So, the Old Gray Lady hauled out the printing press to publish a story about how "cool-hunting hipsters" love Valenica Street. Sure, it's a dated piece. Wildly so, it seems. The article goes on and on Valencia Street faves: terrorist hangout Ritual Coffee Roasters, the macabre plant/carcass retailer Paxton Gate, and the God-we-love-this-place-so-much-but-wish-half-of-you-who-go-there-would-head-to-Casanova-instead Amnesia. But the Times article also mentions new-ish restaurant Spork, sits in the same building as the old KFC. Whimsically, the......

Eeps! SFist received word this morning that Valencia Street fell victim to yet another apartment fire. Sigh. Reader Jeff Cleary tells us:...

We enjoy the following review -- although we're only using part of it for it devolves into anti-Hillary rhetoric, San Francisco's latest form of socially-acceptable sexism -- because a) it turns out that Yelp has an entire category dedicated to Gavin Newsom's hair, and b) it's pro-Gavin Newsom locks. (If you want to see some actual janky-ass hair, walk down Valencia Street or sit on a bench at Zeitgeist on any given day. Because:......

*CLUB: Check out Rock Out Karaoke over at Amnesia. What is Rock Out Karaoke? Well, it mean that you will hear neither a Righteous Brothers cover nor a note from everyone's least favorite musical, Grease. And isn't that what you really want in a karaoke night? Of course it is. (Glenny Kravitz hosts.) READING: Sorry to throw another Valencia Street happening your way, but: author and artist Ian Philips, of Suspect Thoughts Press, reads......

Dear sky: Please stop raining. You're being a jerk. Sincerely, everyone. [SFGate]The Palms defended. Sort of. [Curbed]Weeeee: Q4 earnings fell at Google. [SFGate]Although all of their hair currently looks like warmed over shit, at least from what we glean on Valencia Street, here are your best hipster hair salons. [Gridskipper]Midgen hearts the trannies, and wants them to find jobs. [BAR]More Luisa Hanson controversy. [Eater]We have a Chick-fil-A. Yay! But it's in Fairfield. Boo! [Yelp]Former Clinton......

Charming! And the Curbed Cup award goes to: Hayes Valley. San Francisco's top hood took the crown with 262 votes (52.8%) over second-place Mission's 234 votes (47.2%). Total burn, Valencia Street! And you know what? Well played, HV. Well played. Ideally, it's just the perfect neighborhood. No, it really is. For starters, the area lies flat and stands as the nexus of many other neighborhoods. What's more, it has perhaps one of San Francisco's only......

You know on Market Street how there's that left-hand turn lane if you want to go on Valencia? And you know how everyone likes to rush through when the light turns green to make sure they can get onto Valencia without having to wait through another cycle of traffic signals? We know what you're thinking everytime you make that turn-- hey, what an awesome place to jaywalk! Which is what some woman, latte in hand, did right in front of us as we tried to make that turn in rush hour....

If you haven't made it to the Curiosity Shoppe yet, what are you waiting for? It's one of our new favorite shops on Valencia Street. After having an e-commerce site for a year we were thrilled to hear that owners Lauren Smith and Derek Fagerstrom were setting up a brick and mortar spot in our fair city. Not only do we adore the choice of products for sale in the shop, we're big fans......

Pitchfork has a rich article Fugazi's Joe Lally having thousands of dollars worth of equipment stolen from his touring van while it was parked on Valencia Street. Overnight. Fugazi's Joe Lally and Philly's Capillary Action were enjoying a nice stop over in San Francisco following a shared gig on their current tour when tragedy struck. November 16, between the hours of 3-10 a.m. on the corner of Valencia Street and Clinton Park, someone broke......

Last year's Park(ing) Day at Ritual Coffee Roasters on Valencia Street. It's Park(ing) Day, folks. Today's the day REBAR, a San Francisco-based art collective, thought of taking parking spaces and turning them into public ones by creating fun-sized parks. Now cities all over the country are getting in on it. It's a fun idea and we recommend you check any number of these spaces out today before this happens to them. Community Walk has a......

