Eliana Lopez once again publicly denied having been abused by her husband, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, this time telling a Venezuelan radio station that she spoke to her neighbor, Ivory Madison, detailing only a "disagreement" with Mirkarimi "like all couples have."
Moreover, Lopez questioned Madison's motives for calling the cops four days after they had talked about the argument. Mirkarimi, who was sworn in as the sheriff on Jan. 8, was arrested on Friday on three misdemeanor charges, including battery, child endangerment, and attempting to dissuade a witness.
"We want to find out what her motives are," Lopez, a Venezuelan soap opera star, said in Spanish on the Caracas-based Noticias24. "That's why the lawyers and
investigators are trying to find out who's behind her ... who
talked to her in those four days that made her call the police four days
after?"
Lopez argued that Mirkarimi is the real victim here -- the victim of "dirty politics." She said moneyed political forces are against progressives trying to root out racial inequalities in the criminal justice system -- one of her husband's campaign issues. She said his opponents can't stand the fact that Mirkarimi -- the son of an immigrant who is also married to a Venezuelan -- won the sheriff's seat.
Raymond Foakes, a former Hells Angel, was sentenced yesterday to 70 months in state prison for his role in a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme.
U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup also ordered Foakes, 48, to pay $1,085,000 in restitution. On Oct. 25, 2011, Foakes, the former president of the Sonoma Chapter of the Hells Angels, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.
In a plea agreement, he confessed that from 2006 until early 2007, he was involved in a scheme to fraudulently get mortgage loans for property located all over Northern California.
As if we needed any more reason to doubt the future of humanity, here's yet another horrifying tale. Yvette Acevedo's 12-year-old Yorkie, Toto, was stolen out of her backyard in Hayward early last year. After canvassing the neighborhood, posting "missing" signs, and reporting Toto's disappearance to multiple area dog shelters, Acevedo assumed her dear Toto was a goner.
Well, she was only half right. On November 28, a crate appeared on her front step. Inside was a miserable little creature with missing teeth, a missing ear, one eye missing, and the other eye protruding. Acevedo opened the crate and the poor animal slumped onto the ground, covered in puss and smelling of sewer.
It was Toto - almost dead.
Owners of the popular Gold Dust Lounge are not giving up hope to keep the iconoclastic watering hole open in Union Square. They are asking the community to stop by the dive bar on Powell Street tomorrow to hear their ideas for how to preserve the landmark bar.
And if that's not good enough reason to be there, they are also rolling back alcohol prices to 1933 -- 25 cents per cocktail.
"We have some ideas, we can work this out," said Lee Houskeeper, spokesman for the bar. "We will pay more money."
But money isn't talking in this case. John Handlery, landlord of the building, told SF Weekly that he's already got a new tenant in mind -- and no, it's not The Limited. He said he is waiting for all the paperwork to be signed before he announces who will move into the space, which was built in 1908.
When asked if there was any room to negotiate with the Gold Dust Lounge, Handlery said bluntly: "Probably not."
Power may be the ultimate aphrodisiac, but success is a hell of a salesman. So with the 49ers coming off of one of the most thrilling wins in franchise history and poised for an epic showdown with the New York Giants in Sunday's conference championship, now's the time to start hawking Niners tickets -- or any Niners-related paraphernalia -- for top, top dollar.
Those hoping to attend Sunday's contest without tickets in hand are learning a grim lesson on the meaning of the term "leverage." At this time, internet jackals can be disarmingly candid about the markup they'll be adding to your desired goods. Take this glib Craigslist profiteer. He desires $6,000 for four tickets that he overtly advertises as having a face value of $299 per. "Am selling at premium to cover the costs of the season. ... If you're looking for a discount, these seats aren't for you," he writes. "Ideally sell to Niner fans who will get on [Giants QB Eli] Manning," he notes.
Yes, that would be ideal!
The highest price for a Craigslist ticket as of Wednesday appears to be $5,000 apiece. That said, others are taking advantage of the team's success to hawk $8,000-a-pop season ticket rights (just the rights). That's the exact price, incidentally, of Jose Cruz's custom 49ers van.
49ers President and CEO Jed York finally picked a winner of his Twitter contest, where he asked fans to give him one good reason he should dole out four tickets and pregame field passes to this Sunday's game against the New York Giants.
And the lucky winner is ... Vince Cava, who tweets to York that he managed to watch Saturday's match while also watching his wife give birth. What a real champ!
Here's what Cava said: "@JedYork my first child was born during Sat's game, the dr let us watch the game during labor. It'd be awesome to go see the NFC champs."
Congrats to Cava -- on his double fortune.
If you're reading this, chances are that you regularly consume media online. And if you regularly consume media online, you're almost certainly seeing and reading more today than you know what to do with about the federal Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).
SOPA and PIPA are the respective House and Senate versions of legislation designed to police websites, many of them based abroad, that sell stolen media content -- movies, music, and more -- to U.S. consumers. Silicon Valley's tech giants, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, are fighting ferociously to stop the bills from going through. Most conventional media companies, particularly in Hollywood, support the bills.
In an ad you've probably seen pop up in your Facebook feed, Google says the bills would "censor the Internet." Wikipedia has gone dark for the day to protest the legislation. Searches on the widely used Internet encyclopedia redirect to a shadowy page that ominously declares, "Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge."
Critics of SOPA and PIPA have good points. But a routine round of fact-checking shows that the depiction of the bills by the tech industry is misleading.
GOP presidential hopeful has done some crazy shit in his past, as we've noted here before, but his campaign claims he never released this offensive YouTube video about ex-Utah Gov. Jon Hunstman, showing him dressed as the Communist leader Mao Zedong.
Paul's campaign filed a lawsuit in San Francisco last week, claiming the "malicious" video, which was posted on YouTube by "NHLiberty4Paul," is a case of "dirty politics."
According to the claim, the video questions Huntsman's allegiance to the
United States, referring to the former Republican presidential candidate as "China Jon."
Late-night burgers might make you fat, but they don't turn you into a sociopath.
While the Richmond District Jack in the Box fights to keep serving hammered and hungry patrons at all hours of the night, residents are pushing to make sure the fast-food chain closes its doors after 2 a.m.
Supervisor Eric Mar -- the city's notorious fast-food foe -- is hosting a community hearing in the Richmond District on Friday so that residents and Jack in the Box reps can duke it out about whether the 11th Avenue and Geary Boulevard restaurant should return to operating 24 hours.
As if the story about Trent Arsenault -- the Bay Area's unstoppable Sperminator -- couldn't get more bizarre. To gasps, laughter, and applause from the studio audience on Anderson Cooper's talk show, Arsenault, who has donated his seed for 14 children through his website TrentDonor, revealed that he is really a virgin.
"I'll probably be the 40-year-old virgin, except I'll have 15-plus kids," he told Cooper.
So the only thing Arsenault is making love to is a petri dish.
This bit comes as a surprise not only because Arsenault is 36 years old, but because of his recorded sexual activity -- featuring himself ejaculating in several NSFW online videos, which he claims are not porn, but documenting being a "donorsexual," the term he's coined for someone who expresses their sexuality through sperm donation.
SF Weekly called him to get a few more details on his sex life, or lack thereof. Arsenault said that the videos are how he expresses his sexuality. "So much of my sexuality is suppressed as a donorsexual since I'm not having intercourse, so those videos are how I've coped with my
sex drive."
