Since February, that's $670,381.39. It's been a busy month for lawyers: Muni's conceding $131,695.06 (about the cost of a bribe to Ted Stevens, or one foot of collapsed-bridge repairs, or a single union employee, or an English teacher in Seoul, or your very own hair salon) in settlements for August in nine separate cases. The biggest payout is $47,500 to a guy who broke his ankle when the bus lurched forward before he could......

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express: The Spare The Air advocates don't take BART. Book section: Their book reviewer thinks that Special Topics in Calamity Physics is pretentious. Cover article: the new hip downtown Oakland scene, and backlash. Korean food in Oakland. Amoeba's plans to counteract the downloading revolution -- among other things, they let you "rent" CDs by buying them at full price and then returning them for 75% back after you've ripped......

See, we're not the only people with server problems -- All MUNI K, L, and M trains are stuck after an unspecified "electrical problem" in the tunnel between West Portal and the Castro right before 8:00 a.m. forced MUNI to stop those three train lines so they could send in workers into the tunnel to fix the situation. The dreaded above-ground bus service will be shuttling people to the Castro, at which point we expect......

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. Hey, their website's back up again (wish we could say the same for ours). Also -- new topical blogs. We love how Bruce Brugman's blog says "Bruce will not be posting until the end of the month." Thanks for letting us know! Redmond thought it was neat that lots of people went to Dolores Park to watch the World Cup. Shhhh, don't tell anyone, but Gavin Newsom is really......