A crack was discovered Saturday in one of the members holding up the cantilever section of the Bay Bridge — a section of the bridge not supposed to be worked on at all in this weekend’s massive bridge section switchout. Discovered during the detailed inspection that was carried out as part of the bridge shutdown, the flaw was serious enough to have closed the bridge on its own, CalTrans engineers said.

The unforeseen problem may delay the scheduled 5 a.m. reopening of the bridge to commuter traffic on Tuesday morning.

CalTrans said this morning it has no estimate for when the bridge may reopen.

You can follow the project’s Twitter account, baybridgeinfo, for updates.

Eight firefighters from San Francisco were among those who traveled from northern to southern California to help out with the wildfires down there, but the head of SF’s firefighters’ union says he was “embarrassed” they couldn’t send more.

“We have 250 firefighters that are highly trained, and they want to be in the middle of the fight,” said union chief John Hanley.

A spokesperson for the SFFD said the city couldn’t spare more because “some rigs were out of service” and several crews were busy all weekend battling a warehouse blaze.

I went yesterday to ConspiracyCon, which is exactly what you’d guess it is: a convention of conspiracy theorists. UFO chasers, 9-11 deniers, tax protesters and this year’s big favorite, explainers of the current economic crisis.

Here are some of the things I learned:

• Obama and his administration are pawns of the international banking conspiracy, and it’s all led by former Jimmy Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and the many “secret societies” from the Trilateral Commission to the Bohemian Grove.
• The reason Ron Paul supporters also have UFO conspiracy DVDs at their booth is because if the government let us know about and learn alien technology, it could go a long way toward solving our country’s energy problems.
• No plane actually struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001; the damage was the result of planted explosives. This was vouchsafed to me by an extremely energetic and dedicated young man who was giving his DVDs away for free. He had a very elaborate set of xeroxed photographs with the “real” flight path of the airliner, a professionally-produced series of animated graphics which showed the difference between the fake flight path and the real one, and so on.
• If you experience sudden headaches or body heating as you walk down the street, this is called “electronic harassment” and is the work of the NSA, which can read your driver’s license from space.

This last was given to me by a very sane-appearing man, who said it in the same tones you might use to explain how Twitter works for someone who’s never used it. Everyone was very nice, and very talkative. All I had to do was say to someone, “You seem to have a lot of literature here,” and they’d talk for five minutes without taking a breath.

The best moment was during a presentation by one Webster Tarpley, an animated gent who made a presentation on the conspiracy between Obama and the bankers. At one point he showed pictures of the heads of Citigroup, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs. When no one in the audience could identify all three, he began ranting, “These are the people who rule the world! Never mind the politicians, these are the real rulers! Maybe if you put down your UFO book and paid attention we’d be better off!”

ConspiracyCon continues today at the Santa Clara Marriott.

Joining the ranks of locally oriented blogs (locablogs?) is MediaBistro’s Baynewser, a new companion to that company’s Webnewser, TVnewser, Galleycat (a publishing industry blog), Fishbowls NY and LA, and several other properties.

Baynewser is edited by E.B. Boyd and sportswriter Jason Turbow.

Local comedian Michael Weiner, who broadcasts nationally as a right-wing foamer called “Michael Savage,” has been banned from the U.K. for promoting hate speech. The Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci has an exclusive interview with the radio talker and former Allen Ginsburg groupie, whose previous utterances have included an allegation that autistic children are simply badly behaved kids who need more parental discipline.

It’s not just his radio broadcasts that are banned. Weiner himself is banned from entering the U.K.

An anti-war march with at least a couple thousand diverse participants ventured up Market St this afternoon. The organizers were mostly focused on the sixth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, but the marchers expressed a wide variety of dissatisfaction with numerous foreign & domestic policy issues. The contingent was loud, but peaceful, if not festive at times, replete with marching band and numerous chants bandied about the slow moving crowd that stretched for a couple full blocks.

Unlike recent splintered demonstrations in Oakland, a fairly large contingent of dozens of overtime collecting SFPD officers on foot and motorcycles seemed prepared to quell any possible property damage or disturbances from the bandana’d few who tend to ignite trash cans and engage in the more annoying and disruptive behaviors.

