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New daily flights from SFO to India via Shanghai

If your job has been outsourced to Mumbai and you want to go retain it in India, there’s a new option for you…

SFO will soon have Jet Airways as a new tenant, becoming the first Indian airline to fly from San Francisco to Mumbai and only the second airline worldwide to fly nonstop from San Francisco to Shanghai. The airline which also has codesharing with American Airlines, will begin SFO flights in May, and previously launched daily service from New York’s JFK and Newark airports, as well as Toronto within the past year.

The airline, which won an award for ‘Best Full Service Airline in India’ for the year 2007, touts it’s luxury class offerings ranging from First Class suites with private closets, dining tables for two, and 23″ flat-screens. The Premiere business class features “pods” with 73″-long totally flat beds. Even the Economy seats supposedly divy up more legroom than average and all customers can fiddle with hi-tech personal entertainment systems, complete with 200+ movies, games and Bose noise-canceling headphones.
A Business Class Pod
The Indian airline which was founded in 1993, also runs flights to and from Brussels, London, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Dhaka, Kuwait, Bahrain, Muscat and Doha.

For more information, please visit: http://www.jetairways.com

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Noise Pops as Hollyweird Haunts SF

Inside the Fed’s mostly abandoned 50 UN Plaza, Harvey Milk & George Moscone are being repeatedly asassinated for Gus Van Zant’s cameras over the past few days, meanwhile the ghost of Darby Crash is haunting a theater owned by a certain bankrupt college on 16th St tonight.

“What We Do Is Secret”, a film written about the LA punk band the Germs, has it’s SF debut at 9:15 at the Roxie. Darby Crash’s life story is one of a frustrated street hustler and his obnoxious hardcore punk band breaking down barriers to blow minds (and ear drums) in L.A’s monied moustache rock scene of the late ’70’s. Let’s just say the Eagles, Stevie Nicks and the rest of the denim & diamonds crowd didn’t look up from their mirrored coffee tables to notice the dirty din blasting out of the Starwood in Hollywood.

Ironically, or not, the film’s cast and backers couldn’t be farther from the real life of Darby Crash, amongst those appearing on behalf of the production tonight are ER star Shane West as Darby, and film producer and millionaire scion of the SF socialite scene, Todd Traina. Other cast members up on the screen include the daughters of 60’s & 70’s music industry big wig’s Lenny Waronker and Papa John Phillips, showing that a lil’ nepotism is still hip in show biz.

These two pedigreed young ladies, Anna Waronker & Bijou Phillips, get to play the punky pioneering presences of Joan Jett and Germs bassist Lorna Doon respectively, women in reallife who weren’t handed any family favors by the entertainment industry, gals that had to prove their worth in inexorably inhospitable conditions.

But who ever said Hollyweird was about “keeping it real…”

More on the flick, and other Noise Pop events after the jump:
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All Tmw’s Parties: Artists Television Access

ata_big_logo_home.gifOn Friday, beginning at 8 pm, Artists Television Access, the 25+ year old art space on 21st and Valencia, will hold a year-end fundraiser Electric Revival Party:

In the main gallery:
- DayV Jones, videollusionist extraordinaire, dazzles the house with images from his moving picture trove
- DJX-1138, the Bay Area’s only all-analog sci-fi DJ, electrifies the atmosphere with his collection of far out tunes
- Lee Montgomery, founder of Neighborhood Public Radio, conjures old spectres in a new video installation, from the project “Broadcast Version”

Downstairs in the inner sanctum:
- Craig Baldwin, legendary mad cinema scientist, shares celluloid gems from the Other Cinema archive in his subterranean laboratory
- Low Speed Duplicating, free-spirited Japanese sound duo, beckon spirits from the earth with savage and sublime psychedelic noise

As it’s a fundraiser, they’re charging admission, but they’re also advertising that it’s catered.

