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.
Ten minutes before the marching portion of March Against Muni was set to commence, a far larger, louder, and more spirited contingent of Muni operators strode onto the scene, and drowned out the novice protesters' wails. For those keeping score at home, the marching Muni drivers out-marched March Against Muni. And this was no mass movement; perhaps 200 drivers showed up compared to 50 to 100 March Against Muni folks. The lot of them would have fit in an articulated bus.
PostedByLauren Smiley
on Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:59 PM
Sorry, still poisonous...
You could be forgiven for thinking, somehow, American Spirit cigarettes won't coat your lungs with tar. C'mon, they're "organic!" Plus, there's a Native American chief with a tribal pipe on the cover; a corporate symbol 100 times more trustworthy than a phallic, smirking camel wearing sunglasses.
Yet California Attorney General Jerry Brown is here to burst your bubble. Or at least the haze of organic smoke that has clouded your judgment.
Brown announced today that he has secured an agreement from New Mexico-based Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, Inc. that it print on its advertisements for American Spirit Cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco and pouches that organic tobacco is no safer for smokers than any pesticide-laden tobacco. Thirty-two other state attorney generals and the attorney general of the District of Columbia have signed onto the agreement.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:25 PM
-30- for Panorama publisher...
Oscar Villalon, the longtime former Chronicle book editor who accepted a buyout and then went to work as McSweeney's publisher has abruptly exited that position, SF Weekly has learned.
It is unclear at whose behest Villalon left McSweeney's, just after shepherding the much-covered Panorama newspaper project into huge, heavy, glossy, reality. Villalon only began working for Dave Eggers' operation back in September of last year.
Messages for Villalon have not yet been returned. Our messages for McSweeney's haven't either -- but the chipper folks picking up the phone did inform us that "Oscar doesn't work here any more."
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 1:40 PM
Joe Eskenazi
Does the party ever stop?
If you're reading this, it indicates that you have made it through Monday morning and are now enjoying a majestic Monday afternoon. You are to be congratulated.
And however unpleasant your Monday morning was, odds are it paled in comparison to that experienced by the unfortunate souls above.
These brave individuals were queued up outside Municipal Transportation Authority headquarters, awaiting any number of unpleasant endeavors that involved handing over varying sums of money that now can no longer be applied toward clothing, food, heat, beer, stereo systems, or other life-enriching endeavors.
If you found your car booted over the weekend and needed to have it removed, this was your Monday morning. If you wanted to contest a citation and were preparing to do battle with a city so broke it will all but accept gold teeth, deposit bottles, and your first-born, this was your Monday morning. If you wanted to straighten out nettlesome permit issues -- yes, this was the place.
The line forlornly shuffled into One South Van Ness, with stragglers joining onto the back at roughly the same rate as the vanguard gained entry to the structure -- thus keeping the line at a constant length.
The faces change, but the system does not, it would seem.
PostedByPeter Jamison
on Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 12:56 PM
District Attorney Kamala Harris announced today that 10 members and associates of the notorious Bayview street gang known as Broke Niggas Thievin' have been indicted by a San Francisco criminal grand jury for dozens of felonies, including three murder charges.
The indictment came after three months of grand jury testimony from 77 witnesses, according to DA office spokesman Brian Buckelew. The defendants are scheduled to be arraigned at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning in Department 22 of San Francisco Superior Court.
The indictment includes charges for the 2009 murder of Delvon Fields, who was shot and killed in front of his three children, girlfriend, and mother; the 2008 murder of Gregory Chapman, a bus driver who was shot during a robbery; and the 2006 killing of Lloyd Randleston.
PostedByLois Beckett
on Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 12:45 PM
I am going to get offline right now and buy a magazine.
Imagine that you are the head of a American magazine publishing company. You publish Vogue, or Sports Illustrated, or National Geographic. Your ad revenue has plummeted. You have recently shuttered several magazines. The Web sites of your publications are clunky and underdeveloped (most of them use a similar dull template). You know that you need to do something drastic, something that will turn around your business and inspire a new generation of readers.
Yes -- you are not going to struggle alone. You are going to bring together the best minds in the business to create a $90 million print advertising campaign. You are going to advertise in your own magazines about how people should keep reading magazines!
PostedByMatt Smith
on Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 12:20 PM
Meet the new boss...
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors will vote on a contract that would send tens of millions of dollars in Central Subway project funds to a firm employing the former director of the Municipal Transportation Agency. If approved, the contract will push the total amount of funds sent to companies with ties to top-level ex-Muni brass to nearly $200 million.
