You wouldn't know it from its automated greeting, but the last of San Francisco's Borders Books is closing today.
Call the store, and you'll still hear there are career opportunities available.
But in reality, it is a sad day for anyone who worries about the future of bookstores, or who passed the hours browsing, reading, and drinking Seattle's Best Coffee in one of Borders' 642 stories. Let's face it -- there probably wasn't a whole lot of buying going on.
An employee at the location in the Stonestown Galleria Shopping Center on Winston Drive told us that today is it for the store -- books are still available from every genre for $1 or less.
Bay Area commuters, fresh off yet another BART protest and downtown San Francisco station shutdown last night, might be interested to see some of the faces behind the shadowy hacking group that has helped organize repeated demonstrations against the transit agency.
The political news site Talking Points Memo has learned the identities of 14 of the "hacktivists" affiliated with the group Anonymous. Through a federal Freedom of Information Act request, TPM obtained mugshots of the alleged hackers and posted them on its website.
However, it now appears that TPM's website is experiencing technical difficulties. (We can't open the site at all.) It's still unclear if this is retaliation by Anonymous for the article. Gawker has also published a collection of the mugshots here.
Beyond that, theories vary, and the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance is showing films that explore the gamut during its seventh annual 9/11 Truth Film Festival happening this weekend.
"There are some people who are strongly opposed to what we're doing and some people who are deeply appreciative," says Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance cofounder Carol Brouillet.
Supervisor Scott Wiener's proposal to sanitize public nudity
has only given San Francisco's exhibitionists more reason to strip down and go au naturel.
A group of nudists are planning to take off their clothes at noon on Saturday, Sept. 24 on the Castro Commons and hang out -- literally -- for a few hours for a Nude-In. The goal is twofold: First, the bare-skinned men want to try to "normalize public nudity" and moreover, they want to protest Wiener's proposal which would force naked people to cover up a little more when they are in public.
According to the nudists:
How long can we hang out before the COPS show up? What will you say ifsomeone challenges your right to be NAKED? Make a statement for body
freedom and acceptance, come get buck naked in public with us! Remember your camera! Forget your inhibitions!
There's more intrigue surrounding the debate over who won the latest battle in the three-year war between San Francisco's Church of Scientology and Anonymous - the Internet-born movement of masked protesters outside the Columbus Street church who warn people it's a money-hungry cult.
Anonymous has been toasting "ethicstrouble," a purported Scientologist who wrote on
a local Anonymous message board that the group's protests convinced
him or her that "something is really wrong" with the church, and that he or she now
wants to leave. Meanwhile, Jeff Quiros, the president of the San Francisco church, said in our story yesterday he believes Anonymous itself is behind the defector.
Wait, it gets better.
Yesterday we brought you the strange tale of Jimmy Sosa, a mental health counselor who, through a twist of fate, has been fielding calls meant for the San Francisco Bay Guardian for more than a decade.
Because his cellphone is just one digit off from the newspaper's main number, he's been treated to years of "some really crazy stories: People walking around naked,
trees on fire, bedbugs -- lots of bedbugs -- 'a dog bit my neighbor.'
Anything you can think of. It's gotten to the point where, if I don't
recognize the number, I don't answer it. But they leave voice messages.
And they're angry!"
Sosa enjoys the calls, for the most part. But a trio of calls this morning -- early -- were less pleasant.
A 18-year-old man is in critical condition after he was shot yesterday morning while driving through the Ingleside neighborhood.
Police say the victim and another man were driving along San Jose and Geneva avenues at about 11:17 a.m. yesterday when two men in another vehicle drove up next to them and one of them began shooting. The gunman shot the victim in the hip and the back before driving off, police said.
A 5-year-old boy was hit by a shuttle bus yesterday afternoon while he walked with his mother across the street.
According to San Francisco police, the mother was walking southbound on Third Street at about 3:39 p.m. with two children. She was with one child, while the 5-year-old boy was trailing behind them. The mother and the other child made it safely across the street, but a private shuttle headed east on Williams Street made a turn onto Third Street and hit the boy.
Yesterday evening commuters got screwed again when BART closed down the Powell Street station for two hours while protesters chanted and yelled their way into handcuffs. Police arrested dozens of demonstrators who allegedly interfered with BART's ability to run trains.
But outside the station, there was something even more distracting than chanting demonstrators -- the real freedom of speech issue was flapping around. Naked protesters took to the streets, holding small signs that read "don't shoot me."
Dear Anonymous:
We bow to your power and wisdom. You have the technical prowess to bring down the mighty. You are the true leaders of the world.
You have been running a campaign against our public transportation system, BART, for weeks now, asking for some of its leaders to be fired and its police to be publicly humiliated because a former member of its force shot a homeless guy with a knife.
Thank you! We hear your words about accountability, but we have learned more from your actions, like forcing the most crowded stations to close so nobody can go home. You have shown us that public transportation is a horrible idea, rife with homeless people with knives, as well as police, who are beneath contempt.
We have heard you loud and clear. From now on, we will drive everywhere. We used to worry about gridlock, but you have taught us that that is your goal.
