Due to the popularity of Portland's Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls, (and just in time for the national release of Girls Rock! The Movie this spring) girls' rock camps are now sprouting up all over the country, including one opening in the Bay Area this summer! The Bay Area Girls Rock Camp will serve 25–40 girls between the ages of 8 and 18 and will take place at Julia Morgan School for Girls in......

Researching San Francisco history means spending way too much time sitting in the dark. In the library, we mean, staring at microfilm of old newspapers. Hours of scanning those scratched and blurry archives makes us a little punchy, so we blinked and rubbed our eyes at this gruesome headline from the February 13, 1902 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. We wondered momentarily if it was a prescient comment on the state of contemporary......

Dear AlertSF, Why do you yell at us? You've done this to us five times today already, and we still don't understand you with the greatest clarity. To wit: The National Weather Service reports/updated a Winter Storm Watch for the San Francisco area. ...SNOW ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 4 AM PST THURSDAY FOR THE TULARE COUNTY MOUNTAINS... ...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM THURSDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH FRIDAY AFTERNOON FOR THE TULARE COUNTY MOUNTAINS.........

Vote early, vote often...

The Third Annual Thanksgiving Dodgeball Game is kicking off at 9 p.m. at Dolores Park, Thanksgiving Day. While it's probably best that you go after your food's been well digested, there's nothing like getting pummeled with balls to help you work off those turkey pounds. Just make sure to bring your own balls (literally and figuratively, we suppose) as whoever is running this thing has told us that they won't be supplying the, uh,......

Newsflash! It costs a lot of money to live here in the Bay Area -- 40% above the national average. Fortunately, salaries are generally higher here to cover at least some of the cost. The U.S. Dept. of Commerce issued a report showing that the SF-Oakland area ranks number 2 in income per person for 2005 ($52.543/year, as opposed to the national average of $34.471), behind only Connecticut, which is where hedge fund people......

Each Tuesday we will feature new music that should (or whatever) be on your radar. Standouts: 1. Hard-Fi - Once Upon A Time in the West: They have already conquered the #1 spot on the UK Billboards - now let's see if they can do the same here in the U.S. The popular first single, "Suburban Knights" is a perfect sing-a-long with its memorable chorus and orchestrated strings. After one listen, it might hook you.......

San Rafael-based Edutopia Magazine, which is brought to us by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, looks to the future in its latest issue, identifying 10 ideas or trends that its experts believe can improve K-12 education. We found them thought provoking, and hope you agree. ...

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

Bless you and may the Lord keep you, SFist readers! Look what turned up in the SFist Flickr stream (tag your pictures too!): a picture of the cursed 666 taxi medallion!!! Thank you, reader gusmacroy! The story's gone national, with a picture of the taxi union leader testifying with devil horns on in the designated "wacky San Franciscans" spot in the national section of the New York Times. As we write, it's the seventh-most-emailed......

Plenty of interesting stuff happened in San Francisco last week, and our readers, as always, added funny, insightful, and interesting angles to the stuff we wrote about. Our fabulous five for last week -- the first week with a new guy in the top spot! -- follows....

Former SFist contributor Ted R. passed along this picture he took of an IMPEACH sign spotted at Saturday's Giants game during the national anthem. (We've helpfully circled the IMPEACH for you.) Is this the work of Code Pink....? Or is Barry Bonds so untouchable the only way we can get rid of him is through the constitutional Congressional process? Thanks for the picture, Ted! We miss your weather reports around here!......

Week Around The -Ists...

We just love this cute pic of a mail man loading letters and food. It's the perfect example of a nice canned food drive happening nationwide tomorrow. Some (or is it just us?) may immediately think this canned good drive is a great way to drive up Campbell's business, and they'd probably be correct. Campbell's is the main sponsor. They also may wonder, "Hey, how do I know some sketchy dude(tte) isn't going to......

A fight on the Cal campus last Saturday left a senior with a fractured skull and brain damage and a member of the rugby team looking for an attorney. The resident went outside when he heard someone breaking a window of his co-op (at Prospect and Channing), and got in a confrontation with a guy wearing a Cal rugby shirt. The rugby team had won the national championship that night. The victim claims the rugby......

Warrior Nation, can it get any better? Seriously. After Golden State's tenacious, gutty, and spirited come-from-behind 103-99 victory over the Dallas Mavericks Sunday night in the O-rena, the Warriors have taken a 3-1 lead in their best-of-seven series. After 13 years of waiting, nobody in the NBA is more jacked up than the Warriors and their long-suffering fans.

The season has gone from just another shit sandwich to a gravy train with biscuit wheels in little more than a month. From nine games below .500 to .500. Not just a .500 record, but playoffs. Not just playoffs, but most favorable matchup. Not just favorable matchup, but a game one victory to take home court advantage in the series and set the basketball world abuzz.

