San Francisco News Blog

Tim. We saw that you got busted for pot, and obviously we find it appalling. Will this end your promising young career?Or will your sinewy, 261 strikeout-throwing arm have to atrophy in the dugout for some unspecified amount of time? Hard to say. But if you are out of a job, we'd like to be the first to extend you an offer for a backup career.

The utterly perfect photo for this article

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Please become our new SF Weekly pot critic!

Westword, our sister paper in Denver recently put out a call for the nation's first official pot critic, and the idea caught on so brilliantly that we were thinking of hiring one of our own. Although we're not even sure if you're literate, we feel you would be perfect for this job.

We'll even offer you this free legal advice: Just tell everyone you were only holding the pot for Michael Phelps. Works every time.

​Warren Hellman may have fancied himself opening up America's hearts to music with his bigger-than-ever, three-day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. He also helped famed San Francisco eccentric Frank Chu open city visitors' minds to opaque theories about an alleged intergalactic political conspiracy.

Is there a syndrome for thinking your dad committed famous murders?

​As if police didn't already have their hands full with loonies and conspiracy theorists calling in tips about who the Zodiac Killer is, they can now add a freakin' ex-cop to their list.

"Steve Hodel is not just anybody claiming his father is the Zodiac," announced a recent press release from Hodel's publicist. "He spent 24 years as a homicide detective with the L.A.P.D. with one of the highest 'solve rates' in the department."

If that's true, we humbly suggest that the LAPD check back over those cases and make sure Hodel didn't simply blame his father for all of them. He seems to enjoy doing that. 

Hodel claims that his surgeon and Chronicle reporter father, Dr. George Hodel, sliced the Black Dahlia in half in 1947 (he's written another book arguing as much), and in 1946 dismembered six-year-old Suzanne Degnan in Chicago. Oh yeah, Hodel also thinks his father was the Lipstick Killer.

Created by SF Weekly at ACME ChuMaker.

It's all the terrible truth

You, too, can live with a San Francisco icon. And possibly even date him. Frank Chu hopes for both.

I don't think we're exaggerating by calling Frank Chu -- omnipresent "12 Galaxies" protester -- the living San Francisco icon. He called the other day with a housemate dilemma: "She found a new date so she's moving out."

The implications of that statement are a bit hazy, but the upshot is that Chu is on the search for a housemate who's willing to pay $150 a month for a room in his house near Oakland's Chinatown. We told him he could probably charge more than $150 dollars, but he said the rent is mostly just to help him out with "some financial situations." Don't question this opportunity, folks, just go with it.

Truly, these are boom times for tall, lanky, light-skinned black men with sonorous voices, large ears, and the desire to be mistaken for someone else.

A fascinating recent story on Slate.com shed some light on the increasingly competitive world of Barack Obama impersonators -- who, unlike the president, are not above publicly showering the opposition with nasty, ad-hominem jabs. Give these guys red ties and stand them in front of the flag and, yes, there is a resemblance there to our president. But, for our money, there's no one who looks more like Obama than the man they call "Fauxbama," Gerardo Puisseaux -- the subject of a lengthy profile in our sister paper, the Miami New Times.

The Cuban-born construction worker was a handyman at a Spanish-language TV station when his uncanny resemblance to then-Sen. Obama got him an on-air gig (though he continued working as a handyman). If you're looking to throw a little work Puisseaux's way -- and according to that great New Times article, he could use it -- there are three drawbacks. Unlike the president, he has imperfect teeth, even more imperfect English-language skills -- and, worst of all, no one knows where he is.

​We've seen men on Trikkes. We've seen men in floral-print jumpsuits. But rarely does a man swivel through Mission Bay both on a trikke and in a floral-print jumpsuit. Even more rarely does that man wear a Darth Vader-esque helmet and allow an SF Weekly reporter to take his Trikke for a spin. Recently, the stars aligned to turn this dream scenario into a reality.

