-- Cammerin Boyd killed by reasonable force, says jury. [Chron] -- Behold: the 54 million dollar SF home. Bow down before it, plebeians and renters! [CurbedSF] -- Argentina hosts the gay World Cup of soccer. Maricons can play sports? Well, that tears it. [Chron, via AP] -- Ed Jew fights to keep his seat on the board of supervisors. Sigh. [Examiner] -- Castro getting all atwitter over this year's Halloween. And we're all gonna die!!......

We've written before about our love of soccer but unfortunately, being here in the States, it's a little hard to get the full flavor of it. Major League Soccer isn't quite that exciting and there's no longer a franchise here. There are also plenty of places in the city to watch some Premiere League (and occasional Serie A games) but it's not quite the same as watching the games in Europe. Also, we don't like to get up early. So we're kind of excited over the news that Stanford is going to host a game between the Premiere League's Chelsea and Mexico's Club America on July 14th....

Hey, did you hear we're hosting the All-Star game next year? If you watch any of the Giants' games on TV (and who would, all things considering), they only mention it like twenty times a game. Last week they had some big brouhaha with Hizzoner Gavin to unveil the logo and if you go to a Giants game, they have signs everywhere and some clock to let you know that, like, there are only 362 DAYS UNTIL THE ALL-STAR GAME!!!!! ...

Last week's winner, the Bay Guardian. Hey, their website's back up again (wish we could say the same for ours). Also -- new topical blogs. We love how Bruce Brugman's blog says "Bruce will not be posting until the end of the month." Thanks for letting us know! Redmond thought it was neat that lots of people went to Dolores Park to watch the World Cup. Shhhh, don't tell anyone, but Gavin Newsom is really......

After a day off, the 2006 Tour de France is heading into its second week today, unbeknownst to most Americans. According to the Chronicle, only 280,000 Americans watch the Tour on TV. Compare that to 91 million for the Super Bowl and 17 million for the World Series.

Americans aren't interested in international sports, mostly because we don't win them. The entire run of this year's soccer World Cup has garnered only nine million viewers nationwide -- the American Idol finale had 36 million viewers, on one night. Unless the USA is kicking ass as a country, such as in the Olympics -- and often not even then, Americans care little for televised coverage of international competition in sports like soccer, track and field, and cycling.

The Tour de France is worth watching though. It is the biggest event in the sport of cycling and really highlights the sporting differences between Americans and the rest of the world. And it's very accessible. Outdoor Life Network (OLN) provides daily repeat coverage of every single stage, including extended, live pedal-by-pedal from two of the best to ever call a race: Phil Leggett and Paul Sherwin.

This year, fate and The Man haven't made it any easier for the ADD-addled American television audience to watch skinny foreign guys in lycra riding bikes for hours and hours, day after day. After an opening week dominated more by who wasn't racing than by who was, the Tour suddenly went from a peloton of favorites to a small breakaway of "other guys."

Maillot jeune graphic from Team CSC website.

In all honesty, we can't call ourselves the biggest soccer-phile out there. We don't really follow the sport when it's not the World Cup, although we do occasionally pay somewhat attention to what's going on in the World of Futbol. Still, we’ve always rooted for soccer to become big here in the States. We played it as children, played it again as adults, and love the sport and the passion that it brings. Yesterday, we couldn't have been happier about how into the game everyone was. The day had a Big Event feel to it, like a Bay To Breakers or Superbowl Sunday vibe. It felt like half the city was either on their way to Dolores Park or to North Beach. So naturally, we went to Belden Place. Why not? We were rooting for les Bleus and the idea of being surrounded by people screaming "Sacre Bleu" or "Zizou!" with non-ironic French accents warmed the cockles of our heart. And we got what we wanted, other than a French victory, of course. The alley way was jam packed with people, we heard smattering of French and Italian everywhere, and we even got to hear people sing "La Marseillaise." If only it were WWII and in black & white, it would have been just like Casablanca. ...

Caught World Cup Fever? Been watching the games? Have you been immersing yourself in terms like "Total Football" or "Catenaccio"? We ourselves have been totally obsessed about the Cup since it began. We've watched games when we could, TiVo'ed others. We've read World Cup blogs, live blogged, snuck peak at live feeds at work, and have been reading far more English newspapers than we ever thought we would. We've been so obsessed with it, in fact, that even though there's two more games left, we are already mourning the end of it and have vowed that this time, this time!-- we will continue on with our rediscovered love of soccer and start paying more attention to the Premiere and Champions Leagues. Hell, we have already marked Euro 2008 on our calendars (June 2008). ...

Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddie for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bids Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues with our World Cup broadcasters here, but this guy......

Sampaist is on the scene in São Paulo beginning this week to become the only ist south of the Equator. Editor Leandro M. Pinto leads the paulistanos down there. You can protest someone at his office, sure, but when the whistle blows at the end of the day can you follow him home? D.C. has sports fans, apparently, and elephants aren't really cut out for zoos. There's this trick where you can read information from......

