Here is a story involving a naked man and his trumpet -- and it didn't happen at band camp.
Two marching band members got Stanford University into a legal battle after a half-naked trumpeter got hurt when the band manager tackled him during his pantless performance.
According to a lawsuit filed in San Francisco, the Stanford University marching band has a loose tradition where members take turns playing solos, while other band members try to distract them.
In this case, trumpeter Samuel Franco had been drinking and was perhaps intoxicated when he jumped up on a picnic table and started his trumpet solo. In attempt to mess him up mid-performance, a band member pulled down his pants -- including his underwear.
But the determined musician kept blowing notes.
Is this Debbie Madden, Part Deux?
Public Defender Jeff Adachi sent a letter to District Attorney George Gascón today asking for a list of all the arrests, incidents, police reports, and just about everything else involving the eight officers tied to the controversial raid of Henry Hotel.
The request is an effort to identify other cases that might have been compromised by the involvement of the besmirched officers, who are now being investigated by both the District Attorney and the FBI.
The growing scandal -- which Adachi dubbed Police, Lies, and Videotape -- broke last week when the public defender presented the media with surveillance footage that he argued showed a number of officers searching rooms in the Henry Hotel without warrants. He accuses the officers of then falsifying police reports to justify the alleged illegal search.
Another video - all available on the public defender's YouTube channel - shows the plainclothes officers conducting a search at the Royan Hotel on Valencia Street on New Year's Eve.
In a year that has been marked by Asian ascendancy in city politics -- including the appointment of the city's first Chinese-American Mayor Ed Lee -- U.S. Census Bureau data released today highlights an interesting yet not so surprising fact: San Francisco is becoming more Asian.
The data, released for counties and cities throughout California, indicate that the city's Asian population grew by more than 30,000 between 2000 and 2010, even as numbers of blacks and Latinos dropped, The Bay Citizen reports.
Overall, the census bureau found that San Francisco's population grew slightly, to a total 805,235. (The raw data can be downloaded here, but won't be available in an easily accessible format until sometime in the next 24 hours.)
Any playwright or screenwriter searching for their next big idea should consider the bizarre case of the San Francisco State cheerleading coach who embezzled the team's money to go to Las Vegas. We're thinking Kirsten Dunst for the title role of coach Ashlee "Star" Haley.
But that is not the self-referential play that will be performed at San Francisco State next month. The dramatic material for this work is much more of a downer: budget cuts.
If you are checking back to see what Muni has in store for the evening commute, officials tell us not to fret -- the train ride home will run like butter.
"We running a normal schedule now and the afternoon commute should be a lot faster and a lot less crowded," said Paul Rose, spokesman for the MTA.
Muni officials say they have fixed the mechanical problem that slowed trains at the Embarcadeo station for almost two hours this morning. It affected trains across the city, causing up to 20 minute delays and leaving as many as 150 passengers waiting for a train at Church and Market Streets.
The mechanical trouble started at about 8:30 a.m. when a signal cable was severed, Rose said.
Talk about pimping justice: The California Supreme Court must agree upon a precise definition for the term "pimp" before it can resolve a case involving a man who tried to recruit an undercover cop to work as a prostitute.
Media reports say a lawyer representing Jomo Zambia argued Tuesday that state anti-pandering laws only apply to pimps who recruit innocent victims, as opposed to working prostitutes.
In order for the court to determine whether Zambia is correct, it would seem justices must also mint precise meanings for the rest of prostitution's vocabulary.
Yesterday SF Weekly told you about an incident where Supervisor Jane Kim's staff kicked reporters out of a City Hall meeting as residents gathered to vent about the homeless problem in the Tenderloin neighborhood.
It turns, the freshman supervisor's questionable move was perfectly legal, albeit bad PR.
The City Attorney tells us today that Kim did not violate any public meeting laws because her office never posted the event as open to the public. Instead, it was constituents who had sent around a flier, inviting the community, and members of the press to the "public meeting."
"Private meetings can be held with elected officials because it might deal with private constituent matters," said Jack Song, spokesman with the City Attorney's Office.
In federally funded housing programs, it's illegal for landlords to discriminate based on race, ethnicity -- or even against the guy who says his pit bull keeps him from having panic attacks.
But against homosexuals or the transgendered? No problem there.
That may soon change. While many had hoped President Barack Obama would issue an executive order forbidding discrimination due to sexual orientation, that hasn't happened. Instead, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has come up with a potential "regulation" against such bigotry (other "regulations" require units to, say, have heat or come equipped with a stove). Here's where you come in.
San Franciscan John Trasvina, HUD's assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, wants to hear your thoughts and experiences regarding housing discrimination. He's inviting one and all to a "roundtable discussion" Wednesday at City Hall room 408 from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Based on Muni's transit schedule, it will be a looong work week. After yesterday's mystery delays, San Francisco can expect another nightmarish commute on public transit today.
This morning, Muni announced on a loudspeaker that both inbound and outbound trains are running late at the Embarcadero, causing major delays and leaving more than 150 people standing at Church and Market Streets trying to catch a bus.
Police are truly baffled by a weekend incident where a the ashes of a woman's deceased husband were stolen out of the church as the family planned his memorial service.
The family was gathered at Christ Episcopal Church in Alameda on Saturday afternoon to plan a service for 74-year-old Marvin Kent Hockabout who had died in January. The family had brought his ashes in a wooden box inside a green backpack -- for safety.
At some point, his relatives went into the parish and left backpack containing the ashes at the altar. It was no more than 10 minutes when they came back and the backpack -- including their loved one -- was gone.