What the hell is a Trikke, you ask? Says all-knowing Wikipedia: a human-powered three-wheeled carving vehicle that utilizes conservations of angular momentum to allow a rider to propel forward. It's like a swervy, pervy, scooter, invented by Brazilians in 1988 and raced for the first time by Germans in 2004.

Our Trikkeman said he purchased his Trikke in Tampa, Florida, and that it has become his preferred form of transportation. After this reporter agreed not to hold Trikkeman responsible for any bodily injuries, he allowed that his Trikke be taken for what can only be described as a wiggle around the block. Let's just say the reporter didn't get very far.

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​If you happen to live in the areas bordered by Haight, Steiner, and Pierce Streets near Duboce Park and you walked outside today to find dead, injured, and/or bloodied trick-or-treaters swarming your 'hood (now coated in spider webbing and littered with jack-o-lanterns), don't panic, and for the love of God, don't call 911.

It's just the filming of a Halloween Trauma episode. Earlier today, our Online News Editor Joe Eskenazi made his way through the set, where it was impossible to tell the difference between real SFPD officers and cop actors. (Everybody was apparently working pretty hard, though, so our money's on actors).

Although nobody had been involved in any serious accidents yet, it was hard not to be concerned about what horrible fates might be in store for this adorable little Dracula boy and nearby shy puppy.

​More pics after the jump.

Heklina as Liza -- or is it the other way 'round?

​Even in San Francisco, jobs for drag queens outside of the regular bar show circuit are scarce. (In fact, the unshaven and tattooed guy bagging my hummus at Trader Joe's yesterday told me he moonlights as a performer in a dress and make-up.)

Well, here comes NBC to give the draggy job market a temporary boost. Word is that Trauma, the new TV series jump-starting the city's flaccid film industry, had a Treasure Island casting call this week for multiple drag queen parts.
 
In line for the audition was none other than Heklina, the founding queen of Trannyshack, the iconic weekly drag show that ended its 12-year run last year. Filing in alongside the actors trying out for housewife and kids roles, the queens auditioned for parts like drag queen "flapper," or drag queen "party girl."

Those who thought the use of "regular folks" listed by only first name and profession (Joe the plumber, Henry the racially profiled scholar, Hilda the Secretary of Labor) went out during the last presidential election are sorely disappointed. But now it's all being done in a good cause.

The city's "Great Recycling Moments" Web page touted by none other than Mayor Gavin Newsom (or his smarmy ghostwriter) goes on to list a number of, yes, regular folks by first name and quasi-profession. There's Norma the party host; Stan, the guy moving in with Tom -- which probably implies something in this town -- and Sirron the painter.

We're pleased Sirron is utilizing the city's free services to take away the hazardous chemicals he keeps stored in his apartment -- but, speaking of combustible fluids, we're a bit dazed at how much he resembles Vin Diesel. In fact, you could have told us this was action star Diesel prepping for a role, and we'd believe it (insofar as we'd believe Diesel preps for roles). Here's Sirron:

www.recyclingmoments.org/

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Legoland intended to honor the late King of Pop by putting his four-inch Lego likeness on display at its Miniland U.S.A. park in Carlsbad, California. But today officials announced the plan had been abandoned due to "unresolved legal issues."

"We were looking forward to installing a small tribute to Michael Jackson in Miniland," said the park's general manager Peter Ronchetti. "However, legal matters have come to light that prevent us from displaying the model in the park."

Calls to the Legoland press office have not yet been returned, and no information about the specifics of the legal issues has been released. 

The mini-MJ would have become one of several Lego celebrities inhabiting Legoland parks, including a mini-Obama, a mini-Elvis and mini-Aretha Franklin. The lego figurine was set to be stepping out of a mini-limo in front of a Miniland's Grauman's Chinese Theatre, surrounded by mini paparazzi and mini fans.

Photo: Legoland California 

sf49ers.com

Vernon Davis matches his yellows and reds while participating in a 49ers charitable event

San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis is such a spectacularly good-looking human being that there is absolutely nothing he can look bad doing. Be it fumbling, dropping passes, or even being thrown off the field of play by his coach for poor play and insubordination -- an act that spurred one of the most memorable crazed post-game rants in recent NFL history -- Davis still looks like he just showed up from his handsome lesson.

