When the ancient Polynesians invented surfing, they often used a paddle to help them navigate. Fast-forward a few millennia, and Stand-Up Paddleboarding, or SUP, finds itself trendy again. Part of its increasing popularity is that standing upright allows surfers to spot waves more easily and thus catch more of them, multiplying the fun factor. Paddling back to the wave becomes less of a strain as well. The ability to cruise along on flat inland water, surveying the sights, is another advantage. Finally, it’s a good core workout. If you’re sold on the idea, schedule an intro SUP lesson, free with board and paddle rental, and you may find yourself riding the waves like a Polynesian king.More
Many of us remember coming home from our elementary schools with freshly glazed pinchpots, cups, or whatever else our young imaginations could conjure up. Saturday mornings at the Randall Museum can bring that memory back, or create a new one for the youngsters. Ceramics make great gifts — especially on Mothers' and Fathers' Day. Hop on board for the Randall's once-weekly class, and for $6 and two weeks to have your work fired and glazed, you'll have all the materials you need.More
December is almost over - the New Year is coming up and everyone is busy drying off from the rain or holiday shopping. Let's take a look at what's happened this month.
For someone who lives in the downtown corridor — all right, the Tenderloin — the idea of going to Ocean Beach for pizza is rife with potential pratfalls: high Uber fares, lengthy Muni trips, ever-present fog, jet lag.
So you went out last Saturday night and wore those new dark-wash, skinny leg jeans that you just bought despite the fact that it's the end of the month and you should be saving that money for your rent check.
PostedBySteve Elliott
on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 3:33 PM
Is it game over for the state's narcotics officers?
California's budget crunch could cut almost a third of the agents from the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, according to Attorney General Jerry Brown.
Budget negotiators, facing the financial meltdown of the state treasury, have proposed lopping $20 million from the bureau, on top of $12 million in previous cuts. Brown called it a "terrible budgetary decision" that would lead to layoffs for nearly a third of the BNE's agents.
The agency, part of the California Department of Justice, fields plainclothes agents who work "under the radar" in the drug underworld. "BNE programs target major drug dealers, violent career criminals, clandestine drug manufacturers and violators of prescription drug laws," according to the agency's Web site.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 12:12 PM
SFSU
It stinks! It smells vile. But don't take our word for it...
Last week we reported that those of you who've ever been unable to to turn down an offer such as "Come smell this and tell me if it's rancid" or "Come see what tendon they're cutting up on the surgery channel!" are in for a real treat. San Francisco State's Indonesian corpse flower -- a plant that is not coincidentally named, by the way -- is in the midst of a pungent bloom.
Today is your last chance to drop by and get a whiff. Corpse flowers bloom erratically, often going years between malodorous exhibitions.
Do you ever get tired of doing the same thing every week? Me too.
So this week I decided to imagine how SF Gov InAction would look if it were written by five of this city's most ... um ... noteworthy ... pundits.
You say "parody," I say "homage." Either way: Enjoy.
Monday, June 2911 a.m. - Budget & Finance Committee (as written by TIM REDMOND, San Francisco Bay Guardian Managing Editor)
I was driving back from a trip to wine country last week and noticed that there were a lot fewer cars on the road than usual for this time of year. This is an important improvement: when other people drive, it hurts the environment.
I can understand why other people want to drive. I'm from upstate New York, where my family still lives. They shoot guns, they wave the flag, and they supported the Iraq war even after people in San Francisco, New York City, and Washington D.C. told them not to. We even passed a resolution: To this day, I'm not sure if they've read it.
PostedByAndy Wright
on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 10:10 AM
Two of our writers took home first place awards from two different competitions over the weekend. Our columnist Katy St. Clair, who pens Bouncer was awarded first place in the category of humor columns by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and reporter Ashley Harrell received a first place award in the category of Long Form News Story from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies for her story Snitch.
Check out St. Clair's insightful columns here and read Harrell's moving piece here.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 8:30 AM
SFACC
Fiona the mastiff's Animal Control intake photo
In our recent cover story, "Service With a Snarl," we concluded with a look at "Vicious and Dangerous Dog Court" and the case of Fiona -- a massive Italian Mastiff its owner was intent upon having declared a service animal despite the giant dog's history of biting and lunging at people.
In a decision police told SF Weekly was very close, Sergeant. Bill Herndon opted not to euthanize Fiona, but release her back to owner Heather Morris -- with the caveat that the dog, now officially declared "Vicious and Dangerous" must wear a muzzle at all times.
