As if Valentine's Day couldn't be any worse. BART is reporting a 15-minute delay in the East Bay, thanks to something obstructing the tracks.
No word on what this something is, but it's causing trains to back up between Concord and Pleasant Hill on the Pittsburg/Bay Point Line.
In Major League Baseball's ongoing effort to make the entire ballpark experience as maddeningly slow and repetitious as Nomar Garciaparra in the batter's box, the league has announced mandatory metal detectors at the entrance gates of all stadiums by next year.
The Giants, ever the trend-setters, will install detectors this season.
For San Francisco fans, this may well conjure up dark memories of last season, when the team's response to the Boston bombings resulted in tens of thousands of fans milling about in Willie Mays Plaza -- which was, to a tee, the most counterproductive outcome that could have possibly occurred.
As SF Weekly wrote at the time: "In reaction to an attack directed at many thousands of people packed alarmingly tightly into the streets of Boston, AT&T Park security measures resulted in many thousands of people being packed alarmingly tightly into the streets of San Francisco."
Last year's security measures -- stricter bag checks and "wandings" -- resulted in glacial lines. As a result, Giants employees eased off on the wandings as first pitch approached. With metal detectors, however, that won't be an option.
If you are still moping around because it's Valentines Day and it sucks, get over it, because we're about to make your day Sans chocolates.
We came across this wonderful compliment scribbled on the sidewalk at Castro and 15th streets, and although we understand the endorsement wasn't meant for just us, we wasted no time taking ownership of the praise -- especially after the haircut we got last night.
Sheriffs have tried to regulate it, environmentalists loathe it, and police spend a few months every summer tromping around the woods and buzzing around it in helicopters trying to quash it. And yet it comes back, each and every year, sometimes bigger than ever.
What to do about California's outdoor marijuana industry? Ban it, outlaw it and remove it from the face of mountains in Mendocino and Humboldt counties, if you ever want to eat a California Chinook salmon ever again, according to one estimate.
A substantial, data-driven report published yesterday in Quartz connects outdoor cannabis cultivation to the ongoing drought, and posits that excessive water usage by unscrupulous outdoor growers could finally do what the logging industry and dams blocking rivers never could: eradicate the state's signature fishes.
A San Francisco fish business was cited after wildlife officers discovered it had thousands of pounds of shark fins stocked up on site.
On Jan. 29, the officers inspected Kwong Yip, Inc., a food warehouse located at 1220 Howard Street in San Francisco, and found "what appeared to be shark fins for sale" on the premises -- a clear violation of state law, according to Lt. Patrick Foy.
"It was literally more than a ton of shark fins -- an extraordinary amount, probably thousands of sharks," he tells us.
Here's something we can all agree on: It sucks to have your bike stolen. Unfortunately, it's hard to stop bike thieves, and it's also hard to get your stolen bike back.
So instead of just doing nothing, the SFPD is trying desperately to reunite stolen bikes with their rightful owners through a new bike registration program. With the help of SAFE (Safety Awareness For Everyone), the cops kicked off the program yesterday, helping cyclist log serial numbers into a local database -- just in case their bike is snatched.
Yesterday, a video made the rounds in the media showing a BART cop tasing a passenger several times while on a Millbrae-bound train last month. While passengers -- and some readers -- were appalled by the officer's use of force, Police Chief Kenton Rainey was not so alarmed.
In response to the video, Chief Rainey told reporters that, although the officer in question is fairly new to the force, he acted appropriately.
On Jan. 29, a passenger called BART police to report a drunk man harassing commuters aboard a train in San Bruno. When an officer arrived, he sternly asked the suspect, later identified as Robert Asberry, to get off the train.
When he refused, the cop Tased him.
A local condom company is using Valentine's Day to launch a new service that will, among other things, deliver rubbers to your bedroom -- or wherever it is you like to romp -- in 60 minutes or less.
The business is L Condoms, and as far as we can tell its mission is to come fast. Starting right now, for $5, you can order a fancy rubber in a pinch and one of the company's 50 "hip" bike messengers will deliver it to you in an hour.
We know what you are wondering: Why a hip bike messenger? Because condom-delivering drones are just too creepy.