So we were entertained by a lasciviously written Q&A session with Davis in the fashion-centric Honey magazine; it's a good bet that the intended reader of this article has a wholly different connotation of the term "tight end" in relation to Davis than his position on the gridiron.

We'll give it to Davis, the man knows his fashion (and makes us consider our own fashion chops when we were his age, 25. Or now, yes. Or now.). But it makes your humble narrator's one brush with Davis all the more curious considering it took place at the downtown Old Navy -- a place as synonymous with high fashion as McDonald's is with high cuisine. 

Bobby Badfingers

During the current difficult times,  we have lost faith in many things. But we always thought that Bobby Badfingers -- the native San Franciscan who since the 1980s has turned quick finger-snapping into a world-famous musical novelty act -- would stay true to his art.

In 1987 Badfingers astonished the world by performing the Surfaris' "Wipe Out" on Late Night with David Letterman, busting out lightning-fast finger-snapping licks so catchy that the gig led to engagements worldwide. In 2000 he quit selling RVs to tour full-time. He was temporarily slowed down a year ago when San Francisco cops jailed him for a week, unfairly, according to a lawsuit he filed against the city. But he quickly bot back to business producing Web pilots for a finger-snapping focused children's television show.

Badfingers' latest gambit, however, has caused us to lose faith in the great one's artistic integrity. In what can only be described as a shameless publicity stunt, Badfingers just e-mailed us a new single, in which he reprises Tiny Tim's 1968 hit "Tiptoe Through The Tulips."

Bradley Woehl and his progeny on the go

Gary Fisher, the local mountain bike luminary whose name is plastered on hundreds of thousands of bicycles worldwide, has endowed a San Francisco chair in kid fun, reports local bike shop owner Bradley Woehl.

Well, it's not exactly a chair, as the accompanying photo demonstrates, but rather an enclosed bench seat at the front of a special Bakfiets brand Dutch-made bicycle. Fisher, whose enthusiasms have lately encompassed urban as well as wilderness cycling, used the $3,000 bike to tote his kids around, then gave it to Woehl for his daughters -- but only on the condition Woehl would eventually hand it down free to yet another family.

"My girls named the bike 'Gary' after two great characters -- Mr. Fisher and Spongebob's pet snail," says Woehl, proprietor of American Cyclery at Frederick and Stanyan Streets.

Interesting men are all too common lately

I'll admit it -- I listen to a lot of Energy 92.7. And over the past weeks and months, that's meant I've been repeatedly subjected to Dos Equis' "Interesting Man," commercials. You know, the one's about the old guy with the spray-on tan who doesn't always drink beer, but when he does, he prefers Dos Equis. The guy who is apparently responsible for the sun coming up an hour later on May 6 so as not to spoil his Cinco De Mayo party. The one who teaches dogs to bark in Spanish...

The "Interesting Man" campaign recently expanded to television, winning over plenty of viewers including Slate's Seth Stevenson, who recently gave it the kind of wideyed, toothless blow job the media normally reserved for Barack Obama. The tag line of Stevenson's story actually made me wince: "The quirky genius of the Dos Equis Ad Campaign."

Genius? Genius! Last I checked, genius required originality. Improbable one-liners describing an allegedly interesting man flooded pop culture in 2005, with "Chuck Norris Facts." Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird. He sweats Gatorade. His tears cure cancer...Too bad he's never cried. Etc., etc., etc. 

Joe Eskenazi

Jonathan Zambole and some of his creations

There's no way around it -- Jonathan Zambole's reputation is inflated.

That's not a knock on him; the kid is a balloon animal -- and mineral and vegetable -- prodigy. The 18-year-old Burlingame man is skinny as one of his balloons, and Conan O'Brien-pale, with close-cropped red hair. But you're not going to notice any of that. You'll notice the elaborate balloon monkey he carries by his side, and the Beach Blanket Babylon-worthy inflatable crown he's made for himself.

