If only results of this Kaisar study came out on Friday. Then we may have seen more interesting placards at Walk for Life on Saturday. "Coffee Kills," "Vegan, Caffeine-Free, and Pro-Life," for example. Why such a small study is making headlines in print and on television, we have no idea. The lives of pregnant women are already so limited, what with no drinking allowed, no drugging allowed, no hot-tubbing allowed, etc, etc. Despite the fact......

The food section round up is back. We gobble the various food sections up each Wednesday. But first: ready to "dine and go to heaven" in San Francisco? We are! Dine About Town is here, and prix fixe dining heaven costs $21.95 for lunch and $31.95 for dinner. Participating restaurants include: A16, B44, Cafe de la Presse, La Provence and others. This heaven won't qualify as a cheap eat, but it's presumably cheaper than what......

Similar to the fatal accident that happened in November, another pedestrian -- engrossed in a phone call, ignorant as to what was happening around him -- was stuck and killed by a train in San Leandro. According to the Chronicle, it seems that: The victim, a man who was not immediately identified, was struck at 12:30 p.m. by a northbound Capitol Corridor train at the Alvarado Street crossing, about 8 miles south of the......

Ahhh, crap. During this week’s practice, 49er OLB Manny Lawson tore an ACL and will be out for the 2007 season. This is a mighty blow to the nascent Niner defense, who had been counting on the former first-round pick to lend his 6’5” frame and sprinter’s speed to the linebacking corps this year....

After staunching out the Arizona Cardinals last week, the Niners head to St. Louis to try to get ahead at the expense of the reeling Rams and claw ahead in the NFC West race....

Berrylicious illustration from The Oakland Tribune. We gobble the various food sections up each Wednesday. Here are our favorite nibbles from today's offerings. SF Chronicle: Serious bock-bock time for those of you who may not give chickens their due. Our fave chicken recipes here and here. Many chefs feel local and smaller sized pollo may add up to a better tasting bird. Oh, and at one of the Mission's best spots, when the chicken's......

We gobble the various food sections up each Wednesday. Here are our favorite nibbles from today's offerings. SF Chronicle: Oooh, Ho, Hoh! (said with heavy French accent, mimicking one of our favorite cooking school instructors). The Grand Cafe has a new chef and Californicated French menu. We're seriously eyeing the $18 express (45 minutes!) lunch menu loaded with salad, entree and macaroons for a Friday in our very near future. Grand Cafe remains a lovely......

Your Black Muslim Bakery update: the business is being liquidated in an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding (they have almost $1 million in debt) after a number of unnamed potential buyers dropped out, and the 19-year-old arrested for shooting journalist Chauncey Bailey now says (video clip) he was beaten and coerced into a false confession to the murder. The Oakland PD homicide officer assigned to the case says that's false and they have a taped confession where......

The problems with Oakland's University Preparatory Charter Academy (or "Uprep") are mounting, with an anonymous teacher leaking papers to the Chron today that indicated possible grade-changing on official transcripts sent with college application papers. For instance, the teacher gave one student Fs and Ds on his/her work, the report card that went home had Ds and Cs, and the transcript that went to the colleges showed only As and Bs. Teachers also noticed that the......

You mean those train tracks are actually used by real trains? The City of Berkeley is working to implement a quiet zone to prevent the freight trains from sounding their whistles at intersections due to complaints from residents of this traditionally industrial area. While we find train horns romantic, we must admit that we might find them less so if they were not so off-in-the-distance. Though we wonder why the City didn't make the developers......

--The heart of rock and roll is still beatin' -- at Stern Grove this afternoon. It's HUEY LEWIS AND THE NEWS!!!! The free show starts at 2, but we assume folks'll be lining up pretty early, beach towels and folding chairs at the ready. Stern Grove's at Sloat and 19th. --The Chinese Cultural Center screens White Tower, a documentary about deaf culture in China's Henan Province. 1 p.m., $6, 750 Kearny 3rd Floor (x......

