Former Catholic priest and KGO 810 AM host Bernie Ward was finally fired, ending his working relationship with the station. This stems from last year's federal indictment of child pornography charges that befell the (now former) host of "the Bernie Ward Show" and "Godtalk." He was officially let go, it seems, at the end of 2007. According to Dan Noyes at KGO, Ward admitted to "downloading images from the internet and trading them with......

SFist reader/commenter Tendernob kindly sent this find our way: I spent the holidays with my mother in Los Angeles, who collects rare first-edition books. While I was visiting, she opened "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" (circa 1930) and an old San Francisco MUNI transfer fell out. We don't know whose it was, or how long it was in that book. We're not even certain how old this ticket is, but google tells us that John M.......

With the perpetual rebuilding process that is the San Francisco 49er franchise, every so often an old part of old successes will cycle back through SF. This Sunday, Gilroy’s second-most-favorite export returns to the Bay Area at the reigns of Chucky Gruden’s particular strain of West Coast Offense. You never should have been run out of town, Jeff....

Did she find a horse's head in her office chair the day before? Embattled Susan Leal, who's refused to bow to pressure from Gavin Newsom to resign her position as the general manager of the SF Public Utilities Commission, was hit by a car outside City Hall as she was leaving meetings just before noon today. She was rushed to the hospital, where they found she was okay, if a little shaken. We like one......

With a cool $5.4 million in new state bond money, according to the Chronicle, "BART will upgrade and expand its security camera system" to the likes of which you've never seen before! Dangerous sounding "smart cameras" will litter BART cars, stations, parking lots, and even inside of the Transbay Tube. The new surveillance system will be "helpful in preventing crime, improving emergency response and helping police identify suspects," according to BART General Manager Dorothy......

Well THIS is juicy: a restraining order, freshly filed by the THC, explains at least one of their recent firings: Defendant is ... the former general manager of the Mission Hotel ... THC discovered defendant had been involved in criminal activity, including extortion, assaults, and threats of violence ... The conduct is ongoing. Yikes. Turns out, the guy was fired weeks ago, but he's been stalking people from the THC, and got back into......

Gasp! After 11 hard, long years of phallic rule by Tom Margro -- who left to head the toll operation in Orange County, so let's all say a prayer for him -- our new BART chief, Dorothy Dugger, is the first-ever female to hold the position. We think that this might be a good thing, a woman in the lead position. No reason as to why we think so, other than our love of sweeping......

The other day, we told you our impressions of Naia Gelateria (nutshell: pretty good overall; you should particularly dig it if you enjoy having a ton of varieties to choose from). We wanted to know a little more about this Bay Area company, so we approached Trevor Morris, the company's general manager. He's been running the company since 2003, and had prior experience in the restaurant industry before that. He took the time to answer a few questions....

So San Francisco's Department of the Environment-- you know we had one didn't you?-- has come out with their plans to make this city go green. Or more like cutting down on those nasty, nasty greenhouse gases so we can cut emissions to pre-1990 levels. The report was called for by Gavin as part of his Climate Action Plan, which he introduced in 2004. ...

Two months after Newsom became the umpteenth Mayor to try and roust the homeless from the parks the Examiner checks on in to see how everything is going. The answer? Just swell says Recreation and Park Department General Manager Yomi Agunbiade. According to their stats, the city has torn down 380 encampments and placed 66 homeless people in housing and 33 have been given services. They also tallied who was in the park and discovered that the majority of them are between 18 and 34 and between 30 and 40 percent were from out of town...

It's Week Three of the National Football League's 2006 regular season. Here's what happening with your Niners and Raiders. ...

Months ago Gavin talked up the idea of placing turbines into the Bay to generate energy for the city and on Monday, he made it official. At a press conference at Crissy Field, Gavin and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Susan Leal announced that they will begin the initial stages of getting this thing going. The turbines supposedly will create 38 megawatts of power, or enough to power 38,000 homes. ...

Sunday and yesterday, the James Beard foundation announced their annual awards for 2006 in a posh ceremony. We (a) did not win for our excellent food coverage; and (b) were not invited, which is fine, because we would not have been able to go to New York. Keep not inviting us, as long as you don't give your hardware in our backyard, we don't even care. Losers. Whatever. Even our Gothamist siblings were (a)-and-(b) snubbed,......