We're not the first newsmen to notice Zambole -- he does stick out -- but new wrinkle is that the young homeschooler is hoping his expertise can make him the BMOC: Balloon Man On Campus. He's been spotted of late near -- and within --  AT&T Park during home games, hawking his jaw-dropping balloon creations with hopes of filling the coffers of his college fund. 

I'm Spartacus!

So the Church of Scientology will be out in droves this weekend to protest the American Psychiatric Association's convention at Moscone Center this upcoming Saturday through Thursday. The Citizens Commission for Human Rights, the anti-psychiatry activist arm of Scientology, will have folks gathering from all over the West Coast to man the menacingly named "Psychiatry: Industry of Death" exhibit at the convention and to march down Market Street on Saturday.

A busload of Scientologists will be coming up from Los Angeles. In the past, celebrity Scientologists Kelly Preston and Kirstie Alley have shown up for the San Francisco protest (though we're wondering if the self-proclaimed "Fat Actress" can march much of anywhere these days).

Yet this year, this won't just be a battle between Scientologists and convention-going psychiatrists. We posted a couple weeks back that the Scientologists would be confronted by Anonymous, the masked crusaders against Scientology that sprung off the Internet over a year ago to protest outside Scientology "orgs" across the globe.

Could these "gently worn" jeans soon be yours?

Calm down, everyone. It's a double entendre.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, erstwhile movie star and wife of our gubernatorial candidate and erstwhile mayor, will be "walking the jean carpet" noon today at 525 Castro as a celebrity guest of a "jeans exchange" benefiting Goodwill. It's conceivable our first lady will bring a few pairs to further the cause -- hence our headline.

If it is not clearly denoted upon your calendar, today is "Levi's 501 Day" -- clever! 5/01! -- a company-sponsored denim drive that will last until the 10th. You needn't bring only Levi's -- jeans of all sorts narrowly beat out Kingston Trio records as Goodwill's top-selling item. (A good buddy from college used to pitch his favorites, Wranglers, with the line "Wranglers -- when you just don't give a damn." His old Friendster profile picture even showed him being arrested while wearing a pair).

Folks toting "gently worn" jeans to Levi's 525 Castro or Union Square stores will receive a discount coupon. Finally, in yet another beneficent act of charity to a group of wretched wastrels, Levi's notes that all media covering its big event today get a free lunch.
 

Mr. Higgins

When the lunchtime crowd filters into SoMa's Eddie Rickenbacker's, the establishment's de-facto maître d', Mr. Higgins, makes sure to walk around to every table and socialize. Then he falls asleep on the couch.

Snoozing during work hours is usually a firing offense, but Mr. Higgins' job is safe. Twenty or 30 people a day walk through the door just to enjoy the pleasure of his company and bar owner Henry Africa assures SF Weekly that Mr. Higgins' isn't going anywhere -- after all, he loves that cat.

The orange tomcat -- who weighs in at a floorboard-creaking 27 pounds -- didn't always have it so soft. Four years ago he was running wild through the fetid, water-logged streets of New Orleans, half-starved and half-alive -- with fleas and ticks accounting for around half of his body mass.

Airline workers captured around 200 cats who were scurrying around the Big Easy-- including Mr. Higgins -- and shipped them to a woman living in Nashville. And when Africa stumbled across the bedraggled orange cat's online profile, he phoned Tennessee and bought Mr. Higgins on the spot for $200. The woman told Africa that Mr. Higgins had a brother, and Africa bought him, too.

It's good to be the king -- it's better to be the emperor

Look, it's reasonable for folks to argue about whether Norton I, the Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, was indicative of San Franciscans' longstanding tolerance of eccentrics -- or an early indicator of our ability to turn a blind eye to the seriously mentally unwell.

But one thing we can't abide is demoting the man. He was not "king," damn it! He was the emperor! It says so right on his tombstone!

