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.
This avant-garde band, founded in Louisiana but bred in San Francisco thanks to a van that broke down in the Bay Area in 1966, has been infamously anonymous for at least four decades.
PostedByLauren Smiley
on Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 5:17 PM
What charges are you facing? Whaddya got?
The attorney for one of the three alleged Bay Riders motorcycle gang members charged in a December stabbing says his client is not a Riders member, that the Riders are not a gang, and denies any gang element to the alleged stabbing. The three defendants are due for a hearing in Superior Court Friday morning, during which the prosecution will be motioning to add attempted murder charges against one of the three -- all of who are facing potentially enhanced criminal penalties because of the alleged gang connection.
"It's ludicrous the fact that they're making it a gang allegation,"
said San Francisco attorney Joe Sullivan. "It's two groups of guys yelling at each other. The
fight was not occasioned by colors ... [The prosecution is] just
going to be crushed if they go forward on a gang theory."
Sullivan says his client, Heinrich Dorsch, is innocent of the assault charge as well. In the wee hours of Dec. 18 when Dorsch was arrested, the lawyer says the 23-year-old had one arm in a cast after being hit on his motorcycle by a drunk driver some months ago in San Francisco. The other arm was "un-usable" because of skin grafts. Dorsch also had a plate in his head from suffering brain injury after the accident, added the lawyer.
"Passage would make it clear that San Franciscans want Hetch Hetchy Valley restored to its pre-dam splendor, said Mike Marshall, the group's executive director. "If we get it on the ballot, it will be a bit of a game-changer," he said.
The story ruffled some feathers, to be sure, garnering a lot of comments on the Web site and a response from Tim Redmond, editor of the Guardian, which was (to say the least) critical. And we responded to that response. It's a response-off, yo! And everyone knows there's only one way to settle a response-off: On a good old-fashioned civilized radio show.
Eskenazi and Wachs will debate Redmond tomorrow on KQED's forum show at 9 a.m. So pop the popcorn and make like it's the '20s and tune your dials to 88.5 FM if you'd like to hear some lively debate. Or if you're just curious to know what Eskenazi and Wachs sound like.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 12:10 PM
Muni today released video -- from no fewer than seven different angles -- of the Jan. 5, early morning accident between the 19 Polk bus and a pickup truck.
The takeaway: Muni screwed up. But the driver of the white pickup truck screwed up worse. Way worse.
The camera angles pictured above don't show you much -- though one can discern that, since Muni drivers rarely opt to spontaneously steer their buses into hillside shrubberies, some manner of accident has taken place.
Yet video from "Camera One" of the bus' surveillance system seems to indicate that the Muni driver pulls a "Hollywood stop" and rolls through an intersection, while the driver of the white pickup truck blasts through the stop sign without even bothering to slow down.
The video file Muni sent us containing the footage recorded on Cameras Nos. one through five was so massive, we were physically unable to upload it to this site. Sorry. But we do have these horrifying still photos to show you:
Tim Redmond thinks our debate on Forum tomorrow should be "fun." But I'm bored with his line of argument already. Because the truth is that we're reached a point in the "how much does San Francisco spend per capita?" debate where reasonable people can disagree. And at that point, debating the numbers instead of San Francisco's urgent governmental needs is letting the city get off easy.
We're not arguing about facts so much as what is appropriate to put in or out of the equation ... and there's no definitive answer to that question, nor will there be. It's still a decent subject for a debate, but it's a sidebar that's obscuring the larger discussion, the one we really want to have, about why this city is so horribly mismanaged (hint: Joe Eskenazi and I wrote 5,000 words about its entrenched culture of unaccountability). I know that for Joe and me, any discussion of "Worst-Run City" that doesn't center on unaccountability is missing the point.
So at the risk of making everyone roll their eyes and link to a sexy slide show or an article about pot, l'm going to go over the Guardian's arguments while acting on the assumption that they are making a good-faith effort to get at the real answer, and explain -- in a snark-free way -- why we disagree, hopefully clearing the way for a discussion about how we can actually make this city better.
The first point to realize is that the chart we included in the "Worst-Run City" article (adjusting Philadelphia's budget) was accurate: the raw numbers -- total city budget, population, and per-capita spending based on those numbers -- do show that San Francisco spends more money per person than other cities. The Guardian isn't contesting that. They can't.
As noted earlier today, the city Medical Examiner has identified San Francisco's first homicide victim of the year, a man shot dead in the wee hours Sunday in the Excelsior.
Jose Luis Hernandez-Gomez, was found by police suffering from a gunshot wound while sprawled in front of 500 Naples Street. While it was initially reported that the victim was in his 20s, it turns out Hernandez-Gomez is just 19.
At this time, no arrests have been made and the police are encouraging witnesses and tipsters to come forward.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 7:30 AM
San Francisco's model for city government, apparently
After SF Weekly last month ran a cover feature on the myriad shortcomings of San Francisco's city government, we received a number of supportive letters from city employees. Many of them were evocative and scintillating and retold instances of Kafkaesque situations we'd touched on in our article. But the one that stood out the most was a letter from "Jean," a thrice laid-off former secretary at a large city department. (We're obscuring Jean's identity because he or she is still working for the city, in a different department, and could well be laid off again by the time you read this).
Jean's story: After she'd been handed her pink slip, managers tasked her and other departing workers with going on a spending spree to exhaust the department's budget by the end of the fiscal year last June. Even with the city facing record deficits, Jean's department -- and, almost certainly, many others -- were compulsively spending rather than giving back a cent, amassing useless items at top dollar and asking folks cut loose in the name of fiscal shortfalls to undertake this buy-a-thon.
"I myself spent $18,000," said Jean, who figures he and his colleagues blew through some $50,000 in a matter of days purchasing needless and luxurious items on the city's dime. In one instance, Jean told a manager that he'd located a shredder that cost only $1,000 when the manager had highlighted one that cost twice that. Jean was dumbfounded when his manager upbraided him for not spending enough money, and wasting time by shopping for bargains. That this was public money he was spending mattered little to his bosses -- nor did the fact that even a $1,000 bargain of a shredder was useless.
"We had a shredder 50 feet from my desk. Twenty-five feet from that was a smaller shredder," recalls Jean. "And we had a service that would come and pick up our paper. So it just didn't make any sense."
The doctors aren't quite ready to tell us the man's name -- and have us tell you -- however. The identity of the city's first homicide victim of the year is still being kept confidential pending notification of his family.
Obviously, we'll follow up. In the meantime, the city's final homicide victim of 2009 remains "Jane Doe No. 22."
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 6:30 AM
Say what?
One of the most powerful advertisements of my childhood was a billboard picturing a vast, military cemetery with headstones as far as the eye could see. It was emblazoned with a single word: "Vote."
Well, "location, location, location" is more than just a real estate cliche. The word "vote" accompanying a graveyard imparts a distinct and lasting message. While the word "vote" scrawled on a Denver Boot in Mission Bay simply makes one wonder, "what the hell?"
Any ideas? If anyone can enlighten us on what the hell is going on here, please pen a comment. You'll be doing us a favor.
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.'"
