San Francisco News Blog

Courtesy Global Marijuana March

Got plans for this weekend? Well, cancel 'em. Have I got a party for you!

A new, aggressive staph infection has already affected San Francisco with the Chronicle reporting that the virulent infection has hit everyone from homeless people to schoolkids and “can attack organs throughout the body, forcing doctors to amputate fingers, toes and limbs.” A January New York Times article reports that the artificial turf used in some public parks can be a fertile breeding ground for staph. If you guessed where this is going, you’re right. Photos of San Francisco’s Silver Terrace Playfield showing matter failing to decompose properly on artificial turf have surfaced. Witness all the moldy glory here.
— Andy Wright (photo from sfparks.googlepages.com)

5) Goth-Punk Icon Siouxsie Sioux Maintains Her Provocative Edge - Music

4) Dan White's Motive More About Betrayal Than Homophobia - Feature Story

3) The SF Weekly vs. Bay Guardian Lawsuit Category - The Snitch

2) Slacker Guys and Striver Girls - When lazy men become projects for career women - Feature Story

(Click 'More' to See the #1 story)

Just in case you were running low on pics of black gay runaways trying to out-vogue each other, check it out. Click here for a slideshow from the catwalk. Then read the torrid story by Lauren Smiley. Photos by Eartha Goodwin

The results are in, and you, the reader, are lying when you say you want hard news and analysis. We have the numbers. You click on glory holes, beardos, and technical stories about the #1 porn file-sharing program in the World. So don't give us any of your high-minded shit. We don't want to hear it.

The Top Ten Stories on SF Weekly this Week Are:

10. Chris Rock Brings "No Apologies Tour" to SF April 3 and 4

9. Justice to Throw Massive SF Dance Party with Diplo in March

8. SF Weekly vs. Bay Guardian Lawsuit Updates

(Click 'More' for the #1 story)

By Joe Eskenazi

Amazing scenes were witnessed today at the San Francisco Zoo, when alleged aggressive panhandling from a homeless man induced an episode of “Roid Rage” in Barry the steroidal Siberian tiger. The cat escaped his pen and set the Major League Zoo record for maulings with 73, before being shot dead while putting the finishing touches on former Supervisor Ed Jew.

The rampage comes on the heels of a Chronicle investigation of illegal supplements provided to animals via the Bay Area Laboratory Zoo Co-Operative (BALZCO); Barry had been receiving packages of Tiger Growth Hormone since 2002, according to leaked grand jury testimony. Other zoo animals linked to BALZCO include Giambi the elephant, Romo the rhino, and Marion the cheetah.

Reginald Jackson, the homeless man who allegedly touched off the deadly rampage, was profiled last month in a front-page column by C.W. Nevius, “You Know What Grinds My Gears? Homeless People Ruining My Commute from Walnut Creek, That’s What.”

After Jackson told San Francisco police he would “rather die” than leave his Golden Gate park encampment and head to a homeless shelter, Nevius noted, “Well, if he would rather die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Jackson is a former Oakland resident (see Chip Johnson’s column in the Bay Area section blaming Mayor Ron Dellums for Jackson’s behavior). After a prolonged legal struggle...

The final picture taken of Torrey Kretschman in his life, snapped at Sunday's 49ers game.
By Joe Eskenazi

If you Google the name “Torrey Kretschman,” you’ll find dozens if not hundreds of articles with headlines containing the clauses “falls to his death” “Monster Park” and “49ers game.”

Sadly, this has been Kretschman’s hello and goodbye to the world at large. He’s the man who died. His violent death at Sunday’s game has overshadowed his 31 years of life.

For those who knew him when he lived, it’s a maddening turn of events.

“Infuriating is a better word for me,” said lifelong friend Jodi Bazemore. “Torrey is now known as the man who fell — not Torrey the way the family knows him.”

The first thing you would have noticed about Torrey was...

Dude, you were too old to be riding that thing, and now God punished you. Yes, we're insensitive. But you would be fine if someone like us had shamed you off that thing prior to today's mishap. Remember, hated readers: If your balls have hair on them, you are too old to ride a Razor Scooter:
From the Examiner today:

"A man riding a Razor scooter this morning was hit by a car as he crossed the street at Folsom and Main streets in San Francisco ... The 45-year-old man was transported to San Francisco General Hospital. ... The extent of the man’s injuries was unknown."

—David Downs

From the AP's 'Calls in Sudan for Execution of Briton':

Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."

Fozzy Bear from Sesame Street just called us with a comment on the evolving situation in Sudan:

"Cultural relativism, my hairy ass. These zealots deserve every last smart bomb that finds them. Ditto for Catholic pederasts, Christian fag draggers, Jewish neocons, and all the other intolerant religious fucks that make this world the latrine it is. I'm tired of this shit. What is this, the dark ages? Muhammad was an asshole. Jesus was a prick. And Buddha was a big fat pussy. When can we move on?!"

