Blogs

Every Tuesday, SF Weekly's news blog, The Snitch, profiles one of the Bay's many cool blogs in a series we call BetterKnowanSFBlog! This week, San Francisco-based music company Fuzz launches its new blog-style publication.

By Tyler Callister

Fuzz, whose slogan is "music uprising," is one of those provocative companies that only emerges when a situation is really fucked up. Such is the case with the music industry. Statistically, CD sales are down 22 percent since 1999, and Rolling Stone says, "More than 5,000 record-company employees have been laid off since 2000." Anecdotally, we've been hearing for years about major labels' myopic business models, failure to embrace digital music, and reckless treatment of artists. As the Dallas Observer put it, the music industry has been, "bleeding like a hemophiliac with a razor fetish."

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Gridskipper's Dianne de Guzman engaging in some hard-nosed city journalism.

Every Tuesday morning, SF Weekly's news blog The Snitch profiles one of the Bay's many cool blogs in segment we call -- BetterKnowanSFBlog. This week, we talk to Dianne de Guzman from the blog Gridskipper, exploring the subtleties of making-out and gentrifying in San Francisco.

By Tyler Callister

One of my favorite posts by Gridskipper contributor Dianne de Guzman lists the "Best Make-Out Spots in San Francisco." The urban travel blog suggests Coit Tower, Twin Peaks, and several other places to play tonsil hockey. Sure, Gridskipper did do another post called the "Best Handjobs in San Francisco" which listed several of the top escort services, but why would I pay just to get to third base?

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Every Tuesday morning, SF Weekly's news blog The Snitch profiles one the Bay's many cool blogs or bloggers in a segment we call, BetterKnowanSFBlog. This week, we revisit San Francisco blog celebrity Matt Mullenweg.

By Tyler Callister

Matt Mullenweg, the computer code developer whom PC World listed as #16 on its 50 Most Important People on the Web, has only taken one computer science class in his entire life — and he hated it.

He told me that the rest of his tech knowledge he taught himself, using books and the Internet. He never finished college, but he managed to become the lead developer of WordPress -- one of the most influential blog publishing platforms in the world. If you've ever read a blog, there's a good chance you've seen WordPress in action. In January, the company behind WordPress, Automattic, sealed $29.5 million in funding, with The New York Times Co. among the investors.

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Every Tuesday morning, The Snitch profiles one of the Bay's many cool blogs in a segment we call BetterKnowanSFBlog! This week: quit your day job and become almost famous!

By Tyler Callister

Music blogger Nate Seltenrich used to intern at Zero Magazine where he got to interview big names like The Killers, Hot Hot Heat, Modest Mouse, and Social Distortion. But as a young aspiring music journalist, Seltenrich was frustrated by impersonal interviews with big artists who were already swamped by the media. "You get slammed into an interview slot for thirty minutes. And they're kind of withdrawn and don't have a lot invested in what you're trying to talk to them about," he says.

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Every Tuesday, SF Weekly's news blog The Snitch profiles one of the Bay's many cool blogs in a segment we call... BetterKnowanSFBlog! This week, it's really more of a website than a blog, but anyways, we've got the scoop on San Francisco's freshest art gallery!

(Photo courtesy of fecalface.com)

By Tyler Callister

San Francisco's top art website Fecal Face will open a real life art gallery in Hayes Valley on Saturday, featuring the artists Kill Pixie, Jay Howell, Jeremy Fish, Kelsey Brookes, Andrew Schoultz, Hilary Pecis, Tara Foley, and Maya Hayuk. "It's nice to see work online but having a physical space to show and support artists is going to be great," Fecal Face founder and editor John Trippe says. "You can appreciate the work much better when it's seen in person." (Click "more" to continue reading)

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Every Tuesday, SF Weekly's news blog The Snitch profiles one of the Bay's many cool blogs in segment we call BetterKnowanSFBlog. This week, we fuck you in the eye with photos.

By Tyler Callister

This is one of my favorite pictures on the photo blog What I'm Seeing:

"Every once in a while, when the inner-city pressure is getting to be a bit much, you see something like this and have to crack a smile," they write on the blog. It kind of makes you happy that Clo the Cow roams the streets of San Francisco. Then they drop a picture like this:

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Local music blogs ipickmynose and The Bay Bridged will host a show at Berkeley's Starry Plough on Saturday, featuring folk acts BeatBeat Whisper, Or, The Whale, and Emily Jane White. We caught up with ipickmynose's Adrian Bischoff to discuss his thoughts about the show and the Bay Area music scene at large.

