TheStreet.com, a financial news website, is shutting its San Francisco office, reported Portfolio.com. The announcement doesn’t say how many jobs that would mean, but surely not that many compared with the 5000 worldwide job cuts announced last week by Sun, which has its HQ in Silicon Valley. The announcement follows that of Six Apart last week, where 18 lost their jobs.

Meanwhile CNet links to who’s firing, who’s hiring.

I wonder if the folks at TheStreet.com followed the advice they printed last month about layoff do’s and don’ts.

The San Francisco Film Society presents the Third Annual San Francisco International Animation Festival at Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema, from Thursday through Sunday.

The opening film is Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues (pictured above), which has been described as “Betty Boop meets bhangra.” It “updates the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana by weaving the settings of San Francisco’s Potrero Hill and ancient India with the traditions of shadow puppetry, 1920s-era American torch-singing and Bollywood.” Awesome. It plays at 7:00 and 9:15 PM Thursday night. Nina Paley is expected to attend.

The rest of the Festival includes “the talk of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival,” the documentary/fiction hybrid Waltz with Bashir; Idiots and Angels, the latest from animation legend Bill Plympton, who is also expected to attend; seven shorts programs with the filmmakers in attendance, one free panel discussion, and a “Meet the Maker” seminar with master animator Gene Deitch (he did the original Where the Wild Things Are). Check out the whole schedule here, and get your tickets here.

The 12th International Latino Film Festival is set to open tomorrow night at the Castro Theatre with Cachao: Uno Mas!, and it closes November 23rd. In between, the festival offers more than 50 films at four venues in San Francisco (plus one in Berkeley and 10 on the Peninsula).

The opening night film celebrates “the life of one of the most influential Afro-Cuban musicians,” Israel “Cachao” Lopez. The documentary “follows the legendary bassist from his early days in Cuba to worldwide recognition and features interviews with Andy Garca, John Santos, and more.” (As I recall, it was quite the favorite at SFIFF 51.) Naturally there will be a Noche Cubana to follow the film! (Nota bene: the party’s at the Hotel Kabuki.) If that’s not your style, you might stay on at the Castro to watch Los travestis tambien lloran, a French feature about two Ecuadorian transsexuals struggling to get by in Paris.

Other opening weekend highlights include Chevolution, which explores the life and legacy of Che Guevara; Children in No-Man’s Land, which documents the plight of the 100,000 unaccompanied minors who enter the US each year and are caught by immigration authorities; and the film that has, for my money, one of the best titles ever: Amor, dolor y viceversa, a “sexy thriller” featuring “the stunningly beautiful but forever single Chelo (Barbara Mori),” who is “haunted by recurring visions of a handsome lover (Leonardo Sbaraglia). But dreams turn to nightmares and nightmares to reality. As this tense and noirish jigsaw plot unfolds, truth, fantasy, and lies blur together, and a longing for love turns to unrelenting obsession.” Wow, sounds pretty good to me!

All films Saturday and Sunday are being screened at the Brava Theater for Women in the Arts (located at 24th & York, near Bryant, in Potrero Hill). There are several worthy films this weekend that I haven’t mentioned; for info on them and the other films in the weeks ahead, just check out the full schedule here.

Courtesy SFist — which provided a huge public service by untangling the stupidity of Muni publishing dozens of proposed route changes on dozens of separate PDFs — here are all the proposed changes to Muni routes posted to SFist’s Flickr set. SFist rules today.

Among the several radical changes:

• Bryant Street is totally out of luck. No more service in the Mission District or South of Market. That means that if you wanted to take a bus to or from the Hall of Justice — like if your car was towed and you wanted to get it back — you have to catch a bus on Folsom and then walk two blocks.

More changes after the jump

AT&T has backed down on their plan to install 850 large utility vaults throughout the city. As reported back on July 15th, there was a supervisors meeting on July 29th, and several neighborhoods organized a significant opposition and showed during this Supes meeting. The following report from one of my neighbors who was there:
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I wouldn’t drop my guard just yet, but after people in Potrero Hill and Bernal Heights were plagued by a spate of muggings over the last several weeks, three men were arrested last night after an incident on Potrero Hill. Police said the men may be linked to the previous incidents.

Today is Cesar Chavez day in California. A holiday first established by the Cesar Chavez Foundation to honor the late Cesar Chavez. Chavez, a man who bettered working conditions for farmworkers in California and much of the United States passed away April 23rd, 1993. Fasting for 25 days in a show of non-violent protest, he lead the Farm Worker movement in it’s efforts to raise awareness of the miserable working conditions in California circa 1965. Also starting the national boycott of table grapes around 1970, “NO GRAPES” or “NO UVAS”.

Of note in Chavez’s history was his opposition to the Farm owners bringing illegal immigrants over the border as strikebreakers, although Chavez did support the ‘86 federal immigration act.