The fat (mannish) lady has sung!

San Francisco's big, old classic Drag Queen show hosted by Heklina, Trannyshack, is throwing in the wig, according to SFist:

On Heklina's MySpace page, she tells us that she plans on shutting down Trannyshack -- San Francisco's longest-running (alternative-y) drag show, etcetera -- soon. Very soon. Heklina says, "I need to feel challenged and no longer feel I have the focus to continue doing a weekly drag night-club much longer." And although her appearances won't stop, the Tuesday night destination for many homos and tranny-chasers will. ... By the end of December, or the beginning of January I will be announcing the date of the big blowout, which will be a massive Miss Trannyshack Pageant/Wigstock scale farewell bash featuring Trannyshack performers past and present, as well as some special guest stars.

Google, Yahoo, Oracle -- see they're not all Aspy dudes. Today the WSJ paid alimony to all the powerful shorties out there holding it down in da boardroom. We bow to your superior uterine supremacy.

From the WSJ 50 Women to Watch 2007:

Here are the women we believe have the potential to make a significant impact on business in the year ahead. ... 7. Mulcahy, Anne, Xerox Corp. chairman and chief executive Anne Mulcahy is leading Xerox down a new path after one of the company's biggest acquisitions in years. ... 9. Whitman, Margaret C. "Meg", eBay Inc., President and CEO, In the midst of overseeing a reinvention of the global electronic-commerce company. ... 14. Livermore, Ann, Hewlett-Packard Co., Executive Vice President, One of three women on Hewlett-Packard's executive team, Ann Livermore is responsible for boosting growth at the company's largest business.

(Yusaf Bey IV, Oakland crime tumor)

Yeah! F, you, Richmond! You're only number 9! I love these b.s. crime Top Tens, and so do you!:

After Oakland, at No. 4., came Camden, N.J.; Birmingham, Ala.; North Charleston, S.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Richmond; and Cleveland. Landing in the top 10 in the 2007 rankings, which were based on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's crime data for 2006, is not shocking for Oakland.

Good to see the dirty dirty holding it down as well.

This just in from the Mayor's Office:

Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that the production of the feature film Milk is slated to film entirely in San Francisco beginning in January 2008. Academy Award-winning director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho) will direct the biographical drama, and the film will star Academy Award-winning Bay Area resident Sean Penn as gay-rights icon Harvey Milk.

Initial reactions: Damn, the City of San Francisco is loving this opportunity to look all gay-friendly and inclusive again. I personally feel sorry for any producer who has to get permits and film in this NIMBY hellhole. "Hello, Police. There's people in my front yard and they have lights and a generator that is noisy!"

And just remember citizens, being inclusive is fine as long as it means not including any military productions.
Full press release after the jump.

This week, The SF Weekly examines the 'Knocked Up' scenario of the loser guy and the succesful women who enable them. As a web extra, we present:

-- From Chaplin to 'Knocked Up' -- A Timeline of Cinema Slackers

-- Professions Where Women Are Making More Money Than Men. An xls.

-- Cities Where Women Have Control of the Checkbook. An xls.

-- How Women Make More than Men in New York. An xls.

Today's popular, front-page Chronicle contention that there's a shortage of cheap, talented, experienced chefs willing to work for low pay in San Francisco is more retarded than a CCA drop-out.

Who are her sources?

Craigslist. Hmm. A dash of eatery owners and some anecdotes. Irrelevant. There's no real data showing a lack of cooks for SF! Her argument can be applied to any industry in SF. For example:
Editors Decry Lack of Cheap, Talented Experienced [[Insert Occupation -- Reporters]] Willing to Work for Low Pay. Now you try the madlib with any other job.

Face it. It's always hard to find good people. That's a proverb. It's not news. So bad, Chronicle! No cookie.

--David Downs

Just how the hell did the city lose 43,000 registered voters in four years?

By Joe Eskenazi

We’ve all lost things: our keys, glasses, coins in the couch. But we’ve never lost 42,529 registered voters like the city of San Francisco did between 2003 and the present -– and they’re not in the couch, because we’ve checked.

San Francisco isn’t a geographically vast city, but when you misplace enough people to fill AT&T Park to capacity over four short years, something screwy is going on.

Actually, according to a handful of experts we contacted, something screwy was going on -- and now that San Francisco is on the ball, its past foolishness has become embarrassingly apparent.

“The department of elections has become, what’s the word ...

Welcome to this week's Monday Morning Hangover. We're going to bring it every Monday at 9 a.m. from here on out. I'm your Web editor, David Downs.