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Liveblogging Bonds’ last home game

Barry Bonds in left field at AT&T Park, 26 Sep 2007
Live from AT&T Park, San Francisco:
9:50 pm: The Giants — the lineup full of scrubs and callups by the 9th inning — managed to put another run across, and the fans who remained — and why not remain, it was still a beautiful warm night — were starting to make noise. I even saw a few rally caps. But the veterans quickly restored a sense of reality to the proceedings. With two on, no out and a run in, Pedro Feliz struck out swinging at the worst pitch I ever saw, and then Ray Durham grounded into a double play to end the game.

Then the final scoreboard tribute to Bonds — with the honoree nowhere near the field — took place: a montage of Greatest Hits set to the tune of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” I thought I heard him singing “I’ve already changed out of my uniform, and I’m… on… the… highway.”

(For another view of the evening see this excellent SJ Mercury News piece by Andrew Baggarly.
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Mysterious body in front of SF Hilton

While the staff of the hotel and media were mum, this weekend reports vary as to the origin of a white male seen dead in his underwear in front of the SF Hilton on O’Farrell about midnight on Sunday night.

Some rumors are that a man jumped from the 24th floor of the SF Hilton and died on O’Farrell St. The fire department showed up and quickly hosed the blood down the gutter into the sewer, and the incident was more or less officially over.

Some say a body was tossed out of a moving car, possibly a cab…

Others heard a loud noise, and thought it was a shooting, possibly related to a string of robberies…

Local media were also completely void of mentions on the incident thus far to my knowledge…
hiltonbody.jpg

Whatever it officially was, it now amounts to just another body found in a big city…

Here’s a foto taken by an SF cab driver and blogger I know… more speculation at his SF taxicab website, as well as numerous tales from behind the wheel in the city.

http://sftaxicab.blogspot.com

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Aaron Peskin - Our Only Hope ?

Everyone knows that the city’s parks are in need of some help, and while cutting all the shrubs and finally chasing the live-in speed freaks out is a start, there are other issues afoot.

One Cole Valley Neighborhood NIMBY is angry, and getting no where with the folks ensconced in historic McLaren Lodge, he’s been reaching out to Board of Supes Prez Aaron Peskin at City Hall. In fact in a recent open letter, he claims that Peskin, is “Our Only Hope”, giving the nerdy Telegraph Hill dweller a rep more akin to the one Princess Leia heaved on Obie Wan Kenobi.

Perhaps such Sci-Fi dramatics are warranted when you spend hour upon unpaid hour voluntarily analyzing the topsy turvy alternate universe of the 2005-2006 Park & Rec expenditures, something the city doesn’t seem to have time to do. It’s a wacky world where one guy can turn a park patrol gig into a 6 figure feast & make more than 70% of his pay via overttime, and yer average staff gardener or debris truck drivers can literally rake in over $80,000 a year, yet basic services like public restrooms languish.

With the recent California Supreme Court decision that declares gov’ts must release public employee salary information…who knows, maybe something will finally come of this long running ten year fiasco.

After all, it was in a city employee audit in 1996 that this comment was made:
” By providing a culture of unfettered acceptance and opportunity for individuals to increase their salaries substantially over base levels, the City may be inadvertently encouraging its employees to overwork themselves and to manipulate the work scheduling system to achieve personal economic advantage.”

Huh? like G.W Bush said of the effects of Katrina, who could have ever imagined or foreseen such a thing occuring?

Not the folks in charge in McLaren Lodge anyhow… hmmm, maybe the guy in charge of the still fk’d up stables can get a job running FEMA?

The full letter to Peskin about SF tax dollars at work in the parks after the jump…
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Riding the new hybrid Muni bus

muni_hybrid.jpg
On Saturday morning I found one of Muni’s new hybrid buses pulling up to my stop.

According to Muni’s page, there are 86 hybrid buses in the fleet. Somewhat misleadingly, they say “Electric Powered” on the side by the front door.

