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Alix Rosenthal, the co-founder of Citizens for Halloween, sent out a jubilant e-mail this afternoon, claiming "a credible source in city government" revealed that San Francisco will — after all the ranting and raving about urine and feces running wild — rent 120 outhouses for the Castro non-Halloween fest.

"It may not prevent all of the public urination, but it is certainly better than no toilets at all," she wrote. "We are thrilled...

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Here are your Halloween headlines for the biggest nonevent of 2007 in San Francisco. --David Downs

Tow Trucks Final Blow to Halloween in the Castro:

San Francisco is pulling out all the stops to prevent a party in the Castro tonight, including the unkindest cut of all -- unleashing an army of tow trucks on hapless parkers.

Death of Castro Halloween -- Funeral Procession:

Halloween Night
Wednesday, 10/31/07, 6PM
Come join us to mourn the Death of Castro Halloween with a funeral procession from
Beale & Market to Castro & Market on Halloween Night Wed, 10/31/07!

16th St. BART Closed:

In an effort to discourage the annual crowds and potential violence, the 16 Street BART station will close at 8 p.m. Wednesday, and Muni's Church, Castro, Forest Hill and West Portal stations will shut down at 8:30 p.m., according to Police Chief Heather Fong.

16th St. BART Closures Irrelevant!:

FREE RIDES DURING 16TH ST./MISSION STATION HALLOWEEN CLOSURE
Dear Passenger:
BART and MUNI are working together to provide free MUNI bus rides between the 16th St./Mission and 24th St./Mission stations following the 8 p.m. closure of the 16th St./Mission Station on Halloween, October 31, 2007. BART will also provide free paratransit rides for disabled and mobility impaired passengers between the two stations.
SHOW BART TICKET FOR FREE MUNI OR PARATRANSIT RIDES

City Puts Screws to Local Business:

"It's more of a threat now. They say go ahead, stay open, but if you walk outside and some of your customers are a little buzzed, ABC's going to be right there and so will the police," says Lucre Torres of Marcello's Pizza.

SF City Gestapo Needs to Stop Halloween 'Cleansing':

As the elected representatives of the 16th and Mission community, we
call on BART to reverse its decision and agree to keep the station open on
Halloween night.
Chris Daly, District 6 Supervisor
Tom Radulovich, District 9 BART Director

100,000 Could Descend on City:

What started as an impromptu street parade of costumes nearly 30 years ago now typically draws about 100,000 from the Bay Area and beyond. Critics of the city's decision shake their heads at a campaign designed to drive people away.

500,000 People Could Possibly Show Tonight:

Halloween on the Castro began as a spontaneous and unsanctioned party but was taken over by the city five years ago after police recorded five stabbings and a number of assaults in a 2002 crowd of 500,000 people.

From my vantage in the Mission, last night's magnitude-5.6 earthquake felt like a long, albeit gentle, tumble on the spin cycle. Several people I've spoken to didn't feel it at all, so it was surprising to see this headline from the AP: "San Francisco Rattled Bby Strongest Quake Since 1989." Well, geez, when you put it that way...

Of course, the closer to San Jose, the crazier the stories, since the temblor's epicenter was near Alum Rock in the Diablo foothills. Thankfully, there have been no reports of injuries, and damages seem to be confined to the odd broken water pipe and shattered wine bottle. The USGS reports 10 aftershocks, with the biggest topping out at magnitude 2.1.

The best quake anecdote yet? The Chronicle's quote from guitarist A.J. Flores, who was playing with his band in San Jose:

"Yeah, man, we thought we were really rocking out," Flores said, adding that the musicians quickly realized it was an earthquake and not their Metallica cover song that caused the ruckus.

If nothing else, it reminds all of us to think about getting our shit together for when the Big One actually does strike.

-- Brian Bernbaum

The number of mega-expensive cars being removed in 37 pieces from the state's roads has gone through the roof. We talk to a local speed demon to figure out why.