If the Chronicle made this kind of error when Norton still roamed the earth -- well, he'd probably rave about it on a street corner and fall asleep in a ditch. And that'd show 'em.

U.S. Navy

The U.S.S. San Francisco rides again

Just as cranks who warn us we're playing with our lives for living in the natural disaster Mecca that is California predicted, San Francisco yesterday sank beneath the waves of the Pacific and headed for the bottom of the ocean.

But that's okay. San Francisco is a submarine.

The U.S.S. San Francisco -- and we'll leave it to you to make your own jokes about the Navy's decision to name a submarine after the nation's most gay-friendly city -- steamed out of Bremerton, Wash. yesterday en route for its new home port of San Diego. The 30-year-old sub had been docked in the Pacific Northwest for a three-and-a-half year rehabilitation following a near catastrophic 2005 accident in which it ran, full speed, into an undersea mountain near its old home port of Guam. That collision killed one sailor, injured 97 others, and gravely damaged the sub.

U.S. Navy

The U.S.S. San Francisco, shortly following its 2005 collision

While the Navy would probably be pleased if the U.S.S. San Francisco didn't embody many of the characteristics of its namesake city, it does, fittingly enough, stand as a triumph of recycling. The San Francisco's destroyed nose section was replaced with the salvaged nose of the decommissioned U.S.S. Honolulu (Incidentally, the San Francisco is a "Los Angeles-Class sub" -- and it just had a nose job. So that fits, too).

Sadly, also in line with San Francisco's spend-happy ways, the cost of replacing the sub's nose was $134 million -- up from an estimated 79 million in 2006.

Finally, unlike its namesake city, the commander in charge of the sub spends much of his time, literally, in San Francisco.

Perhaps you have already caught wind of the SF Mexican Consulate's recent gaffe, in which they referred in a press release to speaker Kimberly Guilfoyle as the wife of Mayor Gavin Newsom. She hasn't been for some time. We all know that the mayor's current betrothed is Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the not-producer of  Milk and Fashion.

This poses the question: Who would you rather see speak? Guilfoyle is currently the anchor of Fox News Channel's crime show The Lineup. Siebel Newsom has a threesome scene in the recently released movie The Trouble with Love. Guilfoyle was once an Assistant District Attorney at the SF DA's Office. Siebel Newsom graduated with honors from Stanford and is capable of getting pregnant. Vote on this very important matter below.


And just for fun, because it's Friday and damn it, you deserve two polls -- Who's hotter? Our mayor or his southern counterpart in LA, Antonio Villaraigosa?

Photo Credit: Steve Rhodes

We'll bet you any amount of dollars or pesos that this woman won't be speaking at the Mexican Consulate tonight

A press release from San Francisco's Mexican Consulate plugging tonight's launch of "Women of Conscience," a book about Latina women in California, contained a lot of big names: United States Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. Chicana feminist Betita Martinez.

But the one Anglo name on the list was the worst type-o imaginable:

"The wife of Mayor Gavin Newsom, Ms. Kimberly Guilfoyle, will be attending the event and give words of recognition for the multicultural effort that represents the engagement of Victoria Alvarado, in her aim to increase the knowledge and appreciation for the Latino community in the United States." 

Hijole!  -- this event was supposed to build up women's self-esteem?
 
Yes, we know it's difficult to keep up with Newsom's revolving door of women over the years, but c'mon now, he and Guilfoyle divorced in 2006. The mayor and his current wife, Jennifer Siebel, seem to be doing the real settling-down deal. Siebel is even expecting the city's First Child now, too, just in time to plump up his family-friendly image in the race for governor.

Never thought you'd read the words 'Three Stooges' and 'Oscar' in the same sentence? You just did.

Erm, maybe not. But the word on the Web is that Sean "Best Actor" Penn will be playing Larry in a big screen homage to the Three Stooges.

Let's all let that sink in for a moment. Sean Penn -- who may be the greatest actor of his generation and just won Best Actor for the second time -- has been linked to a movie about The Three Fucking Stooges.