Let's start with the funny. Two words: Tracy. Morgan. Personal hero to us and to Jewish werewolves all over. Werewolf Bar Mitzvah.

Now ... what happened last weekend? Um, we vaguely remember almost getting arrested by police at UC Berkeley before headbanging to DethKlok at UC Berkeley over the weekend. That was pretty brutal.

Then we almost got arrested in da club with Ghostface Killah and Rakim at Mezzanine. That was tight, son!

But that was after we went out honoring all the dead 'tinas in our life at the Dia De Los Muertos parade. Caliente!
...
On the schedule this week: Make sure to watch out for partisan assholes littering your porch and mind with their pet grievances during Tuesday's election. Perhaps you've heard how San Francisco has to hand-count ten times the required amount of ballots, because this wi-fi-less city is retarded.

Let's see. What else is going on this week?

Supervisor Chris Daly intends to ban consensual coworker sex and romance at City Hall on Tuesday. Dozens of secretaries who like getting banged and spanked have yet to speak up. Check out our weekly feature SFGovernmentInAction for more on that.

And, of course, we will be at more great shows like Henry Rollins at Herbst Tuesday (whiner), M.I.A at the Fillmore Wednesday (all hype, no ass), plus Feist at Nob Hill Masonic Friday (we hope she escaped that Nano!).

Feist, money can't buy us back the love that we lost, but drowning our regret in liquor is cheaper than you think.

Ta-ta and toodle-oo. See you next Monday with another hangover.

(Please visit our Dia De Los Slideshow)

Costumes, respect, discreet drinking, and hands-off cops make for a blissful evening

By Joe Eskenazi

In an exercise somewhat akin to the 18th-century intellectual version of bar-room drunks snarling over who would start on a football team blessed with both Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham decided to quantify how much an activity contributed to society’s happiness.

Bentham’s concept of ranking pleasure numerically is difficult to grasp (and his decision to have his corpse taxidermically stuffed like a stag or bear and put on display doesn’t inspire confidence with his decision-making process) -– but after attending Friday’s Dia de los Muertos procession in the city, I think I understand what Bentham was thinking (about the utils, not getting stuffed like a hunting lodge moose).

The utils of joy were soaring to the heavens out of the Mission that evening. Costumes, fun, laughter, decent behavior, people drinking beer out of bags, and the few cops present taking ...

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

Here's the best of SFWeekly.com this week as voted by your clicks:

1) The Top 15 Lame Last-Minute Costumes of Halloween

2) Craig's List Continues to Destroy America

3) Hey, Where is the Best Glory Hole in SF?

4) Local Doof Down on His Luck After Ionic Breeze Lawsuit

5) Tegan and Sarah Make Out ALL the Time!!

6) Thriller Dance vs. Dolores Park Die-In

7) Savage Love: 5-Year-Old Gay Kids

We report, you decide, San Francisco. --David Downs

What's new on SF Weekly.com and in 60,000 printed copies today:

- Savage Love Says If Your Wife's Not Fucking you, Cheat on Her, but Get Her Something Nice

- Visitacion Valley Violence Sends Brothers To Rehab, Friend to Grave

- Wii's Pool Party A Stick in the Mud

- Justice At Mezzanine Will be Dance Party of 2007

- MF Doom: The latest artist to disappoint Bay Area fans

-Bouncer Reports Chronicle Dive Bar the Tempest Not Filthy Enough

- Wes Andersen's 'Darjeeling' Reframes Owen Wilson's Suicide attempt

-Jack Johnson's Label Hosts Rogue Wave's Asleep at Heaven's Gate

-Barry Bonds' Steroids Satire Prompts Acclaim, Criticism (p.s. The Guardian is run by humorless hacks.)

-Russian Sergey Brin and Google: A KGB Propaganda and ...

Here's the real headlines. -d2

--Stiletto Stabbers Still At Large After Violence at SF Nightclub Slide

--Sean Penn Gets Wet Sloppy Make-Up Blowjob from WSJ for his Krakauer adaptation 'Into the Wild'

--Parking as a Contact Sport: Why Protesters Are Playing Ping-Pong in Your Parking Space

--Three Years to Fix the PS3, Implies Sony

--16,000 Hyphens Missing from English Language

--The Moz's Hypocritical Meat Ban: Protein Swallowers Scoff

--Earth to Toymakers: I'm Running Out of Lead

--IDK, My BFF, The Cops?: Errant Text Message Leads to Drug Bust

The headlines you need to know. -d2

-- "Block The Street with Your Inane Hippie Ethic" Day is tomorrow

-- Drunk Texan woman handcuffed and tasered on video. That's what you get, slag.

-- Jena 6: The new, violent posterboys for civil rights

-- Trent Reznor to fans: Steal my music, please.