The march assembled near Justin Herman Plaza circa 11am and ended with a rally at Civic Center Plaza at about 1:30 , where a contingent of pro-Palestinian marchers were met with pro-Israeli occupation demonstrators stationed in front of City Hall.

Other marches took place concurrently in locations such as the Pentagon just outside of Washington DC, and in LA, while another protest is scheduled for tommorrow in Fresno.

Bringing up the rear, just behind the infamous Bay Area Women in Black, was this masked lone wolf demonstrator.

Recently tweeted by @emergency_in_sf

If you have details, I’m sure some of our readers would love this location.

As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer prepared for its last run on paper, former staffers at Denver’s just-closed newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, announced today their intention to start a new online news site for Denver and charge $4.99 for it. They’ll try to get 50,000 monthly subscribers. Could that be a way forward for the San Francisco Chronicle and its popular online presence, SFGate?

Some interesting data points: both Seattle and Denver already have surviving other papers, the Seattle Times and the Denver Post. So their (former?) competitors’ online sites still have to compete, not only with the other papers’ online sites but with their surviving (for now) print editions. But in San Francisco, neither the Chronicle nor SFGate has an equivalent competitor. So if the print Chronicle goes away and it survives as an online paper, it would be the only big-league journalistic operation of its size, influence and considerable reputation.

So would you pay $5 a month — or even more, considering everything’s more expensive in San Francisco — for SFGate?

I would.

I was perusing the latest @sfmetblogs followers on Twitter and found some really interesting businesses and news sources that are active and interesting. Consider checking them out!

@abc7newsBayArea
News and notes directly from the ABC7 newsroom in San Francisco.

@BayAreaCheap
Twittering great stuff to see and do “on the cheap” in the (not so cheap) San Francisco Bay Area.

@bunsandchou
Buns and Chou Chou are rabbits who host their own TV show: Rabbit Bites.

@CheapandEasySF
Because San Francisco’s Not Just for Rich People

@CityofSF
CityofSF is a Twitter service to update people on current events and happenings in San Francisco

@CurbedSF
Curbed SF, the San Francisco nabe and real estate blog. We like architecture and planning, too.

@GhirardelliSQ
More than just the best chocolate! Wine tasting, great food and fun shopping

@INGB2Breakers
I’m Amy @ ING Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. Sharing race updates, costume ideas, fun giveaways, etc.

@munidiaries
Muni Diaries – a place to share and read rider tales

@NinersNation
49ers Blogger for SB Nation

@odcsf
ODC is a groundbreaking contemporary arts institution with longstanding roots in SF and home to our Dance Company, ODC School/Rhythm & Motion & ODC Theater

@sanfranfeed
San Francisco – News Feed

@SFBRAVOCLUB
San Francisco Opera’s BRAVO! CLUB is a group of young adults, aged 21-40, dedicated to building a new audience for San Francisco Opera.

@SFBusinessTimes
Covering businesses headquartered in San Francisco, Oakland, East Bay and Marin

@SFChron_alert
Get breaking news alerts on the Bay Area’s biggest stories from the San Francisco Chronicle.

@SFstandup
Guide to comedy in the San Francisco Bay Area

@Shopping_SF
Follow me for all the freebies, cheap events, and funtastic events..from SF’s hit Shopping! The Musical..Now in its fourth hit year!

@SJMetblogs
San José Metblogs is part of a worldwide network of city-specific blogs, where authors write stories about life in their city from a personal, local perspective

@tskifeed
Tahoe Ski Feed

Missed in the general reaction to Tuesday’s news that the San Francisco Chronicle will have to shrink radically, be sold, or closed — as Denver’s Rocky Mountain News went out of business today — was this bit, which I noticed courtesy MediaBistro: The Chronicle is also planning to charge online readers for its SF Gate online presence, Newsosaur reported.

According to the report, “(The plan) would require the elimination of nearly half of the 1,500 employees of the newspaper to wipe out the operating deficit. To avoid cutting that deeply into the staff, the Chronicle plans to boost revenues by increasing subscription prices for the newspaper and to begin charging consumers for access to certain features and sections at its website.”

Some observers speculated that Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group was positioning itself to buy the Chronicle. The company also owns the San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, and many other smaller dailies in the Bay Area — as well as the Denver Post.

Read more after the jump