Occupiers aren't the only ones resisting the government these days. Now Twitter has decided to sit with protesters, figuratively speaking.
We told readers last month about the New York judge who ordered the San Francisco-based Twitter to turn over tweets from Malcom Harris, a 22-year-old writer and one of the 700 Occupy protesters arrested for disorderly conduct. The judge decided that all things tweeted are public and will live on in the Twitter universe.
However, Harris' attorney's argued that releasing his tweets from that day in October would be a clear violation of his privacy -- and Twitter obviously agrees. On Monday, the company filed a motion to block the judge's
order requiring Twitter turn over Harris' communication history under the handle @destructuremal.
San Franciscans are often an entitled bunch. And massive piles of rancid waste are often unpleasant. Put the two of them together and what do you have? An angry city government.
Entitled locals who feel free to leave tons of heaping debris and waste festering on public land have struck a nerve with the Department of Public Works -- the city body stuck cleaning up the mess. In the last week alone, DPW has been forced to take responsibility for three massive piles of crap in the vicinity of Bernal Heights Park -- one of which was actually on fire (the clandestine deposit of flaming crap is humorous when the said item is small enough to fit in a bag placed atop a front porch. A burning garbage heap is less entertaining).
A third crap pile was, in a move that oozes imminent karmic retribution, left atop a handicapped parking space.
All told, 6.3 tons of crap was removed in three trips; items included paint buckets, "green waste," construction materials, wood, nails, and other industrial items.
You know what happens when three piles of crap -- one aflame -- are removed from Bernal Heights? Public meetings are called.
Update 2:32 pm: Judge Garrett Wong granted Eliana Lopez's attorney's motion for continuance today. This means she will have more time to prepare her argument that the court should not release to the city the video of Lopez describing an alleged domestic assault by her husband, suspended-Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. Her opposition brief is due Thursday and the city's reply is due Monday.
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By this point in the Ross Mirkarimi saga, it almost feels as if we've already seen the infamous New Year's day video: Mirkarimi's wife Eliana Lopez showing the camera a bruise on her arm; tearfully explaining that the injury was the result of an argument with Mirkarimi about Lopez taking their son, Theo, to Venezuela; and then saying that "This is the second time this is happening ... we need help and I'm going to use this just in case he wants to take Theo away from me because he ... said he is very powerful and can do it."
Santa Clara County authorities might have a new break in the Sierra LaMar case. Police said they have located the red Jetta that was caught on surveillance video the morning the 15-year-old Morgan Hill teen went missing.
Sgt. Jose Cardoza told media outlets that they have the car in custody, but would not say where and when it was recovered. Police are also being tight-lipped about how this car is related to the LaMar case.
Authorities released a photo of an early 1990s red Jetta yesterday, asking for the public's help in finding the car resembling that one. Now that they have the car, police want to know more.
"We need information about this car," Cardoza told NBC news, "and we'd like to know who
was driving it before, during, and after Sierra went missing."
San Francisco police are investigating a fight that broke out inside a Japantown nightclub early this morning, injuring three and putting the club's owner on the spot for possible code violations.
Sgt. Daryl Fong tells SF Weekly that police were called to the club, located on the 1700 block of Post Street, just before 1 a.m. on reports of 10 people fighting. When police arrived, they talked to three victims who claimed they had been assaulted in the fight, possibly with beer bottles, but they would not give police any more details about what happened.
News publishers have always treated readers like commodities -- because that's what readers are. The real customers for publishers aren't readers, but advertisers. Readers are the product. It's not quite that simple, of course, and more enlightened publishers treat readers with respect and cover the news fearlessly (which actually makes the readers more valuable to advertisers).
But a quick glance through just about any regional newspaper reveals that most publishers, especially corporate ones, aren't particularly enlightened. Those papers are filled with inane drivel and overcareful, "balanced" stories because publishers and news executives believe that's what attracts readers -- or at least doesn't scare them away.
Web publishing was supposed to change all this, in part by empowering readers to respond to the news. The positive effects, though, have been limited, at best. Readers can respond to many news stories in comments sections, for example, but thoughtful responses tend to get buried by angry, illiterate screeds
A San Francisco man with "extensive history with police" was booked into Santa Cruz jail last night after police found him hiding bloody clothes shortly after a woman was stabbed to death in broad daylight.
Police arrested the 44-year-old man, who has not yet been identified, and charged him with brutally stabbing to death a 39-year-old woman just before noon on Monday. The suspect's last known address was in San Francisco, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Several neighbors saw a man attacking the woman with a knife about 11:50 a.m. They called 911, and when police arrived, they found the Live Oak woman between a parked SUV and a black four-door Nissan.
Back in January, when Jack in the Box was getting the third degree over its drunken patrons, the fast-food chain insisted that its fatty burgers weren't to blame for the brutality taking place at the Richmond District location.
Maybe that's true -- it's nothing in the ingredients. However, it might just be the grease. Here's what we can tell you after perusing the local police blotter: Given the option, San Francisco drunks would take a Sourdough Jack over a footlong cold cut combo any boozy night of the year.
As the RichmondSFblog points out, Subway sandwiches on Geary Boulevard is trying to get its permit to operate all night after its hours were curtailed during the Jack in the Box fiasco last November. Tonight, Subway will go before the city's Entertainment Commission to request a 24-hour permit again -- and, surprisingly, it seems the sandwich chain has the support of local police.
According to the Richmond Police station, Subway was rather tame when it was serving up sandwiches 24 hours a day before its hours were cut, and cops "did not have any problems at that location after hours," Officer Tobius Moore said in an e-mail.
That's because all the problem patrons were probably too busy downing burgers and beating up on each other over at Jack in the Box down the street.
"It ran from bruises, all the way to a puncture wound from a
screwdriver in her hand, to a tooth being knocked out," said San Mateo
County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told reporters.