By Tyler Callister

On Adrian Bischoff's flagship site, ipickmynose.com, he takes a poll, asking you whether or not you pick your nose. According to the results page, roughly 69% of those polled pick their nose and 31% do not.

Clearly, 31% of the population are liars.

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Every Tuesday morning we profile one of the Bay's many cool blogs in a segment we call -- BetterKnowanSFBlog. This week: real estate just got more real.

By Tyler Callister

Curbed SF is San Francisco's premier blog of structural phenomena. "Instead of being generalists, we are very focused on neighborhoods, on real estate, on the built environment, on architecture," Curbed SF editor Sarah Hromack said in a telephone interview from her home in the Upper Market Castro area. "We're interested in looking at San Francisco in its changing urban landscape."

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In case you haven't noticed, every Tuesday we profile one of the Bay's rockin' blogs in a segment we call BetterKnowanSFBlog. If you don't know what a blog is, you're obviously spending too much time on that antiquated machine you call a TV.

So these are some of the most popular articles in the BetterKnowanSFBlog series, in no particular order because we don't believe in hierarchies ... or something like that.

If, by the end of this tumble through the blogosphere, you feel inspired to join this here SF Weekly blog community, get your own SF Weekly screen name which you can use to leave comments on our articles, build up a reputation on SFWeekly.com, and get to know other commenters.

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Mother Jones, American labor activist and namesake of Mother Jones Magazine.

By Tyler Callister

There's nothing like an old woman to inspire a young journalist in his crusade for blogospheric glory. My inspiration is my grandma. For others, it's Madonna. And, for a select few, it's Mother Jones.

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San Francisco indie music blog and podcast The Bay Bridged will present a showcase of exclusively San Francisco bands at the SXSW Music Festival in March. We caught up with the guys from The Bay Bridged to discuss their excitement about the showcase, their blog and podcast, and the state of the SF music scene.

Story and photos by Tyler Callister

No self-respecting San Franciscan visits Texas, for fear of being hanged, shot, or forced to attend a hoedown. The one and only exception is the SXSW Music Conference and Festival in Austin. That's where hundreds of bands and music industry insiders converge for five days in one of the most important events in the industry, and that's where The Bay Bridged, in collaboration with Bay Area labels Three Ring Records and Tricycle Records, will host San Francisco bands-to-watch like Scissors For Lefty, Film School, Social Studies, Birds and Batteries, and Von Iva.

In an interview at their podcasting headquarters in the Mission District, The Bay Bridged editors Ben Van Houten and Christian Cunningham sipped on a couple beers and spoke passionately about their work in the thriving SF music scene.

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Every Tuesday morning we profile one of the Bay's many cool blogs in a segment we call -- BetterKnowanSFBlog. This week: thoughts from LiveJournal's Kimmy Nguyen and Krissy Teegerstrom.

Photo of LiveJournal's Krissy Teegerstrom courtesy of mattdork on Flickr.

By Tyler Callister

In 1999, LiveJournal helped pioneer both the blogging revolution and the social networking revolution. It predates blog services like WordPress and Moveable Type, and it predates social networking giants like MySpace and Facebook. Some LiveJournal users have been at it for close to a decade.

As we reported a few weeks ago...

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Every Tuesday morning we profile one of the bay's many cool blogs in a segment we call -- BetterKnowanSFBlog. This week: Your New Year's resolution is to quit your day job and start a band.

By Tyler Callister

Local music can be an amorphous thing. It’s not that hard to start a “band” (i.e., a kid with a guitar, a drum machine, and a MySpace account), a “record label” (i.e., a kid in his garage writing on burned CDs with a Sharpie) or a “venue” (i.e., a dive bar that keeps a hundred-dollar PA and karaoke mic in the back). But beyond the DIY stylings, there needs to be something that brings all the bands together — a sound, a fashion, a cause, or, perhaps, a kickass Web site.

Enter The Deli SF, one of …

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Every Tuesday morning, we profile one of the Bay's many cool blogs in a segment we call -- BetterKnowanSFBlog. This week: I want to ride my bicycle!

By Tyler Callister

Blogger Rob Anderson is an “antibike activist.” At least that’s how the Bay Guardian recently described him. ...

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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: Laughing Squid unites art and gadgetry.

By Tyler Callister

The San Francisco Bay Guardian dubbed Laughing Squid the “Best Pipeline to the Underground” in 1998. But Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale says that he’s since taken the word “underground” off the website. “’Underground’ is a really strange term now,” he says. “I mean, nothing’s underground unless it’s truly underground and that means that no one’s talking about it.”

Beale has a point...

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