I’d like to welcome to our new Metroblogging family members, Metroblogging Paris! Drop by and say hi when you get a chance. This is our first French Metroblog and we’re happy as clams to have them on board.

January first, BART fares are going to go up by 3.7%:

On Sunday, January 1, 2006, BART fares will increase by 3.7%. This is the first fare increase since January 2004.

The 3.7% increase is based on a formula that accounts for changes in inflation, both locally and nationally, reduced by .5% to account for increased operating efficiencies achieved by BART.

So be sure to hit up that Quickplanner before you head on out.

And for those of you planning on patronizing BART for New Year’s Eve:

The best way to celebrate New Year’s Eve is by leaving your car at home and using BART’s “New Year’s Eve Flash Pass,” good for unlimited rides on BART throughout the holiday evening.

The special New Year’s Eve Flash Pass costs just $6 and gets you unlimited rides on BART from 6 p.m. Saturday, December 31 to 3 a.m. Sunday, January 1.

Riders with passes simply flash them to the BART Station Agent and pass through the station entrance swing gate. No need to use the fare gates!

Here is a short entry to let the world know that good NY-style pizza CAN be found here in San Francisco. Head on over to Arinell Pizza, a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint on 16th and Valencia, and get a slice of heaven. It is so thin you can fold it, with gooey cheese that soaks up the delicious tomato sauce. Just remember to get it hot, and eat it off greaseproof paper. Don’t expect stellar eating conditions and fantastic customer service though…

I went there last night and decided to get a large cheese so I could share it with my husband at home (they don’t have delivery, ’cause it’s such a small operation), and ended up having one of the best TV dinners EVAR.

Check out a few reviews to get more of an overview of what the place is like.

Arinell Pizza
509 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
cross street: between 16th & 17th
district: Mission
phone: 415.255.1303

Well, this hardly comes as a shock:

Five of the 10 most expensive counties for renters in the country are in the Bay Area, according to a new study by a low-income-housing advocacy group.

San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties tied as the least affordable places for households earning the median income for apartment dwellers. Alameda and Contra Costa counties were the seventh-least affordable of the 3,000 U.S. counties in the report. . . .

In San Francisco, for example, the authors found a family of four would need to make $61,440 per year — or a total of $29.54 per hour — to rent a $1,536 apartment. The median income for renter households in the city is $53,239 — compared with $60,031 for all households. The study assumes that no more than 30 percent of a household’s income should be spent on housing costs.

“The implications are that over a half a million renters in the San Francisco Bay Area are stretched beyond their means, only one paycheck away from possible eviction,” Dianne Spaulding, executive director of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, said in a statement.

Like I didn’t already know I can’t afford this place.

Okay, this is very upsetting.

Bicycles that were specially made for children with cerebral palsy, brain injuries, paralysis, blindness, etc., were stolen from their storage room in Berkeley. While detectives are following their own leads for investigation, officials of the nonprofit which owned those bikes, Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program (BORP), are scoping eBay and Craigslist for those bikes.

If you find anything, contact BORP please!

Well, not boot, it’s really very good . . . .

This year marks the end of a beloved holiday tradition: cd’s Holiday Season Finals Study Restaurant Tour. After tomorrow, I can start spending the holidays the way god intended: drunk on nog at office parties.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying my last few unconventional study experiences. Today, I hit Darla’s on Irving. I’ve visited before and though I can’t yet vouch for the accuracy of the Darla’s tagline – Possibly the Best Berger Around! – I can vouch for the eatery’s comfortable atmosphere, terrific coffee and french fries, and unsurpassed service. There’s a sparse but sunny patio for when the weather’s warm. For days like today, the open, comfortably noisy dining room is bustling enough to distract one from finals’ stress, but not so booming that one can’t focus on her outlines.

Today, I enjoyed a club sandwich, fries, and a really rich cup of decaf. The thin fries are generously portioned and seasoned with, best I can tell, Lawry’s season salt – always a fantastic choice. The club was served on lightly toasted wheat bread and was packed full of good things, but not stuffed to the point of structural weakness – so feel free to indulge around your laptop without fear of ending up with a keyboard full of ham.

Darla’s has beer specials weekly and a breakfast special served all day featuring pancakes, eggs, etc, for a tad under $4. The signature send-off however, the complimentary brownies that come with every check, make the meal all the sweeter. I give Darla’s three fries for fine food, 2 stars for atmosphere, 3 smiles for service, and 2.75 stars for study-ability.

Darla’s; 822 Irving St; San Francisco, CA 94121; (415) 753-3275; breakfast served all day, lunch, dinner; $4-$10; beer and wine available

Take a moment to travel back in time with me. Sit somewhere comfortable, close your eyes, and drift back to your childhood. Remember those times on the playground where you either watched, taunted, or were taunted by someone. Roasting you nicely, your opponent, cheered on by a group of equally ass-like kids, hit you right where it hurt. Your comeback?

“That’s not funny!”

And immediately, the observers were shamed, turned, walked away from your tormentor who – seeing the evil of his ways – reformed and never teased again.

NOT!

What actually happened was that your indignation and frustration was met with increased taunting and laughter from the audience. “That’s not funny,” is never, ever an effective deterrent of disfavored behavior. It encourages it pretty well, however.

