SF News Day Around the Bay: Amazon Web Services Goes Kablooey Apps and websites had outages over an Amazon Web Services snafu, SF sheriffs will get overtime pay for guarding Walgreens stores, and yet another “Matrix Resurrections” trailer has dropped.
SF News Comet Leonard, ‘2021’s Best Comet,’ Buzzing Through the December Skies Also known as C/2021 A, the Comet Leonard will be visible all month, and early mornings are your best time to see it. But you’ll probably need binoculars.
SF News ‘Butt Divots’ Are Coming Back, as Muni Is Rolling Out New, Redesigned Train Seats Your “back door” will be more comfortable again on Muni trains, as SFMTA is rolling out a new fleet of seats, and two trains with the new seats are already in the wild.
SF Politics Anti-Vaxxers Bring Chaos to Healdsburg, Rallying Around Unvaccinated City Council Member A Healdsburg city council meeting turned into a mini-January 6 insurrection Monday, as anti-vaccine zealots stormed city hall and forced a council meeting onto Zoom.
Business & Tech Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Poll’ Stock Sale Proven a Sham, as He’s Actually Buying Up Shares Like Mad The latest ‘Elon con’ involves a Twitter stunt where his followers supposedly made the decision for him to sell his Tesla shares. But Musk is actually on a buying spree, buying shares for “well below 1% of Tesla's current share price.”
SF News Stanley Roberts Wrongly Identified As Owner of Restaurant That Refused to Serve Police, Gets Swarmed By Trolls Veteran journalist Stanley Roberts broke the story of a North Beach cafe refusing to seat on-duty police. The right-wing blogosphere wrongly reported Roberts actually owned the restaurant, and he’s been served heaping helpings of online harassment ever since.
Arts & Entertainment Dickens Christmas Fair Faces Backlash and Boycott Over Racism, Harassment Allegations More than 200 Dickens Fair cast members, and thousands of attendees from years past say that the annual holiday festival has been a bleak house of racist behavior toward performers of color.
SF News State AG Rob Bonta Announces Five Guilty Pleas in $8 Million Walgreens-CVS-Target Theft Ring Standing in front of a CVS in Burlingame, the attorney general announced guilty pleas in what is supposedly one of the largest theft-ring arrests in California history.
SF News SF Superior Court Drowning in Case Backlog, Public Defender Calls it ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ More than 200 people remain incarcerated with their trials months past the legal deadline here in San Francisco, and Sup. Ronen is on a warpath to speed up getting these cases heard.
Arts & Entertainment ‘Matrix Resurrections’ Will Have Its Red Carpet U.S. Premiere at the Castro on December 18 You cannot get tickets to the U.S. premiere of 'The Matrix Resurrections’ at the Castro, but you may be able to snap pictures of Keanu, Carrie-Anne, and NPH from some sort of “fan zone” outside the Castro Theatre.
SF News The King Tides are Here, Bringing 'Astronomical High Tides’ Through the Weekend You are advised to wear galoshes near the Embarcadero and coastal areas this weekend, as the King Tides are making an earlier-than-expected return.
Arts & Entertainment Rival ‘Sexy’ SantaCon Angers Traditional SantaCon with $20 Wristband Fee, Cheesecake Advertising What’s worse than SantaCon? A copycat Santacon that’s stealing the idea and charging money to participate, with an advertising blitz that’s fit for the naughty list.
SF Politics More School Board Drama Looming, as Lowell High Sticks to Lottery-Based Admissions Another Year The SFUSD superintendent says there’s not enough time to implement a court order to re-vote on admissions changes at Lowell. That’s likely to further infuriate the alumni groups that sued the district to win that court order.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Ritual Roasters Announces It’s Transitioning to a Worker-Owned Company Now a six-cafe mini-empire, Ritual Coffee Roasters will offer employees shares of stock and the chance to be worker-owners at the company.
Bay Area Sports Las Vegas Becoming More Attractive to Oakland A’s, and They’ve Secretly Bid on the Bally’s Tropicana Site It’s becoming clear that the Oakland A’s would flat-out prefer Las Vegas, as they’ve made a bid on a property along the Strip as the Howard Terminal stadium plan continues to languish.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Santa Rosa Family Wins on ‘The Great Christmas Light Fight’ A new “Matrix Resurrections” trailer just dropped, SFUSD says Lowell High is sticking with lottery admissions for now, and a Santa Rosa household won Monday night’s episode of “The Great Christmas Light Fight.”
SF News Vallejo Police Officers Association Claims Crisis Over ‘Unprecedented Rate’ of Officers Quitting The union for one of the Bay Area’s most scandal-plagued police forces says the sky is falling over officer attrition rates, conveniently ignoring that department’s own massive, self-inflicted reputational damage.
SF News Breed, Colfax Say No New Restrictions Because of Omicron Variant, While Heckler Tries to Steal the Show Mayor Breed and Dr. Grant Colfax urged San Franciscans to “get your booster,” but announced no new restrictions in response to the Omicron variant arriving here, as a heckler tried to shout them down.
SF News Judas in SF 'Jesus Christ Superstar' Arrested For Role in Capitol Insurrection The actor who played Judas in a recent local ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production also allegedly stormed the U.S. Capital on January 6, he’s since been charged by the feds and kicked off of the tour.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Berkeley Falcon Love Triangle Continues, Female Still Hasn’t Chosen Mate DA Boudin’s looting charges against the Union Square burglary suspects could backfire, the CDC will begin testing for the Omicron variant at SFO, and the female Berkeley falcon Annie is keeping both her suitors guessing on which she prefers.
SF News Elizabeth Holmes Details Rape, Assault Accusations Against Co-Defendant ‘Sunny’ Balwani It was expected that Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes would heap blame on her ex and business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. But the rape and sexual assualt accusations were stark, and actually explain her “deep voice” bit.
SF News City Awards $2 Million to Family of 67-Year-Old Woman Killed by Public Works Truck Rui Xia Zhen was hit and killed by a Public Works truck in March 2020. Nearly two years later, her family finally has a settlement from the city.
SF News Contra Costa Sheriff May Have 'Accidentally Released' Nordstrom Flash-Mob Theft Suspect The Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office is “investigating the circumstances” around the release of a Nordstrom ransacking suspect, but the suspect’s mother puts it more bluntly, saying "He was accidentally released from jail."
Business & Tech Twitter Now Says You Can’t Share Other People’s Images Without Their Consent, Confusion Abounds The new post-Jack Dorsey Twitter immediately freaked people out with a “more robust” privacy policy update, and they’re still posting threads to unspool exactly what this all means.
SF News Westfield Mall Gets a Cannabis Store — Without Any Cannabis The Westfield San Francisco Centre has just seen a marijuana dispensary of a sort open in the mall, but there is no marijuana there — just “non-medicated cannabis replicas and empty packaging.”