Oh, and here are some tips from the NERT (National Neighborhood Emergency Response Team), care of Ed Chu of the San Francisco Fire department. It's not the most entertaining bit of footage you'll see this year, but could be the most important. (Quick quiz: how many gallons of water per person is recommended for the 72 hour period after an earthquake? Five!) Also, for more in-depth earthquake safety info, SFGTV2 (channel 78) is running......

Have you read Living Oprah, the greatest thing in the world, ever? Penned by a 35-year-old writer, performer, and artist living in Chicago--who doesn't give her name--for one year she will be living her life according to Oprah's edicts. Because Oprah Winfrey, as we all know by now, is Christ reborn. Over the past few years--after becoming one of the most powerful person in the world, arguably--has achieved an inner peace and sparkling clarity......

Bay Area filmmakers Arne Johnson and Shane King present Girls Rock! The Movie, a highly moving documentary about Portland's Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls, a place for girls ages eight to eighteen to learn an instrument, form their own bands, write songs, make friends, and then perform in front of 700 people -- all in a week's time. The film is opening in seven cities today -- San Francisco, Berkeley, Portland, New York,......

In January we mentioned a global Monopoly board game where you could vote on which cities you want on Hasbro's latest version of the popular board game, Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition. Fun, right? Well, not for some. Hasbro recently removed the country name "Israel" after "Jerusalem" when it received complaints from pro-Palestinian groups. And then, you guessed it, Hasbro received even more heat from people online who noticed the only city......

SFist interviews Jeff Ross, founder of Indie Fest...

The Chicago Tribune is, in 2008, finally getting around to dealing with the glorious, frustrating, and all-knowing voice of the commenter. This week the Tribune shut down their comment boards on all of their political news stories. What's more, the publication also yanked the Commenter's voice on a recent op-ed piece about Muslims and another story about Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich. Why? Bill Adee, associate managing editor who also oversees the online operations,......

Choppy footage: San Francisco Police Department via the Chron And speaking of cameras... While Chicago has seen crime rates plummet to their lowest numbers in over four decades due to the windy city's Big Brother program, San Francisco's attempt at panopticon-ish camera security is failing. Ever since the 68 city-funded cameras started rolling, our city's surveillance program has resulted in a single arrest. That was over 19 months ago. Why the lag, you ask?......

Torontoist discovered their city's most ridiculous holiday lights setup, with 80,000 lights and two––two!––synchronized music routines. Naturally, they snagged a video. Chicago tragically loses one of its most recognizable neighborhood icons, the pigeon man of Lincoln Square. LAPD leaves body in car at crash scene, then tows it. Massachusetts plus mullet equals PR mayhem. Londonist sleeps in a Haunted plague pit. UC Berkeley students strip naked and race through campus, NSFW floppiness ensues. Phillyist......

Reporting from the snow-dappled streets of Chicago, it's your American Football Spectacular preview for this Saturday night's battle at The Stick as The Queen City's feline football franchise comes to town....

Starting out this week, Peck the Town Crier is celebrating his sophomore CD, Groundhog's Day by performing at Pier 23. You can hang out with this San Franciscan native from 7:30-10:30 for absolutely nothing - it's free. "Recorded at the famed Hyde St Studios in San Francisco, Groundhog’s Day blends Peck’s unique story-raps and verbiage with hand played instrumental arrangements that pull from the gambit of [great] American music..." It's a bit weird, a bit......

Kids, it's time to get rocking. (Especially before the "Private Party" dry spell that is coming on. Yikes.) This week, the San Francisco music gods are offering a vast array of newbies and veterans - something that we will graciously partake of any day of the week. Now that the bets are in (okay, so no one really cast any bets - how boring is that?), you can go to Cafe du Nord, tonight,......

Angela Gheorghiu, the diva, made her SF Opera debut on Wednesday evening, in Puccini's La Rondine. That she made it onstage was somewhat of an accomplishment; she just had been fired from a production in Chicago for missing rehearsals. She was attending her husband, French tenor Roberto Alagna, concert at the Met, it seems. (Alagna's claim to fame has been walking off the stage at La Scala in the middle of Aida, after being booed.......