Oh, it gets better. Benicio Del Toro has been bandied about as a possible choice for Moe, while Jim Carrey could get the nod for Curley (too bad it's not the other way around; that way Carrey could just recycle his Lloyd Christmas haircut).

Jeez, how many Oscar-nominated actors do you need for folks to take a Three Stooges vehicle seriously? By the way, the Stooges themselves visited the Biltmore Theater on New Lots Avenue in Brooklyn my mother attended as a child. Her overriding memory -- the stooges were incredibly short (also, unlike any of the actors mentioned above, they were incredibly Jewish: Moe's real name was Moses Horwitz; Curley was his brother Jerome Horwitz; Larry was Louis Fienberg; Shemp was Samuel Horwitz; and Joe Besser was Joe Besser. You're telling me there's no room for David Paymer in this film? How about a little respect for the mischpoche, nu?).

By the way, it will be interesting to see if this film, like Penn's last, Milk, concludes with the protagonist being shot through the head. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.   

Daniel Kramer

T. Boone Pickens

As Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens hits San Francisco tonight in his ongoing tour promoting a curtailing of foreign oil imports and a bolstering of domestic clean energy (in which he is invested to the gills), a long, strange article about Pickens' long, strange trip hit the racks of our sister paper, the Minneapolis City Pages. 

Here are a few choice passages from Chris Vogel's story about Pickens, as unlikely a figure as ever to be embraced in green, progressive circles considering that he bankrolled the Swift Boat ad campaign against John Kerry (and that's just for starters):

The thrust of the Pickens Plan calls for building wind farms that will generate up to 22 percent of the nation's energy, the creation of a more efficient and expansive electrical grid, and using domestic natural gas instead of imported oil as a transportation fuel, focusing on fleet vehicles and 18-wheelers. In 10 years, says Pickens, the combination can reduce oil imports by a third.

At the moment, though, the much-heralded $10 billion wind farm in the Texas Panhandle is on hold until at least 2011 because Pickens can't get the financing together in the tightened credit market. Plus, Pickens's vision for natural gas, despite a recent bump in public support from lawmakers, still has at least as many opponents as allies and was all but left out of the $787 billion stimulus package President Barack Obama signed into law in mid-February.

Financially, 2008 has not been kind to Pickens. His Dallas-based energy hedge fund, BP Capital Management, has been criticized by many on Wall Street for maintaining a bullish view on the price of oil throughout the year. The financial-information company Bloomberg reported in February that the fund lost some 97 percent of its value during the last three months of 2008 and sold off its positions in all but nine of its previously held 26 energy companies. The fund was worth just $40 million, down from nearly $1.3 billion at the end of September. Even by Pickens's standards, that's a lot of green.

Critics say that the entire Pickens Plan is nothing more than a public-relations campaign driven by Pickens's ego, and warn not to mistake the veteran oilman for a tree-hugger. They say the fortune this neo-Greenie stands to make if he can get his wind farms and natural-gas interests up and running could earn him the kind of money traditionally seen only when an oil well explodes in a geyser of black gold. Pickens dismisses this by saying that at 80, he's got enough money and just wants to leave a positive, lasting energy legacy for America. Unlike in the past, Pickens, a longtime free-market man, is counting on the federal government, tax incentives, and subsidies to help make his dreams come true.

We've got your Trauma -- right here!

Locals with a desire to watch this city go up in flames in a nonfiscal, nongovernmental area might opt to mosey over to the King Street onramp to I-280 sometime between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday.

A tanker truck will be slamming into a parked cars and erupting into a ball of flames (Caldecott Tunnel-style, for all you Bay Area longtimers), for part of the NBC hospital series Trauma. Since the pilot is filmed here in San Francisco, you can assume these are heady days for folks in town with knowledge of how to apply burnlike makeup.

You can also anticipate major headaches driving in the area from Saturday to next Wednesday -- which isn't exactly a trauma, but could be qualified as a pain in the ass.

