A small protest was held at City Hall yesterday by 400-plus pissed off Tibetan immigrants, honoring the 49th anniversary of Tibet's uprising against China, but also San Francisco's hosting of the Olympic torch. Just a preface of what will happen in the city next month, San Francisco will be the focus of a major protest since it's the only US city hosting the Olympic torch relay in the 2008 Beijing games. According to CBS......

We found ourselves asking ourselves lots of questions when we decided to post this piece of urban art that SFist reader Mike found on the corner of Sutter and Larkin last week. We were like, is this not suitable for work? It's just graffiti, and it looks just like all the beautiful vagina clichés that are cliché for a reason. It's like a lovely clam, or a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, or a head......

Photo credit: sniderscion Torontoist spent its week uncovering who was behind mysterious ads for a drug called "Obay" that popped up across the country (Scientology? Frank Shepard Fairey?), first tracing them to an advocacy group called Colleges Ontario and then confirming their suspicions a few days later.Phillyist learned how to put on a puppet show – it's not as easy as you might think!Shanghaiist discovers that the average starting monthly pay for fresh graduates......

For those of you into gaming, or at least like to blow off some steam with your Wii (tee hee), we found out through Gamingbits.com that San Francisco will be one of the sites of the US Super Smash Bros. Brawl Tournaments. Fanboys and fangirls, commence with your tears of joy. Tournaments will be held in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston, with the winners of each city going to finals in New York.......

For as much as everyone pretends to be indie coffee house-loving, Starbucks-hating, people of god -- we're not. Especially when we're lazy. If we're in the financial district and want our half-caff, venti macchiato with a double shot of sugar-free vanilla and only want to walk two steps from our door to get it, so be it. We're going to Starbucks. But NOT, however, on February 26th between the hours of 5:30 to 8:30 PM.......

Piff! Pow! Zwap! On Valentine's Day at precisely 6 p.m. at Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco will play host to its third annual public pillow fight. And they're looking for a few good men and women. The rules of the fight are as follows: 1) Tell everyone you know about Pillow Fight! 2) Tell EVERYONE YOU KNOW about Pillow Fight!!! 3) Nothing in your pillow but pillow. 4) Don’t hit anyone with out a......

For what it's worth: "In celebration of National Pancake Day on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., IHOP, one of America's favorite restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner, will give away one free short stack of its signature buttermilk pancakes to all guests," according to iHOP. But where in heaven's name are we to find an iHOP in gastronomically governed San Francisco? Well, there are two iHOPs in SF: one......

Republican (it goes without saying) Assemblyman Guy Houston of San Ramon wants to slice off more than $3 million in state funding from Berkeley for their stance against Marine recruiting. He will introduce legislation to "withhold state transportation money until Berkeley rescinds its 'war on the U.S. Marine Corps.'" Jesus. In a move that will ideally hurt his political career -- since it's a waste of time, a symbolic prick move, and has little......

Hey, it's another Polk post, folks! We're thankful to Flickr user Lulu Vision for giving us a heads-up in the SFist Contribute section regarding tonight's Lower Polk Neighbors meeting with SF Fire Department Chief Joanne Hayes-White about Fire Station 3 and how they're trying to make us all go deaf with their sirens. Hilariously enough, this fire station is located right next to Diva's and Grass Roots. Why would they ever want to leave? From......

The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri) (1966): We were going to start throwing shade at the overall ineffectiveness of political satire -- which, by the way, The Battle of Algiers is not -- but instead we this interesting tidbit about this classic regarding Algeria's struggle to overthrow French Colonial Government in the mid-1950s. According to IMDB: "In 2003, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon screened this film for officers and......

Tomorrow is BART Rider Appreciation / Thank You Day, and you, dear BART riders, will reap the benefits. The people at TransFair USA will give away 50,000 coupons for a shot of fair trade espresso from Tully's Coffee. Perfect for getting a move on in the morning and getting things moving, you know, down there. And remember, folks: That's tomorrow, January 31, 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. at the more heavily-footed stations, like Civic......

Rocket, Wisely, and the Fits: It's an all-pop night, kids. Rocket, an LA-based band that mixes sexy '60s barely-legal innocence with "'70s decibel-damaging boulevard beat, combined with '80s glam wham swagger," headlines tonight. Who else? Well, Wisely, no relation to Sean's abusive stepmother, performs their special brand of "equivocal pop." And finally, the Fits whose sound, according to Aquarius Records, is an "endearing folksy pop gem with vocals that reminded us of J Mascis."......

"Static and squat," declares John King on the new residential tower, Soma Grand. And it only gets worse, beautifully so. [SFGate]Have a sumptuous yet refreshing woodchuck, raccoon, or squirrel recipe? Send it to Endless Summer and you could win a "guest blogging post." [Endless Simmer]Fashion on the 5-Fulton dazzles. [Nature abhors a vacuum]President George W. Bush is coming to the Bay Area tomorrow to make a cameo appearance in Milk, or something like that. [Oakland......

Surely looking to turn us all into latter-career, Catalina-vacationing Natalie Woods, it looks like the rain will fall down (and wake our dreams) and won't stop until god knows when. Flooding, high winds, high tides, airport delays, glacial weather, and mass hysteria are all expected to bring us some mid-winter cheer. Santa Cruz will be getting the brunt of it, or so says the radar, so grab your spot at Pergolesi early and hold......

While walking along Post Street this morning, we came across the above "mysterious" sign at Taylor Street and wondered where the film shoot was. Then we happened to turn down Mason and encountered the film crew at Geary and Mason, as an SFist tipster noted earlier. The set-up was all still there on our walk back home this evening. We're guessing it was for a commercial of some sort. They filmed a Quaker Oats......

