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 a town that's been home to generations of wittily-dressed men, S.F. is rather impoverished as far as a one-stop thrift-shop for cool men's clothes.
The Ramos Fizz was invented a century ago in New Orleans, where one saloon, the Imperial Cabinet, employed 35 men to do nothing but shake up Ramoses during a particularly festive pre-Osterizer Mardi Gras.
In a letter dated today, Deputy City Attorney Alex Tse asserts that "documented acts of sidewalk vandalism" have been committed to advertise the new Mafia Wars game, in the form of fake $25,000 bills glued to sidewalks in San Francisco. The bills direct people to a Mafia Wars website.
"The City Attorney takes violations such as these very seriously, and intends to pursue every available cause of action aggressively against Zynga for these illegal marketing tactics," Tse writes.
PostedByPeter Jamison
on Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 4:35 PM
May I have this dance?
The San Francisco peninsula might be home to some of the world's most avid sexual recreation, but this year it will be bidding a fond adieu to one of its kinkiest confabs. The 31st annual Exotic Erotic Ball & Expo is moving from the Cow Palace to the East Bay, where it will be held at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond.
The report, covering the period between 2007 and 2009, seems to paint a picture of a department where fortunes in overtime pay are handed out sans sufficient oversight. The department keeps track of overtime using an antiquated paper-based system, it doesn't check to make sure officers actually show up for private event overtime bonanzas such as Bay to Breakers, and it's lax in actually collecting from private event organizers once police rack up huge overtime bills. An audit of Bay to Breakers revealed the department did not collect $72,591 for overtime worked at the 2009 raceuntil almost six months after the event.
PostedByPeter Jamison
on Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 3:15 PM
Yesterday we were all treated to Facebook's big announcement of its new location service, called Places. To read the breathless coverage on the tech blogs, you'd think this was the announcement of V-E Day. As it turns out, the new service is fairly straightforward. It will nevertheless bring Facebook into competition, sort of (see below), with such place-based social-networking sites as Foursquare.
Everyone loves the dog. Everyone hates his employer.
When candidates running for the Board of Supervisors were asked what they thought about Target's plans to open a pair of San Francisco outlets, their opinions were like discount footwear at the big box store: plentiful, hard to miss -- and uncomfortable.
The San Francisco-based court grounded pilots Gregory Hawn, Michael Prince, and Aric Aldrich this week, ruling they can't claim gender discrimination after being fired for their "sexualized banter, crude jokes, and the sharing of crude and/or pornographic emails and websites."
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 11:59 AM
Phil Ting knows assessin' and recordin'. But transportation? The environment? Ain't those mayoral subjects?
Perhaps it's a bit of a simplification, but the city's assessor-recorder has two jobs: assessing and recording. So it came as a bit of a surprise when assessor-recorder Phil Ting launched a handsome new website, "Reset San Francisco," which purports to gather readers' civil input on non-assessing/recording matters such as transportation, education, the environment, and public safety.
"Reset San Francisco is designed to accomplish something that no one else has done - engaging San Franciscans to find solutions to the city's challenges in a constructive way without the yelling, the finger pointing and the blaming," writes Ting in an entreaty to would-be users of his nascent website. "Making real change is going to take more than old-fashioned politics. It is going to take a new way of looking at problems."
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.'"
