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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Burn Through Quiet at Bill Graham Civic, 4/9/13

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Sharon Van Etten Bill Graham Civic Auditorium Tuesday, April 9, 2013 Better than: Getting murdered and/or sodomized by Stagger Lee, we're assuming. Are there bad Nick Cave shows? We can't imagine what one would be like. What if there are only Nick Cave shows where your ... More >>

Michelle Shocked's Wikipedia Page Was Briefly Updated to Call Her a "Bigot"

The alt-folk world is still dealing with its anger and confusion after learning that singer/songwriter Michelle Shocked was not only not gay but believed that "God hates fags" as she succinctly stated onstage at Yoshi's in San Francisco over the weekend. Amid the canceled shows and PR nightmare, ... More >>

Michelle Shocked Concerts Canceled Nationwide After Anti-Gay Tirade in SF

Alt-folk singer and self-proclaimed hillbilly Michelle Shocked went on a vicious, anti-gay rant during her concert at Yoshi's on Sunday, infuriating fans with comments like "God hates fags," and causing the venue to pull the plug on her show. See also: * Here Are the Best Michelle Shocked Anti-Gay ... More >>

iHustle: S.F. Tech at South by Southwest

Grimes' "Genesis" Is a Post-Burning Man Freak Show, and Maybe the Weirdest Video of the Year

We wanted to like this. It's on 4AD for chrissakes. The same 4AD that gave us some of the greatest alternative music of the last century. Pixies! Throwing Muses! Cocteau Twins! Belly! The The! What's not to love? And the current roster ain't to be sniffed at either, what with the Mark Lanegan Band, ... More >>

Bobby Flay Would Like You to Know That He's Not the Screaming Type

Last week we published an installment of Michael Leaverton's darkly funny Food on TV column criticizing Bobby Flay for not behaving badly enough in his new restaurant fix-it show, 3 Days to Open: Also, Bobby Flay's mild and tempered personality forgets to scream and rage at the owner of the chicken ... More >>

Bobby Flay, if You Must Subject Us to 3 Days to Open, at Least Have the Decency to Scream and Rage

Each week, we take a quick, cautious look at what's going on with food TV. This week, 3 Days to Open, a one-hour show about empires crumbling to dust, Fridays at 10 p.m. on the Food Network. In the past few years the Food Network's programming moved from the time-honored strategy of having people c ... More >>

Summer of the NPR Intern Shit Storms: What Austin Cooper's Public Enemy Essay Says About Taste

In many ways, pop culture in 2012 is more sophisticated than ever. Hit TV shows and movies boast plots that are more twisty-turny than was once allowed; the general public's understanding of what Joni Mitchell once called "the star-maker machinery" seems pretty thorough by now; and there seems less ... More >>

Anita Sarkeesian: Sen. Leland Yee Reminds Us That He, Too, Hates Sexist Video Games

Video game crusader/Rush Limbaugh provoker state Sen. Leland Yee found another reason to write yet another press release -- but this time it was actually for good reason.The San Francisco Democrat came out in support of California resident and proud feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian, ... More >>

Music Center of San Francisco to Close After 60-Plus Years

In a sad note for the city's music lovers, yet another brick-and-mortar niche wonderland is readying for its swan song. Music Center of San Francisco, the place to obtain a trove of scores and the musical instruments and other accoutrements with which to play them, will close its doors at the end of ... More >>

"Battleship": Soak up the Beautiful Bombast

Chuck Prophet's S.F. Album Gets the Facts Wrong, But the Feelings Right

The Feelings Are True

Chuck Prophet's album about S.F. may have gotten a few facts wrong, but it gets everything else right

Anonymous Attempts to "Bring Down" Facebook

A day without Wikipedia was one thing, but can you imagine your life without Facebook? That's one way to test your allegiance to Anonymous, the online hacktivist group, best known locally for revealing personal information of BART police officers. The group is asking you to set aside your social-net ... More >>