--What with all the excitement about the arrest warrant for Ed Jew, we didn't get a chance to tell you about how just about 50 miles away, the Santa Clara DA's office had to drop the charges they brought against the now-former mayor of San Jose. (Overzealous.) --GASP!!! The Oakland Zoo's about to get two pandas!!!! --Sex for grades? --John McCain, Bill Richardson, and Barack Obama were in the area today. --Hybrids aren't clogging......

The Oakland Trib has an extremely depressing story about a pediatric AIDS study that's had its funding cut. The Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trial Group, a combined effort of UCSF and the Children's Hospital and Research Center Oakland, had been getting $750,000 a year from the National Institutes of Health to study mother-to-child transmission of the virus and the effectiveness of drugs in pediatric care. No longer. The problem? They've done it too well. ...

Last week's winner, as picked by SFist Sara L, the East Bay Express! A very deep Dream Cartoon about George Bush getting eaten by a shark. The Oakland military school is not military enough. Inspirational stories of East Bay kids getting scholarships. Cover: A sweet Oakland family stuck in a nightmare bureaucratic lawsuit hell over a mudslide that destroyed their house. Tripe soup in Fruitvale. A soulless book about 90s punk, and more debate about......

-The Oakland Tribune starts a three-part series on how all this Global Warming stuff is beginning to affect us locally. -Silicon Valley is back and better than before. -Ron Dellums was a hit at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. -Man shot and killed on Eddy Street early Saturday morning. -Blue and Gold fleet wants to raise prices. -Everybody loves the idea of an early primary. -Electric car catches on fire and burns down a building......

The Oakland Raiders' 2006 slog of a season continues this Sunday at the Coliseum with their Week 15 scrap with the St. Louis Rams. Plenty of good tickets still available for the game. Well, there must be tickets, since the NFL is blacking the game out on TV....

We're coming to you live, from Philadelphia as we write this from SFist's Philadelphia bureau. -Aaron Peskin is doing a heckuva job. ...

In a surprising move today, Oakland A’s brass fired manager Ken Macha with two years remaining on his contract. Many A's fans are scratching their heads this afternoon, wondering when the A's headquarters had become drama central. Despite leading the team to its first ALCS since 1992, Macha’s inability to communicate effectively with players was foremost on the list of complaints levied by key personnel. His time with the A's was always tenuous at best; his on-again, off-again merry go-round with Billy Beane subject to intense annual review, with Macha barely surviving the cut each year. His job would typically come down to key veteran players vouching for him, despite his obvious lack of social skills. This year, no such veteran dared throw him a life jacket. Not Kotsay, not Chavez and definitely not Milton Bradley. ...

The Oakland Athletics this afternoon showed why this year’s team is infinitely grittier and more determined than playoff teams of years past. This collection of misfits and guys barely above the legal drinking age simply know how to win. They’ve outplayed and out-executed the Twins in the Metroblob, and showed the baseball world why they’ll go deep into the playoffs. Instead of Frank Thomas hammering the Twins into submission this afternoon, it was the likes of Nick Swisher, Marco Scutaro and Mark Kotsay running the Twins ragged. The 5-2 final score doesn’t reflect the way the A’s controlled this game. Boof Bonser, the Twins starting pitcher, never really had a chance against the highly selective, pitch-conscious A’s batters. They nitpicked the poor guy like vultures picking at an animal carcass. And in the end it came down to the basics: hitting, pitching, defense and the big play (something the Twins were touted as superior to the A’s). Esteban Loiaza, a man we’ve called out in the past, pitched like he’s been sipping on stud juice—he was simply outstanding before running into a couple of homerun blasts. It was also Swisher making adjustments and not swinging for the fences, but using that crappy dome for less glamorous doubles. Smart move, Swish! And it was Mark Kotsay’s brilliant inside-the-park homerun that sealed the deal on this little affair in Minneapolis. ...

If you don't expect anything from life, you can't be disappointed. Monday at the Oakland Coliseum, the Raider Nation in attendance expected their Raiders to compete with the San Diego Chargers. The Nation assembled with facepaint and masks and bared teeth. Their songs of war echoed through the East Bay night air. You see, the Nation, they expected a battle. They got a slaughter. ...

