Five people were hurt at a house on Congo St. (map) when an explosion ripped through the first floor of the house, pictured at right courtesy Google Street View.

Best detail in the Chronicle’s story: A 20-year-old cat, Paws, was saved by a 19-year-old man, a resident of the flat.

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As I mentioned last week, this weekend is so stuffed full of book events — oddly enough, most of them on Thursday — that this post covers only the next three days. Highlights are Bizarro, Ben Ratliff, Chip Kidd, Opium’s Literary Death Match, and the final SF in SF event for the year. Get all the details after the jump.
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If you’ve spent any time in the Mission lately, you’ll have noticed these babies with microchips and gumballs for brains wheatpasted up all over the place. Well, they’re by London-based street artist Paul Insect and he’s got a three-week show opening tonight at FIFTY24SF, 7:00 PM. [via Juxtapoz]

Also, in other art-plus-booze news, tonight is the monthly Gallery Crawl downtown, AKA First Thursdays. A whole bunch of galleries open their doors to the public from 5:30 to 7:30, though 49 Geary is most famous for the event, and it’s where you’ll probably want to start. Quoth Yelper Jill S.: “First Thursday is a fun time to go check this place out. Go early to avoid the drunk girls over-imbibing on all the free wine.” I don’t know, might be bad advice for some… [thanks, SFist!]

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Last night some 2,000 people came out to City Hall to hold a candlelight vigil and protest the passage of Proposition 8. Susie Cagle at Curbed predicts this is just the beginning, and she’s right. You can take part in the next major protest this Friday. Word here. The plan is to meet above the Civic Center BART station (Market and 7th) at 5:30 PM, then march down Market street to Castro Street, down to 18th, and then back along 18th to Mission Dolores Park. The bigger the turnout, the better.

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I was walking back from the David Chiu headquarters, from Polk Street & Bush over Russian Hill, through Chinatown to North Beach, basically diagonally across the district, and looking in at shops and chatting with tourists, I realized my greatest fear this supervisor election: that people who don’t know the issues will vote for a name that they know, Alioto. He’s not a bad man, but I feel he’s out of touch.

I wrote up a comparison on all of the nominees, if you’re interested in the issues. Basically, David Chiu takes the bus, wants the plywood gone, and has a serious plan on crime (as an ex-prosecutor). His parents were working the phones when I stopped by, and they’re adorable.

p.s. my iPhone camera is on the fritz, but in a funky way

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The SF Gate story begins:

Federal immigration authorities raided more than a dozen locations in San Francisco, Richmond and South San Francisco today, arresting several alleged members of the notorious MS-13 street gang, authorities said.

Authorities said the investigation targeted a San Francisco-based faction of the violent group, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, which started in Southern California with roots in El Salvador.

“This is a major take-down,” said Northern California U.S. Attorney Joe Russoniello, adding that the investigation dealt with alleged drug trafficking, gun running, terrorism and extortion activities of the group. He declined to provide further details about the raids.

Full story here.

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First noticed it walking back from Union Street and Leavenworth- we were on top of the hill, it was shocking and stopped us in our tracks. Then a crowd gathered, we all phoned around trying to figure out what was happening. It was around 10PM then, and the fire looked tall and light red, in the south and center of the island. It looked like a volcano crater, across the top in a line- which someone in our crowd said looked like a “lava line.”

A small crowd gathered and we all were chatting- with of course the usual drunk person screaming “It’s not OK! It’s not OK!” Later on, another person in our group yelled, “It’s armageddon!” not to sound too weird, a lot of us were just silently watching it, or muttering to ourselves little nuggets of info we’d picked up somewhere.

The weird thing about being up on Russian Hill was that we smelled the smoke really keenly, and ash even fell on my phone. We also didn’t see any emergency vehicles - just one after a half hour- on the access road on the South side. Not to say there weren’t any, we just didn’t see it form oru vantage. Also, only 1 helicopter before I left.

Later, walked out to (as far as I could get on) Aquatic Pier and it seemed pretty under control. Not really true though- as news showed later. Small groups were gathered on the steps at the cove, or out near the fenced off area near the MacDonnell road.

Just checked tv and it looks like the HD camera on the roof of the ABC news building, a 1/2 mile East showed a lot more damage. Lots of drunk sailors & partiers out- but also people with telephotos, on bikes, trying to capture the island on fire.”

