Okay, okay, okay, okay -- we hear you about Laughing Squid's scoop that Chicken John running for mayor, folks! We were totally slammed at work today, that's why we're getting this up late.

Who's Chicken John? He's a local countercultural legend! He's a Burning Man guy, the former owner of the Odeon Bar, and he hosts Ask Dr. Hal on Pirate Cat Radio. We had absolutely no idea! (Steve Jones at the Guardian knew, though.)

And now he's running for mayor! On the platform that San Francisco needs more whimsy and art. Yay fun! Chicken John'll get along great with Chris Daly! Click here and here (you must use both pages) if you want to sign Chicken John's petition to qualify to run, and then email him so he can pick them up. He needs 1000 10,000* signatures by July 26th to avoid having to pay the $5000 fee.

Also, Josh Wolf wants to run for mayor. He says he'll wear a webcam 24 hours a day to promote open government.

After the jump: excerpts from Chicken John's mayoral campaign manifesto.

*Noted per the comment in our tips line from candidate C. John himself! Sorry about the mixup (.pdf, page 9) -- you need 1000 to run for supervisor, which is why we got confused.

Picture of Chicken John by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid. More info on the event this illustrates here.

With all the recent hoopla regarding national immigration legistlation, now might be a great time to get a perspective on immigration here close to home.

We're not sure how many SFist readers are the "stay at home on Friday nights" type, but if you are, you might consider checking out KQED Channel 9 at 8:30 p.m. on June 29. KQED, of which we're unabashed fans, has a documentary airing that should be really interesting.

Immigration Calculations is a film that examines the economic impact of immigration, specifically in the Bay Area.

The documentary follows four immigrants, all of whom are dealing with different challenges: a small business owner that originally from Mexico; a pair of Indian H-1B visa holders that are software engineers; and a chemist at a biotech company from Eritrea. Their respective situations will be analyzed by economic experts.

The program will run a few more times (check KQED's Web site), but, as they are often doing these days, the channel is also making it available for streaming, which you can access here (though it requires the dreaded RealPlayer, so we're hoping it shows up in our Comcast On-Demand as well)..

It is available en espanol, via second audio programming (SAP).

Hey, why is Gavin Newsom's face pasted onto an Oscar the Grouch body in that graphic? Because he's taken over 300 trash cans off the streets. Why? Because they had too much garbage in them. We know! It's nutty!

Newsom, in his defense, says that SF has more garbage cans than any other comparable city, and he thinks people are using them to throw away personal or commercial trash instead of signing up for garbage service. (We're looking at YOU, Ed Jew!) "I'm still pro garbage can!" Gavin says, hastily.

Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, though, isn't so pleased, calling for legislative hearings on the issue after getting a bunch of calls from angry constituents wanting their trash cans back. "What's next? Is he going to stop street sweepers from coming around because people are throwing their trash in the street?"

And business folks like always-popular sidewalk hangout Mitchell's Ice Cream say that after their garbage can got taken away, they've been forced as good neighbors to put out a big cardboard box by the store to pick up all the cups and napkins that their customers would otherwise leave behind. "For 35 years that can was there. It was a good can. Now it's gone completely. It doesn't make sense," he lamented.

The city says they'll leave garbage cans by hangout spots like MUNI stops and the like, but want to encourage businesses like Mitchell's to get garbage service instead. Why don't they just have rule-breakers (cough--Ed Jew--cough) get garbage service, but also leave some trash cans outside for folks like us who want to throw our finished cup of Mitchell's Mexican Chocolate ice cream away without going back into the store?

An old crank's written a piece for the SFGate today either decrying or praising (we must confess we can't quite tell) our current crop of city supervisors as "a clown show."

A clown show? Why? Just because one guy who doesn't even live here owns every single kind of business that's being investigated by the city (oh, Ed Jew, a taxi medallion too?), another was spotted at the Drunk-n-Horny party, yet another posed in a local magazine in a Speedo, a fourth got made fun of on the Daily Show, and a fifth accidentally got himself sued? We're not even counting the sixth one, who doesn't ever show up to meetings except to tsk-tsk at the seventh. What makes that a clown show?

Of course it's a clown show!! That's why we love it! By contrast, the Bay Guardian, always the serious older sibling to our wacky youngest-child antics over here on the Internet, says the board is not a clown show, and the article wasn't funny. Okay, we'll admit we didn't really quite get the point of the Chron's article, except to rehash some wacky tales about the gays from an article the author wrote about the 1995 Board of Supes -- but ha ha ha! Clown show.

You can read the Chronicle's reader comments here.

Picture from Flickr by JEM Photography.