We will get to hear the microphone between the tits! Anna Netrebko, who kicked off her career in the US here in '96 (in Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila) will be back in La Traviata, the SF Opera announced today when unveiling their 2008-09 season. You'll want to see other, um, microphones too, as the darn sexy Angela Gheorghiu, who we were so smitten with in La Rondine, comes back for more Puccini with La Boheme. It's the 150th anniversary of the birth of Puccini this year, so you get two operas by him, Tosca being the other one. That's a bit lame, we say, since you typically get two operas by Puccini in any season. Say, La Rondine and Madama Butterfly, for instance. A true anniversary celebration would be to have all operas by Puccini, or even better, eleven different productions of Butterfly. That would rock....

It nice to see that the farming and ranching traditions of Livermore's past live on to this day. You see, seven men were nabbed this past Sunday in connection with a cockfighting ring on the 4000 block of North Livermore Avenue. Ick. Busted while a fowl fight was in progress, officers arrested three gentlemen from Alameda, two blokes from Livermore, one from San Jose, and another from Las Vegas. Police officers also uncovered "300......

What a pretty name for a barge, yes? Morning fog, it seems, has temporarily delayed the investigation into yesterday's Richmond-San Rafael Bridge fender bender. Last night, while being guided by tugboats, the Cascade smacked into the east piling of the western span of the bridge. This comes on the heels of the Cosco Busan oil spill, which happened after the container ship rammed into the Oakland Bay Bridge. Read more about yesterday's non-harrowing incident......

Lace up those Converse and get ready to scratch those chins, Radiohead fans. They're coming to San Francisco! When? No clue. Where? We can only assume the Empire Plush Room, of course. But the fine folks over at SF Weekly's All Shook Down just got word that everyone's favorite band to claim that they love will be making a San Francisco pitstop during the leg of their North American tour. Eee! While this Oxfordshire......

Even though more power outages are affecting PG&E customers in the Bay Area due to today's storm (chortle), you would hardly believe it. Where's the vim and vigor of last week's tempest? Where are the knocked down trees? Where are the broken umbrellas? Where are the 10-minute boasting intervals of having a Hi-Def Doppler? Pft. Mama Nature lost us with this one. Although the major brunt of the storm will happen around 4 p.m......

Speaking of Boing Boing, they have word that Electronic Frontier Foundation - the "first line of defense" in our right to free speech, privacy, awesome innovation, and consumer rights - is having a birfday party. For those of you unfamiliar with EFF, ahem: Blending the expertise of lawyers, policy analysts, activists, and technologists, EFF achieves significant victories on behalf of consumers and the general public. EFF fights for freedom primarily in the courts, bringing......

The UK's latest sensation, Kate Nash, makes her San Francisco debut this Saturday night at popscene at 330 Ritch Street. We are so very excited about this show. Not only do we absolutely love Kate Nash's EP (her CD is coming out tomorrow) but we get an added bonus of seeing Minipop, San Francisco's own indie-pop band. This show is bound to be genius. Nash is only playing three other shows in the US -......

Seeing as how we're ashamed of and grossed out by almost every bodily function imaginable, if you want to see the uncensored image above, featuring canine fecal matter adorned with a US flag, you can find it hiding behind the jump. It's visually coarse, and you've been warned. It seems someone in "the Mission neighborhood has apparently been sticking flags in poop piles for quite some time." While that's a curious political statement, we're......

As seen in the graphic above (pulled from the LA Times), and because of last week's fatal attacks, tiger security improvement is needed. Soon. In 30 days, according to the Gate, SF Zoo will have a brand spanking new tiger-grotto security system. The architect who created the zoo's Grizzly Gulch exhibit, Sam Singer, will also now design the safer new tiger grotto. Although no details of the new tiger grotto designed have been released, we're......

One of the greatest misunderstandings in the history of US cinema -- oh please, as far as repeated viewings go, Ordinary People is a superior and more devastating film than Raging Bull -- is the genius of Sophia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette. A fantastic flick, really. It's gorgeous, laced with a few Bay Area inside jokes, oddly nerve-wrecking to watch, and the ending is perfect. Brilliant. In every way. And, yes, while many would (with much......

Further proof that the Richmond is where it's at - unless, of course, you like dry bath towels - last night the good folks in the OR witnessed a reportedly "green" light show in the sky during the storm. (Here in SOMA at SFist HQ, we saw a few dangerous puddle formations. Terrifying.) In our comments section, which we implore you to use liberally, a few readers chimed in on last night's electric action:......

Whether you call it soda, pop, or cola, you'll have to pay more to buy it if Gavin Newsom gets his way: Matier and Ross report that Mayor Newsom is thinking about taxing city vendors of sugary soft drinks to pay for his Shape Up SF kid fitness programs. The thinking's that the fructose corn syrup that gets added to your Coke [we grew up in the South, so we call 'em Cokes, though we've......

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

We came back from taking down the recycling yesterday evening to find we had locked ourselves out of our apartment. "Noooo!!" [Insert Emo Darth Vader ballad here. Warning -- audio.] We dialed the apartment manager on the call-box but got his voice mail. Lucky for us, the manager, who wouldn't be back until 10:00, called our s.o., who wouldn't be back until 8:00, and our s.o. called our friend who lives a few blocks away.......

Ragnar left Sweden to join the SF Symphony as Chorus director in March this year. And did we throw a welcome party for him? Did we ring his door with a cauliflower casserole and a bottle of wine to ease his arrival in the neighborhood? Nope. Nada. We must have been booked when he threw his housewarming or something, but so far, search for him here and you'll find only one single measly hit. Luckily......