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National Parks To Get Major Food Makeover

Culinary offerings in America's national parks are about to get a lot tastier. A new initiative announced by the National Park Service last week outlines guidelines for healthier concessions in parks, including the use of local, sustainably produced foods whenever possible, reports the Washington Po ... More >>

Repellent Troll Sentenced to Jail for Being Repellent Troll

Many of us applauded when Andrew Auernheimer was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for hacking into AT&T's systems, stealing the private email addresses of thousands of iPad users, and sending them to Gawker. Auernheimer is a horrible person -- a repellent, nasty Internet troll wh ... More >>

The Chron Finally Launches Its (Leaky) Paywall

The paywall that San Francisco Chronicle flirted with for years appeared over the weekend, accompanied by a euphemistic letter from Chron president Mark Adkins. He characterized it as a safe harbor for the paper's "premium content" (ie, news and columns) "uncluttered" by the slideshows, celebrity go ... More >>

San Francisco Millionaires Join Scores of Rich People to Demand Higher Taxes on Wealthy

There's a bunch of bargaining chips currently being passed back and forth between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner as they seek to reach a budget deal before the county slides down the much-feared Fiscal Cliff. Perhaps the most notable involved tax rates for the wealthy: generally sp ... More >>

Vegan Butterfingers, Election Night Get-Down, and Holiday Loaf News!

​ The big news this week is both Gardein and Trader Joe's have come out with vegan Thanksgiving "loafs" of sorts. You better make your pro and con lists now because you can get BOTH of these AND a Field Roast loaf! Or you totally can and be awesome. See Also: - Homeless Roosters, Singing Pigs, ... More >>

Here's How Many Californians Are "Freeloading," As Mitt Romney Would Say

Mitt Romney has foolishly decided that 47 percent of Americans are freeloaders (aka bums, leeches, mooches). But what he has been less clear about is who are these government bloodsuckers? How does one really define a "freeloader?"From the really rich man himself:

Digg v1: Betaworks Flushes Seven Years of Internet History Down the Toilet

The end of San Francisco-based Digg has been nigh for over two years, ever since founder Kevin Rose helmed a disastrous redesign in August 2010 and many of the site's users fled to Reddit, but the news-sharing behemoth plodded along, not realizing it was supposed to be dead. That is, until yesterday ... More >>

Desperate Newspapers Pin Hopes on Annoyed Readers

News publishers have always treated readers like commodities -- because that's what readers are. The real customers for publishers aren't readers, but advertisers. Readers are the product. It's not quite that simple, of course, and more enlightened publishers treat readers with respect and cover the ... More >>

When S.F. Gas Price Skyrocket, Just Blame Iran

​As Billy Beane taught us, you probably can't trust your instincts without cold hard statistics to back them up. So for anyone who suspected that gasoline prices might be rising with Icarusian ferver, your intuitions have been vindicated. On Monday AAA released their monthly report on America's f ... More >>

There's a National Kerfuffle About Restaurant Stars, and Why I Don't Care

​If you hadn't heard, the LA Times, which recently hired Jonathan Gold away from our sister paper the LA Weekly, made the decision last week to drop assigning stars to restaurant reviews. "Star ratings are increasingly difficult to align with the reality of dining in Southern California," food edi ... More >>

News Sites Can't Rely on Advertising

​I'm not about to pretend that I know how to solve the economic dilemma that the news business finds itself in. I've been studying the matter, and writing about it off and on, for 16 years, and, like everyone, I really don't know. Maybe it will be nonprofits. Maybe paywalls. Maybe micropayments wi ... More >>

What Our Love for Cupcakes (Still!) Says About Us

Jane Rix / ShutterstockLook deep into my icing and tell me what you see...​The days when Samantha and Carrie were cooing over Magnolia Bakery's icing swirls seem so long ago -- like, 2000 -- and yet the cupcake trend will not die. Cupcake shops are still legion, and cupcake reality TV shows and c ... More >>

Facebook Just Keeps Getting Worse

​Over the years, whenever Facebook has made changes, people have inevitably complained --  on Facebook -- about the changes Facebook made to Facebook. "I'm leaving Facebook," those people would declare, on Facebook. Of course, few of them ever actually left Facebook. Until recently, I have ... More >>

Is American Sushi on the Decline? Some Say Yes.

​It's no surprise that when the Washington Post brings a storied, Japan-trained sushi chef to a neighborhood, fusion-happy sushi restaurant, he doesn't like what he's eating. What is interesting, though, are the reasons why. It's not necessarily the fact that most of the sushi rolls are covered in ... More >>

Tea Party Princess: Victoria Jackson and the Rabid Right

What Happens When You Don't Test Recipes? Lost Readers, Even Lawsuits

Andrew Huff/FlickrThe Chicago Tribune's test kitchen: It doesn't need to be big to be effective.​Last month, a Chilean court ruled that a major newspaper there had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to readers who'd made a recipe for churros that it had published. Why? Well, the recipe had c ... More >>

Hating on Diabetic Paula Deen Is Fun But Premature

​Yesterday, after Paula Deen finally sat down with Al Roker on the Today Show and admitted that she'd been diagnosed with diabetes type three years ago, the food world has been engaged in the loudest round of "I told you so" SFoodie has ever heard. Yes, the Enquirer sniffed this out last year ... More >>

Local Food Is Bigger Business Than You Might Expect

John Loo/Flickr​Given the fact that most Americans have to peel stickers or plastic off their produce before eating them, you'd think that the local-foods business represents a tiny, not-very-lucrative segment of the food system. But a new USDA report, whose findings the Washington Post summa ... More >>

