Eater SF uncovered something new and morally-questionable -- two of our favorite topics -- TablePronto, an online service that scalps restaurant reservations. Basically, it's a site that allows you to buy and sell reservations for a price. As of now they have a scant few available for SF: - Perbacco, 11/16, 9pm, $18; Foreign Cinema, 11/16, 8:30pm, $15; Town Hall, 11/16, 9:15pm, $10; Aqua, 11/16, 8:45pm, $10 Oh, all prime dining hours, too! But......

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2007 Recap from Super!Alright! on Vimeo. Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of Texas's only feminist bookstore. Throughout the week, they interviewed a bunch of indie fashion designers and D-I-Y websites—Etsy, Ornamental Things, 31 Corn Lane, and Aorta Designs—for the upcoming Stitch Fashion Show. They also did......

Hey, remember that Question Time thingy? You know, that non-binding measure that voters passed which called for Gavin to appear in front of the Board of Supes and answer questions thrown his way while the rest of us get to kick back and watch the fun? Well, if you remember, Gavin kind of refused to do it and instead staged fake Question Time, "Town Hall" meetings throughout the city and wound up killing any sort of conflict over the issue by basically boring everyone to death. Even the chickens got bored and stopped attending. ...

Tomorrow, ESPN will take a break determining whether Tom Brady is more Now than LeBron is and feature a town hall type thingy in San Francisco on the issue of Barry Bonds and the Hallowed Record. Despite ESPN's increasing descent into annoying shtick and hype, this should be pretty interesting as it's being hosted by "Outside the Lines" host Bob Ley, one of the few ESPN "personalities" with any integrity left. It's supposed to be a discussion on all things Barry, including race, Bud Selig's complicitness in the mess, how tainted the record is, and a whole bunch of other things. The panel will feature a bunch of writers including ESPN's excellent Buster Olney and "Game of Shadows" Lance Williams as well as Barry's ex teammates Kirk Rueter and Ellis Burks as well as Dusty. Jeff Kent will not be participating. ...

Transportation issues covered at Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's First Town Hall Meeting...

SFist reader Darren stopped by Muni's town hall meeting at the Ferry Building on Tuesday, and sends this account: I thought the head of Muni was very forthcoming when stating that things did not go so well with the launch of the T and it's ripple effects on the system. Unfortunately the director of Muni pointed out that they want to "make sure they don't make the situation worse" so they are going to......

Realizing his town hall meeting is a farce, Gavin Newsom resorts to drinking his own Kool-Aid. ...

You could tell Mayor Gavin Newsom came in expecting the full costumed brigade this morning at Fourth Fake Question Time-- we definitely saw Gavin flinch when SFist Elaine saw him coming into the Excelsior Boys and Girls Club right at 2 p.m.. this morning and shouted out, "Holler!" -- but it was as chicken-free as a lunch at Cafe Gratitude, for the latest installment of Gavin Newsom's town hall meeting, this one on the......

Don't forget, the next Fake Question Time (or, as we call it around here: FQT4) is this Saturday, April 21 at the Boys and Girls Club in Excelsior (163 London Street, x Excelsior Ave, one block off Mission). The meeting starts at 2 p.m. (not the usual 10 or 11 a.m.) and the topic is Kids and Families. Gee, you think Gavin'll let people ask questions this time? Drinks are on us if he......

Uno, dos, tres, quatro!: the mayor's office has announced the fourth installment of his traveling lecture series, or, as he prefers to call it "the town hall open meeting where the public is not actually permitted to ask direct questions." Or -- as we prefer to call it -- FOURTH FAKE QUESTION TIME!!! Guess Gavin's still not going to do Actual Question Time before the Board of Supervisors, huh? Were all those sweet words......

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

Univision: "You okay, Gavin?" Gavin: "Imo get to that question when I get through this door!" KGO: "Did your hair get bigger, or is the doorway getting smaller?" Gavin: "Why's everybody gotta hate? I killed that town hall meeting. I'm the best mayor in the world!" Pat Murphy: "Is it true you got rid of your entire blue tie collection to quell the wrath of SFist Rita?" Gavin: "SFist Rita wasn't even here. What's up with that? They sent that creampuff, SFist Elaine, instead." SFist Elaine: "Whatev, Gavin. You are so DTM!*" ...

To paraphrase an old joke about hockey, we went to a Town Hall meeting last night and a protest broke out. Case in point, the above photo of an attendee making a calm and rational point about the meeting by first shouting at Gavin and then approaching him while Gavin filibustered. We'll let SFist Elaine describe the scene. If you want more eyewitness accounts, Fog City has a recap as well as official Editor in Emeritus, Jackson West. ABC 7 has a video of the scene ...

Man, we can't believe Team Newsom scheduled Third Fake Question Time at the last minute like that -- your Political Junkie is out on vacation so we can't make it to the Cesar Chavez Elementary School on Monday the 26th at 6 p.m. to discuss health care with the residents of District 9. (825 Shotwell (between South Van Ness and Folsom, cross street 22nd). Man, and we were hoping to see Han Shin and......

Late word: What? Gavin Newsom lied to us! At the last Fake Question Time, Gavin clearly told us that the next "town hall meeting" would be in April and address the issue of crime in District 5. So color us surprised when we start hearing word on Monday that Third Fake Question Time is going to be next Monday, March 26, at Cesar Chavez Elementary in District 9 on health care. (note: there's a......

A photo of S.F. Mayor Newsom at UCSF children's hospital...