SFist Christopher Rogers sends in this picture he got outside the bar Shanghai Kelly's (in District 3) last Thursday.

No other news to report, it's just a fun picture.

Sorry we're late on this one! Not much to report, just that Board of Supes president Aaron Peskin has named himself the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee after firing Chris Daly from the position, and proclaimed his intent to make it a "no-drama" budget approval process this time around.

Peskin and the rest of the gang then went ahead and approved a bunch of the proposed budgets for various departments, including Rec and Parks, the City Attorney's Office, the Elections Department, and the Assessor-Recorder's Office. Did the Friends of the Urban Forest make in it?

However, the new committee is also putting $5 million on hold for public housing until the next public meeting. That'll be quite an event! Did you say "drama-free," President Peskin?

There's Mary J. Blige above, singing No More Drama live.

We're hearing word about today's Board of Supes meeting!

So apparently Michela Alioto-Pier, without naming Chris Daly specifically, was going on and on about the need for civility at the Board of Supes, and introduced her code of conduct for members, like she's been saying she would.

Then Chris Daly gets up, and proposes his own code of conduct -- namely, one that 1) prevents fraternization between any city official and a person directly under their supervision; (2) provides penalties for intoxication at meetings, forums, and the like; and (3) sets tougher requirements for officials who do not attend or miss public meetings. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

Though -- Chris, Chris! You forgot one! What about a code that (4) requires all supervisors to show the press immediately the location where they shower?

Update!: Other folks chiming in: Chris Daly himself is blogging about it (along with some dish on Michela Alioto-Pier's childcare suggestions to him), the Guardian's on board, and so is Fog City.

Thanks to our civically-minded readers who passed this info along! The meeting is scheduled for Channel 26 at 9 p.m., right at the roll call for introducing new matters and before public comment.

Picture by Steve Rhodes.

For those of you still a few SFist obsessions back (before Ed Jew, around the same time as Jennifer Siebel, and after the District 6 election), Gavin Newsom's Fake Question Time neighborhood lecture series is still plodding along. Even the chickens aren't bothering to show up anymore!

Anyhow, chickens or no, they've just announced this month's session (.pdf), in Aaron Peskin's District 3, and it's on everyone at SFist's favorite topic -- MUNI! It's this Saturday June 30th at 10 a.m., at the Jean Parker Elementary School on 840 Broadway (x Powell). Your MUNI buses: the 30 and the 45 are your best bets.

Here's the press release in Chinese too (.pdf), just because it's cool.

Picture of an F Market by Jerry Jarvis from the SFist Flickr stream.

Matier and Ross have both our obsessions covered in tomorrow's column! (The column's dated for tomorrow's paper, but went live this evening which is why this is going up now.)

First off: Ed Jew! The Chron finally runs the story that accompanied the pictures of them being denied access to Ed Jew's alleged shower in his flower store from last week that were taken down. Alas, the pictures don't make another appearance, but M&R do say that they made an appointment to see the shower. The photographer came at the appointed time (unclear whether M or R showed up with the photog or not), at which point Ed said, "I don't know anything about this!" and bolted. Run, Ed, run!

In response, Jew's attorney told M&R again (no doubt with a deep sigh) that he's been advising his client not to talk to the press.

And next up: C. Daly!: What's cooking here? Well, did you guys read that Chron Two Cents "Career Advice for Chris Daly" that we told you guys about the other day? Did you notice the second piece of advice, from a "Josh Low" in the Mission, that Daly had good ideas, but should work on his communication skills? That's Chris Daly's brother-in-law!!!! Oh dear.

Picture from a reader, of someone trying to cover up the anti Ed Jew poster at Thursday's pro-Ed Jew rally.

Hey, newsflash! Gay people vote!

Taking advantage of this breaking news, Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, will be addressing the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic club at their Sunday breakfast the day of the Pride parade.

On the bright side, that's great that national politicians are finally recognizing the power of the gay-friendly voting bloc! On the down side -- well, it's not like John Edwards is coming to speak. Everyone does really love Elizabeth Edwards, though, so it's cool.

Picture of the Edwardses from the John Edwards 2008 campaign

Yay! Tapioca Ed's back!

Puckish commenter KWillets passes along this picture, from yesterday's Ed Jew Open House in District 4. Originally posted on Craigslist, it's somehow gotten included on Ed Jew's own webpage.

KWillets has done everything on our Oh No, Ed Jew! coverage -- coming up with the name Tapioca Ed, dreaming up the LOLJEW pictures... we're just going to let KWillets cover the Ed Jew beat from here on out!

Thanks, KWillets! We're so excited not to be covering the Newsom cocaine thing, we can't even tell you.

