At first, before reading this story, we were ready to shake our finger at the Vespa rider in question. Lord knows we worry about you kids. But it seems she wasn't at fault. You see, last night a 24-year-old San Francisco woman was put in the hospital with life-threatening injuries while riding a Vespa on South Van Ness Avenue. It seems that "a 1994 Honda Accord, which was traveling southbound, tried to make a......

-- On Saturday Friday at around 10:40 p.m., Jan. 26, 24-year-old Ernesto Williams was shot and killed while standing outside his car at the Chevron station at Sixth and Harrison streets. While waiting with his 26-year-old girlfriend, police claim a suspect drove up to the couple, exited his vehicle, and then "approached the victims and started shooting," killing the Oakland man and wounding his female companion. The suspect then "returned to the vehicle and......

Every year at Thanksgiving, you're bound to forget one or two critical items. A shallot, cooking twine, mushrooms, Ketel One -- something will slip your mind and you run the risk of having your Thanksgiving dinner collapse in on itself. And then you've ruined everything. Everything! But who can we prevent such yellow wallpapered hysteria? This is where you come in: do you know of any grocery stores that stay open late on Thanksgiving......

-- San Mateo Bridge shuts down, then opens. Ta-da. [Examiner] -- Dan Noyes on Jerry Lucas, the sanity-estranged man who followed a then-pregnant Jill Rabinowitz into her garage, severely beating her with a can of paint. He might soon get sprung from the funny farm. [ABC7] -- Streets such as "Van Ness Avenue, Broadway...Harrison Street" and more could turn into toll roads under a proposed city plan to ease traffic congestion. [Chron] -- Viggo......

-- Benefit Show Honoring Erno "Tattoo" Szabady: Local rock bands Slowfinger, DickDusters, and the Walker Brothers get together to raise money for a burial "niche" for well-known, recently deceased tattoo artist, Szabady. Show starts at 8 p.m. at Peacock Lounge, 552 Haight Street (at Fillmore); $10-$15. -- Live-in Maid (Cama adentro): Norma Aleandro's dramatic role, about a "wealthy woman and her live-in housekeeper" dealing with the economic collapse in Argentina, finally arrives in the......

And now for another big city's mildly retarded view of San Francisco: Too much ink has been spilled and too much bandwidth used to praise/bury Critical Mass in length. Now the LA Times gets in on the action. We'd love to break it down for you, but it's a long article and we don't bike or drive; more or less, it's stuff you've heard before. So, we present to you some choice quotes from......

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......

While playing around on YouTube yesterday to look for some H.R. Puffenstuff stuff, we stumbled upon this newsreel footage of San Francisco after the '06 quake. The print might not be of the highest quality, but it's pretty damn cool. ...

First off, we have to admit something: We've grown more and more bored by "Survivor," and gave up watching it altogether last season. But we realize the show still has its fans, and its wannabe Survivors, so we wanted to make sure all you Robinson Crusoe-types know about the open casting call being held by KPIX channel 5 tomorrow. Applicants should go to the MetroPCS store on Van Ness between 10 a.m. and 2......

The Examiner reports on something that seems like perfect fodder for the good old ChronicleWatch (SFist Rita, when can we see another ChronicleWatch Watch? We loved that feature!): Apparently, the streetlights all along Van Ness are consistently broken, and little action has been taken to repair them. Residents have been complaining for about a year, with scant help from city officials. SFPUC,which oversees the lights, blames the problems on "aging infrastructure and a complicated......