Good news: Translink will be up and running on Muni in the late fall/early winter of 2007. Or at least, that's what Muni said last year, and surprise! It's still not working. (And before that, it was January of 2007.) Translink is the work of a company called ERG, Ltd (emphasis on the "limited"); and in the decades (decades!) that it's been bandied about, lots of other cities have managed to set up Translinks of their own. No wonder Scott Schroeder, BART's controller-treasurer, wants the MTC to cut its losses and just give up on the project. more ›

SFist interviews the Reverend Billy of "what would jesus buy?" more ›

Found Magazine's inexhaustible founders, Davy and Peter Rothbart, will be at Berkeley's Pegasus Books tonight and at SF's The Dark Room on Thursday night for Found's "There Goes the Neighborhood Tour 2007." We're excited to see what's in Davy's trunk of "sparkling, brand-new finds" and be privy to Peter's songs based on notes from Found #5, aka "The Crime Issue." The Bay Area marks the halfway point in the bros.' "65-city, 36-state, 3-month rampage!" Found... more ›

-- Barefoot Nellies: "The Bay Area's finest all-gal bluegrass band" headline at one of the Bay Area's finest bars, Amnesia, starting at 8:30 p.m., 853 Valencia; free. more ›

--The SF Board of Supes has imposed a moratorium on SoMa studio condo construction. more ›

The Bay Area Hip-Hop Theater Festival kicks off its two-week run of politically-inspired and racially-conscious dramatic and spoken word arts at Berkeley's La Pena Cultural Center at an event featuring the teen poets of Youth Speaks and their Brave New Voices College Tour. $10, 8 p.m., 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley (between Ashby and Alcatraz Aves.) more ›

Last Wednesday, we told you our quick take on Juno Baby's line of educational entertainment products for kids (the long and short: cute, cool, and engaging). Adam Adleman, one of the founders of Juno Baby, took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to answer some questions: more ›

The Bay Area is home to many intriguing small businesses. Still, color us surprised that we've found in Juno Baby a local purveyor of high-quality children's educational products that manages to encapsulate what we like best in a company. more ›

We gobble the various food sections up each Wednesday. These are our favorite tidbits from today's offerings: more ›

What? This isn't Thursday? OK, all this holiday brouhaha has made us a day late from our usual posting schedule but we just know you'll forgive us. To make it up to you, we want to share a brand new video from Trainwreck Riders. According to our buddy Nat, last week the band hit the streets with a super 8 camera and a bag full of costumes that they dug up from their basements. They started the day at 'Drink Liquor' (where they used to buy alcohol at when they were in high school - uh, allegedly), picked up some 40 oz's of Olde English as inspiration, and shot a video at some of the stomping grounds that Pete sings about in the song. more ›

Now that summer's sun has given way to winter's gloom, the concerns of our air have moved from day to night. What does this mean other than a lousy attempt at being poetic? We're moving into "Spare the Night" nights. Like the one called last night. more ›

"Individuals who enter homosexual unions cannot reasonably be expected to provide children with sound moral teaching," Father Gerald Coleman, rector of St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, is quoted as writing in this month's issue of "San Francisco Faith: The Bay Area's Catholic Newsletter." Okay, we admit that some gays are not always responsible, and a meth-addled seeker of unsafe sex might be less suited for parenthood than, say, a dedicated spiritual leader. But it's getting so hard to tell those two apart these days, isn't it? more ›

-HP Chairman (Chairwoman?) Patricia Dunn will step down in January for all the craziness HP has been involved in lately. We're sure that with all the scandal swirling about that she's sort of responsible for, HP will give her a package commiserate with the mess, like say only several millions of dollars. more ›

SFist interviews John Ringhofer of Half-handed cloud on the Asthmatic Kitty label more ›

Screw getting Dooced, Josh Wolf has set the blogger bar a bit higher than getting fired. He's been jailed. Judge William Alsup, presiding over a federal grand jury case investigating the attempted burning of a police car and assault of an officer during an anti-war protest last year, has held Mr. Wolf in contempt of court, and ordered him imprisoned. The crime? Refusing to answer a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's office for raw footage of the event and to stand witness before the Grand Jury. more ›

The best professional road cyclists in the world are competing for the maillot jeune on the rolling plains and brutal mountain passes of Europe right now, but this weekend, we've got our own battle for cycling supremacy going on right here in the Bay Area.

Today through Sunday, road cyclists from Pro down through Cat 5 and beyond can compete in the Cougar Mountain Classic on and around the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma. As an added bonus, the Cougar is playing host to the USA Cycling Mountain Bike National Championships. That's the Nationals baby, right here, almost within sight of Mt. Tam, mountain biking's Hoboken.