We're already getting tired of this story. Can we please get back to the Ed Jew investigations? The only coverage we're enjoying is Bad Reporter's! (We're enjoying Bad Reporter's coverage very, very much, though. "No oxygen: He could die.") Here's the latest in Daly Fight 2007:

--Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier is going to reintroduce a code of conduct for behavior before the Board of Supes. You may remember she introduced a motion to censure Daly for saying "f*** off" at a board meeting back in 2004, but it failed. The Chron's called for censure too.

--Aaron Peskin says he's already told Daly the whole thing was uncool and wants to leave it there. Yes, please. We can't take much more of this!

--Will this latest scandal take away district elections? Probably not.

--People around town seem less interested in the Newsom coke thing than they were in the Newsom sex/drinking thing, and kind of annoyed with Daly for bringing it up in the first place. Daly says (we imagine somewhat poignantly), "My [poll] numbers are already low. Now they'll hit rock bottom." Aw, we still love you, Chris! (though we understand he's not so happy with us right now.) Who else are we going to write about on the 'Fist? (Besides Ed Jew, of course.)

--The Chron also looks at other nasty political fights around the area, like in Oakland and Antioch. They blame the Internet.

--BeyondChron, by contrast, blames the Chron. (Thank you for the nice compliment about our Ed Jew coverage, Randy Shaw! Though we think the Chron's Ed Jew coverage has been awesome.)

--And while everyone else is talking about coke, people affected by Newsom's budget are still trying to get your attention. Affordable housing or the Friends of the Urban Forest? Is there no way to have both?

Picture by Jerry Jarvis.

In flipping through today's Examiner, SFist Jim snapped a picture of this picture, underneath the article about the Newsom-Daly drug use fight. We recognize Gavin Newsom, sure, but who's that other guy? That doesn't look like Chris Daly at all!

Look what we just got in the SFist editor's inbox!! Jury Duty with Ed Jew! This juror, being a good citizen, had to wait two days before the case resolved before being able to talk to us about it. We love you, juror reader!

By now, you’ve heard it reported that Ed Jew got called up for Jury Duty on Monday. Well, I was actually in his juror pool and got to see the whole thing go down! I was selected (he wasn’t. Something about residency, I guess?) so I have been unable to discuss it. But the parties settled yesterday, so the story of My Jury Duty With Ed Jew can now be told!

I started seeing him several times early Monday morning waiting his turn in the basement Juror Assembly Room at 400 McAllister. Every time I walked by him, I thought, "Haha! That guy totally looks like Ed Jew. Haha!" It’s kind of dark down in that basement area, and I had trouble distinguishing things. And why wouldn’t I? I had just smoked an enormous doobie walking from Civic Center to the Superior Court house.

But when we both got called up in the afternoon, to the bright lights and smaller quarters of an individual court room, it was unmistakable. Granted, he has gotten remarkably good at glancing back discouragingly at people who stare at him thinking, "Holy f***! Is that Ed Jew?" But I got in enough stares to know it was him. Hilariously, there was actually a moment at which the judge asked aloud, "Is anyone here not a resident of San Francisco?" Of course at that moment, Ed Jew doesn’t do or say s***.

And then the bomb that everyone in that court room who reads the papers or just loves his name is waiting for finally drops.

So what happened??? Click on the jump!

As this Sesame Street YouTube clip asks, who are the people in your neighborhood, Ed Jew? And -- good idea, commenter Apioca Ted! Here's a summary of the declarations filed by Ed Jew's neighbors:

--Barry Hermanson: Barry was the State Assembly candidate for the Green Party, and has lived a couple houses down from Ed Jew's "address" for 17 years. Barry met Ed when both of them were running for District 4 back in 2002. It was "somewhat of a shock" for Barry to learn that Ed Jew had been claiming to live on his block for the last few years. He's never seen lights on, garbage bins, or anyone parked outside of Ed's house after the tenants left.

--Neighbor Daniel: Has lived on the block for 20 years. Walks his dog twice a day every day past Ed Jew's "house," and on the late-night walk, has only seen one light on, which looks to be on a timer. Also noticed in early 2007 that the water was running continuously at Ed's place and called it in to the PUC.

More neighbors and neighborhood service people after the jump. Who are the people in your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? In your neighborhoooooooood?

This is all Ed Jew's fault. We were so distracted by updating you on the latest in his woes that we totally missed the news that we just got from a favorite reader that previous SFist obsession District 6 Supe Chris Daly threw one of his famous fits at the Board of Supes meeting today! NO! How did we miss this?