Photo by Francisco Barradas

Now that's a face a casting director would love. After years of crossing the border, Leonardo Medrano moved to the Mission for good from Sonora, Mexico, in 1977. After 14 years working as an airport janitor, Medrano started his career selling flowers outside the La Victoria bakery on the corner of Alabama and 24th streets. Now in his seventh year there, Medrano is a 24th Street fixture who most just call Don Leo.  

The 79-year-old Medrano has even been immortalized in a mural (perhaps the official stamp of approval in the Mission) on a electric box a few blocks up the street.

Francisco Barradas

Urban art aside, his fame is about to get a major boost. Last year while hawking his flowers, Don Leo was spotted by a casting director for La Mission, the film opening the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival, starring native son Benjamin Bratt, and directed by his brother, Peter Bratt. The woman asked Don Leo be interested in being in the movie. Leo had never acted before, but, being the amiable guy he is, agreed.

Don Leo plays a man who, like himself, has lived in the neighborhood for generations. Yet unlike Leo, who's out selling on 24th each day, his character fears leaving his house because of the hood's violence. Coincidentally, the house used as his character's home is right across the street from Leo's actual house on York Street.

Leo says he stars in two or three scenes, and serves as a link to the neighborhood's past. "The important thing is to understand how the Mission was before -- more orderly, safer," he said Sunday after making a flower sale. "Now it's more dangerous. I'm scared for it now."

While Leo says he doesn't rule out future film appearances ("It depends on the role," he said) for now he just wants a ticket for the premiere at the Castro Theater on April 23. He's lost touch with the movie folks, and hopes they'll remember to invite him.

Hello, neighbor

Because everyone needs a neighbor. Because only one man could pull off the cardigan-Keds combo. And because the trolley to the Neighborhood of Make Believe really does look like a cable car -- San Franciscans ought to don their sweaters next week, March 20, in honor of Mister Rogers' 80th birthday.

"We're asking everyone everywhere to wear their favorite sweater on that day," pleads Mr. McFeely -- the fast-talking "Speedy Delivery" man on the long-running PBS show Mister Rogers Neighborhood (actually "McFeely" is David Newell, the fast-talking PR man for Family Communications, Inc., the nonprofit founded by Rogers himself in 1971). Rogers, by the way, died in 2003 at age 74.

"It doesn't have to have a zipper down the front like the one Mister Rogers wore on the program, it just has to be special to you," continued McFeely/Newell.

And, by the way, if you were to, perchance, run out and purchase a sweater in one of San Francisco's locally owned shops -- well, that'd be special to them. But we digress.

Finally, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Day isn't meant to merely be a sartorial endeavor. Its organizers are calling for increased neighborliness (and, in a sign of the times we live in, they've put together a 12-page guidebook to explain just what neighborliness is). Some suggestions:

• Start a sweater drive;

• Read to children;

• Visit old folks in a nursing home;

• Depose King Friday and install a parliamentary government (sorry, couldn't resist)

Oh, by the way: You can send the organizers your sweater photos here.

Bobby Badfingers, the world's fastest finger-snapper, has sued various San Francisco law enforcement agencies in connection with what he alleges was his mistreatment during arrest and incarceration 13 months ago. According to a complaint filed in federal court by Badfingers under his civilian name, Robert Van Merta, he was arrested without warrant for an alleged assault, assaulted by police officers, and unjustly held in San Francisco County Jail.

Badfingers is demanding that San Francisco law enforcement officials pay him $1 million for violation of his constitutional rights to due process, defamation, and other alleged harm he suffered during a week stay in San Francisco jails last year..

Badfingers is a novelty performer who attaches tiny microphones --  

--  to his index fingers to allow audiences to experience his extraordinary finger snapping abilities. According to his Web site, Badfingers has opened for The Beach Boys, and performed on television shows such as Late Night With David Letterman, The Howard Stern Show, The View With Barbara Walters, Regis & Kelly, and the Jerry Lewis National Telethon. Badfingers has also been profiled on the Biography Channel in a piece called Behind the Snaps: The Legend of Bobby Badfingers.