Warren Hellman, Incidental Banjo Player

Over the past week, photos of Warren Hellman toting a banjo were pretty much ubiquitous. The departed billionaire was a financial titan and a political force in this city -- but, yes, it was the banjo, perhaps the happiest of musical instruments, that seemed to define his public persona (and his pri ... More >>

Bouncer: On Missing Jesse Morris, San Francisco's Punk Rock Johnny Cash

From this week's Bouncer column: At times I find myself preoccupied with thoughts of suicide -- not my own, but other people's. I visit suicide memorial websites and read each blurb. I always look at the recent suicide postings on Wikipedia. It was there that I learned of the death of one of the m ... More >>

Sandra Lee's Ridiculous Halloween Special: All the Hard Drinkin' Highlights

​Do you remember how Joe Camel got into trouble for making cigarettes look like a fun thing for kids? This is a recap of Sandra Lee's Food Network special Sandra's Halloween Wonderland. The Nightmare Before Christmas The beginning is largely preamble, with Sandra waking up on a lawn, disorien ... More >>

BAM Magazine Is Coming Back -- As a Website

BAM's July 7, 1978 issue​Remember BAM? If you followed By Area music between, oh, 1976 and 1999, you probably read it all the time. And if you didn't, you'll get a chance to -- there's a revived version coming to the web in a couple of weeks. Some background: BAM was a free biweekly print mag ... More >>

Facebook Is No. 10 Most "Hated" Company

Facebook's populaity plummets​After Facebook launched the creepy facial recognition feature that had users freaking out, it's no wonder the social networking giant was voted the No. 10 most hated company in America. To put this snub into context, the only companies that are more hated than Faceboo ... More >>

Thank (Based) God: Lil B Returns to Being Awesomely Dumb with "Bill Bellamy"

Bitch, he's Bill Bellamy​ After a week in which Berkeley rapper Lil B dropped a rather highbrow (and surprisingly listenable) new album, gave it away for free, got a Best New Music on Pitchfork for one of its songs, and continued to penetrate the respectable inner circus of the music industry, ... More >>

Fantasy Island: The Strange Tale of Alleged Fraudster Pearlasia Gamboa

Lil B's I'm Gay: More Bashful Than Expected

​ I love the idea of Lil B -- a member of Berkeley one-hit wonders the Pack who wasn't gonna go out like that, and has since thrown anything and everything at the wall via Twitter and Mediafire to keep attention, fans and fame -- yet I've scarcely heard a note of his music. Loved his stint on ... More >>

"Hanna": Teen Girl Kicks Major Ass in Taut Thriller

Or, The Whale Returns Home to the Independent

​Or, The Whale Chris Pureka Wednesday, November 17 @ The Independent Better than: Watching more dead whales wash up on Bay Area shores If you think about it, San Francisco's Or, The Whale is one of the most audaciously named bands this side of !!! and Various. There's the literary reference, for ... More >>

Cafe des Amis reinvents some French culinary classics

Arlington, Home of the Rangers, Largest City in U.S. Without Public Transit. Blame the Rangers.

You won't be riding this to a Rangers game​As precarious as riding Muni to Giants games can be, it'll always beat taking public transit to Texas Rangers contests. Because you can't. Wikipedia readers and others have been bandying about the claim that Arlington -- home to the Rangers, Dallas Cowboy ... More >>

'Machine gun'used in 101 California Shootings seen in Potrero Hill

Not quite the scene in Potrero, but close?​Alarm swept through The Snitch's world headquarters today, when we read a report in which San Francisco police warned of a suspect toting a "machine gun" in Potrero Hill.A 29-year old man was robbed at gunpoint at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday on 23rd Street near ... More >>

"Mesrine": Rambling tale of a gangster-showman

Chris Lindland uses memes to sell pants

Expert Teaches You How to Get Eaten by a Great White Shark

El Monstruo de Cojimar was captured off the coast of Cuba in 1945 and purportedly clocked in at 21 feet.​Dr. John McCosker, the Senior Scientist and Chair of the Department of Aquatic Biology at the California Academy of Science, presented a talk called "Sharks: Why We Love, Fear, and Need Them" a ... More >>

A Joint Effort

Shocker: Gavin Newsom Doesn't Know What Lt. Governor Does!

