Email Author Matt Smith

Awards

• 2011 - Peninsula Press Club Awards

  "Distressed Properties"

• 2011 - Peninsula Press Club Awards

  "City Hounds the Homeless"

• 2011 - Peninsula Press Club Awards

  "Hypocritical Mayor"

• 2010 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published June 17, 2009

  "On Thin Ice"

• 2010 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published June 3, 2009

  "Domestic Spouses"

• 2010 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published May 6, 2009

  "Bumping Frights"

• 2009 - Peninsula Press Club Awards

  Matt Smith columns

• 2008 - Peninsula Press Club Awards

  Matt Smith columns

• 2007 - Maggies: The Magazine Awards of Western Publishing, published April 26, 2006

  "Bank of Indifference"

• 2007 - Peninsula Press Club Awards

  Matt Smith columns

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2010 Stories by Matt Smith

• Don't worry, America. San Francisco knows what's best for you

  published December 1, 2010

  With Kamala Harris about to become California's next attorney general, San Franciscans get to relive the hubris of a century ago, when we ran... More >>

• 

  FEATURED STORY

  Froot Loops Lawyers Now Going After Snapple

  published Nov 29, 2010

  Howard Rubinstein and Hal Hewell, whose clients have unsuccessfully claimed in federal lawsuits filed here that Crunchberries and Froot Loops cereals tricked consumers into believing the products cont... More >>

• Google Pays Kickbacks -- Or So Say TechCrunch's Anonymous Hearsay Sources

  published Nov 24, 2010

  Is Google today's incarnation of Alan Freed, the 1950s R&B disc jockey accused of taking payments to play certain songsr TechCrunch cites anonymous sources suggesting something like that.A major a... More >>

• Happy Meal Ban Makes Canadian Ashamed To Share Border with U.S.

  published Nov 23, 2010

  A Canadian correspondent was so appalled by the ordinance passed over the mayor's veto today requiring local restaurants luring children with toys to meet minimum nutritional requirements, that he's e... More >>

• 

  FEATURED STORY

  Man Stranded 5 Days on Island During Rubber Raft Voyage Still Wants To Reach San Francisco

  published Nov 22, 2010

  A man attempting to paddle a rubber raft from Sacramento to San Francisco was stranded for five days on a small island in the Delta. Notwithstanding, the 54-year-old Northridge resident plans on conti... More >>

• Big Pharma lobbies against S.F. drug proposal

  published November 24, 2010

  The afternoon of Nov. 15, representatives of drug companies and their California trade associations gathered in City Hall's Room 278 to stare... More >>

• Art Agnos Speaking With Supervisors About Interim Mayor Gig

  published Nov 19, 2010

  Art Agnos, San Francisco's mayor from 1988 to 1992, says he has been speaking with members of the Board of Supervisors about the possibility he will serve as an interim mayor. Under the deal being pro... More >>

• Court Saves S.F. $10 Million, Throws Out Challenge to Payroll Tax

  published Nov 18, 2010

  San Francisco isn't getting many financial gifts this holiday season. So it's with great cheer we welcome a recent decision by the California Court of Appeal to throw out a lawsuit challenging the leg... More >>

• Bayview Opera House's Newly Restored, 122-Year-Old Wood Floor

  published Nov 17, 2010

  This week's Matt Smith column describes how Barbara Ockel, acting director of the 122-year-old Bayview Opera House, discoverd a vast, antique Douglas Fir floor that records said no longer existed. The... More >>

• Lance Armstrong Case Takes BALCO Investigator Jeff Novitzky To France

  published Nov 17, 2010

  Jeff Novitzky, the USDA investigator famed for pursuing Barry Bonds in the BALCO steroids case, was in Lyon, France this week chasing evidence that cycling star Lance Armstrong doped in violation of m... More >>

• Circumcision Ban Seems More Focused on Penises Than Children's Rights

  published Nov 16, 2010

  Lloyd Schofield, the retired hotel credit manager seeking to place a circumcision ban on the San Francisco ballot, says his campaign is all about saving innocents. "Our prime goal is to protect the ch... More >>