The almost still-new bus was comfortable, the ride a little smoother, and somewhat quieter than a regular diesel bus — but not completely without engine noise. The rear seating area is raised, while the main deck is much closer to the street than older buses.
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Silent night

blastoff.jpgUsually, it’s not just the 4th of July that stimulates fireworks users. The days leading up to the Fourth feature an increasing number of bangs, until the “nonstop fusillade of illicit fireworks” in the Mission District on the evening of the Fourth itself. (Here’s a Chronicle recap of fireworks-related injuries and arrests from this week.)

But last night — the 5th of July — is often almost as bad. While it’s hard to imagine that the full battle effect of the 4th could have left anything unexploded, the local denizens manage to locate whatever’s left and blow it up the next night.

But last night? Almost nothing. I was heading toward bed around 10:30 when I realized I hadn’t heard a single boom. This is unprecedented. It almost makes me accept the noise of the 4th, as long as I know it’s all over for the rest of the year — until local towns again start selling fireworks in anticipation of New Year’s Eve.

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Block Politics

OK, so I got in this discussion with a neighbor the other night. Do you think that a medical marijuana dispensary next to a rehab facility for street people, is a wise choice? Case in point: Columbus Ave, North Beach Citizens next door to a dispensary. It’s not that I think marijuana should be illegal- I don’t. I think it should be legal. It’s that it’s illegal federally and so we get this reseller industry hanging out in front. So folks trying very hard to kick habits, get off the street are encountering this side business ever morning and night. Wise? How could this go on so long, too?

I’ve heard the local businesses are not too happy about it either. My neighbor had a great suggestion: put the dispensary in the basement of the City Hall, or the police station on Vallejo.
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6th Street Strip Report : Lawyers, Launches & Last Blasts

It may be hard to imagine that 6th & Mission once had it’s own miniature golf course, but here it is in a 1930’s photo from the SF Public Library collection. Nowadays the recreational pursuits in the neighborhood are quite different, and hardly as wholesome looking.

The current strip of nightclubs along SF’s seedy 6th Street strip and it’s offshoot alleys provide a classic study in contrasts. Fresh faced suburban bred 20-somethings careen intoxicatedly in and out of clubs looking to partake in some sort of overpriced quasi-glam nightlife activities, whilst dozens of ever present ne’er do’ells, derelicts and addicts of various sorts bob about, some actually laying sprawled on the concrete.

Word filters out that after a good few years of pioneering the attempted hipster takeover of the block, The Arrow Bar operators are tired of struggling and are calling it quits. This weekend is the last hurrah, with Monday night being the last chance to grab a PBR at their farewell blast. The place had been for sale since early this year, and the business opportunity to own your own urban squalor centric club was listed for about $160,000. I’m not sure who the new caretakers of the license might be, but we’ll wish ‘em luck.

You might notice how empty the Arrow Bar bar is in this real estate website photo, and that’s either because the cover charge to get into the 900 sq ft dump was normally so high on a typical Monday that no one bothered to come in, or that everyone is quite possibly in the bathroom getting high…

Me thinks that white powder ain’t leftover Comet bathroom cleanser on the handy counter by the sink y’all…

Meanwhile, over at the sleek 1000 capacity Mezzanine club on Jessie, the cavernous concrete club was packed with dancing fools last night gulping down $8 & $10 cocktails while grooving to the U.K electronica mash maestros Soulwax. The “no ins & outs” Mezzanine is seemingly raking in dough from it’s captive audience, where even a 60 cent roll of lifesavers can set you back $2…

The joint is staffed to the gills with 4 bars pumping out top shelf drinks, there’s state of the art sound, video and ventilation systems, a comfortable VIP area and backstage replete with shower & eye pleasing art, furniture, fridge and dimmed recessed lighting.

Meanwhile the largest demographic segment of tenants in the square mile around 6th street are people making under $10,000 a year and most literally don’t have apot to piss in, unless you count a communal toilet down the hall…

If you’d like to read more on the 6th Street Strip and trivia and travails of Club Six and it’s neighbors, follow after the jump. We’ve even got a link that’ll get you onto the guestlist for a private JetBlue sponsored showcase at Mezzanine this Tuesday night, May 1st with Sweden’s current hottest musical exports The Teddybears STHLM…
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