Over what, though? Over what?? All we've got is a news item from CBS 5 that says Daly introduced his Blue Angels ban resolution, claiming that the planes are dangerous, waste jet fuel in a time of climate change, and "traumatize people who have fled war-torn countries for the safety of San Francisco." Was this it? Or something else?

We're going to go watch SFGov TV and see if we can catch it live, since we've never been able to get the streaming video to work right on our computer. But if you've got the info on what went down, tell us! Tell us tell us tell us!

Update: Our source says it wasn't over the Blue Angels, it was over some budget item, around agenda item 30. Now what channel is SFGov TV on again? (26.)

Update again!: Okay, after reading descriptions of the speech, we agree, the title "meltdown" is probably an unfair characterization. We'll go with "oratory," and the folks who actually watched it can debate whether it was righteous or self-righteous in the comments.

Third Update!: Thank goodness for objective journalism -- there's accounts online now. On the one hand, Daly lamented the slashing of the budget for the neediest, and the Police Officers' Association is mad. On the other, Daly also implied that Gavin Newsom uses coke (which Newsom has denied), and the Newsom campaign and Aaron Peskin are mad. And there was nothing on the Blue Angels?

Picture of Chris Daly by Steve Rhodes.

Mayor Gavvy-Gav's finally gotten through the City Attorney's report about Ed Jew, and he's none too happy about it! This is cutting into Jennifer Siebel cuddle time!

Newsom told the Chron that Tapioca Ed better cowboy up on these residency questions if he wants to stay in office, challenging Ed to "prove it," characterizing the City Attorney papers as "very damning" and "quite condemning," and calling the evidence that Jew doesn't live in San Francisco "overwhelming." (We really have to urge you to read through these neighbors' statements if you've got a moderately-fast .pdf downloader on your browser, they're excellent. We totally want to move to this block of 28th Avenue, it sounds very friendly.)

Jew's lawyer says his client would say something if he wasn't so afraid of the DA, and furthermore, if he did, he's totally sure Newsom would have been satisfied. Yeah, since that whole "my father forgets to do things" explanation did so well when this news first broke. (Meanwhile, M&R report that the DA offered Ed a plea bargain, but Ed refused to take it.)

Ed showed up at City Hall today and voted on a bunch of things, but refused to take questions and had to be escorted out by the deputies because of the crush of reporters. Meanwhile, Newsom's like, how hard is it to prove you live in San Francisco, and furthermore, notes that he still wants to know what happened to that $40,000 in Quickly cash that the FBI's looking into too.

Picture by SFist Jim.

Thanks to SFist reader Captain Disco for investigating the truth about the Mike Gravel presidential campaign: the dangerous lunatic shot his horrifying commercials in our very back yards.

If you haven't been following along: Mike Gravel is an Eskimo or whatever who wants to spend the next couple years hooting and hollering at the country. His presidential campaign hasn't been doing so keen, so he's turned to the one medium guaranteed to have mass appeal: interpretive video art! In response, the country furrowed its brow; in part because the campaign ads make no sense, but mostly because they've never heard of this joker.

But Captain Disco, his keen senses no doubt honed during his rise through the ranks of the Disco Army, noticed a few clues in the ad. That crooked tree ... that windy beach ... the clammy atmosphere ... the stink of hobo ... why, that's none other than San Francisco's very own Spreckels Lake that that madman's just tossed a boulder into! The evidence, as indicated here and here and on Google street-view, is irrefutable.

So now the only question is ... who'll be the first one out to the lake to retrieve the stone, crack it open, and retrieve Mike's heart?

What's Ed Jew doing today, now that he's been excused from jury duty? This has got to be the first time anyone's been trying to get San Francisco jury duty, ever.

--The Chron's got the news on the City Attorney's quo warranto petition. Among the tidbits revealed: Ed Jew's wife has been taking a deduction on the Burlingame house as her primary residency for San Mateo County tax purposes -- and, hey, remember how Jew said the reason why no one saw him in the Sunset is because he left for his daily shower at the flower shop early in the morning? Well, it turns out Jew's next-door neighbor (.pdf) wakes up around 5-6 a.m. every day and has never seen anyone at Ed's house. Hey neighbor, if you're up, do you mind getting all those free papers littering Ed's driveway?

--Ken Garcia at the Examiner's been asking around too -- he brushes aside rumors that Jew was growing pot at the Sunset house but does report that he talked to a woman who sold a furnace to Jew earlier this year and said Jew was very open about not living in San Francisco. "I never thought anything about it except he had a weird name, until I read about him in the newspaper," she said.