As we've been watching the World Cup, we just can't but help think just how much fun it would be to be there. After all, it's soccer, it's beer, it's Katenrauchwurst-- what else do you want out of life? But alas, we were too late to sign up for tickets and our friends who are going didn't take us. What to do...what to do... Hey, we just found out a way to go-- just give tons of money to Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez? He's taking some of his biggest fund raisers to Germany to watch the Finals. Total cost per person? $25,000. Airfare isn't included, but tickets, hotel reservations, and "welcoming gifts" are. We don't, however, think by "welcoming gifts" they mean "hookers"-- unless Duke Cunningham is involved. ...

LAist is flashing a sad peace out to their editor Carolyn Kellogg with one hand and bumping knuckles with their new head typist L.A. blogger king Tony Pierce with the other. Where do ist editors go when they hang up the 'editorial we'? They take on MySpace, apparently. At least Ben Brown does. Austinist reminds of the just rewards of less savory careers this week and then they witness the Arctic Monkeys and We Are......

Summer is heating up (or cooling down, depending on how close you are to the Pacific) so don’t forget to pack your sunscreen and pooch to take your dog with you on your adventures. You can start this Sunday at the W Hotel’s party for dogs cosponsored by Bark Magazine. Come meet the author of “TAILS OF DEVOTION A Look At The Bond Between People And Their Pets” from 4-6 p.m. This is a......

It is customary to start any post about the World Cup by stating that you should care. We won't do that. Y'all know what a big deal it is and how pretty much every part of the world that isn't Canada or the U.S. is effectively shutting itself down for a month to watch. Besides, we have a feeling part of the reason soccer has never really taken off here is because too many people tell you that you have to care. So getting into soccer becomes something like eating broccoli or the metric system or any other things you are told to do because it's good for you. As a result, people here start getting all huffy and get all "nuh-uh, we're 'merican's damnit. We like our sports with non-stop action, lots of beer commercials, and scoreboards telling us when to cheer and when not to cheer, you Euro Weenie One World-ist!" Instead, we're going to try and get you into it by showing you just how much fun the World Cup can be. Picture it not as something you have to do because you have to be like everyone else, but as, well, kind of a way to travel around the world in a month without ever having to leave the city. ...

Shanghaiist probably knows a little more about China than the Chicago Sun-Times. Giving them the benefit of the doubt on that one. The city does to have a music scene. Don't even front like they don't. They also have Dorito bananas and white guys shopping for wives. What they don't have is any more tolerance for jaywalkers. Bostonist sees Boston and Somerville each whip out their art and face off. A plagiarized novel is the......

Long-time SFist readers will remember that we were so inspired at last year's SFIAAFF by "Chinese Restaurants: Three Continents" that we gave it our prestigious Best Film We Saw On SFist award for 2005. The premise behind the Chinese Restaurants series is that the Canadian filmmaker, Cheuk Kwan, visits Chinese restaurants around the world and interviews the owners to find out how they ended up in their particular country. So Kwan has visited Chinese restaurants......

With the start of the World Baseball Classic upon us, we thought we'd let SFist Jon and SFist Jake duke it out over whether this thing will be any good. There wasn't much duking to be had, however, because both Jon and Jake pretty much agreed that this just might be the best thing ever. And despite all the naysayers, the cynics, and George Steinbrenner's whining, they're both excited as hell. In short, SFist's official stance is this: Play ball!...

With almost four months til the World Cup, it's tune up time for the U.S. team and today, at Whatever the Hell It's Named Now Stadium, the U.S. team will have a chance to tune up with a game against another Germany bound team, Japan. The match is what they call "a friendly," which is soccer-ese (sorry, football-ese) for what we here in America call an "exhibition" game. This means that there is a good chance Big Boys, like Landon Donovan or Eddie Pope, who are on the roster, might not play. Big Boys Claudio Reyna and SFist Fave Demarcus Beasley aren't even on the roster because they're in Europe right now. ...

We have to admit that we love the idea of the baseball World Cup. It could turn into something awesome, like the soccer World Cup, except with more scoring and less David Beckham. Which doesn't mean that MLB won't somehow screw it up, but it has potential. The biggest thing the thing needs is legitimacy from its star players. Well, it just got one of its biggest stars to compete, maybe the biggest of the big, one Barry Lamar Bonds. ...

Pass the basket, please! The San Francisco-based US Bread Baking Guild competitive team won this year's Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, described as "the World Cup of bread baking." The team coach and one of the bakers are from the San Francisco Baking Institute (in South City), and the Baking Institute also offered training space for the team. The team beat out perennial powerhouse France and third-place winner Japan in all three categories: baguettes, viennoiserie (pastries and sandwiches), and artistic design. Team America's artistic design was a bread sculpture featuring Mt. Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty with a flaming torch of wheat and -- Marin ups! -- a Golden Gate Bridge painted with paprika and little savory rolls for cars. (No mention if a suicide barrier made out of breadsticks was featured.) Rad! SFist loves baking competitions. ...

Things aren't looking good for professional sports in San Jose. It seems that because of dismal attendance and the lack of a new stadium, the Anschutz Group is looking to sell the San Jose Earthquakes to Mexico's Club America [Espanol], who would then shop them to cities in Texas - including Houston, San Antonio and Dallas....