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We just received last week the Slow Food Guide to San Francisco and the bay area, third guide in the series after New York and Chicago. The Bay Area is in smaller font in the actual title, but the guide actually makes a great job at not discriminating against the South and East Bays. We love Slow Food. Our s.o.'s roommate, Valerie, used to head the Berkeley chapter and many times we would step into a chapter meeting in the living room, which really was a yummy potluck of all-organic, all-sustainable delicious recipes. And they would let us take a bite, thank you very much, they won our heart the old fashioned way, through the belly. We were out when Alice Waters visited, but we knew the house had been touched by the Slow Food equivalent of a divinity, it had a halo from that day on. Both our s.o. and Valerie have moved out of the holy shrine by now, but Slow Food is still thriving. more ›

SFist interviews Tyrone Davies of blue vomit fame and Free Form Film Festival Proprietor more ›

We love those Food Network cookoff challenges! Make a birthday cake for Elvis! Decorate the best gingerbread house! Who can make the tallest ice/pastry sculpture? So we can't wait for Food Network's coverage of the mothership of food contesting -- the biennial $1,000,000 Pillsbury Bake-Off. So Pillsbury picks 100 contestants every two years, to compete in categories like "Wake Up To Breakfast," and "Brand New You" (healthful recipes), and "Dinner Made Simple," among others. The recipes must include at least two designated Pillsbury products, such as Yoplait, El Paso salsa, and Pop-Secret popcorn, among many others. One lucky winner walks away with a million dollars; and other $10,000 prizes will be awarded, including most dairy, and best Latino-influenced. The Bay Area has traditionally done pretty well in the bake-off -- the most famous bake-off winner was the Tunnel of Fudge chocolate bundt cake, made by a San Franciscan, and the first male winner of the contest was from Redwood City (with a macadamia torte). This year, the Bay Area's sending six representatives, including a very pregnant Mountain View cook (making spinach wonton crisps), a 48-year-old San Francisco male painter who's been entering the bakeoff since he was 10 (deviled crab and cheese rolls), and acclaimed food contestor Roxanne Chan from Albany, with a tomato-corn recipe. (Also, a shrimp and rice salad from Windsor, a taco steak pasta from Monterey, and bear claws from San Jose.) The bakeoff takes place from March 19-22 in Orlando, Florida. Go Bay Area cooks! And contestants, you're all just lucky SFist Derrick didn't enter this year -- he'd totally clean your kitchen-timer clocks! more ›

The massive gap between rental rates and mortgage rates in the Bay Area is often cited as one of the reasons the entire real estate market's headed for certain doom. Having sunk some money into said market, we're very interested in exactly what's going to go on with housing prices and rental rates, so we read the real estate press as carefully as a haruspex examines sheep guts.

Okay, folks. Here's what we're facing: in the December issue of "Faith: The Bay Area Catholic Newsletter," the editor writes that "if it should be the case that homosexual desires are related to DNA, are we to say that anal and oral intercourse (which are really what homosexuality is all about) are natural, normal, and good?" more ›

When it came time to pick the best place to shop for food, we fretted over the decision. We knew the winner would be a farmer's market, since seasonal produce bought from local farmers beats virtually every store's fruits and vegetables. But which market to choose? The Bay Area probably has more farmer's markets per capita than anywhere else, each with its own personality and devotees. more ›

It was almost a year ago that someone put our names on the mailing list of "Faith: The Bay Area's Lay Catholic Newsletter," and it's been an eye-opening couple of months. For example, who knew that local conservatives feel that their arguments against gay marriage are "too religious," an interesting criticism for a Catholic newsletter to raise, and that they haven't provided enough "secular reasons for opposing homosexual unions." Good luck thinking of any. The prevailing attitude in "Faith" surprised us -- they seem to feel that the purpose of marriage is "procreation and education" and that homospouses are mere "help-mates" to each other, capable of neither. What a fascinating position. Fascinating and retarded. more ›

"Unitarians Begone!" declares a front-page headline in this month's "San Francisco Faith: The Bay Area's Lay Catholic Newsletter." The article itself is about the unpleasant architecture of a proposed Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland -- we're not sure how Unitarians are to blame, or how it's possible to use the word "begone" without irony in this day and age. Oh well. more ›

Saturday: We'll be empowering ourselves through sports and the arts at the Mack Daddy Caddy Urban Country Club. Get to Club 6 at 11 AM to hear a free to the public panel discussion between The RZA, Senior PGA tour legend Walter Morgan, Evil E, and Kevvy Kev on the empowering nature of hip-hop and golf, and stay for the $15 concert at 2 PM. more ›

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Homosexual Pride Mass in Berkeley! Father Richard Sparks gave communion to gays and members of other faiths; "completely unjustified," and "heresy," says the article. SFist's expert in such matters informs us that Father Sparks did, in fact, violate Canon 844 § 1, and that casual participation in a sacred rite can offend (sorta like the influx of suburbanites to Pride in the Castro). On the other hand, there are many of the opinion that bringing Christ to as many people as possible is not necessarily a bad thing; but "Faith" doesn't address that side of the issue -- hey, we thought conservatives were all about "teach the controversy!" more ›

Okay, we're going to have a little fun at someone's expense here, but we feel that they deserve it. Or at least, we deserve to. Because we feel rather jerked around, and were ready to ignore it, but recent events have made us feel all the more belittled. So with our viciously sharp HTML claws, we'd like to dig in to the Blog Business Summit's PR department. more ›

The Bay Area should be proud of at least two high profile record releases from local artists this week. Oakland's own The Lovemakers drop their major label debut Times of Romance on Interscope Records, and San Francisco's John Vanderslice keeps it real by releasing his latest, Pixel Revolt, on indie stalwart Barsuk Records. more ›