The Oakland A's will win the American League West. Yes, this year! We (SFist) are not accustomed to making barrel-chested predictions that eventually turn to fool's gold as it often does on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" -- we're merely pointing out the obvious: the Oakland A's will win the AL West this year. Despite their anemic, Milton Bradley-less performance last night at the hands of the Los Angeles Angels and Joe Saunders-- who they made seem like a young Ron Guidry than the junk-ball throwing Tommy John clone that he is-- the A's will win more of those tightly-sewn games than the Angels, or god forbid, the perennial flame-out Texas Rangers. And they'll do it without resident genius Billy Beane making a nano-move during the trade deadline frenzy. ...

We were feeling pretty good about the state of the California housing market after reading the PDF of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's most recent report. Housing prices up 18.8% in the Pacific region! California's housing appreciation up 21.07% over the year-ago period and 4.65% over the previous financial quarter! The Oakland area ranked as number 44 out of 275 urban markets in terms of price appreciation -- East Bay represent! (Silicon Valley......

The Oakland PD has arrested a man for the shooting of Antar Bey, the 20-year-old leader of a Black Muslim organization in Oakland. The police had been working to rule out any possible assassination attempts, in light of the fact that after the death of its founder and Antar Bey's father, Yusuf Bey, two other members of the Black Muslim group had been shot under mysterious circumstances in the last two years. The president and CEO of Your Black Muslim Bakery was found in a shallow grave in the Oakland hills in 2004, and Bey's adopted brother was wounded by a gunman outside his house just this June. Antar Bey's killing appears to be just a random carjacking, and unrelated to any political strife in the organization. Well, in lighter news, a guy in Blackhawk (near Danville) was driving along and thought he hit a deer. He pulled over to see what happened. No deer..... -- until a second car drove by, and hit the deer a second time. The deer went flying -- and hit the first driver. First man broke his ankle. Cops are still looking for the second driver. Deer was pronounced dead on the scene. And in the wake of the Yes on I vote in SF (disapproving of military recruiting in schools), Bill O'Reilly's called for terrorists to destroy Coit Tower. Why call for terrorists to do it when we can use budget cuts to do the same thing? Mayor Gav brushed it off, saying, "remember that guy wanted to have me arrested last year?" (for the gay marriages). And after the jump, a recap of all the blotter pictures since June. Previous updates here and here. ...

The Daly City vice squad's running sting operations targeting immigrant-owned stores, where sales clerks who don't speak English have been selling beer to underage kids. The Daly City police department is unsympathetic to the clerks' claims (through interpreters) that they don't know how to read the IDs they're produced, saying that the clerks should have been instructed that you can't sell to anyone with the "I'm Not 21" red stripe running down the side of their license. To be fair, the cops had sent all the local stores a notice saying that they were going to be sending underage decoys in to try to buy beer. Weird. A foot-high pile of feathers was found scattered over the block of 2nd Avenue and Clement. Authorities are baffled. They got one of those street sweepers to wet down the feathers so they could sweep 'em up. The other day, Matt Drudge released footage that he claimed was from an Oakland sideshow, where a woman was reputedly beaten to death for talking to the police. The Oakland Tribune has since figured out that the footage is actually from a 2002 DVD called, "World's Wildest Street Fights Vol. 1." The Oakland PD remains interested in hearing if anyone has any information about the footage, but Drudge is now no longer returning phone calls. ...

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express. Dream cartoonist outdoes himself with a dream about fighting Lord Vader! Cover article: The Oakland band Heavenly States had a horrible trip to Libya. Hey, Jose Canseco's doing a book signing at the Jack London Barnes and Noble next Monday! SFist Jake, we hope you're there! Was Abbey Lincoln drunk or delusional at her upsetting Yoshi's show last week? And Savage Love: why can't we charge barebackers full cost for anti-viral drug therapies for their victims? The SF Weekly: Matt Smith, being contrarian and pro-business. We never really understand what he's so upset about, but we're sure he's right! Dog Bites: better California quarter designs. Backroom dealings about Indian casinos. Hey! There's an orchestra performance of the music from Final Fantasy (scroll down) next Monday! Cover article: cabaret singer Antony. OK Then had a nice time at the Saturday J. Newsom concert, and, biting the EBX's style from last week, the Weekly also runs an article about metal yoginis High On Fire. Hilarious undercover sting operations in the Guardian and the Weekly of the Week, after the jump. ...

