Sorry we're late on this one! Not much to report, just that Board of Supes president Aaron Peskin has named himself the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee after firing Chris Daly from the position, and proclaimed his intent to make it a "no-drama" budget approval process this time around. Peskin and the rest of the gang then went ahead and approved a bunch of the proposed budgets for various departments, including Rec......

We're already getting tired of this story. Can we please get back to the Ed Jew investigations? The only coverage we're enjoying is Bad Reporter's! (We're enjoying Bad Reporter's coverage very, very much, though. "No oxygen: He could die.") Here's the latest in Daly Fight 2007: --Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier is going to reintroduce a code of conduct for behavior before the Board of Supes. You may remember she introduced a motion to censure Daly for......

You know we'd never say Chris Daly backed down from a fight, especially not in the title of a post! However, we did just get an email from the Gavin Newsom 2008 people noting that the Board of Supes Budget Committee meeting scheduled for tomorrow has been cancelled. That was the meeting that was supposed to be the proxy mayoral race over Daly and Newsom's competing visions of the city (i.e., whether we were......

SFiS -- more than just SFist minus the T! We give the new glossy advertorial section of the Chronicle our patented By The Numbers treatment below. (Warning -- SFiS only appears in .pdf form so many, but not all, of the links featured here will require Adobe Acrobat.) Average cost of items promoted in SFiS (not including ads): $399.91. Number of Catherine Bigelow columns: 6. (new recaps of Gordon Getty's birthday party, the Red Tie......

A battle is brewing over the putting of Marines commended for heroism in the Iraqi War on billboards throughout the area. The billboards are part of the Marines' "Hometown Heroes" campaign which puts the pictures of local Marines up on the billboards with a mention of what award they have won and why. One of those who will be featured is Cpl. Michael Montemayor of San Jose who braved enemy gunfire and ran into a canal to rescue another injured Marine. This being the Bay Area, however, not all are psyched on the idea. Critics are calling the program a recruiting tool and "propaganda" because in honoring someone for heroism, they are making heroism seem, umm, heroic and thus might get people to join the military to be a hero. Not every anti-war group is against the billboards, however as some are pointing out that it's okay to call someone brave enough to jump into enemy fire a hero and still disagree with the war. ...

Well, in San Francisco, it's definitely getting so it makes more sense to rent than it does to own -- so we're not entirely surprised to hear of a program where the Friends of the Urban Forest will rent you a living Christmas tree, so you don't have to encourage people to cut trees down or get a chemical-filled artificial one. So you pay $90 and you get a living tree, which after the holidays will be replanted in a neighborhood needing more greenery. As an extra bonus, they'll throw in some energy-saving lights for the tree too. They're a little scragglier than you might be used to -- but who cares, they're alive! You can get a primrose tree, a Brisbane box, or a fruitless olive. ....And! If you kick in a little extra, you can have your Christmas tree planted in front of your own house! That way you'll never need to take those ornaments down! Well, unfortunately, after we read the article and got all excited about it -- it turns out they've already rented all their trees out for the season. If you want one for next year, get yourself on the Friends of the Urban Forest email list at holidaytree@fuf.net. Picture from the FUF website...