Results tagged “bigbrother”

Although Julie Chen described Russell as being a "Mixed Martial Arts Fighter from San Francisco," this hot-tempered Commercial Real Estate Broker from Walnut Creek was evicted from the Big Brother house last night by a unanimous 3-0 vote. San Francisco, Walnut Creek. Same difference, right Julie? (Since she's from Queens, we're guessing she frequently tells people she's from Manhattan.)

SFist loves cameras. Public, private, wherever, whenever -- we want them up, we want them rolling. So, we were tickled exuberant after hearing that San Francisco transit officials plan to install continuously-running cameras on Muni buses. The cameras would "trigger an alert every time a driver hits the brakes hard, swerves or gets into a collision," according to reports, and be placed inside and outside buses. If all goes according to plan, they will capture electrifying footage like this.

According to research done by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, surveillance cameras installed around the city in 2005 have failed to reduce serious crimes like murder and stuff. While Dickensian crimes, like "burglary, pickpocketing and purse-snatching," have seen a drop in numbers, the big brother eyes in the sky haven't done much to curb violent crimes. (Although we still urge you all to install live cams outside your windows, if only for our amusement.) A few reasons the cameras failed? Well, according to the study, the cam program has "no dedicated manager" and the footage of the cameras was grainy and poor. Another reason is that due to privacy concerns, police aren't legally allowed to view cameras in real time. Instead, they must "order footage after a crime is reported." The report criticized surveillance cameras installed by team Newsom. It did not report on the cameras used by the San Francisco Housing Authority.

Crestfallen doesn't begin to describe how we feel what we're about to tell you. Akit's Complaint Department informs us that BART has removed their much-loved, nascent "Rude Rider Hall of Shame." They leave us dangling with this message.

Deliciously big brother-y, BART is now asking riders to snap photos of rider at its worst and post them them to BART's Facebook page. It's called "Rude Rider Hall of Shame," and we look forward to all of you ratting out your fellow passengers. And it's so easy too! On trains, platforms, or anywhere around the station, have your cellphone at the ready to capture images of one person taking up two seat spaces, people not standing to the right on an escalator, selfish backpack carriers, self-centered cyclists, and more.

It was with some interest that we read Chuck Nevius's latest column on security cameras in the City. The reviews of the cameras have been mixed at best, with the most recent incident involving the use of camera footage to prove that an accused man was innocent, and that the witnesses in the case were somewhat less than reliable. On the other hand, the cameras have done very little to solve crimes, possibly because the footage quality is terrible, nobody watches them live, and the tapes are erased after seven days because of storage limitations. Limitations? When a 500 GB drive is under $100?

Since there's no reason every other blog and MSM outlet out there gets to milk yesterday's 5.4 LA earthquake and not us, check out these two pieces of caught-on-tape footage fun. First we have , showing God's unmitigated gall by interfereing with Ms. Sheindlin's ruling.

We were a little perturbed to learn there was a local on the new season of "Big Brother," not because we weren't planning on watching every damn minute--believe us, we were--but because that's a lot of show to recap. Let's see how that local did, shall we?

We were out running this morning, and caught a weird site cruising up Masonic. A bright red Toyota Prius with what looked like a conning tower on top. We followed it for nearly a block, and deduced that the four megaphone-like things on top were actually cameras. Our only conclusion - those crazy kids at Google are street-level mapping again! Have you seen the mutant Prius today? Where? And what funny/ridiculous/outrageous behavior do you think they'll capture this time around?

Are you an "outgoing, intriguing, competitive" person who is "up for anything and everything?" Also, are you an asshole? Yes? Then head over to Sugar Cafe (679 Sutter) this Saturday night from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. to tryout for a spot as one of the hamsters in CBS's phenomenal reality show, .

LA-based comedy troupe The Vacationeers fears Google Maps Street View Big Brother-ness. And ever since we saw a shot of our bedroom window on it, featuring our awful interior decor, so do we.

Choppy footage: San Francisco Police Department via the Chron

From your SFist editor's district supervisor's blog: A day before the polls open, local reporters already started writing their Election winners and losers stories. While I won’t make any big predictions, I am confident in calling this season the biggest win for me… Saturday morning at 5:51, Grace Eolen blessed us with her arrival. Sarah had a brief but exciting labor and mother, baby, and proud big brother are doing great. Oh wow, she's...

Wonkette did something we find most awesome: commenter-cleansing. Hee:

Exhibition football is back and ready to ruin our prime time lives. Hey, thanks, football. Tomorrow's a big one, so we thought we'd be helpful and give you one full day to make sure your DVR is set to record shows like Big Brother and CSI at their temporary graveyard-shift times.

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to.

The Sacramento-based chapter of the National Organization of Women is targeting Big Brother's resident "rocker" and asshole, Evel Dick. NOW has issued an alert asking the public to send letters of protest to CBS about Dick’s abusive behavior in the Big Brother house.

We can only hope that every single news outlet has printed a typo when reporting the amount of cash the United States is sending Peru, which is still experiencing severe aftershocks. As the death toll climbs past 500, with more than 1,500 reported injuries, the United States government has pledged a whopping $100,000 in support. Why don’t we just send America’s Player, Eric (with his oh-so-attractive pierced nipples) from Big Brother to help them...

-- Newsom bats his eyes at progressives. [BeyondChron]

It's no secret that we adore -- that's right adore -- watching Big Brother, especially this season. If you're not familiar with BB, it's like this: twelve Type A personalities get locked in a house and try to win half a million dollars. They're systematically eliminated one by one via house vote, and it's all captured by dozens and dozens of cameras throughout the Big Brother house.

Last night's innovative Chicken John/Josh Wolf Mayoral debate brought in "a dozen or so citizens," artists, and political fetishists. Even though it was on a Sunday night, anyone who cares about politics, SF, and progressiveness shouldn't have missed it.

Here we have le Gav looking lover-ly while kicking it with some tired Ethel Merman tranny (excuse me, fabulous "Ethel Merman impersonator") in Jesse McKinley's stellar New York Times article about our personality-littered mayoral race. (And while a very interesting piece, why Rita's or Jeremy's brilliant coverage and point of views aren't mentioned is beyond any and all logic. We're just saying is all. We digress.) Almost all of the usual and self-consciously zany...

When not fending off rumors that he's been horking lines, Gavin has lately been running around proposing ideas to fix Muni, spurred on by the latest SPUR report and the Transit Effectiveness Project.

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost.

Those season premieres are trickling in, with the big gusher arriving next week. We'll try to come to you daily next week with coverage and (hopefully) some actual reviews of pilots, but for this week we offer a slightly briefer rundown.

Oh, Gavin. Is it that hard to find love while running a major American city? Here's our mayor at the SF Opera opening with reality TV star Erin Brodie. (Brodie apparently created a minor stir by wearing a knee-length skirt at the traditionally white-tie event.)

If there's one thing we love more than passing along days-old links to non-stories, it's laughing and pointing at people on the internets getting all riled up at perceived assaults on their freedom of expression.

The MacWorld Expo 2006 isn't due to start until the second week of January, so the Apple rumor sites are already hard at work trying to ruin the surprise.

Okay, we're going to have a little fun at someone's expense here, but we feel that they deserve it. Or at least, we deserve to. Because we feel rather jerked around, and were ready to ignore it, but recent events have made us feel all the more belittled. So with our viciously sharp HTML claws, we'd like to dig in to the Blog Business Summit's PR department.

It's been a depressing week for TV, so this time around, we're going to take a slightly different approach. We're going to tell you what not to watch...