SF Public Safety blog is up, and has some interesting crime-related stats. From my Central District newsletter, looks like year-over-year stats are in, and they seem kind of cheery (despite the recession news everywhere)… SF Public Safety opinion here…

While we can’t extrapolate meaningfully significant results from such early trends, these reductions nonetheless serve as an accurate snapshot of where we are, thus far in 2009, and hence inform us on the effectivness of present deployment strategies.

Whereas, Captain Dudley from Central District sums up Central District YTD numbers as:

Overall, I would say we are down in violent crime and up in property
related crimes by about the same margin. Some of the crime or incidents
listed have to do with where we are in relation to location. Since we
are a tourism hub, we receive a lot of reports of lost or stolen items
such as luggage, small electronics and passports. The night life in our
entertainment corridors has its share of assaults and drunken related
behavior.

I would have suspected a lot more property and drugs related crimes due to the recession, but since it’s only in the last few months, YTD numbers aren’t going to reflect that. Central District site is here. Don’t rely on me for your neighborhood crime info, sign up for your own newsletter, by district. Crime Maps info, can be interesting too.

Tomorrow night, the San Francisco Film Society presents a special program at the Palace of Fine Arts: 13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests.

As might be expected from that title and the picture above, the show consists of pop duo Dean and Britta performing original songs with a 4-piece band while a selection of Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests are projected in large scale behind them. (The New York Times reviewed the show here a couple weeks ago.)

Warhol created his Screen Tests from 1964 to 1966 as part of his ongoing exploration of the transient nature of celebrity. Whenever a visitor with potential star quality visited the Factory — a potential judged by Warhol, of course — he would ask his visitor to sit in front of a tripod-mounted 16mm Bolex camera. A strong key light would be set up and the camera would be loaded with a 100-foot roll of black and white film. Often the visitor was instructed to sit as still as possible, or to perform some other action (like toothbrushing), and to stare into the camera without blinking while the camera was running. The resulting films were 2.75 minutes long, but when shown they are invariably slowed down such that each one lasts exactly 4 minutes.

From the 300 or so that Warhol filmed in those three years, he made several compilations for public exhibition, including two called The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys and The Thirteen Most Beautiful Women. The title of this show is an homage to those compilations, but the thirteen Screen Tests featured are drawn from the totality. The featured stars include Edie Sedgwick (of course), Nico (but of course!), Ann Buchanan, Lou Reed, Dennis Hopper, and eight others famous and otherwise.

And if you’re interested in learning a bit more, you might check out the trailer here, or Alex Barkett’s interview with Dean Wareham over here at SFist!

Advance tickets can be purchased here.

Recently I started writing for SF Metblogs without really any clue as to what I was doing or what I should write about so I decided to get in touch with some of the other writers to meet them in person and get some tips.

I figured there might be some other people that love San Francisco as much as I do and made a resolution to blog more, so I figured we should open up our meetup to anyone interested in getting the run down.

Sean Bonner, co-founder of Metblogs is in town and we’re going to hang out at my favorite bar, Bender’s Bar & Grill, so come hang out, celebrate Ground Hog Day and that 6 more weeks of winter is someone else’s problem. Most importantly, down some tasty beverages and cheap sushi!

Bender’s Bar & Grill
Monday, Feb., 2, 2009
6:00PM – 8:00PM
806 S. Van Ness Ave. (at 19th St.) Click here for map

New shop opened 3 different locations downtown. Between 3rd and 4th on Market is “Seller’s Market” a kind of quick, organic eating place with SCORE outside seating. I’m somewhat pimping, as a friend’s coworker left her ad agency job to be marketing manager here, and plied me with fresh drinks and yummy guacamole…

Besides the great people-watching, as this is the common corridor from Bart to all MUNI points beyond, I ran into an old friend here, walking to the gym, and I got to ply her with beer and conversation. Isn’t that a fantasy we all have- that on the way to the gym our friends will pull us into a cafe and make us drink beer and eat nachos?

I was perusing the rooms & shares section of SFBay Craigslist and came across this posting. It doesn’t indicate if he is looking for a male or female roomie…but I think he might have more success posting it in “misc romance.”

I was inspired by Tara’s post, Public Transportation 2.0, to add more than a comment.

When I was in Bangalore in 2007, I was struck by the utility of the ubiquitous motorized rickshaws, known locally as autocabs or just autos:

Any visitor to Asia has seen these things, since they’re in every Asian city. And they are cheap and they are everywhere. When I mentioned them to one of the panjandrums of the Bay Area public transportation scene, the executive director of one of the NGOs that lobbies for transportation policy, he was dismissive. “Oh, the tuk-tuks,” he said. “They clog up the streets, and they pollute. That’s not what we need. We need commuter rail that goes everywhere.”

Oh, fine, Mr. Bay Area Transit Boss! So I’m on my way to work in the morning. Never mind how I get to the BART station; I take a train across the bay to, say, Ashby. Now that I have alighted at your gigantor 1970s-era concrete monster BART station, I need to get to work, 2.3 miles away. It’s too far to walk. I could wait 20 minutes for a bus, and then that bus would take 20 minutes to poke along for the two miles, making my trip to work take over an hour… And that’s why I drive every day instead.

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