You know how on Murder She Wrote, you were always like, why does anyone ever invite Jessica Fletcher anywhere, because someone always gets murdered when she's around? Well, Jessica Fletcher must be in San Francisco, because there's been four separate murders this week. On Thursday, two people were killed in the Alamo Square area (one at McAllister and Lyon, and another at Eddy and Scott), and over the weekend, two people were killed in the Potrero Hill area (one at 20th and Tennessee, another at 22nd and Vermont). In our own Casuistry incident, three teens in Pleasanton have been arrested for murdering a cat and hanging its body from a noose over a train trestle for passersby to see. Who comes up with ideas like this? And Oakland's going with humili-tainment as its latest get-tough-on-prostitution tactic. The Oakland PD will be installing cameras in areas known for prostitution and johns who are arrested for solicitation may have their pictures put up on billboards and bus stops. Dang! Adding insult to injury, they'll also take your car ("Come to Oakland in a Porsche, leave on AC Transit"), so there's that additional risk of waiting for a bus stop that has your picture on it. Oakland's not messing around....

With all the positive hubbub about San Francisco's Animal Care and Control officers and its Dog Court (oh, you bet your sweet bippy we're discussing this in We Read the Weeklies tomorrow), it's doubly sad to hear about the allegations of animal cruelty that have been directed across the bay at Oakland's animal shelter. ReShawn McClarty, the acting director of the shelter, has been just placed on administrative leave as allegations concerning the shelter's mistreatments continue to grow. Lori Barnabe, a former Oakland animal control officer who quit in June, recently sent a letter to the city and the Oakland police force, claiming that the shelter routinely euthanizes animals that are scheduled to be picked up by rescue groups or distraught owners, and that animals are routinely euthanized without being given the standard course of sedatives first. Barnabe also claimed to have seen a live dog that had accidentally been closed in a barrel of animal corpses in a freezer, shelter workers altering records after euthanization to make animals appear more vicious, staff leaving kittens in an unattended drop box overnight (causing a kitten to die), and in general, levels of neglect bordering on abuse (like locking a dog in a kennel without exercise for a year). The shelter concedes that a dog was accidentally euthanized last month, but claims that in general the shelter is run quite well overall. The Oakland City Council is holding a town meeting tomorrow night at 7 p.m. in City Hall to discuss these allegations and the appointment of a new shelter director with the public....

Well, we just heard Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" on the radio the other day (the kickoff song for the season), so it's official -- Santa Claus will be coming to town. And with him comes an assortment of Bay Area secular holiday entertainment -- kittens in the windows of Macy's, the Kristi Yamaguchi ice-skating rink at Justin Herman Plaza, caroling children thrown out of Union Square and then shamefacedly reinvited at the command of Mayor Gavvie Gav to sing at City Hall instead..... and how could we forget? Tap-dancing Christmas trees! The Oakland Trib profiles some of the more unique Bay Area Christmas entertainers, including the 28-member strong tap-dancing Christmas tree troupe, the trumpet-playing gorilla Santa Claus (he dresses up as Vampire Gorilla for Halloween), the Incredible Hulk Santa, and the Nerd Elf, among others. And The Standing Room gives us the lowdown on the itinerate life of the seasonal Dickensian caroler. (Who knew there were four verses of Jingle Bells?) So while you're frantically trying to get all your presents purchased (maybe at some of the stores we're profiling?), don't forget to kick back for a bit and enjoy the scene -- over a cup of scammed free cider from Williams-Sonoma. Pictures courtesy of The Standing Room. Check out that sexy tap-dancing Christmas tree hip-wiggle!...

A "vagrant" is being blamed for a fire last Sunday at the Fox Theater on 19th and Telegraph in Oakland, near the Paramount. The theater is undergoing renovations and is slated to become a charter school focused on the arts. The Oakland FD found a small propane stove and a sleeping bag in an abandoned office space in the building, and the ensuing fire caused about $300,000 worth of damage. No injuries, though. In......

Weekly football recap....