In new year revamp news, noted Haight Street dive bar Murio's Trophy Room has been transformed with a new, slightly slicker look. After closing a closing a few months back to update the always charming "random stuff on the wall" theme, Inside Scoop reports the venue for many a Roller Derby afterparty has thrown open their new floor-to-ceiling windows to welcome patrons to a sleek new space featuring, most strikingly, actual tables at which to sit down. more ›

That unfortunate fire we told you about yesterday that scorched three buildings on Masonic between Waller and Frederick on New Year's Day has been ruled an accident by fire department investigators. The blaze started at 1357-1359 Masonic Ave., a three-unit building, just after 8 p.m. Sunday and spread to two neighboring buildings, causing approximately $1.3 million in damage and displacing nine people. more ›

It's been a fiery start to the new year both here and down in L.A., and a three-alarm fire last night on Masonic between Frederick and Waller damaged three buildings and displaced ten people. One person was taken to the hospital suffering from shortness of breath. more ›

Although the neighborhood lost a much-loved gathering spot when the Red Vic's projector flickered for the last time back in July, the neighborhood could be getting another community-focused space to take it's place sometime in 2012. As the ever vigilante Tablehopper reports today, Betsy and Jack Rix, who own the building along with the Alembic next door, are looking to reinvent the former movie house as a food-centric incubator space for budding entrepreneurs and retailers to get their sea legs before moving on to their own commercial kitchens or storefronts. more ›

Chuck Nevius continues his tour of the slowly gentrifying corners of the city this week, now focusing on the Haight. He devoted his Saturday column to acting shocked that there were any decent, "high-end," foodie-type establishments in the Tenderloin, and sounding uncharacteristically optimistic about the trend. Now he turns his attention to the Upper Haight, where miracle of miracles, the Sit/Lie law appears to be doing some good, by God! more ›

The controversial Sit/Lie law, a.k.a. Prop L, won't be enforced until mid-February, but it already has had a chilling/gloriously cleansing effect on Haight Street, depending on how you see it. Haight Street merchants saw an immediate effect after the law passed in November, even though it didn't take effect until December 17 and still hasn't seen any enforcement from the ever vigilant Upper Haight-based police. more ›

Proving that Coke is better than its rival -- do any of you really prefer, say, Diet Pepsi over Diet Coke? If so, please explain yourself -- a Pepsi delivery truck and a female cyclist collided this morning, causing Muni delays in the upper Haight. more ›

We were in the Upper Haight last night, walking with friends along the street to the Magnolia for a late-ish dinner. We walked past a small group of punk-ish kids sitting on the street with a "give us some money [insert ironic saying here]" sign. They were talking with a guy who was standing there with a beautiful husky dog on a leash. We'll repeat - that dog was gorgeous. more ›

Among San Francisco’s myriad neighborhoods, few are as widely misunderstood as the Outer Sunset. Location certainly plays a role. To your average Upper Haight resident – to say nothing of your average South of Market or North Beach resident – this beach-adjacent community may seem as distant as Honolulu, with an N-Judah trip that may rival a flight to Oahu in terms of travel time. But it’s sometimes easy to forget that San Francisco is a mere seven miles wide, and that the folks out west do have phone numbers that begin with 415, rather than 808. more ›

A man in a black leather jacket carefully backs his Yamaha into one of the six motorcycle spaces on Haight at the corner of Shrader. He's here to see Pinback's in-store performance at Amoeba Music across the street later in the evening, but he's also pulled his bike into a world where the warm early evening air is alternately punctured by the scent of patchouli, McChickens, pee, and smoke from silly cigarettes. Plenty of off-street fee parking and reminders of the 1960s glory days are also available. Certain parts of Haight between Shrader and Stanyan have seen better commercial days – specifically, the shuttered and boarded Cala supermarket at its west end, and on a much lesser scale, the former home of taco/burrito retailer Chabela's at 1805 (dormant since the mid-'00s) – and there's no escaping the persistently suffocating sense of flower power and "revolution" around here anytime soon. (Kind bud?) The vibe on the block's sidewalks can be construed as seamy or circus-like (or perhaps both), depending upon one's tolerance for American Youth in Very Big Pants, or for politely deranged men pushing shopping carts and singing "COME TO AFRICA!!" at the top of their high-pitched lungs. But regardless of one's frame of reference, there's always a lot to take in down here in Amoeba Gulch. more ›

For those of you keeping track: more ›

Quick -- which one of those pictures above is of Valencia Street in SF and which is of Williamsburg in Brooklyn? more ›

We used to live in the Cole Valley (well, technically it was Upper Haight but nobody likes to admit they live in Upper Haight) and during the weekend’s almost every drive way had a car parked in it, especially at night when everyone went out and about in the neighborhood. One night, around midnight, one of our crazy neighbors came home only to find a car parked in her driveway, blocking her from parking her own car in her very own garage. So she started screaming at the top of her lungs about how she can't get into her garage and how she's going to kill whomever parked the car in her driveway and how they spend all this money to have a garage and how they’re tired and not healthy and how they were going to get the car towed unless somebody came down. After about five minutes of screaming, somebody sheepishly went down to move their car. Crisis averted. more ›

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express: Well, this is interesting! Bottom Feeder Will Harper is leaving the EBX to become the executive editor of the SF Weekly. We're sorry to see Harper leave, but we're excited to see what he does at the sister SF publication! Plus, this collection of Bottom Feeder's greatest hits is pretty exciting. We may not be making as much money off stem cells as everyone says we will -- and there's an online-only article about the clash at Dellums inauguration. Cover article: Emeryville hotel fires illegal immigrant workers to avoid a minimum wage law. People are walking out of the Berkeley Rep's production of a play about a child murderer. Indian pizza in Fremont, and the Wineau calls out some errors made. The Bluegrass Festival. And Ron Dellums's horoscope: Define your short-term goals. (Horoscope online is different from the one in the paper. Dellums's horoscope in the hard copy is "be your usual loquacious self.") more ›

One year ago, husband and father Jerry Tang disappeared from his Upper Haight apartment. He hasn't been seen since. more ›

--Are the A's moving to Fremont? more ›

Submissions go to yvesdroppings at gmail dot com. more ›

Hooray! The Board of Supervisors has agreed to allow beer and wine to be served at the Red Vic movie theatre. While a moratorium had been called on new liquor licenses in the Upper Haight, the newly-approved bill is intended to override that in the case of the worker owned and operated single-screen movie theater. more ›

All this over the protests of Joltin' Joe O'Donoghue and his buddies because of her pregnant condition. With job finally assured, she promptly celebrated by going out on maternity leave where we all thought things would go happily ever after. But no. Now, her entire family is basically living in the living room of their duplex apartment in Upper Haight because she was hit with a late appeal on an already given out permit to re-do her top floor. A re-do that had already been started and now can't be worked on until at least a hearing on Dec. 14th. more ›

While we were on vacation, those long-rumored changes to the BART schedule happened. It didn't take us long to figure out what it all meant-- longer waits and more crowded trains. Not quite N Judah at rush hour crowded, but still kind of crowded. Crowded enough we sometimes had to share our usually comfy seat with another person. We, however, weren't the only people to notice the same thing. BART did too. And you know why it’s more crowded? Because the dimwits scheduled the cut in service at the same time school started up. In other words, they cut service just at the exact moment more people were going to need it. Nice. more ›

Time once again for another two fingers of truth, lit on fire and chugged before being hastily chased by a PBR back. As long as Prohibition has still been repealed, Barrespondent Drew will be there to try new places out. more ›