In political science, cycling executives from top government posts to private companies doing business with their former agencies is known as "revolving door politics," and is viewed as a source of potential conflicts of interest. Among San Francisco's tight-knit political elite, it's apparently known as business development, and is considered the most expeditious way to get things done.
Tomorrow, the Board of Supervisors will consider awarding a Central
Subway contract worth $40 million for engineering and architectural
design of the system's stations, to Central Subway Design Group. That
firm is actually a joint venture including the company Parsons Brinckerhoff -- a civil engineering firm that features a staffer
with the title Principal Consultant/Local Business Executive by the
name of Stuart Sunshine.
Sunshine most recently made news as Gavin Newsom's $260,000-per-year
transportation czar, a position he assumed after serving as executive
PostedByPeter Jamison
on Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 9:40 AM
Sit. Lie Down. Hold still for a jolt of electricity. And listen up -- this is a week in S.F. government you don't want to miss.
City Hall is crackling with energy this week
This morning the Board of Supervisors' Public Safety Committee is taking a look at a ban on sitting or lying down on sidewalks. The measure, a favorite of SFPD Chief George Gascon, is aimed at curbing a supposed epidemic of harassment of passersby by vagrants in such areas of the city as Haight Street. (Is it really that hard to just say "no" to the dreadlocked 16-year-old offering to sell you shrooms?) Opponents of the legislation say it's an attack on the city's homeless population. It'll be interesting to see where Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, in whose district the Haight lies, comes down on this one.
Later today, at 2 p.m., the Land Use and Economic Development Committee will discuss legislation to encourage or require seismic retrofitting of wood buildings. (Timely, we'd say, given recent events to the south.) On Tuesday, the full board is scheduled for a vote on whether to put an initiative on the June ballot that would allow poor tenants to ask the city to bar their landlords from increasing their rent. This is bread-and-butter tenant activism from the board's progressive faction, and Mayor Gavin Newsom has predictably come out swinging against it.
Hearing a large group of people in Dolores Park break into a chorus of "WOOO-HOO!" is downright ubiquitous. But when the "WOOO-HOO!" emanates from folks resembling survivors of an industrial accident at the Skittles factory -- well, you don't see that every day.
Your humble narrator stumbled across this colorful lot over the weekend. But this is more than mere whimsical tomfoolery -- it's all for a good cause. This is a fund-raiser thrown by the Friends of El Shadai to raise money for the El Shadai foster family home in Bugembe, Uganda. The paint? That's a nod to the Holi festival, practiced in India, Pakistan, Nepal and elsewhere.
You knew there'd be incense. And you knew there'd be drums. And, somehow, this muddy, colorful event raised $2,200 for the foster home, according to event organizer Veronica Canton (that's her on the left above -- and this is what she looks like out of Technicolor).
We asked how, exactly, the getting doused in paint and mud was tied to the raising of funds -- but, at just that moment, a lad pointed our way and said "That one's clean." And that was our exit cue. In the meantime, you can lend a hand without getting dirty. Click on the link for many more photos of folks doing both.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 7:30 AM
Hey -- this is out of our hands! Except when it isn't.
The other day, your humble narrator stopped off at the Department of Public Health to retrieve his own birth certificate. What promised to be a lengthy, Kafkaesqe experience was instead a snap: You pay your $14, they hand you a piece of paper, and you're done -- surprise!
Reading the certificate, I came across another surprise. While my father's job and employer were both listed, there was no space to fill in such information for my mother. As far as the form was concerned, giving birth was job enough. Granted, it was 1976 -- but that kind of reactionary behavior hardly seems symptomatic of San Francisco.
It's not, agrees Karen MacKenzie -- but there's not much her predecessors could do about it. The chief deputy registrar for the city and county notes that birth certificates are state forms -- and cities have no input into the format. Amazingly, professions for mothers and fathers were both listed as late as 1974 -- but by '76, inexplicably, the mother's profession was dropped.
By 1977, professions were no longer listed at all, and by '78, Social Security Numbers were dropped as well. And yet, when it comes to altering state forms to do away with sexism -- it's been done here. Back in 2004, when Gavin Newsom made San Francisco the Las Vegas of gay weddings, recalls Kathy Hong, director of the county clerk's office, marriage licenses were simply re-done on a computer with input from the city attorney.
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.'"
