Hey, have you seen all those annoying "Let's meet at Starbucks" adverts? Quite irritating. Well, SBUX is indeed bringing folks together -- in a way they may not be too happy about. many businesses and residents in the Inner Richmond are protesting via petition an invasion of one of Starbuck's nigh ubiquitous stores....

What with all the Ed Jew Borderline and guy taking off his nose business at our city's seat of government, we almost missed some interesting news about the Market/Octavia onramp of bicyclist injury! The Board of Supes has authorized local transit people to put in a raised median strip at the rightmost lane at the intersection, to discourage people from illegally turning onto the highway. We're not absolutely positive that's going to solve the problem......

Here's todays wrapup of news stories....

Peace in our times! Bikers and car drivers, with the help of none other than the Honorable Gavin Newsom, have worked out a permanent solution to the Golden Gate Park Healthy Saturdays impasse. We know, we're totally amazed too -- next, the mayor's office will say they've worked it all out between the Shias and the Sunnis; Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff; and Pat Murphy and Chris Daly. We're nominating Gavin for a Nobel peace......

We've been totally neglecting all the other stuff going on these days, so as to better gawk at the Newsom drinking and sexing debacle (does anyone else think it seems a little unsavory for Gavin to be paying off Mr. Tourk, in an Indecent Proposal kind of way?), but that doesn't mean there hasn't been a lot going on! As Ross Mirkarimi proudly announced a week or so ago, "Wait till you see some of......

First off. Alcoholism is a serious problem and we hope Gavin Newsom (.pdf) gets help and support. Second of all. Blue tie alert! (see picture from this afternoon at right.) We're tag-teaming in for an exhausted Editor SFist Jon, who's taking a much-needed break from his nonstop Gavin news coverage this week, to give you the latest in Newsom news around the web. --Gavin will be getting counseling from Mimi Silbert, the head of the......

Riddle us this, Batman: what does it mean if there's no parking to be had in the city, yet revenues made from parking meters isn't nearly what it should be? Give up? Well, so has everyone else because nobody can quite figure it out. And nobody's really happy about it. ...

-Buffy the robbery slayer. -The Chron delves into the story of Spocko the Blogger....

Like Frank Perdue always said: It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken. The Board of Supervisors cock-a-doodle-doo'ed a 10-1 vote in favor of putting Gavin Newsom and the Question Time he's intent on avoiding on their monthly agenda. So Gavin is now currently scheduled to appear every third Tuesday, and will be marked absent if he doesn't show up within five minutes of his scheduled time. Gavin buck-buck-buck'ed a testy response to......

-The Board of Supes have their first meeting of the year with Gavin as their Very Special Guest Star. -What do you do when you can't make budget? Make welfare cuts!...

You know how Gavin said we were "seconds" away from inking a deal with Earthlink/Google over providing free WiFi to everyone in the city? Well, "seconds" might have been a slight exaggeration but late yesterday, a deal was actually reached, the i's dotted, the t's crossed, and pen was put to paper. Soon the entire city will be a "hot spot." But we knew that already. ...

How much does Gavin not like all those foot patrol resolutions the Board of Supes keep throwing at him? Not very much. So much so he vetoed it again. This resolution was an add-on to the previous legislation that would have added Central and Richmond station districts to areas already covered by the new foot patrol legislation. And yes, this veto came on a late Friday afternoon, the traditional dump-off of stuff everyone knows is politically bad. Like your chief of staff leaving. We see him signing this thing while unbuttoning his blue tie to rush out the door for some more drunken make-out sessions with Jennifer. ...

The Board of Supes' budget committee were doing performance reviews of various departments in the city to see who is doing what and how well. When they did a review of the SFPD, the results weren't so hot. According to the report, Homicide investigators only "cleared" just thirty-three murders for the 2006 fiscal year that ended July 1. The hoped for number was fifty-five cases. In other words, if the SFPD were a major corporation, there'd be layoffs, pension cuts, and more outsourcing to India. You know, that's one good thing about being a cop: it's probably one of the few jobs that won't eventually be outsourced to India. ...

It's another installment of.... Who's! Attacking! Newsom! Now! Where we compile all the negative things people are saying about the San Francisco mayor and report it in bullet form! We'll run a Who's Defending Newsom Now post next, as soon as we find someone defending Newsom, besides Peter Ragone. So here's the list! --Sean Elsbernd!: Newsom's erstwhile ally on the Board of Supes in District 7, Elsbernd is irritated that Newsom's new "let's fix the......

-The Board of Supervisors really don't like Annemarie Conroy. -Members of Visitacion Valley gang plead guilty for gang-like behavior. Meanwhile former gang leader in Oakland shot dead. -Building inspector who bought property that was under review resigns. -Headline in the Onion: Nancy Pelosi Wants Congress to Want to Pass Bill: New Speaker Thought House Knew This Was Important to Her. -You know how several months ago everyone was talking about buying hybrids and the need......

We stole this column idea from Stephen Colbert -- but goodness, a lot of people are attacking Newsom these days, aren't they? Here's today's list! (The Guardian's keeping a list too.) Ross Mirkarimi!: Ross says that Gavin has been "hoisted by his own petard," in response to mayoral minder Peter Ragone's statements that Mirkarimi is only pushing the foot patrol issue so he (Ross) can run for mayor against Newsom. Ross said the Newsom......