Theatrical Releases April 27, 2007 We’ve already told you to catch The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and Vacancy and Hot Fuzz, and the rest of this “week in movies” will be all about local wisdom, but before we disband with the national releases, we need to tell you to see Domestic Import at the Balboa. Domestic is a comedy of errors about a Russian nanny in a well-to-do family. The indie tackles immigration issues with biting but not terribly painful satire. Definitely worth the time and the Balboa is always a great place to see a flick-- free admission on your Birthday! And, hey, we're also giving tickets away to the movie. Just enter below and we'll announce the winner tomorrow afternoon ...

Lest you think Gavin's little statement over the weekend that this being a Sanctuary City, he will order city officials to not raise a finger when it comes to cracking down illegal immigrants has gone without any reaction out there in media land, it has. And it's loads of fun. ...

Yesterday afternoon, friendly blogneighbor Cedric wrote in to point out a glaring slight: on Out Magazine's list of 50 important gays, there seem to be zero San Franciscans. What! Zero! Of all the nerve! (At least, we think it's zero ... after the twenties, we're a little foggy on some of those names. Like, Ingrid Sischy? Who?) But how dare they! Of all the oversights! How could they possibly have overlooked such local gay......

For most of the day it looked like a total Cinderella story for unknown Jason Donald, but when the very last rider of the 2007 Tour of California (TOC) prologue crossed the finish line Sunday, it was Levi Leipheimer who had tears in his eyes.

A Credit Agricole rider suffers his way up the last 300 meters to the finish line atop Telegraph Hill. Photo from SF_Chris.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the national anthem, Jean-Marc Marino of team Credit Agricole rolled down the starting chute at 1:00 p.m. sharp and the prologue was on. In a time trial like Sunday's prologue, riders race alone and against the clock rather than against each other en masse. Following Marino, 144 more riders attacked the course at one-minute intervals for the next two hours.

In today's Chron, there's a big story about the events that occurred on New Year's Eve. To do so, they interviewed a whole bunch of witnesses (most of whom are anonymous) and put it together into a cohesive whole. And guess what? Everybody corroborates the story of the Baker's Dozen choral group. Everybody. Which makes you wonder why nobody's been charged yet or what's up with Ken Garcia and why is Heather Fong lying but that's neither here nor there right now....

It's the best American football wknd of the year. The four still-standing franchises slug it out for a slot in the Super Bowl. Awesome....

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to....

-So we've already had our say about Art's canning, but what does everyone else say? Ray Ratto wishes whomever the next coach is good luck and Gwen Knapp thinks it should be the Mulleted One (as does Don Banks on CNNSI). Raiders Fan House runs down a list of candidates as does Inside Bay Area. In the national sites, Deadspin wonders if Al and Art are the new Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner and ESPN's Mark Kreidler thinks Al needs to get over himself and hire some big name guy. Over in San Jose, Mark Purdy picks Bill Cowher out of his ass as a potential replacement. ...

And today's study unleashed upon the world concerns the chances the kids have of succeeding in life. According to said study, kids today in California don't have that much of a chance to succeed. Out of fifty states, we come in thirty-fourth. Ouch. That's way behind #1 state, Virginia but much better than lowly New Mexico which comes in at #50. Ha ha, sucks to be you. And here's our little questions-- how much credibility can you give a study that puts a state that came this close to electing George Allen as Senator as #1? ...

Every now and then, we try to watch the national news so we'll get the jokes on the Daily Show the next day. So, even though Comedy Central's fake news outlets are on break this week, we were watching the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night and turning away when the Saddam Hussein on the gallows footage was on (like a game of hangman, we keep expecting a half-completed word to appear under his feet,......

So the final pre-bowl Bowl Championship Series (BCS) poll is out, and guess what? Everybody's pissed about something, except for Ohio State and Florida, the two teams that received Golden Tickets to the big game. Different year, same BS for the BCS.

From the people who brought you AT&T Park and Monster Park and the Doritos’s Fiesta Bowl comes word that the Golden Gate Bridge-- THE Golden Gate Bridge-- might get corporate sponsorship too. ...

The National Football League's Week Nine of the 2006 regular season is upon us here in the Bay Area, as well as the first tinge of wet weather. Curl up on the couch with a mug o' soup and a blanket: it's time for American football....

You know how like every week some organization comes out with some listing and everyone dutifully reports it as if it's handed down by the Oracle itself? Well, one of those list type things came out and everyone is reporting the fact that Oakland just got ranked as the eighth most dangerous city in the U.S. (they're #3 in the A.P. poll). The rankings are based on not just murders and shootings but for such crimes as rape or burglary. The numbers are then compared to the national averages, et viola, a ranking. The ranking is done by Morgan Quitno Press and no; we have no idea who they are either. ...