Dog Bites

Dog Bites, on the other hand, will no longer have to spend six days a week in the office; much as we genuinely love the place, we believe this to be a positive development. Celebrations began Friday evening at the Final Final -- special thanks to the Giants for winning, because it was more festive that way -- and concluded, at least for the time being, over chocolate cake at Jianna Sunday. All in all, we think things are off to a good start.

So, as we clean out the office -- unpinning our prized letters from Carl Nolte, Herb Gold, and Joan Jett-Black from the bulletin board, dusting off our special Rice-A-Roni box, cringing at certain of our old columns, and -- hey! There's a receipt! We can claim that!

Um, where were we? Oh. A number of people have asked whether Dog Bites will change; the answer is yes. We believe our new schedule will allow us to really develop an expertise on the intricacies of city government; to puzzle out what, exactly, Supervisor Michael Yaki, booster of the Bloomingdale's-on-Market project, meant when he said of the former Emporium, "This building was going nowhere fast."

Hmmm.

Issues of civic economics will also feature. For instance, much as Dog Bites adores the whole retail experience, we're sort of skeptical about assertions that the Bloomingdale's development will generate $14 million in new sales tax revenue for San Francisco every year. Someone needs to ask: How many Prescriptives counters can one city support? At what point does DKNY become a zero-sum proposition? That someone, we believe, can be us.

Meanwhile, we have to finish packing and pull ourselves together. Dog Bites isn't usually sentimental, but we do know there's one thing we're really, really going to miss: our door.