What with all of the Dedes, Newsoms, Nessies, and guilty white trustifarians using "gentrification!" as both a battle cry AND a lifestyle, it should come as no surprise to you that San Francisco crazy-ass rich. At least according to the California Franchise Tax board's recently released annual report, we are. ...

We love Danielle Steel. A lot. Why? We can't pinpoint; there are many reasons to adore this SF-based writer. Her soft-focused images on the back of her books; her rumored affection for SFist mascot Vanessa Getty; her shifting into reverse with homely SF society; her daughters (fun!); her sons (sexy!); her home (insane!); her work (scintillating!); her money (loads!) -- we can't pick one reason. We just kinda like the gal. And according to......

As most of you know, we here at SFist are staunch vertical-growth advocates. In addition to One Rincon Hill being visible from SFist headquarters, we have also had the pleasure of watching the mushroom tip of BLŪ sprout above SOMA/Rincon Hill overt the last few months. While unsure of whether or not it was the next St. Regis or SOMA Grand, we've been dying for some time to sneak a peak at its insides.......

Forbes annual list of billionaires around the world came out today. Jealous? And for the first time in 14 years Warren Buffett (at $62 billion) snatched the number one spot from Bill Gates (who came in at a dismal $58 billion.) This post was created using Explorer, not Firefox, in condolence. But who, you ask, took the top spots for the Bay Area? Well, Oracle founder Larry Ellison (coming in at #14 with $25......

Every night from our janky turn-of-the-century Victorian apartment, inside our janky bedroom, from within the sheets of our janky bed we look out our window at the thin, glassy penis that is One Rincon Hill and wonder, "Who will be the first one to move in?" Today, we wonder no more. Our new best friends Frank Mg, Snapfish systems engineer, and his girlfriend, Catherine Chan, will be living in sin together at the swank......

-- Doug Benson: How he didn't win the last season of Last Comic Standing is above and beyond all logic. Then again, competitive reality TV makes little sense at times. (See: Banks, Tyra) Benson managed to make it on LCS not once, but twice. And with good reason: he's downright hilarious. Nikki Glaser and Mo Mandel open for the Benson. Show starts at 8 p.m. (and continues until Saturday) at the Punch Line; $15.......

Never having been huge fans of instrumental music, we were taken by surprise when we listened to Maserati's latest record Inventions For The New Season. Their own entertaining bio describes the music as a "post-psychedelic orgy of hooks molesting the tired cliche of math-prog" and/or "a post-disco drone machine bristling with the buzz-saw sound of 1,000 angry square waves nestled on a California king size bed of shoegaze swirl." We like to think of the......

Gremlins, Howard the Duck, and Troll 2 -- how does Midnights for Maniacs manage to put together such incredibly pleasing triple-features? The "Vertically Challenged Monsters" start unspooling at 7:30 on May 25th at the Castro, and conclude sometime after midnight (so don't count on Muni to get home -- as if you ever do). Tickets are ten bucks and you get to see all three -- that's an absolute steal for the wealth of cultural......

Here's how you can access some "secret" bus-prediction info: data that only Muni has, and that you can only get by calling the right number and asking the right questions. Yesterday, we explained why 311 is your new go-to number for all things bus-predictive. The operators at 311 have a wealth of data, y'see; much more than 511 has. But sometimes NextMuni lets us down: for whatever reason, a bus sometimes won't show up in......

We went to Myth burdened with expectations as high as the Transamerica pyramid two blocks away: the place was so popular we had to let the restaurant decide when we would eat there, all our suggestions being shot down by Open Table like a buddy of Dick Cheney. Nina Zagat whispered in our ear that this was one of the exciting places in her new guide. Michael You're Eating in My City Bauer wrote a review which was glowing in the dark, and named Myth on his 10 best new restaurants of 2005 list. And it was easy to find the restaurant itself: it was the one with the Ferrari parked in front. There are many ways to blow your money when you have too much, and this one is as show-off-ish as any, but this seemed a better omen of sophistication than, say, a tricked-up Escalade. The interior design is stunning: a wide square room with an open kitchen is lined up with bench against the opposite wall, and sleek booth on one side. Behind the booth sits a long and busy bar where you can eat on a stool. Then, behind a wall of exposed bricks making elegant arches, another long dining room with a high ceiling and the atmosphere of a hip cloister. A private room opposite the kitchen is separated with a large glass partition, so you can follow, while you are seating in the main room, the powerpoint slides the corporate suits are examining. Biotech is trending up on those charts. This is a dining room where you feel comfortable displaying your wealth conspicuously....