Try drowning Dave Eggers, Michelle Tea, Stephen Elliott, Beth Lisick, Barb Bersche, Eileen Hassi, or 826 Program Director Erin Neeley, via a dunking booth, this Sunday afternoon at the first 8/26 Day Festival. The literary bash will feature live performances, cartooning, Everett Middle School's dance troupe, readings, local writers (pardon me, novelists), paper flower making, haiku writing, bon mots flying to and fro, and much, much, much more. The festivities go from 1 p.m.......

-- Daft Punk's Electroma: Pinocchio-ish road movie about two robots -- played by Daft Punk members Peter Hurteau and Michael Reich -- and their quest to become human. Riot In Belgium, the Bang Gang DJs, Dandi Wind, and Richie Panic & Jefrodisiac perform tonight before and after the movie. Doors open at 7 p.m. at Mezzanine, 444 Jesse (at Mint); free with RSVP at going.com. -- Justice League Wiffle Ball Game: According to Laughing......

According to NPR, it seems both Los Angeles and San Francisco are in the habit of slashing the tires of and beating the crap out of our dear meter maids -- now more than ever before. The absurdity of SF's parking ticket-dispensing habits aside, this is awful. A year ago, we saw a couple of altercations on Valencia Street, with vile douche bags puffing up their flaccid feathers at hard-working meter maids (meter-men? parking......

-- Dreamgirls: Jennifer Hudson's performance as Effie White won her an Academy Award, and her end of Act I nervous breakdown ("And I Am Telling You") blew audiences to the back wall of the theatre. . She is the reason to see this movie. It also features Anika Noni Rose, a former A.C.T. student. Check out this musical loosely based on the rise of the Supremes tonight at 7 p.m. at the Castro Theatre,......

Ritual Coffee Roasters' two locations are only about three miles apart. Not so bad on a bike, right? Well, what if you're biking with 130 pounds of coffee? Yeah, a little tougher. This Saturday, popular cafe Ritual Roasters, in conjunction with Bikes to Rwanda, is having a wacky, multi-tiered charity event that involves bike-race betting, film-watching, a raffle, and the consumption of both of our favorite beverages: booze and coffee....

It wasn't just that shooting in Western Addition this morning -- it's been kind of a violent 24 hours there and in the Mission. At around 5:40 p.m. yesterday, there was a stabbing at Capp and 17th -- a guy was stabbed with an ice pick after getting out of a car. The stabber then jumped into another car and tried to run the victim down, and then jumped out of the car and stabbed......

Pee-yoo. Workers fixing the pipes on Valencia Street near Tiffany Avenue (behind St. Luke's) opened a 100-year-old unused cast-iron pipe in the ground, which released what Bay City News is delicately referring to as "a noxious odor." The odor was sufficiently noxious that 30-some people in the area got sick (nausea, dizziness, vomiting) and around 11-13 people went inside to St. Luke's to get treated. Ironically, the rest of the workers at St. Luke's were......

The latest issue concerning the DPT is sidewalk parking and what to do about it. The issue raised it's head a few months ago when Jake McG asked for a crackdown and now, the DPT has some ideas on what to do about the issue. Mainly shrug their shoulders and tell everyone "whatta you gonna do about it?" ...

3.... 2.... 1.... blast off! Yuri's Night at NASA's Ames Research Center is a science-sound-music-art shindig that sounds fun and interesting. Hosed by Keynote Speaker (and hottie!) Anoushe Ansari, the first privately funded femme space explorer. There's demos, organic food and drink, robots, and interactive art, yo. This World Space Party is one of 90 events in 30 countries, and celebrates Yuri Gagarin, who was only 27 when he was the first human to......

We've been noticing lately that there seems to be not only lots of construction crews out on Valencia Street but big, huge squares of road missing. What this means is that either the roads are even more of a mess than usual (possible) or they are actually fixing Valencia Street. So, we checked out the Better Valencia Project and discovered that it's twue, it's twue-- they're repaving the streets. ...