Los Angeles City Councilgal Janice Hahn, a Democrat running for lieutenant governor, released an Internet ad today attacking Gavin Newsom, her potential rival in the June primary. The ad shows footage of a past Newsom interview in which the city's mayor says, "What does the lieutenant governor do? ... More >>

Local Frequency: Bay Area Artist Q&A w/ Rykarda Parasol

Shot at the Walter Maciel Gallery, LA. Robb Putnam wall art and sculptureSarah Morrison Photography. Josette Church Makeup. ​On her second full-length effort, For Blood and Wine, Rykarda Parasol invites you on a journey where the main character, a lawless woman trapped in time, drifts between the ... More >>

McFAIL: Eight Case Studies of McDonald's Gone Horribly Wrong

Lushie Peach/Flickr​McDonald's thrives on sameness ― essential when serving approximately 47 million customers daily. Ideally, items get served in the same amount of time and with the same quality and cashier friendliness at every location, a sort of Stepfordian vision of perfection. The last th ... More >>

Get Off My Internets: Here's Something You Didn't Care About, and Shouldn't

My mentor, the journalist Paul Boutin, taught me plenty of rules about developing a story. My favorite is this: If the reader hasn't yet heard about your subject, you need a good reason to tell them about it. Never write a post that goes "here's something you didn't care about, and shouldn't." I dr ... More >>

Bay Bridge Rupture Reminiscent of Carquinez Eyebar Failure in 1970s

The 1927 Carquinez Bridge also had issues with eyebars -- and aging​The Bay Bridge isn't the first local aging span to have problems with torn and failing eyebars. Yet the low traffic load and easy alternate route available to the engineers who remedied the last situation aren't applicable when it ... More >>

Chronic City: L.A.'s Marijuana Dispensary Ban Could Cost City Millions

Los Angeles' proposed medical marijuana ordinance -- which would ban the sale of pot at dispensaries -- could cost the city $36 million to $74 million in lost sales tax, according to a marijuana advocacy group.Photo by lavocado, Wikimedia CommonsOpen for business on L.A.'s Ventura Boulevard... but f ... More >>

Alice Waters to Receive France's Highest Honor

JonBauer/Flickr Mon dieu.Word is that Alice Waters has gotten a letter informing her that she's going to be receiving the French Legion of Honor, otherwise known as the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur. As of this morning, assistant Varun Mehra didn't yet know when his boss would be get ... More >>

Live Nation Asks For Your Help in Renovating Masonic Center

FeistTaking a page from onetime bitter rivals (and now just rivals) Another Planet Entertainment's handbook, Live Nation (the live concert spin-off from radio/billboard barony Clear Channel, now its own entity) have announced plans to remodel, makeover, and otherwise update SF's venerable Masonic Ce ... More >>

Biggie, Small

Notorious B.I.G., made B.L.A.N.D.

Dear God: If you can't stop Mark Morford, please teach him to use the internet

SF's Most Maddening Final Four

SF's Most Maddening Final Four

Kings of Commenting: The Best/Worst in SFWeekly Comments This Week

Kings of Commenting: The Best/Worst in SF Weekly.com Comments

The Bookish Bunch

Vampire Weekend's shaky smart-aleck stand

The Fears of a Clown: MC Frontalot Gets Trapped in Unfunny Nerdspeak

Sad But True

During his life, Bay Area author Leonard Michaels never got his due. In death, he just might.

Welcome to MySpace, Whoever You Are

This year, it's all about You, so put Yourself out there

Picture This

The surprising history of Pablo Picasso, book illustrator, and the artists he inspired