Congress Rules That Pizza Sauce Is a Vegetable

Alan Cowan / ShutterstockSource of many vital nutrients. Apparently.​Criticize the Obama administration if you will for being too soft on GMOs or too hard on legal pot dispensaries, but it seems to be on the marks when it comes to school lunch. The USDA, under the administration, has been working ... More >>

‘Out There’ Is Here

Pop-Up Indian Dinner Flies Across the Country for Secret S.F. Meal

Veronika Lukasova/Washington PostStrangers commune over Gujarati food at a Hush pop-up dinner in Washington, D.C.​Here are three really rare pop-up dinners: Hush Supper Club proprietor Geeta is dropping into the Bay Area this week from her normal turf in Washington, D.C., to host four secret m ... More >>

Filthy Fast Food Playgrounds, Michelle Obama Eats a Burger (Gasp!)

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. 1. Dirty fast food slides. The Chicago Tribune/LA Times profile an Arizona woman who is evaluating the playgrounds at fast food restaurants by taking video of the filth and sending s ... More >>

Utah Newspaper One-Ups Chronicle, Gives Column to *Active* Mayor

Da Mayor has competition​The Deseret News has raised some eyebrows with its decision to make the sitting mayor of Utah's second-largest city a columnist. West Valley City Mayor Mike Winder is apparently excited about this new platform to share his great ideas, which include the recent establishmen ... More >>

R.I.P. Hazel Dickens, American Legend, Feminist Folk Singer, and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fixture

Jay BlakesbergHazel Dickens with Dolly Parton and Warren Hellman​Hazel Dickens, a bluegrass singer who played every Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival since the free event began in 2001, died today at age 75.Described by the Washington Post as "a living legend of American music," Dickens use ... More >>

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

S.F. Bedbug Website Spawns Bogus Trend Stories Nationwide

Louis De Vos, Université Libre de BruxellesNow you see me...​The website Bedbugregistry.com, run by San Franciscan Maciej Ceglowski, takes pains to note that its anonymous reports of insect sitings should not be taken as hard evidence of a plague. But that hasn't stopped newspaper and television ... More >>

When To Stop Texting and Use Your Phone as a Phone

​How do you judge when a conversation is more appropriate for texting or a phone call? For example, "Do you think red or pink go-go boots would go better with my plaid lederhosen?" is clearly a text question while "Can you explain Neitchze's view on nihilism and how it pertains to vegan Indian cui ... More >>

R.E.M., The Roots, and a Bunch of Waffles Tell Feds To Preserve Net Neutrality

R.E.M. loves net neutrality! ​A group of musicians that includes R.E.M., Jackson Browne, The Roots, Moby, and OK Go has sent a letter to the FCC urging legal protection for net neutrality, the principle (and current reality) that all information can travel equally quickly on the Internet.The FCC i ... More >>

Memo to Elena Kagan: Come Out of the Closet

Elena Kagen's life as a -- ahem -- softball player shouldn't be a big secret​"She's a lesbian!" said Betty White over and over again on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. White was talking about a character in a Little Women parody but she might as well have been talking about Elena Kagan, ... More >>

Is the Government Caving to Pressure Over Regulating Sodium?

A public interest group first asked FDA to intervene in 1978.​Our favorite morsel from the blogs. Salt politics: At Food Politics, Marion Nestle considers the on-one-minute, gone-the-next rumor that FDA has plans to regulate the salt content in processed foods. She lays out the simple timelin ... More >>

Calling Bullshit on Eater's Crusade to Bust Restaurant Critics

One-time New York Times critic Ruth Reichl in disguise.​Our favorite morsel from the blogs. To catch a d-bag: Tim Carman of Washington City Paper calls Eater a dick for its initiative to unmask food critics. Eater National's Greg Morabito, you see, has this ongoing obsession he calls "To Catc ... More >>

Other Car Not Broom, Sorry

Doggy Bag: Today's Odds and Ends

Our favorite morsels from the food blogs and beyond. First Foodie: Is Michelle Obama a stealth locavore? Grist's Tom Laskawy ponders the possibility. According to the Washington Post, FLOTUS's commitment to denying Big Ag goes a bit beyond scratching out a few rows of heirloom radishes on the South ... More >>

Chronic City: Seeds of Change -- Marijuana Going Mainstream

Two major new polls underscored a fact many of us already know: When it comes to marijuana, the political ground is shifting underneath our feet - and the change is picking up momentum as it goes.

Iraqi Shoe Guy Disses San Francisco

By Matt Smith When Muntadar al-Zaidi of Cairo-based al-Baghdadia TV threw his size 10 shoes at President George Bush, San Franciscans were thrilled. It now appears, however, that it's not just George W. Bush who was knocked down a notch by Zaidi's impressive pitching. His filthy flying apparel ma ... More >>

YBCA women's show revives the F word

Peeps Show II: Finally A Good Use For The Damn Things

SF's Boing Boing in New York Times for BoingBoingTV

Misc. Reviews

Ghost Ride: The Blog

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

SSRI-ay Cap'n

Depression is all around us, but here's some upcoming shows that won't bring you down

Deliver Me

What to expect when you're reading local baby books

Culture Lag

Art appreciation after closing time

A Chance for Respect?

How to tell whether the San Francisco Chronicle is becoming a great newspaper, or another nondescript Hearst money-machine

Dog Bites

REAL ASTROLOGY For an Unreal World

Night+Day

Unspun

Unspun

Publish or Perish