This weekend is the debut of a new local fashion event on Saturday night called Underground Runway…

Fans of checking out all the upcoming styles & new designers, some very pretty ladies and deviant dancefloor action should show up around 9ish when the event is really rolling.

Guests will be treated to hot and flashy runway presentations from each designer’s latest sexy collections, and a lavish after party with music from top Bay Area DJ talents like DJ Undakut, Sake 1, and others in da mix…

Local recording artist Malika ( of MTV’s Making The Band) will host the Underground Runway show this Saturday, featuring multiple local designers at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco on Saturday March 3rd 2007, with doors and VIP cocktail reception starting at 8:30 pm.

Local Designers To Be Featured Include :

* Mastahn Fanaka

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* RJ Designs / RJ Latina

more designers pix & info after the jump
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So my brother in Seattle pings me that Clover, a new coffee company, is putting some machines into Ritual Roasters and I should go check it out. I emailed some friends who live nearby to see if they’ve noticed the new machines- it’s a very precise brewing of coffee, basically. French Press, but moreso. I head in today and talk to the guy roasting coffee, and he confirms that he made his first Clover coffee this morning. He made me some Ethiopian-Limmu, and I have to say it was really yummy. It’s a kind of precise creation of a single cup of coffee- beans ground and put into an espresso-like machine, where the water, etc. is all done automatically. There are a lot of settings, I guess, and sometimes it’s only as good as the barista managing the machine.

I usually put milk in my coffee to kill the bitter, but these are so refined, you don’t have to. So I had my first black coffee in quite a while. I recommend it- same cost as a cup of coffee but really quite good. “Hints of lime and lemon” he said, as I tasetd it. He wanted to get it at a little different temperature, but to me it was heaven.

On the morning after a series of storms, the sun rose on Bernal Heights in a clear sky early this morning.

It’s with great joy that I make this post. The best San Francisco podcast has returned to us after a far too long hiatus. The first new episode is “the crocker spite fence“.

History is rife with bizarre confrontations and grand feuds, but in San Francisco none were more bizarre than the showdown between Charles Crocker (bellicose railroad robber baron) and Nicholas Yung (unassuming German undertaker).

Call it “a tale of two egos”. It was over a very small piece of land, but this property was located on center stage of 1870’s San Francisco — the very top of Nob Hill.

The new website still has a few bugs in it but you can listen to the episodes right on the site until the RSS is fixed. Welcome back Sparkletack!

Sandy soil is a problem for the Bay Area for two reasons: it does terribly in earthquakes and it’s disturbingly common around here, especially in the City. There are ways to deal with it, of course. Aside from building defensively, a good idea anywhere in earthquake country, engineers can impregnate the soil with epoxy or the like. This isn’t very environmentally friendly, though, as uncured epoxies aren’t very nice chemicals to have around you.

Slashdot ran a story today about a possible alternate solution. Researchers at UC Davis have found a way to use Bacillus pasteurii bacteria (commonly found in soil) to fill in the areas between sand grains with calcite, turning the sand into sandstone. It’s the same sort of thing that coral does when creating its skeleton.

As of now, they’ve only tried this on a a very small scale in the lab, but they’re studying the technique to see if it’ll scale up economically and safely. The UC Davis press release is here.

Yep, first it was lightening, then thunder, then small, tiny pea-sized hail started bombarding the atrium of my apartment building, windows, and deck. Several delighted screams from neighbors, and it lasted about twenty minutes. Now it’s back to boring old rain and I have no excuse not to return my videos. Probably rolling all over San francisco- at 9:00 to 9:20 it was in North Beach. Funny in a land of none or at least boring weather, we finally got some!

On Stockton at Greenwich the hail on the corner of the intersection had been squished into a tiny little SNOW-like pile. A small snowman was created in front of the Deli there, with little twigs as arms and stones as eyes. About 10 inches tall. Gotta love our snow.