We're getting pretty antsy, waiting for service to start on Muni's fabled new Third Street line. It was originally supposed to be operational when, like, 2005? And the delays just keep mounting. The lastest obstacle: getting driver signed up and trained for the new line. Muni was dragging its feet on that, and for a while it looked like the training process would mean an additional couple months of delays -- but the SF......

Last Wednesday, word got out about a class-action suit being brought by Gonzalez & Leigh on behalf of employees at the Courtyard Marriott in San Francisco Superior Court. Originally filed September 23rd, the recently amended complaint alleges that Marriott has failed to comply with the San Francisco Minimum Wage Ordinance since it was enacted on February 23rd, 2004. Further, it's alleged that the ordinance itself wasn't posted for employees and that one employee, Joseph......

Last week’s roundup covered quite a few places in the Mission: Pizzeria Delfina, the resurrected Window, the Thai-French fusion at Baku, dim-sum at Big Lantern, and Crazy Sushi. We thought it was a lot, but we were very far from being exhaustive: we snubbed -- for now -- the new Provence, on Guerrero, or the Annex, a budget French restaurant on Valencia. We ignored the new menu and new ownership at the Last Supper......

Well, if you were looking for material to parody lefty activists, look no further than the recent strife over at KPFA's offices in Berkeley. Want your lawsuits, your conspiracy theories, your anonymous mudslinging and accusations of being a goverment and/or corporate coup by agent provocateurs hell bent on destroying the station? How about if we told you there's alleged sexual harassment, thrown chairs and threats to go mano-a-mano? Oh yes, it's a sordid mess......

While stuck on BART for it's weekly hairball cough up, we couldn't but help enjoy the latest column by the Chron's Glimmer Twins, Matier & Ross, about the new head of BART (memo to BART-- maybe more people would take the train to the airport if you didn't break down at least once a week. After all, being late for work isn't nearly as bad as being late for a flight. And speaking of being late for work, when you hold a train at SFO for ten minutes before heading off to Millbrae, would it kill you to at least pretend that you are aware of the fact that some of us have connections to make?). Seems that the new head of BART, Zoyd (Zoyd!) Luce, a retired ex-mid-level flunkey, got just one whiff of power and has gone all Col. Kurtz over there. Get this-- he sent out a memo to BART General Manager Tom Margro proposing management cuts, eliminating "stipends" to top level executives, laying off an army of consultants, wage freezes for both employees and management, and taking away BART passes from everyone but employees. And wait, there's more! He even called for the laying off of BART police and the cutting back of employee pensions. We know! That's crazy talk. ...

We would like to sincerely thank everyone who has offered their stories, thoughts and support in this matter. We were honestly expecting maybe half a dozen people to show up tomorrow, but now we think that it's going to be a lot bigger, which is awesome. This story seems to have really touched a nerve! We notified local press and relevant city agencies through an official press release [PDF] yesterday. Once again, it's tomorrow,......

Back on Tuesday, Athletics Nation carried the third and final part of their interview with Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane, who is generally considered something of a genius in his field. Kos points out that he had this to say about the blogosphere, after discussing how fluid player deals and a managing a team's makeup can be: [T]hat's what I love, for lack of a better word, about the blogger's world.  There is a......

After one of those breathless, local news type investigations by ABC 7 into supposed slacking of city gardeners aired in December, the head of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department has vowed to crack down on the abuses. From here on in, there will be quarterly reviews of staff employees and they will have to sign in and sign out of their assignments. To further make sure gardeners actually work, managers will start visiting......

At the beginning of the year, our earnest Boy Wonder of a Mayor said that in the spirit of sharing the pain of the inevitable budget cuts, he would cut his own salary 15% percent. The total amount of his cut? $25,000 -- taking his salary down from the $168,867 being Mayor pays. Sure living on a salary around $140,000 isn't that difficult. And sure it's easy to give up money when you're already rich.......

We may kid the Chronicle every once in awhile, for, oh, laying people off, getting rid of good columnists, and shoddy editorial standards, but sometimes you gotta give credit where credit is due. Which is why we come today to praise the Chron, not bury it, because the Chron done good. And what did they do? Did they expose citywide government corruption? Highlight details of a poor and put-upon underclass? Get rid of the Night......