The film “Ready, Set, Bag!” (formerly titled “Paper or Plastic?“) will be shown tonight at the Roxie Theatre in a benefit for the San Francisco Food Bank, the city’s non-profit group that helps feed thousands of families every week using groceries and produce donated by stores and growers. The program starts at 7:00 pm.

The film follows the finalists in the National Grocers Association Best Bagger Championship, which is exactly what it sounds like, I guess. Also on the program is a short, Leonardo, by Pixar animator Jim Capobianco.

Speaking of the Food Bank, VISA is doubling donations to the group right now. So go to their website and give ‘em some money. The Food Bank is a great community organization.

This morning, staff, non-tenured faculty and graduate student instructors at University of California campuses begin a three-day strike to protest the imposition of tuition hikes at the public university. Their website is UCstrike.com and you can follow events on twitter using the #ucstrike hashtag.

According to the strikers’ website, tuition increases this decade have meant that the cost of an undergraduate education has tripled since 2000. They lay the blame not only at the national economic crisis but the university’s commitment to over $1 billion in new debt for construction of new facilities, saying the system favors “construction over instruction.”

The strike is timed to coincide with a meeting of UC regents in Los Angeles. The governing borad is expected to approve new fee hikes.

San Franciscans have a choice this Saturday: Apollo or Dionysus?

In Apollo’s corner, publishers and writers from two experimental presses, Sidebrow of San Francisco and Les Figues of Los Angeles, will appear Saturday at 7:30 pm at The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St. at Gough (map). Both presses publish poetry and experimental prose in small, interesting editions. I interviewed Les Figues’ Teresa Carmody a few years ago.

At the same moment, representing Dionysus, Writers with Drinks happens at the Makeout Room on 22nd St. Appearing are Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman TV series), Mary Robinette Kowal (Scenting The Dark And Other Stories), Kat Richardson (Greywalker), Naomi Quiñonez (Invocation L.A.: Urban Multicultural Poetry), and S. Bear Bergman (Butch Is A Noun).

Last night’s big rig plunge off the Bay Bridge, which happened at 3:30 a.m. when a semi with a load of pears hit the infamous S-curve too fast, was only the latest of more than forty accidents on the suddenly jinxed bridge, the CHP said, as reported by KTVU TV’s website.

The truck hit the curve at 50 m.p.h., which is the speed limit for much of the bridge, but not for the S-curve, a temporary detour installed over the Labor Day weekend as part of the decade-long Bay Bridge earthquake retrofit project. After a big rig crashed on the curve Oct. 14, spilling cargo across four lanes, CalTrans lowered the speed limit on the curve to 35 m.p.h. and installed new signs, but evidently they weren’t enough to draw the attention of a sleepy produce truck driver in the middle of the night.

The driver was killed when the truck went over the guardrail and plunged 200 feet to the ground on the shore of Yerba Buena Island.

Quoted in the SFGate.com story, a CalTrans spokesman blamed the driver, saying the crash was “another example of poor judgment.”

A reel of “raw video” on the KPIX website shows the impact scene before dawn, including a grotesque image of the driver’s severed forearm and hand.

From the Craigslist Rants and Raves section, just today:

• A woman hates her ex because he poisoned San Francisco for her.
• A “fatal hipster” neglected his girlfriend at Whole Foods.
• “Mystery liquid on my floor this morning.”

Finally:

You humans are so weak, with your stupid rants. You think you so mighty! go fight a rhino or elephant! You all should leave this planet! Go to Saturn!

A liberal think tank, the Urban Land Institute, has issued a report on the cost to working people of living in the Bay Area. The report, Bay Area Burden, examines the impact on working people of high costs of housing and transportation, looks at how proximity to mass transit helps relieve the burden, and asks policymakers to take working people’s needs into account when making land use decisions.

Their website, bayareaburden.org, has a Housing + Transportation Calculator that’s fun to play with.

It’s election day! Who knew? In San Francisco, the only interesting thing on the ballot is Prop. D., the proposal to put giant Times Square-type advertising signs on Market Street in order to “enliven” it.

Are they kidding? Apparently not. Here are some arguments in favor and a Chronicle editorial against. And here is the whole list of issues and candidates running, including City Atty. Dennis Herrera (unopposed).

Go to the SF Dept of Elections for results tonight.

 
Flickr photo of Times Square by Scott Beale at Laughing Squid.

Tonight’s the annual Dia de los Muertos event in the Mission. Unlike previous years, the procession starts at 24th and Bryant rather than in front of the Mission Cultural Center. The event starts at 7:00 p.m.