By Joe Eskenazi

It took the Germans to say in one word –- schadenfreude –- what Americans say in six: "Pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune." It took the Americans to mass-market schadenfreude in the guise of America's Funniest Home Videos.

But in a perfect melding of the American and European sensibilities of the word, more and more Californians now have the opportunity to drive past some chump who spent six figures on a European-crafted, street-legal race car that he's proceeded to smash to bits and laugh at his rich ass. I guess you could say, "Schadenfreude, dude."

The California Highway Patrol recently announced that, while the overall accident rate has dropped since 2002, there has been an 81 percent jump in accidents involving Bentleys, Ferraris, Aston Martins, and other ridiculously powerful cars.

My interest piqued, I called the San Francisco Bentley dealer...

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The Bewitching Hour has come — brother, can you spare an outhouse?

Will this year's Halloween in the Castro be the non-vent the city hopes for or the fetid, bloody riot neighborhood folks fear? To quote Brandt from The Big Lebowski, "Well, Dude, we just don't know."

In any event, your humble narrator, Joe Eskenazi, will be in the Castro tonight. So...

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The harvest season brought us a bumper crop of reader interest in boobs, Bonds, and bad costumes. Click on this link to begin a slideshow of your favorite stories as voted on by your clicks. -- David Downs

Readers sent The Warm Bosom of Booze to the top of our charts, so this election week we're back with more comics! Yay! Reading is stupid! Pictures are fun!
Check out: 'Into the Wild' Starring Sean Penn and Matt Gonzalez

And then check out: 'Mayor Gavin Newsom's 'Audaciousness' Program' starring the Newmeister himself and Matt Smith too.

P.S. We have the best jobs in the world; so we got that going for us, which is nice. -- David Downs

P.S.S: Pick up the dead-tree edition this week for the comics in all their full-page splendor. And eat it, humorless Guardian! You's our bitches this week. ... Hey, hey, let me guess: "Wahh, PG&E and bad! ... Corporations bad! ... Bush bad!" Yeah? We thought so.

At just past 8 this evening, we took another step closer to Pangea II:

Geologists now suspect that the movements of the Earth's continents are cyclical, and that every 500 to 700 million years they clump together. Unfolding over a period three times as long as it takes our solar system to orbit the centre of the galaxy, this is one of nature's grandest patterns. So what drives this cycle, and what will life be like next time the continents meet? ...

If we could visit this future Earth we would barely recognise it. The continents have crashed together to form a single gigantic supercontinent, surrounded by a global ocean. Much of the land is inhospitable desert, while the coast is battered by ferocious storms. The oceans are turbulent on the surface, stagnant at depth, and starved of oxygen and nutrients. Disease, war, or asteroid collisions have pushed humans and many of the species we know today to extinction and competition has seen off all but the hardiest of the rest.

Yay! Happy Tuesday! ... stupid humanity. -- David Downs

There must be something in the air lately, and it's not just billowing clouds of pot smoke. Fast on the heels of the burn out crowds attending the Wonders of Cannabis Festival in Golden Gate Park last weekend, the Governator is getting some interesting press this week for telling the UK edition of GQ magazine that marijuana is not a drug. But don't go blowing that bong hit too quick, because it's not exactly what you think.

The "joke" about pot came after an exchange in which Arnie contended that he'd never taken drugs, to which the magazine cited his well-known joint-smoking in the 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron." Hilarity ensued, and Schwarzenegger came back with the quip in question: "This is not a drug. It's a leaf ... My drug was pumping iron, trust me."

Arnie's press secretary cleared things up: "Of course the governor understands marijuana is a drug," reminding people of the "silly entertainment context," in which the comment was uttered. At any rate, the Governator's comment was enough to spur a Chronicle op-ed calling for marijuana legalization and an end to the drug war.

-- Brian Bernbaum

Every Tuesday morning, the SF Weekly news blog The Snitch profiles one of the bay's many cool blogs in a segment we call -- BetterKnowanSFBlog. This week: Gadgets gone wild.