The UFW during Chávez’s tenure was committed to restricting immigration. César Chávez and Dolores Huerta fought a federal law that prohibited hiring illegal immigrants in 1973. Later during the 1980s, while Chávez was still the UFW president, Dolores Huerta, the cofounder of the UFW, was key in getting the amnesty provisions into the 1986 federal immigration act. [2].

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h/t to Ms. Banneker at the LA Metblog: Happy Birthday, Cesar Chavez

The Assembly seat for California’s Assembly District 3 which includes the northern half of San Francisco, throughout Marin County and into Southern Sonoma is up for grabs on June 3rd. Incumbent Carole Migden and her challengers Mark Leno and Joe Nation are scheduled to begin the verbal sparring at 6:30 pm at 200 McCallister tonight, Tuesday March 18th. The UC Hastings Alumni Reception Center will host the second San Francisco debate of these 3 Democratic contenders since a prior appearance at The Potrero Democratic Club earlier this month. Since that debate, after announcing raising $250,000, SF Police Commissioner, Joe Veronese Alioto pulled out of his longshot bid.

And then there were three…

Leno, the leading challenger is a popular former SF Supervisor, and newly termed out assembly member, who has made waves for challenging the supposed “safe” seat that Migden has held for years. The race has made for some uncomfortable choices in bedfellows as the two political rivals both emerged from the same party with similar strong support in the local LGBT community. Last year when Leno announced his candidacy, it sent ripples through political circles, and an endorsement of Migden over Leno nearly erupted into a fracas at a Harvey Milk Democratic Club meeting. Joining the acrimonious fray for District 3’s seat is Joe Nation, a former state lawmaker who is now a Stanford educator andf who announced his candidacy last month.

Leno is hungry for more power in Sacramento, and has painted Migden as unethical, which he highlights by pointing to campaign fundraising issues, including Migden’s litigation against the State’s Fair Political Practices Committee for refusing to let her tap into an additional million bucks she wants to use in her campaign. Migden in a separate case, has also reportedly agreed today to a $350000 fine for 89 violations of the Political Reform Act. The fine is a record for a sitting lawmaker.

One can see some micro parallels to the mega Obama-Clinton feud currently splitting Dems nationally as upstart Leno, who got his political start working under Migden, now sets sparks flying as a “young turk” challenging conventions & Migden’s tenure. It should be a somewhat interesting, if tempestuous exchange of ideas & ideology no doubt bubbling under heaps of hubris.

The Potrero View, one of the city’s best neighborhood newspapers, reported in their January issue that the new Whole Foods store at 17th and Rhode Island is hurting neighborhood businesses. According to the story, restaurants, gorceries and delis saw declines when the giant supermarket opened in September. It goes on to say that some are seeing sales recover “now that ‘new and different’ is over.”

The Potero WF is part of a mixed housing and retail development that takes up an entire city block. It includes 100 spaces of free parking, a valuable commodity in the neighborhood, and offers the usual WF mix of groceries, deli foods and lifestyle crap like clothing, yoga mats and CDs. (I’ve seen this mix criticized, but in fact, Rainbow Co-op does the same, and in fact seems to have even more non-food items.)
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SFPD is hiring & shuffling: Capt. Ehrlich heads to Tac Squad, Fong brings in new female “Community” Capt. Bennet , plus scroll for details for potential applicants and those that just want to know more about what the hell is it they actually do:

In a continual game that is SFPD’s version of musical chairs meets Stratego, respected local Capt. John Ehrlich, a 27 year vet, moves into the Special Operations’ “Tac Squad” and Northern Station’s former Community Policing Lieutenant, Theresa “Teri” Barrett becomes the Park station’s new captain. An ironic shift perhaps since Chief Heather Fong has been reluctant to give so-called “community policing” much headway. Ehrlich also seemed content like most others in the dept. to hopefully let the “community policing” issue fade away before officers ever were forced to move around outside their bulletproof squad cars like any of us ordinary citizens must do.

This personnel shuffle seems yet another shift in the department that on one hand is derided as being insular, ineffective, and wishy washy and then on the other hand is accused of being insular, insensitive & overly aggressive.

I mean how could one not put their faith in an organization that issues glowing reports on it’s own recruits like
“San Frasncisco Policec Academy to Gradtue 13 Lateral Officers” as seen in a press release link posted proudly on the SFPD website since September 21, 2007.

It’s never helped that the majority of SFPD officers don’t live in town, and for a long time many seemed to take gleeful pride in bullying those that do. Lately the embarrassing and stubborn refusal of the SFPD to get around to enacting basic community policing reforms has really strained community relations.

It’s simply ridiculous what we spend here per capita on policing, and the ultimately shoddy results we get for that $500 dollars a year per person. According to a recent editorial in the Chronicle SF spends $120 more per citizen than Chicago, and $180 more per citizen than Los Angeles does on police services. Yet from 1999 to 2005, unlike in those towns, arrests were down 35 percent, and homicides went up, up, up and not away. Especially troubling is the unsolved homicide rate, with less than 25% solved these days, a dramatic reduction since the 50% solved rate of the latter 1990’s under other leadership.

More ranting after the jump…

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