More pictures here, at SFist from the souther, Yerba Buena Island angle, on SF Gate

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Lads and Jockeys, which screens at 9:15 tonight and 4:15 tomorrow at the Clay Theatre, is Benjamin Marquet’s first feature film. In this excellent documentary, he takes on an unusual subject: a 40-year-old boarding school in Chantilly, France, 30 miles north of Paris, whose sole purpose is to train young people to run stables and ride horses. It is the largest such school in France, possibly in Europe, and only a talented few will become the jockeys who ride in professional races. Just as most music students enter conservatories with aspirations to become soloists, most of the students who enter this equestrian school aspire to become jockeys, the most glamorous profession in horse racing. But those who don’t have the talent for it — that is, most of the students — will remain “lads,” short for “stable lads.” In his film, Marquet charts the progress of three students during their first year in the school. It’s not an easy path. They are apprenticed out to current or former professional jockeys, and those men have little patience with unprofessional behavior, even when it comes from a 15-year-old boy. The jockeys, by their example and often harsh instruction, seek to instill a respect for the horses and a love for their craft. And these three boys, at least, rise to the awesome challenge. We see them develop, almost despite themselves, a truly professional attitude towards both success and failure. And we do see a measure of each. It’s a very engaging documentary, and I highly recommend it. Yesterday I had a chance to sit down with Mr. Marquet and chat with him for half an hour about his film.

How did you end up doing a whole film on this subject? How did you find the school?
After I studied anthropology in Paris, I lived in Senegal for a year, and shot my first documentary over there. It was a 35-minute short, and I came back to Paris with the movie, and people seemed interested in it. Well, my father works in the movie business also, and he loves horses — for 40 years he has ridden horses in Chantilly, where this film takes place. And he saw my first film and suggested that I do something about the whole world of horse racing. At first I was like, maybe not, because horses are not really my stuff, and working with my father — same thing, maybe a little bit risky! But finally, I said, “okay, I studied anthropology and I love Africa, but there’s no reason I couldn’t do something in France.” So I said, “okay, let’s try it.” I had no idea what Chantilly really looked like, what the industry was all about. So I said, “first, I’ll just go see what is there, and second, if I do something, it won’t be about horses but about people. So I spent a couple of days, and really quickly I understood that there are tons of characters there, all involved in horse racing in some way, and I would just have my choice. I mean, they’re all really original people, with extraordinary backgrounds.
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I just watched KQED’s latest Gallery Crawl video (running time 13:43), and discovered that the show by “Lydia Fong” over at Ratio 3 is actually work by world-famous San Francisco native Barry McGee, who is still obviously keeping things cool. (If you don’t know about him yet, check out this great PBS feature page as well.) There is definitely a slightly different flavor to the work done under his pseudonym. In KQED’s video, he gives a fairly interesting tour of the exhibition, and it’s worth watching even if you’re not already a fan. Hi-res Quicktime is here, lo-res YouTube is here. If you have the time to get personal, the gallery is over on Stevenson at Duboce, a block west of Mission. The show will be up through October 18th, so you have just over one week left to see it.

The second half of KQED’s program is about Gallery 16’s current show, a 15-year retrospective called “These Are the People in Your Neighborhood,” involving just about everybody the gallery has ever worked with. You can watch just the 7-minute segment devoted to that show by clicking here, and you definitely shouldn’t miss it. The (huge) retrospective runs through November 7th. In the past 15 years the gallery has come up a bit among commercial galleries; as interviewed artist Rex Ray put it, the gallery used to be on 16th, but now it’s on “glamorous 3rd Street,” at Bryant. But it has done so without losing any of its daring. Owner Griff Williams describes it as a place where artists are “free to fail.” And that’s a freedom that every artist needs.

[Images by the galleries named above; please click on them to visit their websites!] Comments are off for this post

Annoyed with being on the West Coast and having our ballots counted after the election’s been called? You can vote early. From the SF County site

ABSENTEE BALLOTS and VOTING EARLY

* Any voter may vote early by Absentee Ballot (voting by mail), or they may vote early in person.
Mail in your Absentee Ballot to the Department of Elections:
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett
San Francisco, CA. 94102 OR
Drop it off at the Department of Elections
Room 48, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett
(Ground Floor, City Hall) OR
Drop it off at a polling location before 8 p.m. on Election Day
To vote early in person:
Go to the Department of Elections beginning January 7, 2008:
Room 48, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett (City Hall, Ground Floor),
Monday - Friday– 8:00 am. to 5:00 pm.
Saturday & Sunday, Jan 26 & 27–10:00 am. to 4:00 pm. (enter from Grove Street only)
You don’t have to give a reason for voting early.
Any ballot that arrives at the Department of Elections after 8 p.m. on Election Day will not be counted.

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