By Tyler Callister
Photo courtesy of 37˚C on Flickr

In the middle of my phone interview with Brian Lam (the editor of Steve Jobs’ favorite blog Gizmodo and an all around blog guru who has appeared everywhere from Wired to The Daily Show) his fucking iPhone dropped the call. He called me back and said that happens a lot.

While Lam loves gadgets, he’s not afraid to bluntly point out their flaws. That’s probably why he got the job as editor of the second most popular gadget blog on the internet (right below Engadget and right above Boing Boing, as ranked by Technorati). After growing up in New Jersey and moving to San Francisco “for the weather,” Lam worked as an assistant editor for Wired magazine before finally becoming editor of Gizmodo a year and half ago. He now runs the blog from his home in the Twin Peaks neighborhood.

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Finally the world will know how a former child actor has devastated a public transportation agency — and my life.

By Joe Eskenazi

In a daring attempt at simultaneous truth-telling and onomatopoeia, an Examiner headline last week blared “BART Goal: Stop SCREEECH!”

For so many years, I bellowed just that message to the heavens — which gets you thrown out of BART board meetings, by the way. But now my countless letters, e-mails and instances of grabbing BART officials by the lapels and shaking them have finally wrested the Wachovia ads off the front of the Examiner.

In short, Dustin Diamond (who portrayed “Screech” in “Saved By the Bell”— and little else) has been responsible for a series of BART delays, breakdowns and, naturally, noise complaints.

I first noticed Diamond haunting a BART train in 1998...

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An Op-Ed Piece by Benjamin Wachs

In San Francisco, April 24 has been proclaimed “Armenian Genocide Day” every year for the past 7, and I never know what to get my girlfriend for it. A sweater? An orphan? Or just a card?

But today, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is on track to help give the local Armenian community a much bigger present … a unanimously passed resolution “Urging (house) Speaker Nancy Pelosi to continue to support and immediately schedule a vote on HR 106” – the now infamous bill which recognizes the genocide against the Armenians by Turkey in 1915.

Most of you probably couldn’t care less, but you generally support this bill because President Bush is against it. Which is a pretty good policy except for the way it’s … you know … blind hatred.

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Note that estimates involve the amounts of money theoretically recognized by the city’s ethics commission.

By Benjamin Wachs

August 1 (approx): Chicken John declares his candidacy. San Francisco thinks he isn’t serious. Estimated campaign net worth: $0

August 10: Chicken John officially files as a candidate. Board of Elections clerks think he can’t be serious. Estimated campaign net worth: $10,000.

August 26: After holding a major fundraiser, Chicken John’s campaign happily announces they’re thiiiis close to qualifying for public funds. San Francisco realizes he’s serious. Estimated campaign net worth: $23,000

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Presidentially speaking, Republicans and independents are up for grabs in the Bay Area, and that's where Libertarian-cum-GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul comes in. If it sounds weird, well, it is. But with his quippy one-liners against the war in Iraq and his non-interventionist foreign policy (not to mention pro-gun rights, anti-abortion stances), Paul disciples in the region are solidifying their ranks via Meetup.com, which clocks nearly 20 different Ron Paul groups in the area.

They're fanning out to scoop up stray votes from disaffected GOPers and other unaffiliated nutcases and rednecks (kidding!) The goal, however unlikely, is to capture some of California's 173 convention delegates in the Feb. 5th primary. A change in party rules has prompted this kind of grassroots campaigning to spawn ever larger organizing pools. The craziest thing, really, is that it might not be so crazy after all. With (historically) less than 50 percent voter turnout, and with a wide open field of lame ass GOP candidates, Paul just might stand a chance.

-- Brian Bernbaum

For example:

Question:
What should I do today?

Answer:
Go see Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore at Great American.

Question:
Who do I send my local music to for review and fame?

Answer:
david.downs [at ] villagevoicemedia.com
185 Berry St. Suite 3800
San Francisco, CA. 94107

Now you try.