Update: Result of last night’s weather, SF Gate reports landslide occurring at 3am on the 400 block of Broadway. All they could think of was “Landslide Forces Evacuations?” How about… Stripclub Gets Stripped; Mountain moves to Showgirls; Showgirls Shown Wrath of God; hmm… maybe I should keep my day job. Here we go- inspiration at last- Water Break in NB Stripclub – Customers All Wet.

Update 2/27 4PM: Captain Dudley of the Central Precinct sent out this note:

I spent all morning at the rock slide that began out back of the 400 block of Vallejo Street. Several tons of rock crashed down on rear facing structures on the even side of Broadway Street. At the time of this report, we ran a unified command with the Department of Building Inspections and helped evacuate and secure approximately 85 apartments and businesses. The American Red Cross was on hand from 3:30 AM and set up a shelter for displaced residents at the Chinatown Rec Center at 1199 Mason Street. A meeting is scheduled for tomorrow 2/28/07 at noon at 440 Broadway for the community to hear from City Agencies on what will be happening over the next days to week.

I tried to upload this entry earlier , but DNS errors or something prevented me from informing folks that local reps from the SFPD, City Government and various homeless services agencies and community members were heading down to UC Hastings civic center area campus to have a “Town Hall Forum” on the myriad of issues affecting the Tenderloin.

Confirmed speakers yakking as i write tonight include Ned Howey of Tenderloin Aids Resource Center, Tod Plummer of Legal Resources for Children and members of the neighborhood, and faculty and students involved with UC Hastings College of Law’s Race & Poverty Law Journal.

Also on the bill, Bill Bart of General Assistance Advocacy Project. The name of that non-profit group always befuddles me, because as a former skid row hotel dweller & GA recipient, why anyone would want to advocate you stay on General Assistance is beyond me… But I’m sure Bill and his pals have their reasons.

Event is open to the public and runs til 8 pm at 198 McCallister @ Hyde…

As the cliche goes, to make a queer village, it takes more than just a clutch of GLBT residents and businesses. In other words, there’s a world of difference between a neighborhood where you can comfortably embrace your off-the-gender-charts lover and having a shop on every block where you can buy rainbow toilet paper.

If queer neighborhoods mean more to you than a preponderance of Pride flags, make some noise on Tuesday night, when the GLBT Historical Society and Castro Coalition are holding the third roundtable in their series, Queer in the City: GLBT Neighborhoods and Urban Planning, with guests:

*Dawn Philips, an East Bay activist for people of color and housing rights who helped lead a fight against gay gentrification in Oakland.

* Don Reuter an independent scholar developing a book on the rise and imperilment of U.S. gay neighborhoods.

*Leading feminist scholar and University of Michigan anthropology professor Gayle Rubin discussing the South of Market area as an alternate view of queer neighborhood.

*University of Chicago doctoral candidate Tim Stewart-Winter describing the historical transformation of the Castro and the GLBT community.

I’ll be there being a shameless Gayle Rubin fangirl.

And if you miss it, hopefully this one will get vlogged, as well — a collection of videos from their last roundtable, “Are Queer Neighborhoods Worth Saving?” (this is rhetorical, yes) are all up on the GoogTube.

(photo: Lasagna Boy, aka salim, via flickr)

Just in from Wired’s Table of Malcontents: Annalee Newitz hosted “a scotch-fueled blogger brawl” yestereve (including SF Metbloggers Liz Henry and Melissa Gira) for Oscar Night. The ceremony’s long over, of course, but you can see the blog or Liz’s photos. Looks like fun!

All the old Italians are not gone (trying to quote Ferlinghetti’s poem). Walking with my aunt past St. Peter & Paul Silesian on Ash Wednesday. She was getting an early start on mass, and started talking to an elderly gentleman in front of the church. He listened to her for awhile, then said, “No speak English.” or something to that effect, and that he only spoke Italian. After he left, we stood in front of the church and I was still kind of thunderstruck. She was visiting from Minnesota and had no idea why I was so amazed until I told her that there are a lot of people who think all of the Italians have left North Beach. It was neat. I didn’t stick around for the mass, as I’m (cough) a very lapsed Catholic. Also, I have no photos of the huge church, St. Peter & Paul Silesian, on Washington Square Park. How odd!