Look! Up in the sky! It's... well, just a bunch of fog, apparently. People have been spending a lot of time looking to the tech world for heroes and personal saviors, only to have those illusions shattered when they realize all they're getting are software, search engines, and MP3 players. Leander Kahney of Wired News got some flak for his commentary about the relative merits of Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates. He says that......

Perusing the club listings for December, we're seeing an awful lot of blank calendars. We reckon that means many of SFist's great music venues are being rented out for holiday parties. Perhaps even parties to which we were not invited. Party throwers, don't be afraid to invite SFist. We promise not to do anything untoward that might tarnish our sterling reputation. Not like we did last year. Dear readers, there is a wealth of good......

Let us begin with an invitation to what will almost certainly be one of the most unique parties in San Francisco history: today (Sunday) at Aunt Charlie's, starting at 4:00 PM, they'll be a commemorating a violent Tenderloin uprising 39 years ago, when the transgender community suddenly resisted police harassment. At the time, the Tenderloin was one of the only spots in the city where trans folks could walk around openly, but it was......

There is a certain type of theatergoer who, upon seeing Joan Crawford turn, a sudden spotlight on her furious eyes and her dark lips snarled in melodrama, cannot help but cream themselves. Of those types of theatergoers, Charles Busch is king, and more often, queen; he's made an acting career out of evoking the acting style of film divas of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Sometimes somber, mostly hilarious, "The Lady in Question is......

When we settled into our seats at Valencia Street's The Marsh, we were a little nervous. We weren't sure quite what to expect from writer/performer Mark Kenward's show The Dharma of Dollars, an autobiographical solo performance about his struggle to acheive enlightenment in the face of his new spouse's wealth. To have these problems, right? Mark paints a great portrait of the politically self aware and righteous young man who marries the girl of......

Well, oral arguments in the MGM v. Grokster case concluded yesterday, and the reports from the scene conclude that the justices were very pointed in their questioning of the plaintiff, MGM. Reading different sources give us different impressions of the mood and tone -- the SCOTUSblog makes us think that the Justices were giving MGM the benefit of the doubt, whereas the EFF seemed encouraged by the hearing from the tone of their press......

We know, you've got a lot of pulls on your time these days, what with company holiday parties and SFist's first Bay Blotto tonight, but you really should know about a couple of very badass things happening on stage right now: The Man Who Came to Dinner at the Rhino In this Kaufman & Hart farce, the charismatic but egomaniacal Sheridan Whiteside, visiting the Stanleys for dinner as he passes through town, trips on their......

SFist is shocked to see that we failed for the 31st year in a row to make the Forbes list of the top 400 richest people in the world. Much like those US News and World Report stickers that show up on local editions of the America's Top Colleges magazines ("NORTHERN CALIFORNIA! Berkeley, Stanford, and Mills are represented in here!"), someone has thoughtfully compiled a compendium of California-based information for your perusal....

If that flashing $100 million lottery sign on the other side of the B of A clock on 101 had you dreaming like it did EssEffist (if EssEffist won, we were going to chip in for the Bay Bridge retrofit � and oh yeah, and buy us a digital camera), there�s good news and bad news. The good news is that two tickets in the Bay Area won. (The third winning ticket was sold in Huntington Beach). The bad news is that it probably wasn�t you � unless you�re Walter Tracy, an 80 year old WWII pilot from Los Altos, or you live in Sausalito and bought your ticket from Pal�s Liquor and Wine....