• The early reviews of the S.F. Symphony's Black & White Ball are in: SFWire notes, "The drag girls were fabulous as they posed with slightly shocked suburbanites. Marina girls tried to outdo each other and nearly froze to death." While Violet Blue, writing for SFAppeal, has a little different persepective on these people who, "live and shop and fuck and eat in the same city as me. Yet they might as well be as far away from the rest of us as Mars, and the Ball a ritual of old money mystery." [SFWire] [SFAppeal]

  • The Kansas man who built himself a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge has never actually seen the real thing. So some locals pitched in to fly him and his wife, who "has never been on a jet plane," out to San Francisco for a look. That makes Chuck Nevius something of a miracle worker, we guess. [Nevius]

  • It's a few days old, but The Wood-Fired Oven Of The Vanities is the best piece of writing on the Bay Area food scene we've read all year. [The Awl]

  • Where to eat alone in the Lower Haight, because you friends don't want to have anything to do with you anymore. [Haighteration]

  • The food blogs have been loving Thomas McNaughton's Central Kitchen. Here's an illustrated version of a meal at "the poor man's Saison." [GrubSF]

  • La Grotta, a new Italian place in the Mission Market, fails to delight at least two of the Mission's discerning palates: "...the vegetables tasted like vegetables." [Mission Mission]

  • Public official schadenfreude: DPW Director Mohammed Nuru got crapped on by a pigeon [Garchik]

  • Old Muni transfers say something about San Francisco history. [MuniDiaries]

  • Ferry service begins today between San Francisco, Alameda, Oakland and south city. [Chron]