For both the New Orleans Saints and the 49ers, this season has suuucked. There's no worse feeling in fandom than unmet expectations. And both of the NFL's gold-helmeted teams have seen the bottom drop out of their dreams for the 2007 season....

Hey, remember angry Sarah Nome, the lady who refused to move out of the Kaiser hospital in Marin for over a year, and ran up a $1.4 million bill? Well, Kaiser's 1) gotten ownership of her house in San Anselmo and 2) will be auctioning it off to pay off her tab. Kaiser was awarded the house after Nome was put in the care of the state (after her daughter refused to take her in),......

Today's the day! They've finally restarted Southwest service out of SFO, so those of you who hate to schlep all the way to Oakland so you can stand in line for a non-guaranteed seat assignment can rejoice. Gavin Newsom said it was good for the environment to have Southwest at all three Bay Area airports so people can go to the airport closest to their house. We hope Gavin's taking BART or Caltrain to his......

Hey, all you singles in San Francisco/Oakland, looks like you live in the right place. Our fair city was tops in Forbes 7th Annual Best Cities for Singles Report....

-- "Kim Nalley Sings Nina Simone": Local legend/songstress pays tribute to Dr. Nina Simone's brilliance, goddamn. Nalley blesses us with two sets at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. at Jazz at Pearl's; $15, $20. -- Phantom of the Opera (1925): Oh, an Andrew Lloyd Webber jab would be trite, so let's just say: catch this silent-era version of the Phantom. Warren Lubich on the Mighty Wurlitzer provides tonight's non-Webberian score.  7 p.m. at the Castro......

The next season of Top Chef is looking for a few good contestants, right here in San Francisco. Applicants that aren't able to attend can submit video profiles instead, but Sunday brings you a chance for a little face time with producers. Either way, there's paperwork to fill out....

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts......

It's just gotten easier to travel -ist to -ist on the West Coast -- British cheapo bus service Megabus is starting up next week between the Bay Area and LA. Megabus is already in Chicago too. The big draw are the $1 tickets (yes, you read that right, one dollar to go to LA) -- if you're one of the first four people to book on a particular bus, that's all you'll have to pay.......

It is a cavalcade of giving these days at SFist! Today's present to our faithful readers: tickets for you and a friend to see new alternaband the Cribs. They're three brothers (two twins) from England, they sound kind of like Interpol, their new album "Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever" was produced by the singer from Franz Ferdinand, and they're at Lollapalooza in Chicago in August. But before they do that, the Cribs are playing......

The artists in We, Asian Sex Workers want to make it clear that they are not slaves or victims. They don't need to be "saved," but they would like some respect, or at the very least, sensitivity. As part of the fifth annual San Francisco Sex Worker Festival, curator Gennifer Hirano and artists Sarah Mac, Mariko Passion, Reagan Louie, Tracy Quan, Annie Chen, Surgeon Scofflaw, The Girls of Banteay Srei (Oakland, CA), and Ivy from......

Saturday.... in the park... wish it were the Fourth of July! (That's the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra performing the Chicago classic above). Here's your events for today: --Supervisor Dreamy, Ross Mirkarimi's picking up litter and planting trees as part of the Community Clean Team in the Inner Sunset today from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. Meet at the City Parking Lot on 9th between Irving and Judah. --Close out the month-long National Queer Arts......

Week Around The -Ists...

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

SFist interviews James Elkington of the Zincs, opening for The Sea and Cake at Bimbo's tonight. ...

Drove out to China Camp State Park with Sufjan Stevens on the stereo singing about Chicago. The air sat heavy with oil from the Eucalyptus trees and salt from the Bay....

Continuing a string of semi-interesting news regarding lower-cost airlines, Southwest has announced that it's starting serveice directly to and from SFO on August 26....

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

It's time for American Football Spectacular's capsule reviews of the 2007 NFL Draft. Adventure, excitement,measureables!...