Bring pictures of dead loved ones, wear black, feel free to dress in skeletal attire. Kids are welcome.

Just a note to tribal/Burning Man types: leave your freaking bongo drums at home, OK?

After announcing the Bay Bridge would not reopen in time for the morning commute, CalTrans announced about 8:20 this morning that the bridge would be reopening by 9:00 a.m. The reopening follows five and a half days of blame, angst, repair, testing and inspection after a previous emergency fix broke last week on Tuesday afternoon.

Safety engineers were still testing the most recent repairs to the Bay Bridge over the weekend, and the word mid-Sunday afternoon is: don’t count on the bridge being available for the Monday morning commute. Better plan alternatives. Update @ 5:20 pm: That’s confirmed, no Monday morning on the bridge.

Pictures show an eerily empty toll plaza, an eerily empty bridge, and stuffed BART trains. Meanwhile, a car thief blew through barricades in San Francisco and led police on a chase over the closed bridge, and most people in San Francisco today completely forgot there was any problem at all, since it’s a gorgeous, sunny, warm 1st of November.

A ship spilled oil in San Francisco Bay today south of the Bay Bridge, and the Coast Guard is attempting to contain it before it reaches any shorelines to minimize the risk to wildlife. But the Oiled Wildlife Care Network will respond to any reports of sea birds fouled with the oil. Just call them at 1.877.UCD.OWCN. (Thanks, @kmieszkowski)

The incident took place almost two years after the Cosco Busan struck the Bay Bridge on Nov. 7, 2007, releasing over 58,000 gallons of heavy “bunker fuel” and fouling beaches around the bay and up and down the coast from San Mateo County to Sonoma County.

Saying his “young family” and his day job were bigger priorities, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom pulled out of the race for California governor today.

Newsom was once a Democratic Party rising star. Then:

• his 2004 gay marriage fiat handed right-wingers an issue to organize around, and some say it helped send George Bush to the White house for a second term.
• His marriage to TV news reporter Kimberly Guilfoyle fell apart at the beginning of 2005.
• In early 2007, he admitted an affair with his campaign manager’s wife, and a problem with alcohol.
• His “it’s gonna happen whether you like it or not” taunting was successfully used against gay marriage by Prop. 8 backers in 2008.

And then in April this year he announced he was running for governor. So we see how well that went.

Newsom’s second term as San Francisco mayor lasts through 2011.

Engineers were continuing to test the completed fix-to-the-repair on the suddenly dubious Bay Bridge today, and CalTrans announced at 10:00 a.m. today that the bridge would remain closed throughout the Friday evening commute. It could possibly open as early as late Friday evening. You can click the map at left for a current traffic map or go to 511.org.

You can text the word ALERT to 45227 (which is KCBS radio) and get a text message when the Bay Bridge reopens.

Update, 3:20 pm: The 511.org site now says the bridge will be closed “through Friday,” but “if” the bridge remains closed, BART will run hourly all-night service to the East Bay tonight and Saturday night. Here’s the all-night BART details. Note that only 14 stations will be in operation overnight.

The Bay Bridge could be open as early as Thursday evening “if everything goes perfectly” with repairs to the troublesome spot on the cantilever span, CalTrans told KRON Channel 4 today. “If something happens during the testing” and they have to adjust the repairs, it could take days longer.

Meanwhile, a UC Berkeley engineering expert was being quoted in news reports saying the design of the first fix — which was done while crews were cleaning up from the mammoth Labor Day re-route — was “not correct” and left the span vulnerable to complete collapse in the event of an earthquake. It was nothing more than a Band-Aid, he said.

An Associated Press article quoted a driver as saying the accident yesterday had caused her to lose “so much confidence in the experts, the millions of dollars that are being spent to reconstruct and build a new bridge,” referring to the decade-long project that will eventually replace the entire cantilever section with a suspension bridge.

The failure was probably caused by continuous heavy winds this week, CalTrans said. Wind continued gusty today while a new repair was being worked on. Asked to describe what the new design was like, a CalTrans spokesman said, “Think of a big belt around a piece of wood.”

Somehow that image doesn’t comfort me.

The Bay Bridge was closed around 7 pm this evening after the emergency repair accomplished over the Labor Day weekend broke apart, raining heavy steel pieces and cables down on westbound traffic.

California Highway Patrol officers are still working, two hours after the incident, to clear heavy traffic from the bridge, after which it will be closed in both directions indefinitely. Monitor the Twitter account @baybridgeinfo for information.