From what we understand, the Quentin Tarantino portion of his Grindhouse movie is about a stunt driver who goes a little crazy and starts running over people. Which sounds kind of dumb and makes us wish Quentin would stop slumming around and get back to making great movies again. But in reading about the below story, we're starting to think Quentin might be into something because this story, about a pedestrian being killed in anger by a car driver on Valencia Street, is darn right awful. ...

Quick -- which one of those pictures above is of Valencia Street in SF and which is of Williamsburg in Brooklyn? Bay Area blogger Overstated has put together his list of what New York neighborhoods correspond to which San Francisco ones. Check out his list, and let the great debates begin! Here's some calls we agree with: --Totally Williamsburg is the Mission. Last time we were on Bedford Avenue, honest to God we thought......

A plan to step up street cleaning in the Mission was officially kyboshed as the Board of Supervisors agreed with Tom Ammiano's resolution to ixnay the idea. The plan called for increased street cleaning from once a week to three times a week. The reason why they wanted to step it up is well, do we even need to say why? The area in question, a two hundred-block area from Portrero to Valencia Street are considered the cities dirtiest. We can't believe they keep stats on these things but according to said stats, the amount of garbage has tripled over the past year. ...

Even though you're probably too chicken to admit it, we know you're curious about the January 24th meeting of the SF County Transit Authority meeting (100 Van Ness Avenue, 26th Floor). They're planning to allocate ten milllllllllion dollars to some Transbay Terminal tomfoolery: that's extending Caltrain to the terminal, redeveloping the terminal's crappy neighborhood, and sprucing up the terminal so that it's the kind of place people actually go to. Most of that 10......

You know how Gavin said we were "seconds" away from inking a deal with Earthlink/Google over providing free WiFi to everyone in the city? Well, "seconds" might have been a slight exaggeration but late yesterday, a deal was actually reached, the i's dotted, the t's crossed, and pen was put to paper. Soon the entire city will be a "hot spot." But we knew that already. ...

Keeping some distance this week from his personal history-- it's better to forget-- SFist Nico goes rummaging through a red-lit version of Hell he really likes. Good Lord Almighty, we can barely remember anything. Maybe it's something in the food, maybe we're trying jam too much information into our tiny little brains, or, heaven forbid, we're just getting old, but whatever it is, we're pretty good at forgetting things: names, appointments, awesome bands from the......

Busy, bookish night! First, we're heading over to (if you work someplace conservative this link could be NSFW) Good Vibrations (603 Valencia Street at 17th) to have Stephen Elliot sign a copy of his new book, My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up, at tonight's party to celebrate its release. The party runs from 6:30-8:30, but we have to rush out sooner, so we can get to... Berkeley's Black Oak Books......

You know how they say things happen in threes? We wonder if that pertains to business closings too because a third business in the 16th & Valencia Street Corridor recently closed down. The business is a bar, actually, Cama, which joins Leather Tongue and Kelly's Burger in the recently deceased business list. Like the other two, the closing just kind of happened. One night there was a crowd of people outside of it, then the sign came down but the bar was still open, and then the bar itself was closed. ...

While walking down 16th today we noticed something off, something unusual, something different and then we figured out what it was-- Kelly's Burgers looked not only closed but boarded up. The familiar outdoor tables were gone and the windows were papered over so you couldn't look in. There was no sign saying "closed for renovations" or even a sign saying anything. Is Kelly's Burger gone?...

We read Steven Jones' article in this week's Bay Guardian over the handbill debate in the Mission with interest and not just because it brings up a great debate or because of the usual Bay Guardian hilarity, but because as we were walking around Valencia Street, we noticed that there was nary a flier to be found. Not a call for ending U.S. Imperialism, not a bill for some DJ we've never heard of, nor an announcement for a Trotsky Teach-In. What we saw as we were walking around were completely bare streetlights and unpostered walls. ...