We don't know about you, but we are a bit drained from the excitement of last night's election and constantly "refreshing results" while our better half patiently indulged us. It is this sort of compulsive behavior that led us to swear off ebay. But we digress. We're feeling like some instant gratification tonight, and this event should fit the bill. YLEM presents “How Techies Have Fun," a show and tell featuring moving light sculptures,......

The old political shibboleth about releasing unpopular news on the afternoon of "take out the trash" Friday holds true again, as Gavin Newsom sneaks in a veto on Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi's well-received proposal requiring police foot patrols of San Francisco neighborhoods, after originally saying he would let it pass. Ross isn't too pleased about this (his commentary was described as "withering" in the paper). Read this with your own mellifluous basso imitation-Ross voice! The mayor......

By an 8-3 vote, the Board of Supervisors approved a plan to establish foot patrols for eight of the city's ten police district stations. The vote was in reaction to the increased violence in the city and gun-related murders. The Board said foot patrols would go a long ways to helping fight the violence in the city while members of the Police Officers Association said that foot patrols would mean slower response times to 911 calls. We had hoped that the debate would go forward in a restrained, honest, and intelligent way as befitting such an important decision, but that didn't quite happen. So much so, it took us a day just to figure out all the incessant craziness that occurred because of the debate. Let's just say we don't think Chris Daly will be attending any POA fundraisers in the near future. Not that they'd invite him anyways. ...

Hooray! The Board of Supervisors has agreed to allow beer and wine to be served at the Red Vic movie theatre. While a moratorium had been called on new liquor licenses in the Upper Haight, the newly-approved bill is intended to override that in the case of the worker owned and operated single-screen movie theater. The Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi-penned ordinance goes into effect immediately, but the Red Vic still had several hurdles to leap.......

It's cold out there, people, as cold as our Junior Year prom date. -The Board of Supes voted by a 9-2 margin for the public financing of Mayoral races. The city will give a maximum of $1.375 million dollars for those who want in and will be given to candidates who have raised at least $525,000 on their own. That should at least keep Starchild from getting some of that money. Cost in total? $1.5 Million a year and a little over $6 mil an election cycle. ...

Betcha you'd like to know what's going on over at the intimidatingly-named SF County Transportation Authority, wouldn'tcha? Well, you can't. At least, not in great detail, yet. The Board of Supes (that is, the SFCTA's bosses) voted to withhold approval of the Authority's annual report for a bit longer, effectively keeping it away from prying eyes. Could this have anything to do with Supervisor "Everybody-Hates" Chris Daly's recent failed attempt to replace Jake McGoldrick......

In case you missed it, here are a few stories that fell through the proverbial SFist cracks last week: --Arnie kicked off the special election campaign with the traditional scaring of the old folks. The claim this time? If the three resolutions he's backing don't pass, Prop. 13 will have to be revoked and all the old folks will then have their property taxes increased so high that they would have to sell their homes......

First MUNI announced they wanted to raise fares. Then Caltrain hopped on board the fare raising train (ha! we made a pun). And now BART. Why, raising fares is the new black. Thanks to the usual assortment of reasons- budget shortfalls, rising employee benefits, mismanagement- BART is now facing a budget deficit of $53 million dollars. Unlike MUNI, the BART Board doesn't want to cut service, but is proposing a combination fare hikes, cutting discounts to children and seniors, staff layoffs, and raising parking fees. Oh, and introducing valet service at some of the more popular parking lots. Yes, valet services and no, that doesn't sound elitist at all. At a meeting last week, BART directors heard from the horde of angry commuters who raised the fairly decent point that with gas prices so high, raising fares to make BART prohibitively more expensive might not be the smartest thing to do (maybe it's because we only got a C in economics, but if there's a belief that lowering prices can increase profits by making it cheaper for people to buy things and crack dealers often sell their crack at a low cost to get more people hooked, wouldn't that also be true of public transportation? Like if you lower fares, maybe more people would ride and more money would be brought in? But what do we know?) The Board of Directors pretty much shrugged their shoulders in response. ...

Bono makes appearance at Glide Memorial on Sunday, singing "Stand By Me" and talked of meeting the pope and offering him his "fly" shades. San Jose State cheerleaders get into a somewhat violent altercation with fan who thought their routines bordered on the lascivious. It looks like the electioneering communication reform bill will become law in time for the next campaign period. Everyone's been assured that bloggers will be exempt. Nancy Pelosi gave Tom......

The Board of Supervisors voted 6-5 to allow the sponsors of the San Francisco Grand Prix Bicycle Race, otherwise known as the T-Mobile International, to have around $200,000 in costs waived by the city. Whether to give dispensation to the sponsors became an issue when Chris Daly tried to block Gavin Newsom's attempt to give them a free waiver. Daly argued that the bicycle race was basically a corporate giveaway and that the city can't afford to give away any money in our budget conscious times. And not only that, the guy behind it is a Republican! Daly also brought up the vote he lost about sending money to tsunami relief to try and point out that the city refused to send money to help victims of the tsunami but will give money to some rich Republican who likes bikes. Bitter much? On the other hand, Newsom and other supporters argued that the race generated mucho dinero in tax revenues and tourism money and is worth the expense. Bike race watchers, and there are a lot of them, love to spend. ...

Clemency has been denied in the pending excution of death-row inmate Donald Beardslee, and the first execution in California since January of 2002 should go on as scheduled tonight at 12:01am. The Governor's official statement [PDF] (which did not include the above quote from Commando, although we have a feeling someone will make a tasteless "Hasta La Vista, Baby" joke before the night is over) reads in part: The Board of Prison Terms unanimously recommended......