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

t's looking like Spocko the Blogger's little stunt he pulled on KSFO is working. Both Bank of America and MasterCard pulled either all of their advertising or some of their advertising from KSFO. Others are expected to follow suit. ...

Hey, all of you fun-loving participatory government fans -- whether you're for Newsom or not, we just got word that you should RSVP for this Saturday's Fake Question Time Town Hall Meeting (10 a.m., 251 18th Ave.) You can email MONS and let them know you're planning on attending, or call 415-554-6110. The word on the street is that they may close the room off if it's full. (We hope this isn't a plan to......

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......

--Hating on Police Chief Heather Fong. --Pictures from Fog City Journal of the Board of Supes meeting on Tuesday. Weird to see Chris Daly without a green tie on! --Former USF dean pleading guilty to possession of kiddie porn. --Hey, wanna buy (or at least sponsor) a bridge? --Up to 20 people possibly bitten by a sea lion in San Francisco bay. --They're going to install cameras at high-risk corners in SF -- but......

Does anyone else remember those awesome signs they used to have behind the driver on the old MUNI buses -- "Information Gladly Given But Safety Requires Avoiding Unnecessary Conversation"? Well, get some information -- and maybe even have some unnecessary conversations -- at Ross Mirkarimi's Town Hall Meeting On MUNI tomorrow, Wednesday November 1! Ross and (SFist obsession) MTA Director Mr. Nathaniel Ford (!!!!!) will be on hand "to discuss your concerns about service,......

RESOLVED: That you want to become more informed about the issues in the local SF elections. So we're trying to compile a handy-dandy list of all the forums we can find, arranged by district and by date -- but we can barely find anything out there! So we're posting what we've got, and asking everyone else to post other dates in the comments if you've got any. See you guys at the debates -- we'll......

You've gotta admire SFCityscape's Steve Boland for putting his money where his Muni-griping mouth is. While lesser sites (like SFist, we freely admit) are content just to bitch and moan about Muni, SF Cityscape wants to buy you a drink at Trad'r Sam. First, come out for the Richmond Town Hall Meeting with Mayor Newsom and Supervisor McGoldrick, this Saturday, July 29 from noon to 2 at Presidio Middle School (450 30th Ave between Geary......

Michela Alioto-Pier and her family is proud to announce that the supervisor for District 2 gave birth to their third child, a healthy baby girl, last night. They don't have a name picked out yet because they thought the baby was going to be a boy. Seven pounds 11 oz., 20 inches long, born at 11:24 p.m. at Cal Pacific. Congratulations to the Alioto-Piers! ....and welcome back to work, Ms. Alioto-Pier! Neither the state nor local laws have any provisions granting elected women officials any time for maternity leave. And Alioto-Pier can't just call in sick for the next three months, either -- under the law, she must be physically present in order to vote. We think it's maybe not a coincidence that Alioto-Pier is the first elected San Franciscan to give birth while in office. Alioto-Pier has sponsored a charter amendment (.pdf) that would allow supervisors to vote by telephone if they're on pregnancy-related bed rest. (Guess you can't vote by telephone if you're just on a self-prescribed bed rest binge.) Voters will be asked to approve it for the Nov. 2006 election. One question, though: why didn't Alioto-Pier ask us to approve maternity leave for supervisor-moms in that bill too? Picture of Alioto-Pier and Newsom from the 2004 District 2 Town Hall Meeting....

SFist on immigration protests in Atherton...

Yes, our beautiful city and it's congressional representative once again made the "Daily Show." Yay! And could we be more provincial? Anyways, the bit was on latest political meme being that despite all the Republicans troubles caused by committing the three biggest sins of politics-- bad war, bad governance, bad ethics-- the Democrats are once unable to shoot straight. Or even fire their guns without blowing themselves up in the process and winding up looking like Daffy Duck taking on Bugs Bunny and having their beak blown up to the other side of his head. So Stewart and the gang went through a variety of recent statements by Democratic leaders to illustrate the point. ...

We have the latest and hottest political news today, coming to you from the best place to get the hottest California political news, the gossip pages. Which raises this interesting question: for those of us who read celebrity news to get away from politics, where do we go when politics become part of the gossip pages? And will all of this mean that we should start watching "Extra!" to get the lastest news on the Plame indictments? Anyways, in Monday's edition of the Examiner’s "The Scoop," there is a blurb about Entertainment Weekly saying that Warren Beatty "has been telling anyone who will listen that he plans to unseat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger." And Cindy Adams writes in her Page Six column in the New York Post that the Governator is so pissed about the President poaching off his Republican money men, which he did last week and which the Governor was once again a very conspicuous no show, that he basically told the White House off and is threatening to become a Democrat over the whole thing. ...

The results are in on our first ever blind item guessing game, and while EssEffist was a little disappointed in the response (come on, isn't your one goal in life to find out compromising things about otherwise succesful people?) we did get enough responses that we thought could, possibly, in a completely non-libellous way be entirely maybe true. Lucky for us and our lawyers, there's been a tie! We received an equal number of votes for both Town Hall and Bacar. Both are relatively new, both chic, both doing well. Hmm, that doesn't really narrow it down, does it. Could it be Doug Washington, Maitre d' and co-manager of Town Hall? But he's just so good at his job! Other guesses included Lulu, the gas station featuring a Burger King and a Starbucks (which we all know is evil) and the Mission St. Denny's, although that was apparently a customer-on-customer spank request. Thanks for all your guesses! Keep an eye on Leah Garchik's column, and submit your own blind items to the editor if you have some dish that just must see the light of non-libellous day....