--And we're busy reading the extremely-thorough papers and declarations filed by the City Attorney on Jew's residency. Late-night dog-walkers, eager would-be renters, folks who remembered the shooting at the tenants a few years back... and who knew Green Party State Assembly candidate Barry Hermanson (.pdf) lived on that block of 28th Avenue too? (most links in this paragraph .pdfs.)

Picture from Friday's pro-Ed rally by SFist Jim.

Hey, did you hear? City Attorney Dennis Herrera referred Ed Jew's case to the State Attorney General (Jerry Brown) for disciplinary action (.pdf). One of Jew's three lawyers is hoppin' mad. The picture's from SFMike and the two sound clips (30 seconds apiece) are from SFist Jim. Thanks, guys!

powered by ODEO

powered by ODEO
What we're even more excited about, though, is the following Tapioca Ed sighting we received word of, from a reader from the San Francisco courthouse jury summons room!

Many were a-twitter today when Ed Jew showed up at the Hall of Justice this morning for jury duty. Apparently he received his summons at his Sunset "home" address. And apparently, he had to explain why he had not responded to his last four (4) jury duty summonses.

Oops! Ed must've missed those earlier summons letters in his bimonthly SF mailbox checks!

Send your Ed Jew tips this way -- we love to hear 'em!

Good thing we've got so many awesome Ed Jew rally pictures from last week -- so we can keep you up to date on the latest on Tapioca Ed!

--Matier and Ross report that it looks like everyone's going to punt to Jerry Brown to make the final decision about whether to throw Ed Jew out of office or not over the residency issue. Update!: City Attorney Dennis Herrera has punted. Hike!

--Meanwhile, Leah Garchik gets in on the fun, reporting that a reader asked her if Ed Jew's Canton Flower Shop sells..... forget-me-nots! Ha!

--Over in the blogosphere, Left in SF reports a case of spoofing in their comments where someone claimed to be commenting under the email address ed.jew@sfgov.org (with the comment "I'm going to jail."). We've had our own issues with spoofery, so please note that it is illegal to claim to be affiliated with a governmental entity when you're not, and as a result, we have to take action if we see something like that on our site.

--And finally! The SFJunto chatboard asks if we've got a Cantonese Mike Litoris incident in the Chron!

Picture by SFist Jim.

Man, we're bummed the Chron still hasn't put back up the pictures of the Canton Flower Shop and their stymied attempts to inspect the legendary shower in the back -- but we do have a new Matier and Ross column to summarize from the Tapioca Ed perspective: we call it M&R and Everyone We Know.

--First up -- Ed Jew himself: M&R repeat what faithful SFist readers recalled earlier this week: DA Kamala Harris hired Ed Jew as a consultant in her 2003 race against current Ed Jew attorney Bill Fazio.

One choice tidbit, though: M&R asked Harris's campaign manager where they mailed the checks for Jew's work, and he replied, after laughing, "I think we handed the checks to him. I don't think Ed's the kind of guy you mailed things to." Hey, Tapioca Ed picked up his mail every two weeks!

--Next, Chris Daly: Got so mad at District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi for not backing him up on the budget showdown with Newsom that other folks joked that they'd need to call in the SWAT team. Ed Jew connection: BoS prez Aaron Peskin was going to reassign Daly's position on the Budget and Finance Committee earlier in the week but got too busy with the Ed Jew arrest.

--And finally, Carole Migden: Has a condo at 3rd and Harrison (and reps SF and Marin), but has been reputed to live in the East Bay with her long-term partner for years. Oh no, C. Mig!

Picture from Friday's rally by SFJim.

Quick, what was yesterday? Besides a lovely day -- it was also the deadline for Ed Jew to respond to the City Attorney with additional documentation of his residency.

Did he do it? No! Jew failed to produce any of the requested documents, and also refused to submit to an in-person interview. His attorney, Steve Gruel, says it's because any statements he gives could be used against him in the criminal proceedings. Wasn't that true before, though? Hasn't stopped Tapioca Ed from running off at the mouth to anyone who'd listen!

Meanwhile, the charges of racism at yesterday's rally seem to be falling on skeptical ears, with Rose Pak saying, "Our community leaders should not bury their head in the sand and try to blame it on somebody else. I wish these people would stop talking so everybody doesn't think we're all morons."

And -- darn it! The Chron's taken down the hilarious pictures they had of Ed Jew's Chinatown flower shop, where an employee refused to show them the shower that Ed Jew says he uses in the back. Maybe they'll run it tomorrow.

There's an intriguing conspiracy theory afoot on the SFJunto, about the drive-by shooting at Ed Jew's "house" on 28th Ave. and that pot club he rents to.

And here's our new favorite quote! From rally organizer Calvin Louie. "Y