-- Yeah, that Marriage is really working out for you, huh? 25th Anniversary Mark Elusive for Many Couples

-- Midwesterners Need It: a procedure called lipodissolve, which uses injections of a drug compound to target unwanted fat deposits, has captured the attention of thousands of cosmetic patients in Missouri and Kansas

-- 9 out 10 Southeast Asian farmers now prefer meth: Three decades ago, the northernmost reaches of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar produced more than 70 percent of all the opium sold worldwide, most of which was refined into heroin. Today the area produces about 5 percent of the world total, says Mr. Costa’s agency. What happened?

-- Kid Fliers Penalized: Now if we could just get kids off of all plane flights entirely.

-- Art or marketing: does anyone care anymore? SFist investigates

-- Dumb Oakland cops botch Bailey case:

"Shortly before Broussard confessed to the killing, police allowed bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV, 21, to talk privately with Broussard. The conversation was not recorded, and police were not present as Broussard and Bey whispered to each other in an interrogation room at the Eastmont Police Station. ... Broussard's defense team can question the veracity of a confession: Did the police make a side deal with Bey to have him convince Broussard to confess? Did Bey make promises to Broussard that he would get out of jail sooner if he admitted committing the crime? .. "An inference can be made here that maybe the cops had something to hide when they really did not," Nolan said.

-- Leather and Diapers: Bikers Against Child Abuse join parents in a dispute against a neighbor who some claim yells at their kids for making too much noise.

-- Oakland Stalker to Firing Boss: Racist!

Benjamin Robinson, 40, of Oakland was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in San Jose, charged with unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and making a false statement to a government agency. ... From May 2003 through March 2004, he used a government database called the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS) to track the travel patterns of S.S. and her family, the indictment says. ... Robinson sued the Commerce Department in January, claiming the department "has a pattern and practice of using the investigative process and other procedures to terminate African-American employees or to take other adverse employment actions on the basis of their race."

-- Local Alicia Silverstone so not naked as promised in PETA ad

-- Depraved local marching band needs new members

-- Drive by limo shooting at Metreon gone awry

-- British professor wins prize for bar-fight research.

This week, Savage Love deals with why some Mexican girls call for their papi during sex, and 'Ask A Mexican' assists: "Dads earned such a place in Mexico gracias to the cultures of Catholicism, the Conquest, and the Aztecs—all governed by males who considered women little more than birth canals." Ahh, the good ole days.

This one oughta do well on fark.com: Haight Street Bondage Session Ends in Murder, as the Selling of the Golden Gate continues

And lastly, in letters, Bouncer gets Savaged by a bartender.

More stories after the jump.

Here's the headlines you need to know. -d2

-- Number of Women Age 18 to 50 with Santa Cruz License Plates: 5 percent

-- Fuck the Sex Pistols Reunion, and Van Halen, and Led Zeppelin

-- Sony Stops Making the Cell -- Maybe

-- Sharks A Step Closer to Doing Our Bidding

-- #1 GLBT-Friendly Bay Company: Chevron, San Ramon

-- Killing in SF, Blame Oakland

-- Peaceniks Need to Calm Down

-- Rummy Comes to Stanford, Stanford Not Pleased

-- Pre-Conscious Morality? More like, Borality.

-- Buy a Mac now, before Microsoft Wins

-- SF Finds Health Care for All

-- Stock Up on Glowsticks and Molly, Lovefest is back

Here's the headlines you need to know. -d2

-- Dubious Social Experiment of the week: pee-pee hands

-- Niners/Raiders make No Money, Either

-- Bonds Sprains Toe, World Shudders

-- Fucking Mark Ecko Wins Bonds Ball

-- Video Games Kill Man

-- AVP: Bikini Eye Candy for the both teams

-- Grey's Anatomy Gives Heigl Emmy Facial

-- Oakland Reps to City: Um, More Rich People, Please

-- SF Biz Times: Dick Move of the Week - $3 ATM Fee Hike

-- Google Haters Splash Haterade on Jet Plane

-- DIY Citywide WiFi

-- O.J. Held in Vegas, whaa?

-- Get Ready For More Latin Radio

-- Best Sightseeing Tours, SF

-- Cops Hipsters Unite

-- The 24-Hour Diners of SF

-- Intel Gets to Wreak Havok

-- Techcrunch shenanigans

-- Brutal home invasion baby killing

-- Requisite dentist fondler story

-- Web 2.0 to SF: You Ain't All That

PHOTO COURTESY OF EROS BLOG

Here's the headlines you need to know. -d2

--WSJ: Google and the Moon: Why Worry?

--Snitch: Mimes Have Rights Too

--Snitch: SF Opens Cold Case Shop

--Snitch: MUNI Cop Ridealong

--Snitch: SF Gun Seizures Double

--Gate: Why My GF's Sister Is Still On ...