart, goofy Newsom protest blogs that makes milk come out our noses. You suck! Have a nice day! Picture from If I Ran The Zoo. SFist Jacob, contributing. ...

For years, arts groups have been complaining about not getting enough money and what money they get not going to the right people. Part of the problem was that the city's art fund, which mainly comes from hotel and other taxes have continuously been robbed of funding from the Board of Supervisors looking to fill budget holes. So last year, after years of complaining, something was done: a task force was formed to look into it. After a year of debating, the task force issued their findings and found that the key to solving this problem is to form another committee. That and there should be more money given to the program. Oh, and it would be super nice if the Board of Supes would kindly not raid funds to pay for other things. Some say that this won't do anything as it just adds another level of bureaucracy to everything. Others point out that committees cost money too. And Jon Carroll wonders what if the Board of Supes just stopped raiding the fund? ...

Last week, the Governator put an abortion loving lesbian in charge of his Adminstration. The Right was not amused (neither was the Left, but that's neither here nor there in terms of this posting). How not amused? John Fund in the Wall Street Journal not only compares the nomination of Susan Kennedy to Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, but wonders if Arnie Jumped the Shark. That shark was jumped months ago. But wait, there's more. In response, a conservative group is starting a drive to draft Mel Gibson to run against the Governator. They've even set up a Web site with an online petition to encourage him to run. We think is an awesome idea. After all, Arnie and Mel never actually squared off in a movie which means it'll be like one of those Kirk vs. Picard type situations. Just think of it, the Terminator versus Braveheart, Predator vs. Lethal Weapon. We can already picture the debate: as Arnie recites one-liners from his movies for the hundredth time, Mel goes into his "Three Stooges" routine while his aides torture him in slow motion. ...