People & Places >>

• Readers' Poll Winners
  Best Person to Follow on Twitter Gavin Newsom Most Wi-Fi-Friendly Place Starbucks Best Startup Social Imprints Best Bartender Chupa at Bender’s Best Bike Messenger Godspeed Best Drag Queen Monistat Best Talk Radio Host Ronn Owens, KGO Best Newscaster Dan Ashley, ABC 7 Best Blog... More >>
• Best Celebrity Blogger
  Danielle Steel
  Writer Danielle Steel, who resides in the opulent Spreckels mansion in tony Pacific Heights, is most famous for penning melodramatic, guilty-pleasure romance novels with titles like Passion's Promise, Sunset in St. Tropez, and Five Days in Paris. But she also has a blog. It alternates between a... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Blog
  Mission Mission
  Imagine if your city newspaper had a story on a cool little piece of art that appeared on a local mailbox over the weekend. Then another one. And another. Would that paper survive? No, it wouldn't, so we guess Mission Mission won't be taking down old media any time soon. Run by Allan Hough since... More >>
• Best New Museum
  California Academy of Sciences
  There are so many awesome things about the Cal Academy of Sciences. The jaw-dropping building, with its grassy hillocks on the roof. The multistory rainforest display, which allows you to stroll from roots to treetop. The African penguins, fed twice a day to the delight of squealing tots. The... More >>
• Best S.F. History Podcast
  Sparkletack.com
  San Francisco is a city of transplants — many knowing little about the city's history other than the Gold Rush and the hippies — who quickly morph into snobs who won't be caught dead on a walking tour with fanny-pack­-toting tourists. Fortunately, now there's a way to learn about... More >>
• Best Literary Street Name
  Frank Norris
  With Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris was one of a handful of unflinchingly perceptive social-realism novelists whose rigorously detached prose and gritty insights into the human condition helped usher American literature into the vigorous, violent 20th century.... More >>
• Best Walking Tour
  San Francisco Architecture Walking Tour
  Part of the beauty of San Francisco is the fact that you can walk just about everywhere. And considering that the city is a national architectural center — chock-full of Victorian and modern buildings, with skyscrapers brushing elbows with Painted Ladies — there's plenty of eye candy... More >>
• Best Public Tour of a Porn Studio
  Kink.com
  If you think the old Armory at 14th and Mission streets — that giant brick fortress built in the 1910s to look like a re-created Moorish castle (why not?) — is imposing from the outside, check out its insides. Once a month, Kink.com, the alternative porn studio that bought the... More >>
• Best Drag Queen
  Vicki Marlane at Aunt Charlie's
  Weekends at Aunt Charlie's Lounge aren't for everybody. This Tenderloin gay joint is where you go when you need a solitary seat by the bar and a drink made with whatever gin it's pouring. A sense of nostalgia permeates the air, which is maybe why it's become the go-to place for retro kicks... More >>
• Best Scenic Muni Route
  33 Stanyan
  We all have our favorite vista points, whether they're Crissy Field, China Beach, or the top of Lombard Street. We're partial to the accidental sightings we are routinely treated to in this hilly town, the casual glimpses of beauteous paradise that aren't tourist destination spots but suddenly... More >>
• Best Muni Nostalgia Ride
  F-Market and Wharves
  Forget about those cable cars creaking with loads of German tourists. If you're a fan of nostalgic strains of public transportation — about the only worthwhile form of public transportation this city has to offer — spring for a $1.50 ride into the past, courtesy of the F-Market and... More >>
• Best Street Performer
  Gregory Pike, aka Dog-Cat-Rat Man
  San Francisco boasts one of the finest collections of street-dwelling eccentrics to be found anywhere. Let's face it: Where else would a unicyclist clad in a pink unitard or a man convincingly disguised as a bush not take the grand prize in this category? But in a city of stiff competition, one... More >>
• Best Personality on Two Wheels
  Fossil Fool the Bike Rapper
  Chances are if you've been out in the Mission or at a Critical Mass bike ride, you've seen Fossil Fool the Bike Rapper, aka Paul Freedman, riding his 130-pound Choprical Fish. The fish is a glowing neon bicycle tricked out with an eight-speaker system that often has a woman known as Mafiosa... More >>
• Best Gay Pride Group
  Gay Shame
  Leave it to San Francisco to have so much gay pride that people start feeling guilty about it. Gay Shame — a "celebration of resistance" that meets at 5:30 p.m. every Saturday at Modern Times Bookstore — isn't for casual self-loathers. If you're gay but only mildly embarrassed by... More >>
• Best Hatmaker (1 Comment)
  Jasmin Zorlu
  Those who insist they just aren't "hat people" obviously haven't found the right topper. But German-born hatmaker Jasmin Zorlu, who specializes in elegantly quirky "sculptural headwear for earthlings," is aware that a hat is the perfect crowning touch. Zorlu's distinctive designs are timeless... More >>
• Best Hometown Politician
  Tom Ammiano
  San Francisco's favorite schoolteacher and stand-up comic turned politician has had a helluva year. Ammiano played himself quite convincingly as a 1970s gay activist with a marked Jersey accent in Milk. The universal health care bill he wrote while a city supervisor got a shoutout from President... More >>
• Most Fashionable Person
  Chelsea Starr
  As DJ of long-running lesbian '80s dance club "Hot Pants" (second Fridays of the month at the Cat Club), Chelsea Starr must really see it all, fashionwise. She seems to love it all, too: Her style is wicked eclectic. Sure, sometimes she's in layers of cream lace and weird pearls (as she was for... More >>
• Best Hipster T-Shirt Designer
  Jen D'Angelo
