Never having to drive through this again? Sob. The East Bay and South Bay (more or less) are vying to be one of the destination points that will send travelers from SF to LA in 2½ hours. (Can you imagine? You're watch HSM and HSM2 on your iPhone and -- poof! -- you're kicking it in LA!) Over 700 miles of track would be devoted to getting you from SF to LA in record......

The East Bay Biz Times is reporting that Whole Foods is planning a major expansion throughout the East Bay. Yes, soon enough, Lafayette, Dublin, and Oakland will be able to experience the "whole paycheck" phenomenon. ...

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Last Week's Winner: SF Weekly Nothing's good enough for the SF Weekly this week: Cutting Ball Theatre's Woyzeck doesn't cut it for Chloe Veltman; Frances Reade compares Kemble Scott's hot-selling novel SoMa to Showgirls (not meant as a compliment); in an article compelling for its title, alone, Flaccid Nostalgia, Music Editor, Jennifer Maerz lays into the Mother Hips with the "you asked for it" gambit, "They want me to write about this band - I......

Last month's winner, San Francisco Magazine: Cover: Spring '07 Style Forecast. Is it just us, or does the model on the cover look a whole lot like Carmen Electra? Sadly, it's not, but we love the orange Prada dress she's sporting. Short Stories: spring's super-short dresses are fabulous, and inspire us to do more squats. (But we think we'll stick to knee-length, because the world has seen enough hoo ha lately to last a lifetime.) href="http://sanfranmag.com/home/view_story/1534">Deconstructing Eco-chic: Tips on how to dress green, and still look good. Style Counsel: An interview with Mellisa Ceria, the founder of ShareYourLook.com, a personal style website for anybody too shy to ask a stranger, "Cute bag. Where did you get it?" Not that anybody ever asks us that every day. ...

Forget the Oscar nominations and the Super Bowl, what really matters in January is The Onion's A.V. Club choices for Worst Band Names. They have special categories for emo bands, death metal bands, bands with the word "f*ck" in them, bands with the word "funk" in them, and bands with gratuitous usage of exclamation points. Personally, we're of the opinion that there are two types of bad band names: annoying or boring bad and so-bad-they're-good......

The Wall Street Journal's East Bay Journal showed us a little love this week with a two-part series on the residential and commercial real estate markets in the Five-and-Dime. See "East Bay: More Affordable, But Only Compared to Its Neighbors" (January 18, 2006) and "California's East Bay Area Offers Relative Bargains" (January 19, 2006). SFist is always interested to read about bargains in the area, if only because they're rarer than a morning when......

We personally think the whole "Top Whatever" lists thing to be totally overdone and usually laughably wrong. On the other hand, they are darn fun to ruminate over. Especially a particularly juicy one that hasn't been done before. Recently, USA Today put together a list of the "Top Twenty American Rock Bands." The top American band of all time, as voted by the readers? Pearl Jam. Something they got in part for "longevity" even though we thought they broke up in '95 or something (we kid! We know they're still around. It's just that they’ve been releasing the same half-assed disc for the past ten years). Of local interest is the fact that the Bay Area throws down and represents. In fact, four out of the twenty (well, actually, twenty-one but do we really want to include Bon Jovi?) all hail from our hallowed climes. Those bands? The East Bay's own Creedence Clearwater Revival (15, tied with Bruuuuuce!!!!!) and Metallica (12), the Dead (7), and clocking in as the highest ranked Bay Area band-- Journey (5). Don’t stop believing, indeed. For a bit of perspective, that's more great bands than Chicago (zero bands), Boston (one band), Seattle (three) and the mighty New York (three). Take that, Big Apple! The only area more rocking than the Bay Area is SoCal, with six, but there should be some sort of penalty incurred for giving us the Eagles. ...

The East Bay's Casual Commute just got a little more codified with today's Chron cover story about the cheapest way to get across the Bay Bridge. We've never been able to find a website explaining the casual commute phenomenon, or where exactly to pick up rides -- though we have seen groups of artists-working-day-jobs, slumming consultants, and other downtown denizens patiently lined up on various corners in Berkeley and Rockridge waiting on corners around 8 in the morning. Thanks to the Chron for publishing the definitive list! So the trick with cas. commute is that East Bay denizens looking to get to San Francisco meet up at designated points with drivers who are looking to get three people for the free Bay Bridge carpool lane. Once in the car, the casual commute rules are famous: no chitchat unless the driver initiates; no cell phone calls; driver's radio should be set on NPR, classical, or jazz; no food. Riders are dropped off in SoMA (though sometimes a driver will agree to take you up to the Financial District if it's along their way.). But rule-breakers are legion. One friend who casual-commutes reports a lawyer blabbing on and on about his cases on his cell phone without ever figuring out one of his companions in the car was a federal judge, much to the snickerings of the rest of the people in the car (a carful of lawyers is apparently not otherwise notable, we guess). The Chron also reports that one environmentalist will open the door to SUVs waiting in line, shout at them for despoiling our earth, and then slam the door and move to the next car in line. Awesome. Any good casual commute stories out there? ...