​The SF Weekly Web Awards nominations are here, which means it's time to make sure your favorite news hounds get onto the ballot. From our cosmopolitan and well-informed readers of the Snitch, we'd love to know who you think is the Best Local Politics Blogger, the Best Media Personality Twitter, the Best Breaking News Twitter, the Best Public Transit Blog, and the Best San Francisco Giants Blog. More >>

We're giving you a chance to finally be a winner!

​A big congrats to Beth Spotswood, local media maven, very funny writer, and well-deserving winner of 7x7's Hot 20 Under 40 Readers' Choice Award. Watching all the excitement as people wrangled for votes, we couldn't help but get a little jealous. After all, we'd love for people to be competing for SF Weekly to bestow the title of Hottest on them.

But, let's face facts. Compared to SF Weekly, 7x7 editors are better looking, better educated, and better smelling. (We snapped an iPhone pic of the newsroom to illustrate our point.) In fact, the only thing we do have over them is that, at least according to Quantcast data, SF Weekly has more web readers than 7x7. So, with that in mind, we're announcing SF Weekly's Hottest 2,000 Under 40 contest.

More >>

A coveted Ellie.

​Every year since 1966, the American Society of Magazine Editors and Columbia University's school of journalism have issued National Magazine Awards, more commonly known as Ellie's (the trophies look at lot like elephants).

The Bay Area cleaned up this year, with four local magazines taking home four pachyderm-y accolades. San Francisco magazine grabbed a general excellence award in the less than 100,000-circulation category for its April, August, and December issues. Mother Jones also won for general excellence in the 100,000 to 250,000-circulation category for its July/August, September/October, and November/December issues.

Wired's "The Mystery Issue," which ran in May, took the top award for Single-Topic Issue. And McSweeney's Quarterly received the grand prize for fiction for "Memory Wall," by Anthony Doerr, "Raw Water," by Wells Tower, and "Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events," by Kevin Moffett.
More >>

Spencer Tunick

Didn't happen

​George Davis -- a former mayoral candidate known around the city as naked yoga guy --had pretty high ambitions for the second-annual Naked Olympics. Scheduled for Saturday, the competition was supposed to include barefoot races, ancient Greek and sumo wrestling, discus, broad jump, volleyball, touch football, and a kickboxing exhibition.

But the overcast, 50-degree Saturday didn't much appeal to the nudist crowd. When the games were supposed to begin, only eight stripped-down, goosebumpy guys had arrived. Among them was Rocky Angel, a beefcake who painted his face to look like a Mexican wrestler mask. But there was nobody to challenge him.

So instead of moving forward with a half-assed event, the host called it off.

More >>

Photo via dk79 on flickr

Ahhh. Nature.

​So, you're on funemployment and the world doesn't understand how talented you are and daddy's getting pissy about covering your rent again this month. Who knew what a disappointment early adulthood would be? Well, here's one temporary distraction: Throw your efforts into a photo contest you probably won't win.

The Hansen's Photo competition (Hansen is a natural soda company sponsor trying to prove that it's all about local everything and the beauty of nature) started August 31 and runs through October 4. All you have to is upload your mediocre San Francisco nature photos here and round up as many of your loser friends as possible to cast their biased votes. Every so often, a winner will be declared and awarded $500, which he or she is likely to spend on drugs.

More >>

As a dedicated reader of all things SF Weekly, you may have noticed on our All Shook Down blog that we finally got with the times and created our own flickr pool of San Francisco-related photography.

But if you missed it, here's the recap: Generously contribute your San Francisco photos to our stream, and if they're funny/interesting/awesome in some way, they may well end up published on All Shook Down. Here's the additional good news: If you happen to capture a local celebrity or even something just soooo San Francisco, we just might co-opt it for our news blog, The Snitch.

At the end of the month, we might even publish your work in a best of Flickr slideshow, which would pretty much mean you have made it.

Photo   |   Plug1

Get wasted sustainably.

As of April last year, only one bar in San Francisco was certified green, and that was Elixir. According to the aforelinked NPR story, a group set on greening more bars dubbed Green & Tonic was planning to get to work using Elixir as a sustainability consultant and greening more bars, and a year and a half (and several interns) later, they are just getting to it.

Their aim is to help bar owners reduce waste, energy, and water consumption by using energy-efficient appliances, low-flow toilets, and non-toxic cleaning supplies, and to further those aims, in conjunction with Carrotmob -- a network of green-product consumers -- they've just launched a green bar competition.

Basically, Green and Tonic will conduct a free, walk through at any bar that chooses to participate, then create a short film featuring the three top eco-friendly bars in the city. Carrotmob will then hold a community vote, and the bar with the most votes will win a fundraising event in September. All the money raised with help the bar "make their greenovation wishes come true," says Healther Driscoll, co-founder and co-President of Green & Tonic.

To express interest, e-mail Driscoll at contactevents@greenandtonic.com. 

'Help me help you...'

Last week the Board of Supervisors and Mayor Gavin Newsom compromised on a city budget featuring an unprecedented $44 million in add-backs by the supes. The champagne was already broken out in the Board chambers (literally) when Chris Daly served as the turd in the punchbowl (not literally) by demonstratively pointing out that Newsom was entitled to unilaterally whisk away this money -- and had done so in the past. The only assurance this won't happen again is an exceedingly vague, three-paragraph letter the mayor sent to the Board (read it here; it'll take you two minutes).

We compared Daly to Police Chief Martin Brody, who warned the people of Amity Island in the film Jaws that it wasn't safe to go back in the water -- which didn't make him a popular man with his peers in city government. My colleague Benjamin Wachs noted that Newsom's history of, shall we say, fidelity hasn't been exemplary. Folks outside of our office have also opined that while it's tempting to tune out Chris Daly, no one can accuse the man of not knowing what he's talking about here. 

Here's where you come in. While Newsom simply wrote that he would "work with the Board of Supervisors" before pulling away the money -- and that could be interpreted as "Here's what I'm going to do -- now get me a Fresca" -- it's hard to state what the mayor actually "promised" to do here. But should he yank money away from the projects "spared" by the supes, the Board will invariably accuse him of breaking his word and his platoon of spokesmen will invariably Twitter that he did not. So, dear readers, comment on this article and enter the date you believe Newsom will break his "promise" and announce he's taking away that money.

More >>