Apparently, however, Badfingers' snapping powers were rendered harmless by San Francisco's criminal justice system. Officials allegedly kept him locked up in a jail cell for a full week, yet he was not taken before a magistrate for an arraignment, and charges were never filed, according to Badfingers' complaint, filed on the one-year anniversary of his Feb. 20, 2008 incarceration.

A message left on Badfingers' answering machine was unanswered by press time. As of March 6, San Francisco agencies had not filed a response to Badfingers' complaint.

Whatever its merits, Mr. Badfinger seems determined to make sure the city can't just snap its fingers and make his case go away. SF Weekly will be following the Badfingers v. SF case as it develops.

Learning about John Muir has hardly made the state's schoolchildren conservationists ... so how could curriculum on Harvey Milk turn them gay?

Milk, on the whole, tends to suffer when left out -- but Sen. Mark Leno feels a year of exposure is just what his Milk bill needed.

The San Francisco State Senator has re-introduced a bill he authored last year that would designate May 22 as a "day of special significance" for slain city Supervisor Harvey Milk. That bill passed -- on party lines -- last year before being vetoed on Sept. 30 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I make a habit of not speaking for other elected officials, but I do know there was quite a bit of lobbying for the governor's signature for and against that bill," Leno told SF Weekly. "In his veto message, [Schwarzenegger] said he appreciated the intent of the legislation but he believed Harvey';s work should be continued on the local level where it had its impact. Well, a lot has happened in the past five months -- and, because of Sean Penn's successful portrayal of Harvey there's no one who can only say Harvey's life and work have had only a local impact."

Leno re-introduced his bill to the media this morning at Tosca -- Penn's favorite bar --  with Mr. Best Actor beside him.That got the media's attention, but Leno is banking it will also get the governor's.

"If there's one thing Arnold Schwarzenegger understands, it's box office," Leno said. "And, thanks to the producers, directors, and stars of Milk, Harvey now has box office."

If Senate Bill 572 -- co-written by the entire LGBT caucus -- passes, it would establish Milk's birthday as a "special day of significance." This wouldn't cost the state money and wouldn't entail anything beyond the governor declaring May 22 to be Harvey Milk Day in California. Other "days of significance," Leno points out, include John Muir Day, Day of the Teacher, and California Poppy Day. Since Milk-related curricula would be "encouraged" in schools, Leno noted that he is "counting on" foes of his bill employing the "They'll be teaching kids about homosexuals -- in the classroom!" argument that helped to successfully pass Proposition 8.

The bill will be heard in committee in April and could get to the senate floor by mid-May. Leno predicts it will work its way through the Assembly and be sitting on the governor's desk by late August.

Perhaps Leno could have stolen a line from Schwarzenegger: "I'll be back."

Rejoice, short San Franciscan women! The arbiter of beauty, America's Next Top Model, has deemed you worthy to put on your highest heels and totter onto their set. Per the gushing e-mail received at the SF Weekly offices, reminding us that SF'ers can attend a casting call at the Westin on March 3rd, "...Just a reminder, but for the first time EVER the casting call will only accept girls that are 5'7" & under!!" If ever a sentence has deserved caps and multiple exclamation points, it's that one.

That's right, freakishly short women who ring in at a anomalous 5-foot-5 (Like me! Oh, the shame I have suffered, buying my slacks in the boys department of Sears and whatnot.) can now compete to be on the show that often approached women of a more tasteful six feet. While the show won't be taking anyone over 5'7", "...Producers reserve the right to make case-by-case exceptions." Truly, a benchmark for individual rights and a refutation of the stifling beauty standard has been struck today. I can hardly wait for the shoots in which photographer Jay Manuel berates his diminutive subjects, barking, "Look taller!" and model evaluations during which Tyra Banks pops her eyes out and declares authoritatively, "You don't have to BE tall, you have to ACT tall! You project tall. You gotta find the tall inside you!"