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Check Out This Mesmerizing Video Tracking Foursquare Check-Ins in NYC and Tokyo

So, this is pretty cool: Foursquare has pulled together all its data to condense a year's worth of check-ins in New York City and Tokyo into one 24-hour time-frame. The video is visually mesmerizing in itself, in the same way that the iTunes music visualizer is mesmerizing (we can only imagine how w ... More >>

SF MusicTech Summit: Big Predictions, Blanket Dismissals, and Lots of Bad Words

Prediction: In 10 years, no one's going to care about owning music as long as they have access to it. Prediction: No one except for .1 percent of music listeners and Neil Young will pay for Neil Young's high-quality digital audio service. Prediction: In 3030, mashups will finally be legal. So i ... More >>

iPads for School Lunches: SFUSD Woos Applicants with Prizes

Marijuana Day: San Francisco's Guide to Music, Comedy, and Protest on 4/20

If you're reading this, it's arrived: The marijuana holiday, the tokiest of tokies, the Christmas/Chinese New Year/Yom Kippur of cannabis use. The 20th day of April, the beloved 420.Woot.Today, every medical cannabis dispensary in town will be offering specials and discounts, and many will be offeri ... More >>

Personal Needs: Tech Dude Seeks Young, Materialistic Women

Copyright Owners Continue to Tilt at Windmills

​Given the intensity of the debates over digital piracy, you'd almost think that if one side or the other were to "win," the question would be decided: If critics of copyright holders were victorious, piracy would run rampant and the media industry would be brought to its knees; if the copyright o ... More >>

Silent Dancing and $68,000 Sound Systems: The Music of Macworld

There were more curious wallflowers than hula-hooping dancers yesterday as the wireless headphones-assisted dance party Silent Frisco took over the second floor of the Macworld conference. (It continues today from noon to 6 p.m. with DJs Motion Potion and u9lift). For Sunset Promotions, which takes ... More >>

Proopsian Technology

Best Practices for Making a Hip Coffee Shop Your Office

​Yelp/ Lucy M.​For those of us who don't work in an office, and aren't rich or fancy enough to afford things like WiFi and coffee makers, there's always the options of setting up shop at nearby coffee shops and cafes. Sometimes a trip to our local cafe is the only thing that'll stop those of us ... More >>

Fall Arts: We Made Nato Green Fill Out a Questionnaire

Sizzle & Fizzle: Highs and Lows from the Last Week in S.F. Music

Gay Blogger Calls for Boycott of Retail Stores Supporting Christian Values Network

Now gays are really going to be bad for business​It wasn't enough that Apple pulled its iTunes store from the Christian Values Network, which is decidedly antigay. A San Francisco blogger is now asking people everywhere to boycott those retailers that are still enrolled in the Christian shopping w ... More >>

Jay-Z and Kanye West Reschedule Watch the Throne Tour

You'll have to wait two more months to Watch the Throne.​Last week, Jay-Z and Kanye West announced their Watch the Throne Tour. It was scheduled to stop at San Jose's HP Pavilion on October 16, but apparently all royal marriages take time, and now there will be a two-month delay.

Jay-Z and Kanye West Are Bringing the Throne to the Bay Area This Fall

The Kings will cometh.​Now that the hype from the Royal Wedding has finally died down, it's time for the Kings to arrive. The self-proclaimed kings, that is -- Jay-Z and Kanye West, now collectively known as the Throne, will bring their upcoming joint tour through the Bay Area this fall. Will ... More >>

Let the Cassette Tape Die Already

And stay dead! (Photo via.)​ In its July issue, Wired magazine takes note of a disturbing trend: The apparent unwillingness among young, music-loving cool types to let the cassette tape die a complete and much-deserved death. Noting that 2010 saw both the last new car ship with a tape player ... More >>

A B & The Sea Talk New Anthem, "In the Sunshine": All the Summer You Can Handle

The summeriest video that has ever summered​ Surprise: They went with a beach theme! We're kidding, of course. You can practically hear the sound of frisbees and waves in local indie-pop outfit A B & the Sea's new single "In the Sunshine," so naturally, the band went full-on sun-and-sand for ... More >>

Apple Introduces iCloud at WWDC

What do you see in the iCloud?​As expected, Steve Jobs took the stage at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco today, announcing the company's new iCloud product, which will allow users to upload and sync data across nearly every Apple device, for free. Jobs, who has been on me ... More >>

Deciphering Those Judgment Day Billboards

Apple May (Finally) Launch Cloud Music Service Soon -- But Who's Excited?

