Photo credit: SFist reader Sumanth Sukumar A small but vocal amount of the local Serbian community held a minor protest about the United States' recognition of Kosovo as a separate state, going up Market Street on Sunday afternoon; the republic declared itself to be independent earlier this month. According to Associated Press, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica says the U.S. should "annul their recognition of Kosovo." AP goes on to say: Serbia's prime minister......

Ralph Nader announced yesterday that he will take yet another tireless stab at the Oval Office, this time running as an Independent in the 2008 presidential election. Oh joy. Prattling on endlessly about how the Democratic and Republican candidates aren't addressing the issues, and blah blah, who cares, this will be his fifth attempt at snatching the title President of the United States of American. What with a black man, Barack Obama, in the......

Ours was. And how. It would neither send nor receive email for hours. The horror. Hitting all carriers, it turns out the BlackBerry outage afflicted enterprise users across the United States and Canada today. And the "company has no estimate for when service will be restored." Read more about it here. (Our service seems to be working fine as of 5 p.m., btw.) You win, iPhone. You...you win.......

Shit. It's Valentine's Day this Thursday and by the looks of it most of you have already planned your perfect date. Three shows are already completely sold-out: The Kills at Rickshaw Stop, Slightly Stoopid at The Independent and Common at Mezzanine. While there are still several shows you can chance Thursday night, it might be wise to stay home and wait till the weekend to take your crush out. We are. Friday, the local music......

Madeleine Albright, it seems, "will also share her recommendations for the next president." There will be more than one recommendation? Oh joy. Part of her tour to promote her new literary effort, Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership, the former United States Secretary of State will stop by Nob Hill to chat with the peons. President and chief executive officer of the World Affairs Council of Northern......

Net Neutrality Symposium at USF...

Now that donuts have made a return to Bay Area coffee houses--minus its exhausting Homer Simpsonesque, white-trash irony--you can find the preferable pastries at places like Ritual Coffee Roasters (vegan! and actually good!), Seattle's Best at Border's Books & Music (double-glazed), and even Starbucks (plasticky). With the return of the donut comes the return of the brewed coffee. At least, according to today's New York Times, which profiles the Blue Bottle Cafe, scheduled to......

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.........

The Busan is free to leave....

Vote early, vote often...

The feds have gotten big bucks for the value of the Busan, so it now has one less hurdle to jump before heading home. ...

Jesus Christ, this has sent us into a tailspin. While we can safely say that our biggest accomplishments in life thus far have been finding synonyms for the word "poop" and being able to thoroughly enjoy steak tartare, it seems that a few other driven, Type-A individuals have done more at our age. Much, much more. Behold what we should have done at this point on Earth: Amelia Earhart became the first woman to......

You all know SFist Wendy's a living goddess too, right?? It only takes 32 perfections to become a goddess in Nepal -- sounds simple, right? Hardly. But Sajani, the eight year-old goddess who stole our heart in the movie Living Goddess at DocFest last weekend, fit the bill. Sajani is one of three such goddesses in Nepal, Buddhists girls believed to be inhabited by Hindu goddesses. Sajani was chosen at the ripe age of two......

Late August can be a bit of a slow season for touring, whether it's bands not wanting to deal with the blazing heat in most of the United States or record labels holding back tour support until closer to the lucrative fourth quarter releases. The upside is that local bands can sometimes benefit from a venue's slow month, and we're really excited about the chance to see Or, The Whale, Birds & Batteries and Social......

We can only hope that every single news outlet has printed a typo when reporting the amount of cash the United States is sending Peru, which is still experiencing severe aftershocks. As the death toll climbs past 500, with more than 1,500 reported injuries, the United States government has pledged a whopping $100,000 in support. Why don’t we just send America’s Player, Eric (with his oh-so-attractive pierced nipples) from Big Brother to help them......

In case you missed it, President 25% Approval Ratings was able to ram through some legislation revamping all those FISA laws you keep hearing about. It's hard to make heads or tails of what the bill says as the administration, in a surprise to no one, won't tell anyone what it says, but it involves making warrants kind of unnecessary, the monitoring of anyone suspected as a "terrorist" and-- get this-- the oversight by one Alberto "Fredo" Gonzalez. That's more than letting the fox guard the hen house, that's letting Michael Vick run the SPCA. ...

Who knew that one of the five islands in San Francisco Bay was privately owned? Even stranger, "Red Rock Island" is now up for sale, for a paltry $10 million. The last time we remember one of our islands changing hands was way back in 1847, when Captain John C Fremont bought Alcatraz for $5000. Fremont was in town, as you no doubt remember, as the head of a surveying expedition. A man of......