This went poorly. As noted in our story, Morris was twice cited for walking the dog without a muzzle -- and, on one occasion, fled the scene and left the dog with the Animal Control Officer, according to Officer John Denny of the San Francisco Police Department's Vicious and Dangerous Animal Unit. Last week, the SFPD issued a seizure order on Fiona after a woman complained the unmuzzled dog lunged at her and tried to bite. On Saturday, Animal Control officers impounded the dog.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 7:30 AM
'Made
it, Ma! Top of the world!' Going out in a ball of flames exchanging
gunfire with the cops: Very gangster. A federal lawsuit regarding a Web
ad: Not so much.
In a case that features two of the silliest-named litigants to ever spar in San Francisco's federal district court, Zynga is suing Playdom over videogames called, respectively, "Mafia Wars" and "Mobsters." And, yes, they made a federal case out of it.
San Francisco-based Zynga specializes in games on social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook -- as does the Mountain View company Playdom -- and, considering the subject of the rival companies' games, you could call this a turf war.
Zynga claims 2.5 million users play "Mafia Wars" daily -- so there are plenty of reasons to want to muscle in on Zynga's action. The company claims Playdom did so when a Zynga employee noticed, on June 11, an advertisement on Facebook that blared, in big letters, "Like Mafia Wars?" In smaller text below an image of a 1930s-era gangster was written: "Click here to play Mobsters. Its (sic) got henchmen, mini games, message boards and sophisticateds style."
Just over a week transpired between the discovery of this ad and a federal lawsuit -- which is awfully quick for two companies making money on gangster lore, don't you think? Would it have killed them to send someone a fish wrapped up game-controller cords? Couldn't a truce have been brokered after-hours in an Italian restaurant, complete with Nintendo Duck Hunt firearms fetched from toilets? This federal case -- it's just not very gangster. But, alas.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 6:30 AM
'It's good to be the king' -- and it's always good to have powerful folks in your corner pulling some strings
San Francisco's campaign finance rules are so beastly complex that professional treasurers with decades of experience have been known to drive sharpened pencils through their palms in fits of desperation. Yet eluding these Byzantine laws need not require the greatest level of legal or administrative sophistication. In fact, you can employ the same strategy the rich kid in your high school did to get out of trouble after he crashed his BMW into the main quad. Just have one of dad's influential friends send the principal a letter and -- voila! -- suddenly there are novel new ways to interpret rules meant to keep cars off of school lunch ladies.
That's not to say Supervisor Carmen Chu was doing any thing so cavalier as executing doughnuts on the lawn with her 325i. Instead, she was caught apparently violating campaign fund-raising rules that also tripped up her erstwhile colleagues Chris Daly and Gerardo Sandoval in years past. Yet while those progressive supes were audited, cited, and fined, Chu skated.
Unlike Daly and Sandoval, Chu had Jim Sutton -- the lawyer, adviser, and svengali for Mayor Gavin Newsom and all the moderates in town -- in her corner to write letters and make phone calls to the city's Ethics Commission. After Sutton got involved, the case was yanked out of the hands of the staffers who'd been handling it -- without their even knowing it -- and handled discreetly by Mabel Ng, the commission's deputy director. A staffer who brought up the Daly and Sandoval precedents was threatened with termination. And -- surprise, surprise -- Ng found a way to reach a conclusion along the lines of what Sutton, one of the city's most powerful movers and shakers, was pushing for.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 12:01 AM
Jim Herd
As noted before, this public restroom in the Panhandle cost as much as a 16,200-square-foot mansion in the midwest
Does this city have a taskforce on taskforces? It doesn't appear to -- but just you wait, now someone will bring it up. In any event, all excretory humor aside, we do have a restroom taskforce. Before you laugh, however, be informed that the restroom taskforce has the chance to piss away a serious amount of city money, if things go badly.
Last year, city voters approved $11.4 million dedicated to park and playground restroom upkeep as part of the $185 million Proposition A. Now our restroom taskforce is looking for your guidance on which terrible, terrible city restrooms should be fixed with that voter-provided loot, or which locales deserve a new restroom.
During seven meetings this year, the taskforce categorized the city's freestanding public restrooms into three categories: Abysmal, Wretched, and Not Even Johnny Knoxville Is Going To Go In There. Sorry, that's not true. The categories are simply "Priority One," Priority Two," and, predictably, "Priority Three," and you can draw your own conclusions from that. Here are the Priority One restroom replacements:
Sub Pop recording artists 'clipping.' brought their brand of noise-driven experimental hip hop to the closing night of 2016's San Francisco Electronic Music Fest this past Sunday. The packed Brava Theater hosted an initially seated crowd that ended the night jumping and dancing against the front of the stage. The trio performed a set focused on their recently released Sci-Fi Horror concept album, 'Splendor & Misery', then delved into their dancier and more aggressive back catalogue, and recent single 'Wriggle'.
Opening performances included local experimental electronic duo 'Tujurikkuja' and computer music artist 'Madalyn Merkey.'"