  Jen D'Angelo's Nooworks is just about the most adorable San Francisco clothing and accessory company going — and it was started by accident. In 2004, after graduating from California College of the Arts, D'Angelo, a bartender at the Attic, silk-screened an illustration of her dog, Noo Noo,... More >>
• Best Baby Mama
  Eliana López
  Surely you've heard that Mayor Gavin Newsom and Jennifer Siebel are expecting the city's First Child, just in time to boost the mayor's family-friendly image for his gubernatorial run. But let's not forget that the Newsoms were beat by a mile in the politico baby race by Venezuelan soap opera... More >>
• Best SFPD Flack
  Sergeant Lyn Tomioka
  Calling the cops is rarely a pleasant experience. But ever since Lyn Tomioka joined the media relations team at the Hall of Justice, it's been nothing but goodies, goodies, and gumdrops. The former patrol supervisor in the Richmond District transferred to media relations late last year and... More >>
• Best S.F. Historian
  Chris Carlsson
  Left-wing intellectual Chris Carlsson is often accused of being the person who "started Critical Mass." He won't give a straight answer to the question, if asked, because there isn't one. He won't back away from it or disavow Critical Mass, either, usually instead encouraging people to see what... More >>
• Best Gardener
  Flora Grubb
  A lot of people don't know that Flora Grubb, of Flora Grubb Gardens, is a real person. And that's her birth name. After opening a 28,000-square-foot solar-powered nursery in the Bayview District in 2007, she has spent the last year delving into her love of gorgeous gardens as art. She recently... More >>
• Best Human Guide to Endangered Species (10 Comments)
  Brent Plater
  Brent Plater, who teaches in the environmental studies department at San Francisco State University, possesses a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the endangered birds, plants, and fish found in the Bay Area. Last year he put his nature smarts to use. The former Bay Area director of the Center... More >>
• Best Laundromat Mural
  Mr. Burbujas
  Behold: Mr. Burbujas, aka Mr. Bubbles. The humanoid washing machine prances across the exterior wall of the Laundromat that bears his name. His fleshy legs are swathed in gym socks pulled high, and he kicks his sneakered feet high into the air, overcome with the giddy ecstasy of cleanliness.... More >>
• Best Place for a Birthday Party
  China Beach
  Competition among parents for children's birthday party sites is San Francisco's version of range warfare. Prime spots in Golden Gate Park require advance reservations. Private birthday spots such as the Secret Garden Tea House & Gift Parlour or AcroSports cost more than recession victims... More >>
• Best Public Space in a Private Place
  The KPMG Building
  San Francisco building codes encourage developers to include public space in their building designs. Many game the system by placing these spots, which are supposed to be accessible to anyone, behind lobby guards and announcing their existence with nothing but a tiny plaque. The KPMG Building... More >>
• Best 'New' Library Branch
  Marina Library
  Of the 24 San Francisco libraries slated for construction, replacement, or renovation by a bond measure passed by voters in November 2000, nine are already doing business and another half a dozen are expected to open this year. The Marina branch, which reopened in 2007 after a two-year, $3.9... More >>
• Best Local News Program (1 Comment)
  Crosscurrents on KALW (91.7 FM)
  KALW bucked the trend toward a shrinking mediascape when it launched the 30-minute evening radio news program Crosscurrents last summer. The new show operates on a shoestring budget (like most public radio programs not hosted by Ira Glass), but its production quality is as good as any radio news... More >>
• Best Business Experimental Model for News (2 Comments)
  Spot.us
  Let's face it: The Chronicle is on a fast track to oblivion. It publishes less and less local news, and its own Web site, SFGate, has begun sending readers to other sites for some featured stories. But San Francisco still has a seamy underside — and plenty of journalists to write about it.... More >>
• Best Local Scandal
  Obama's 'Bittergate' Episode
  Remember when news broke that Barack Obama dissed small-town Pennsylvania voters who "cling to guns or religion" at a Pacific Heights fundraiser, just two weeks before the Pennsylvania presidential primary? We thought we felt an earthquake that day, though it might have been Bay Area liberals... More >>
• Best Place for Families to Help Others (1 Comment)
  San Francisco Food Bank, Sunday Family Hours
  Put off your family vacation to help put some food on another family's table. About a year and a half ago, the San Francisco Food Bank, which moves 33 million pounds of food through its warehouse each week, started letting parents bring kids as young as 4 on Sundays to volunteer and help pack... More >>
• Best Caltrain Voice
  Sergio Cruz
  Sergio Cruz knows what early morning Caltrain commuters heading from S.F. to their jobs on the Peninsula and the South Bay want. The supersmooth conductor doesn't try to be an authority figure or hone his standup routine when he calls the stops and makes announcements. No jokes. No attitude. No... More >>
• Best Preacher
  Reverend Schuyler Rhodes
  Among the many benefits of the 2008 presidential election has been a new American appreciation for great oratory. San Franciscans are doubly blessed, because our city is host to many churches with preachers who are part of the same liberal Protestant tradition that has informed the style and... More >>
• Best Theater PR Person
  Erica Lewis-Finein
  Alongside the puzzle of the postlaundry lost sock, one of life's eternal mysteries has to be the hiring of PR specialists. Companies ostensibly employ press representatives to get word out about their services and products. But surprisingly few of these so-called professional communicators... More >>