Weekly Obsessions

The American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA) recently ranked San Francisco the second best walking city in the country. To determine the rankings, they used 14 scientific criteria, including the percentage of people who go to museums, the percentage who bike to work, and, of course, the infallible "Golf Index" that is so apropos to San Francisco. When APMA supercomputers finished crunching numbers, the only city ranking higher than S.F. was -- Arlington, Va. Have you ever been to Arlington? There's nowhere to walk. It's a suburban desert, a deadening stretch of cookie-cutter homes punctuated by strip malls and office parks. Sure, you can walk in Arlington: You can walk around the block a hundred times until you lose your mind. You can stroll to the end of your driveway and stare into the void until your faith in the goodness of man erodes. Or you walk around your coffee table for a couple of hours, dreaming of San Francisco, where you actually won't need your car. L.O'B.

Atop the laundry list of creepouts that accompanied the Mayor's Stem Cell Headquarters proposal, the renaming of an alley near SF Weekly's HQ has sent a chill through China Basin (or Mission Bay, as it seems to be called these days). We understand that it takes an enticing package to edge out the other cities for the bid, but if California's stem cell center goes elsewhere, does our local coffee shop still have to be located on Stem Cell Place? N.C.