Here’s the deal. Having now watched the “controversial” SFPD tapes, I can officially agree with the many rank and file cops and other residents, newscasters, commentators and observers who conclude – again – that San Francisco has no sense of humor. It’s gone. R.I.P. or R.I.P.C. – you can figure out what the P.C. stands for.

Maybe I’m missing the parts that are homophobic, sexist, or generally offensive. What I saw was this (based on the order of the clips in the link):

Pt.1 – The roasting of cops, playing to the stereotypes of cops as lazy, slow to react, etc. Bonus source of potential biting social commentary: the headline on the newspaper heralds the selection of Heather Fong as police chief. Is this video perhaps condemning – or even faux-mourning – the pre-Fong era in which the SFPD was in sorry shape? To me, the image implies the days of such Tai-Chi, job-ditching in the department are over.

That would be a good thing.

By the way – the video as accessed via the cbs5.com website features a title card omitted from the above link in which the cop characters are named “Hamster and Big Dummy.” ‘Nuff said.

Pt.2 – A condemnation of the war on drugs that sucks up dozens of officers in pursuit of tiny amount of crack while piles of coke snorted above Market go undetected? A hyperbolic, congratulations of a high-achieving subdivision? An inside joke portraying the undercover drug cops’ jobs as effortless when the intended viewers – beat cops, etc – is probably no laughing matter at all, thick with danger, etc? Probably. Offensive? I’m going to go with no.

Pt. 3 – More self-mockery of the stereotypical cop who looks like the fool when compared to everyman bum he runs over. Think deeper guys. If you think this video means SFPD approves of running over the homeless, you need to go back to your high school English teacher and apologize profusely for missing the point.

Pt. 4 – Makes fun of guys! Makes fun of chauvinist pigs! Shit, this one actually made me laugh. Who’s the mug here, people? The cop! I’d love it if the outrage from City Hall or elsewhere came from concern that cops were too full of self-loathing and might need a self-esteem boost. But what this who thing demonstrates a MASSIVE overreaction.

There is also a mock hot-guy video featuring a captain who – quite believably – contends that his participation its production was non-existent. The video’s producer used outtakes of the Captain flubbing his lines. Now the guy’s name is toast in the community and for what?

But hey, I’m not about to tell the unfunny that they aren’t funny. Though, technically, I could do so since it doesn’t violate my Not Funny Not Funny Rule since it wasn’t meant to be funny to begin with. I urge you all to click around, watch the videos, read the coverage, google it up as much as you can and make your own decision. I was expecting to see something FAR different from what I saw given the Mayor’s and Chief Fong’s rhetoric. Especially moving where local news interviews with beat cops who decry the overreaction, correctly saying that we, the general public, can’t possibly understand how important humor is as a release from the stress of what they face everyday.

There’s a reason I’m not a cop – I don’t know if I’m strong enough to face danger, an increasingly and more heavily armed public, or to be able to sleep nights seeing what they see: death, sadness, misery, decay, etc, etc.

I think the Mayor fumbled this badly. And I take any offense on humor quite seriously.

No joke.

Although my willingness to show support for freedom would normally trump my aversion to attire “suitable for court”, I was unable to attend the hearing this morning at SF’s Ninth Circuit Court.

Local boy, Sun co-founder, and staunch civil libertarian John Gilmore was there trying to stop the police state now in affect at the airports. Tim Cavanaugh shares his impression of how it went. Be warned that it isn’t particularly cheery.

Someone with understanding of our legal system once remarked “You may be right, but you’re not necessarily the right one [to challenge the law.]” The first to challenge a law sets the precedent. If it isn’t done right the first time, then we’re usually stuck with the much more arduous legislative route to change. Not a promising situation, since that branch is from whence the evil originated.

It ain’t over ’til it’s over. Stay tuned.

That’s what we are. Heck, I’ll admit to it too. It’s been really c-o-l-d these couple weeks, and the wind and rain doesn’t help either. Although it seems to be getting better — I actually saw sun this afternoon! Last week’s torrential downpour was nightmarish though… I felt like we were a herd of drowned rats swarming the streets. Not to mention the crazy traffic problems the weather caused. Of course, the problem is further compounded in our house because our heater is on the fritz. That meant lots of sweaters and blankets. BRRR!

I know people in the Midwest and Alaska are laughing at me now. But I can’t be the only one freezing out there — anyone here have similar issues with our San Francisco winter?

So the other night, while I was at the SF showing of the celebrated indie flick Firecracker, trying to hide my giddiness over sitting a few feet away from star Mike Patton, my friend, (whom I had incidentally tried to reach that night to join me) was on his way out to the fine ‘burb of Fremont to be the unwitting participant of a police sting. Now I know why he didn’t call me back. He’s been in the clink.

Fremont PD, having already cleared the streets of every rapist, murderer, and thief, has an excess of manpower. They have so much free time, that they actually have to lure non-violent alleged law breakers to their little utopia. Thank you, Fremont taxpayers, for spending your money on saving the greater bay area from the horrors of consensual sex for money.

Read on for a first person account of the incident. I have made only slight edits to protect the innocent pending retention of counsel.
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