A teen from Sonoma County jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge today during a school field trip, yet survived after falling nearly 250 feet.
Media outlets are reporting that at about 11 a.m., the Windsor High School student jumped from the eastern sidewalk, just south of the South Tower.
The 17-year-old swam to the shore, where he was assisted by a surfer nearby.
At a late January America's Cup press conference, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom said something a bit odd regarding the city's dramatically hammered-out deal to host the race: "We made a lot of promises. A lot of them have been reported. Candidly, a lot of them have not."
In fact, a full 16 pages of the compact had been crossed out and rewritten per then-Mayor Newsom between the Board of Supervisors signing off on the deal in mid-December and the deal's official acceptance on the final day of the year. Altering large sections of what is, in essence, a multi-million dollar real estate deal can have some financial consequences. Now we have an idea what they are.
An audit of the changes to the America's Cup deal by budget analyst Harvey Rose was released early this evening. While he hesitates to attach a dollar figure to the consequences of the altered deal, Rose notes "the cost could be very significant." Under certain circumstances, it appears the city could be out hundreds of thousands if not several million dollars a year -- over the course of a 66-year agreement.
Just when you thought cat people couldn't appear any more eccentric. Purina is holding a national contest for cat lovers alike to become the one person who will serve as the pet food brand's roving cat guru.
Purina is on the hunt for the first ever Cat Chow correspondent. The winner gets $50,000 and a one-year contract to travel the nation and learn more about the the capricious creatures and then report back to the company.
We has to ask, how much more is there to know about cats?
The tryouts will be held in five cities, and Purina is coming to the San Francisco Bay Area on March 19. And bring your cat so they see how well you two get along.
Public Defender Jeff Adachi continued his offensive against the police practices surrounding searches of residential hotels Thursday. In a letter to the district attorney and the police, the head defense attorney requested that police no longer be allowed to request the master keys from hotel managers.
This comes as Adachi orchestrates what he's dubbed the "Police, Lies, and Videotape" scandal to its ultimate effect, which all started when he released surveillance footage to the press last week that showed undercover officers helping themselves into rooms at the Henry Hotel, a flophouse on the part of the Sixth Street you best not dawdle.
So far, the resulting media frenzy has yielded great rewards for Adachi's clients. The district attorney dismissed 57 cases that involved the besmirched police officers, now under investigation by the DA and FBI.
Safeway Inc. has sued San Francisco over a law banning tobacco sales in stores containing pharmacies, claiming that the law gives an unfair advantage to markets that don't sell prescription drugs.
The lawsuit calls the tobacco ban "arbitrary and capricious," and "a denial of Safeway's due process rights under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."
A spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, however, said the suit has no merit.
"We think the lawsuit is frivolous, and we believe the court will dismiss the case," said Jack Song, Herrera's spokesman.
We wrote earlier today about the headline-grabbing Chamber of Commerce poll that indicates San Francisco voters can't figure out how ranked-choice voting works.
It's an interesting survey. Somehow, the 500 San Franciscans queried understood enough about payroll taxes that they overwhelmingly support one in mid-Market. And they know what "earned revenues" means well enough to approve of the Recreation and Park Department chasing more of it. But the majority of the respondents don't know if their vote "is counted" in a ranked-choice election.
If you were searching for a way to phrase the ranked-choice voting question in order to maximize ambiguity and confuse people, you couldn't do it better. Here's how the pollsters put it, verbatim:
Four magicians have set out to walk nearly 3,000 miles across the United States -- from San Francisco to New York City.
And their reasoning is not much different from Forrest Gump's: Because they felt like it.
SF Weekly spoke to the crew via phone on Thursday as they walked down El Camino Real through San Mateo, carrying 50-pound packs and pushing a shopping cart; they are on their way to Yosemite.
"Nobody believed we were serious," said 28-year-old Edwin Bond. "But as soon as we started people offered to help or contribute in any way they could."
So we ask what kind of people would want to make that trek and why?
Well, the Hawaii natives tell us they were all street performers -- magicians, jugglers, and balloon artists, whose careers came to an end when the government in Waikiki bulldozed the streets where they performed.
The crew -- which includes Bond, Michael Nelsen, Bulla Lepen, and Arthur Stout -- got together and decided to take their magic on the road. And since none of them had seen all of the United States, they came up with this ambitious goal to walk across the nation to showcase their street performance, and document it along the way. Once they get to New York, they plan to turn it into a television series.
UPDATE: Read what JFK University officials told Addison in our latest story.
A college professor was stripped of her teaching job after university officials found out she had a yen for performing burlesque shows.
Sheila M. Addison, an Alameda County resident, received a termination letter from John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill last year for one offense: Performing in San Francisco's Hubba Hubba Revue, which provides political and social commentary on gender, sexuality, and body image stereotypes.
She has filed a claim against the university, saying that her termination was illegal and the result of gender discrimination.
A road rage incident quickly became just rage when a speeding driver beat a woman and her boyfriend walking through the Excelsior neighborhood earlier this week.
At about 6:30 a.m., the couple was walking across the street at Persia Avenue and Madrid Street when a driver speeding in a green car swerved passed them. The woman looked at the driver and yelled out "whoa."
The driver then made a U-turn, stopped the car, got out, and started beating the woman, according to police reports.
The passenger of the car also got out and jumped in on the attack, punching the woman. The victim's boyfriend tried to help her, but the men punched him and broke his nose.
The one thing that makes perfect sense about ranked-choice voting is that nobody seems to understand it.
And a new poll validated this notion recently. According to a Chamber of Commerce poll, more than half of those who responded indicated that they don't understand if or how their vote counts; in other words they don't get it.
"It's clear that San Francisco voters understand ranked-choice voting
about as well as they understand quantum physics," said Nathan Ballard, a
Democratic strategist tells the Chronicle.
And how will that play out as we head into the crowded mayoral race, with at least eight serious contenders?
Your least favorite candidate can be crowned mayor, that's how.