​ Apple, the company that already makes 75 to 99 percent of the stuff you use to listen to, organize, and perhaps even make music, is ready to launch its cloud music service ahead of a similar service by Google, according to a report today from Reuters:  Apple's plans will allow iTunes custo ... More >>

Find the Best of San Francisco on Your iPhone

If you've ever been out and about and wondered where's the best place grab a good gin and tonic or get your bike fixed ― as chosen by seasoned pros like ourselves ― you're in luck. We've just launched a completely free iPhone app that takes all the goodness of our Best Of... issues and crams i ... More >>

Find the Best of San Francisco on Your iPhone

If you've ever been out and about and wondered where's the best place grab a good gin and tonic or get your bike fixed -- as chosen by seasoned pros like ourselves -- you're in luck. We've just launched a completely free iPhone app that takes all the goodness of our Best Of... issues and crams it ... More >>

A Postcard from the Future

Or, how 2011 was the year everything changed in music.

Paris Surf Minstrels La Femme Talk Censored Cover Art and American Adventures

​Contrary to what you might quite reasonably expect, Parisian post-surf-rock outfit La Femme is, well, not very feminine at all. Besides a variable cast of sultry chanteuses, the group comprises three to four vaguely shadowy young Frenchmen who, to hear them tell it, spend most of their time in a ... More >>

Watch YouTube Sensation Pomplamoose Perform IRL on NYE in SF

It can weird be to see your favorite Internet stars in real life, and certainly, not all of the web-famous (especially among musicians) are ready for the live spotlight in a way that, say, Justin Bieber is (uh, debatable). That's a roundabout way of saying that we're especially curious to see ... More >>

Dubstep Documentary Claims to Predict Genre's Future

You can bet that these days, any genre of music with a decent lifespan will one day get its documentary. Like what Better Living Through Circuitry was for electronic/dance music or what Scratch was for hip-hop/turntablism, a forthcoming U.K. film entitled Bassweight wil ... More >>

Is There Room Online For Apple's Ping Social Network to Succeed?

Christopher VictorioPing will let Lady Gaga reach out to her fans in new ways.​Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced today that his company is hopping on the social network bandwagon with a service, called Ping, that will connect music fans, musicians, and their friends and followers. Jobs describes Ping ... More >>

What Apple's Big Announcement Means for Music Fans

How will this pretty little thing shake up the music world?​Yeah, yeah, the new iPhone 4 is slick and skinny and sports two video cameras. But will today's news shake up the music world as Apple developments have in the past? Our thoughts below:Mobile music videos: Get ready for a world of iPhone- ... More >>

Tristram Stuart Traces Food Waste Back to the Source

​Our favorite morsel from the blogs.Waste not: Tristram Stuart, a young British historian, is making a career of writing erudite studies of timely food issues. His first book, The Bloodless Revolution, traced the history of vegetarianism in Europe from the 17th century on. The followup, Waste: Unc ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

New MP3 from 2010's Big Pop Contenders The Morning Benders

Weston Walker​I got a sneak listen to Big Echo, the new album due out in March from the Morning Benders. And I know it's early, but I already think this record could end up on my best of 2010 list. The group enlisted Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor as co-producer, and the songs are just slightly weird ... More >>

Last Night: Vamps at the Grand

​ VAMPSJuly 25, 2009Regency CenterReview by Kirsty EvansBetter Than: A weekend vampire movie marathon. It was hard to tell what to expect from VAMPS before Saturday's show, as singer/guitarist Hyde (L'Arc en Ciel) and guitarist K.A.Z (Oblivion Dust) come from such different backgrounds. Wh ... More >>

Track of the Day: Fischerspooner's R.E.M. Cover

To help stoke the publicity fires before its May tour (which hits S.F. May 22 at the Fillmore), New York's arty glam-electro heads Fischerspooner announced they'd been given an unreleased R.E.M. song to cover. The tune, "Fascinating," was apparently written by Michael Stipe but never put on an R.E. ... More >>

Sunday Night: Boyz II Men at Mezzanine

Last Night: Boyz II Men Mezzanine January 18, 2009 Better than: All the Philly steaks you can eat It had been announced that, for this performance, the multiplatinum R&B superstars Boyz II Men would be performing tunes from their 2007 cover album Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville U.S.A., but I ha ... More >>

Pretty cult machines: NIN and Deerhunter

Mix-CD fans take their hobbies public in bars and galleries

A heavy metal snob separates the shredders from the posers

James Pants Drops Fresh Beats in SF

Exclusive B-52's MP3 Free Download

Lyrics Born Releases Digital Single in Feb.

Flo Rida, Soulja Boy, Britney Spears Among Top Ten Downloads of the Week

Make Some Noise

Last Night: The Police at Oakland Coliseum

New Wave Thuggin'

Kirby Dominant brings together niggaz and white girlz

'70s by the poolside

The Quiet Storm

Unquiet Riot

Youngblood Brass Band marches out the jams

The Price Is Variable

Would you pay as much for a good record as you would for a fine bottle of vino?

Alvarius B

Blood Operatives of the Barium Sunset

Music videos: First they were all the rage, then they were all but dead. Thanks mainly to Apple, they're back.

Polishing the Brass

Judging from last week's Music Law Summit West, the future of the music biz is unclear – but that's not what the RIAA wants you to think