• Patients Must Wait Month For Health Clinic Appointments

  published Nov 15, 2010

  New patients now wait 30 days for an appointment at San Francisco public health clinics. That marathon delay is thanks in part to challenges incorporating new patients added to the government system a... More >>

• Restoring Bayview Opera House lifts the area

  published November 17, 2010

  Barbara Ockel crouches at the entrance of a crawlspace under the stage of the Bayview Opera House, retracing her discovery of the building's... More >>

• We Win! L.A. Has More High Earthquake Risk Hospitals Than S.F.

  published Nov 12, 2010

  Red-staters may fantasize about San Franciscans perishing in The Big One. But a recent California Watch report identifying which hospital buildings have the highest known risk of collapse suggests we ... More >>

• Tesoro Incident Results in Higher San Francisco Gas Prices

  published Nov 11, 2010

  Wednesday's flareup at the Tesoro refinery in Martinez, reportedly caused by a PG&E electricity outage, will result in higher wholesale gasoline prices in the San Francisco area.Yesterday, all fiv... More >>

• Recession's Latest Victim: Plans to Restore Old Mint

  published Nov 10, 2010

  Nine years after Mayor Willie Brown put in motion a plan to turn the 136-year-old San Francisco's Old Mint at Fifth and Mission Streets into a "21st-century mixed-use cultural center dedicated to the ... More >>

• Graffiti Shifts From Public to Private Property, City Reports

  published Nov 10, 2010

  Following a lengthy and expensive crackdown, graffiti seems to be migrating from public to private property, the controller's office reports.According to a memo from the city controller presented as p... More >>

• Lawsuit Claims S.F. Juvy Guards Beat Young Inmates

  published Nov 08, 2010

  A counselor working for the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department claims in a federal lawsuit that guards for years mistreated youthful inmates, then conspired to hide the abuse."There's kicking... More >>

• SFPD wants to recruit suburbocops from outside the city

  published November 10, 2010

  During the late 1990s I occasionally sat in on a poker game at a friend's house in Fairfield, a suburb 47 miles northeast of San Francisco.... More >>

• After Prop. 19 Loss, Potheads Back To Touting Hemp as Bogus Cure-All

  published Nov 05, 2010

  After losing a ballot battle to legalize marijuana, cannabis fans are back to touting the supposedly vast economic potential of industrial hemp, a non-intoxicating cousin to the plant used as a recrea... More >>

• Ravens, Crows, Bedbugs, and Drain Flies Among Pests City Combats With Chemicals

  published Nov 04, 2010

  Following Tuesday's election, San Francisco may seem like a political island in a sea of shellacking states. Judging from a recent report from the Department of Environment's Integrated Pest Managemen... More >>

• Happy Meal Ban: Middle Schoolers Write to Supes, Critique Toys

  published Nov 02, 2010

  Six dozen students at a middle school in Brentwood, a suburb 55 miles to the east, wrote to San Francisco City Hall Oct. 15 to voice views on Supervisor Eric Mar's proposed ban on Happy Meal toys, whi... More >>

• Suckers! The media want us to think there's a bedbug invasion.

  published November 3, 2010

  Armando Silva, an exterminator for Marina Pest Control, has seen a lot of nastiness during his years killing ants, fleas, cockroaches, and... More >>

• Nancy Pelosi's Opponent, John Dennis, Doesn't Want to Privatize Your Sidewalk

  published Nov 01, 2010

  John Dennis, Nancy Pelosi's Republican congressional opponent, informs us that his campaign platform does not include the privatization of America's sidewalks. We don't usually need to point this out ... More >>

• 911 Dispatch Managers -- Not Dispatchers -- Accused of Dawdling in Federal Suit

  published Oct 29, 2010

  Managers at the city's 911 dispatch center are accused in a federal lawsuit of misdeeds that include surfing the web when they should be supervising. But those criticisms do not extend to workers on t... More >>