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PayLock The 'Smart Boot'
Today, our lunch break began with a terrifying encounter with a Specialty's delivery guy, Robert, who appeared to have sustained some serious injuries. That, or he bought fake scars and glued them to his face and caked it with make-up. "I'm just dead," he explained.
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| Robert, who called in dead for work |
Robert is not the first and certainly not the last to don costume a full 24 hours before the average trick-or-treater. In fact, our lunch break yielded a healthy numbers of early Halloween celebrators (and more than a few pre-ejack-o-lanterns).
Around 12:30 p.m., this slightly lacking game of beer pong was on the move in front of the baseball stadium. (Ed.: Looks like the gent on the right toting the cane is dressed as Dr. House). |
Look, you knew this was happening. It had to happen. We owed it to the general public to create a Bay Bridge-themed Fail Whale. And now it's yours for the taking!
Obtain the 1280 x 1024 version here:
View image
Use it in good health -- and feel free to peruse these failing items as well.
Audrey Fukuman, based on original illustration by @yiyinglu Get it while it's hot!
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| What were the odds of this happening? |
In examining Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's letter to the California State Assembly in which the letters I F-U-C-K Y-O-U appear vertically down the left-hand side, it is hard to imagine that it could have happened randomly.
The letter purportedly explains Schwarzenegger's refusal to sign AB 1176 -- an ordinary piece of legislation regarding the Port of San Francisco's finances -- which happened to be sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who recently told the governator to "kiss my gay ass." Motive? Check.
In all seriousness, we wondered what the chances were that the letters "I FUCK YOU" ended up on the page via sheer coincidence. So we called a few math professors.
Stephen Devlin, the chair of the math department at the University of San Francisco, got excited about the challenge. The first thing he had to do was estimate how frequently the letters in question generally appear at the beginning of words.
Since we first covered the "funemployment" phenomenon in a June cover story, we here at SF Weekly have been pleasantly surprised again and again by the productive uses to which jobless young San Franciscans are turning their idle hands. From blogging to designing funemployment flare, folks in this city seem inexplicably hellbent on doing creative and useful things instead of turning to drink, television, and despair. 
Greenskeeper Joseph Frankel tees off in his backyard
Time to add another all-star to the funemployment hall of fame. His name is Joseph Frankel. He's a 25-year-old resident of the Inner Richmond, via New Jersey, where he grew up. Since he was laid off from a beer distributor at the end of last year, Frankel has actually built a golf course in his back yard.
You don't exactly have to be Tiger Woods to make it on the green in one at the Richmond Country Club, as Frankel and his roommates have dubbed their idyllic golfing enclave, which was previously a fenced-off dirt lot not much bigger than a garage. The club now features several sets of turf for teeing off from different distances, a strip of lawn serving as a fairway, and a rolling green with multiple holes, each of which can be capped when not in use. Frankel has even laid out some turf on the roof of his building, where players can take a swing at their wiffle golf balls (the only kind used at Richmond CC) from par-5 range.
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Perhaps you've seen this before -- but it was a new thrill to us. A pair of gents with a time-lapse camera that snapped photos every 10 seconds have distilled their cross-country automobile journey down to the above four-and-a-half minute haul from San Francisco to Washington, D.C.
In case you're wondering, this is the quickest anyone has left San Francisco since Gavin Newsom heard there were some folks in Bakersfield with an abiding interest in health care and photogenic mayors.
If you're also wondering how fast a vehicle that could tear from Mason Street to the nation's capital in four minutes and 36 seconds would be traveling, we did the math for you:
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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.
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| 511 is the He-Man of websites |
"Although a number of cities offer Web-based trip planners," says Government Computer News, "San Francisco's combines the schedules of dozens of subway, light-rail, trolley and bus systems, a heroic act of interagency coordination."
Other winning websites included the USPS virtual post office, data.gov, science.gov, webcontent.com (a Web site demonstrating how to make better Web sites) and the site for the state of Utah. But none of them got the high distinction of "hero."
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