We mentioned this in Tuesday's Day Around the Bay, but there are some new bits to the story so we're going to do a full post on it. Plus, it's kind of a fun story. Anyways, this is about the guy in Alameda who did some public art in front of his house that features a cardboard cutout of the President with a knife in his head. Well, the Secret Service were not amused and came to give the guy a visit. ...

Watch the trailer for Your Mommy Kills Animals. We felt a little bad when the lady working the concession stand at the Roxie seemed so startled we were getting butter on our popcorn -- but hey, the IndieFest documentary Your Mommy Kills Animals is a movie about the radical animal rights movement, so we can't blame her for thinking the audience would be in general staying away from dairy-based fats. Your Mommy Kills Animals......

A few photos of the MLK Breakfast at the S.F. Hilton, Monday morning, 1/15/07...

One of our favorite independent bookstores, Modern Times, (888 Valencia St. at 20th) presents author, Nick Mamatas reading from his hilarious new novel Under My Roof, the story of telepathic tween Herbert Weinberg, whose father Daniel decides to strike a blow for freedom by building a nuclear device, planting it in the lawn jockey in his front yard, and declaring independence from the United States. Plus special guest, local firecracker and Audre Lorde Award-winning performance......

As reported (here among many other places) Gays Use Social Networks Most, Survey Says. Which would not really pique our interests, except that the survey also mentions Craigslist. So this morning we decided to dive right in and see what all the hubbub was about. The gist is that Harris interactive just released a poll which showed that people who identify themselves as Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual ("GLB") use Social Networking sites (Myspace, Facebook,......

At the ever-swanky Herbst Theatre (401 Van Ness at McAllister), Dave Eggers converses with the subject of his latest book, What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, which depicts the recent history of civil war in Sudan, and is based on the true story of Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of a 1000-mile exodus and one of Sudan's "Lost Boys." In 2003, Eggers and Deng traveled by cargo plane to southern Sudan......

Pirate Cat Radio benefit concert at the Makeout Room (3225 22nd St. between Mission & Valencia) with Lisa Dewey, Bettie Black and The May Fire. Pirate Cat needs money to buy new gear and more server space so they can continue to broadcast and webcast. (9pm) At CCA in SF (1111 8th St. near 16th and Wisconsin) there are three separate art openings tonight. Capp Street Project presents an installation by Michael Stevenson examining......

Just as we were putting away the original Jason Fortuny Seattle Craigslist scandal, a copy-cat comes along and tries to run the same prank again. This time with "better" results (Better only in the sense that he is now getting sued). This story started a few months ago when Jason Fortuny decided to put up a pretty intense women seeking men ad on Craigslist, then proceeded to publish the "results", people's phone numbers, names,......

For 10 years and counting Microcinema International has been distributing, presenting, and touring independent film and video. Originally based in Seattle, Microcinema is quickly becoming an SF institution. Tonight, as part of its Independent Exposure series, Microcinema presents its annual Halloweird program at 111 Minna (111 Minna St. at 2nd). This year's features 12 weird, creepy, gross, odd and strange shorts made by moving image artists from around the world. From popping out eyeballs......

As we wrote before, you're staring to hear the phrase "San Francisco values" thrown around and around and not in a good way, more in a trying to scare the bejeesus out of Mr. and Mrs. Red State kind of way. But what exactly do people mean by "San Francisco values." ...

If you read the comments on this blog closely, you'll see that we suggested that, in light of Gavin Newsom's new Matt Gonzalez-influenced coffure, the next obvious thing would be for us to find a picture of Matt Gonzalez brushing his hair like Gavin's. Well, we're pleased as punch to say that someone has risen to our challenge! Look how more regressive Matt looks! You can practically see him chasing the homeless out of San......

The fall TV season continues to grow with the premiere of two more shows tonight. The first is the return of "The Bachelor" at 9 p.m. on ABC. Yes. They STILL haven't cancelled that piece of crap. Instead they've just decided to move it to Europe--more specifically, Rome. The bachelor this time around is some kind of bonafied prince who happens to live in the United States. Whatever. All we know is there isn't......

Who knows how it happened, but somehow, SF's most iconic eccentric (followed by the twins and Frank Chu) has risen from beyond the grave to call out to his populace for assistance. Like everyone else of consequence these days, Emperor Norton -- the real estate baron who went a bit screwy in the 1850s and declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico -- has a blog, and what's more, he's......