Results tagged “russianhill”

On viscous news days such as today, we reach into our inbox to see what readers have on their minds. Here's something:

Sleep easy, San Francisco. Mayor Gavin Newsom has, at last, sold his Russian Hill bachelor pad. On the market for over a month, the spacious and too tastefully decorated penthouse condo, if you recall, had trouble finding a buyer. Today, the apartment is in escrow. While the asking price was a cool $2.995 million, the sales price has yet to be revealed. Anyway, congrats, unidentified buyer. Also, all together now: oh, if those walls could talk.

A month after being on the market -- with an initial asking price of $3,200,000 -- Mayor Gavin Newsom's penthouse condo at 1101 Green Street #2001 has plummeted in price. According to SocketSite, the asking price for his 1,693 square foot one-bedroom bachelor pad has been reduced to a mere $2,995,000.

San Francisco's Toilet Torcher is making national headlines. (Also, AP is calling him or her the "Toilet Torcher," to which SFist will take full credit, thank you. Ha ha.) And for some it's positively vexing. Scott Johnson, a 57-year-old contractor who was working on apartment building renovations in Russian Hill, describes the immolations as "an outrage."

We were beginning to think we our favorite arsonist hung up his bic. Not so. According to reports, it seems the Toilet Torcher has struck again, this time at "3:50 on Sunday morning," setting ablaze a porta-potty at on the 2000 block of Broadway. Since November, portable toilets have fell victim to someone or some persons setting the plastic outhouses on fire. So far no one has been injured. [Inset poop joke here]

The porta-potty arsonist has struck again, this time at at the 1200 block of Washington Street during the wee hours this morning, according to reports. No was was injured, no arrests have been made. (Are there really, THAT many porta-potties in Russian Hill? Seems an unusual amount of kindle for this guy to burn.)

The Toilet Torcher strikes again! This time he or she has claimed their 15th porta-potty since November. The portable outhouse went up in flames last night at Union and Franklin Streets. This time, however, a nearby car was damaged by the flames. Toilet Torcher, we demand you to reveal yourself to us! Why are you igniting the crappers of Russian Hill? Political statement? Stink mischief? Frank Chu-esque lucidity? Really, who are you?

Just when you thought the Toilet Torcher was a match striking terror to stay stuck in the halcyon days of 2008, he or she leaps into 2009 with aplomb. See, just this morning for the 13th time since November 2008, someone set a porta-potty on fire during the wee hours of the morning. The fire was reported at around 3:20 a.m. close to the intersection of Van Ness Avenue and Greenwich Street. It was put out by firefighters who arrived on the scene. No one was injured.

One person was killed after a two-alarm fire torched an apartment building in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood this afternoon. The blaze, reported at 11:52 a.m., sparked on the second floor and spread to the third floor. It required seventy-five firefighters to fight the inferno, and was put out about an hour later. In addition to the one death, another person was sent to St. Francis Memorial Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation and a pet cat cannot be found. (NBC 3)

"If you want to sell your car, call Jeff," said a sign tacked to a Russian Hill phone pole this weekend. There's a phone number attached, but here's what's weird: a little Googling reveals a rogue's gallery attached to that number. According to one page, it's transitional housing on 9th Street. According to another, it's a publisher on Clement. And Google's cache reveals a slew of Craigslist postings for psychics from Albany, Flagstaff, and Anchorage.

We don't usually read the Op Ed pages of the Chronicle, because it's always either rehashed columnists from other papers or something like "give birth control pills to deer in Point Reyes" -- but can you believe it? The Chron actually got someone local to write about a local issue today -- if we're going to build out the MUNI underground, why not actually build it out and have a subway that runs to Fisherman's Wharf?

It’s the dead of San Francisco winter and 46 degrees — 46 degrees! — but that’s not stopping certain hardy residents of the sizable apartment structure at 1214 Polk from opening their windows and drying their laundry au naturale. We’re impressed. 46 degrees in San Francisco, particularly along this gusty urban corridor between Bush and Sutter, feels like autumn in the Yukon. This is the southern edge of Polk’s transitional zone, where it emerges from the sleazy chic of “nitespots” like Vertigo and Blur and slowly crawls toward more prim territory northward up into Russian Hill. The upstairs residences on this block are decidedly ordinary, but there’s a dichotomy at work between, for example, the stained glasswork at O’Reilly’s Holy Grail and the $5 haircuts and $20 facials across the road at the International College of Cosmetology II. Of course, Polk St. has always been known as one of San Francisco’s more diverse business thoroughfares.

Yeah, we could hardly believe the headline ourselves. Do people have no shame?

Exploring San Francisco through the lens of city blocks, Blocker is a weekly series by Charles Hodgkins. Look for it on SFist each Wednesday, around the lunching hour.

Photo of six kids in a huge stroller in Civic Center

Photo of s sign prohibiting photography in Russian Hill

Hey, tomorrow's Saturday. You were going to have a few stiff ones anyway, right? May as well have them at the John Barleycorn. From 1-5 p.m. tomorrow there will be a free BBQ at this the historic pub

Here's todays news

Quick -- which one of those pictures above is of Valencia Street in SF and which is of Williamsburg in Brooklyn?

Those of us you who live or work near the Nob Hill/Russian Hill/Chinatown area are conveniently located near the biggest-bang-for-your-buck yoga in town. Yogic Motion's intro offer of $20 for 30 days of unlimited yoga is impossible to resist and a very smart tactic. "Everyone can go to the ATM and withdraw a twenty," explained Yogic Motion owner Brian Monnier. And for that $20 you can do yoga every day for a month. Then you will be hopelessly hooked. And hey, we gotta giveaway too. Start off your new year right and enter to win a free month of unlimited classes at Yogic Motion.

We know the frustration of driving around the block, constantly searching for a parking spot. We're guessing we’re not the only SFister who occasionally has to drive (for work) that may sometimes feel this way. Been there, done that. It’s likely not news to anyone, and we hope we don’t receive angry comments telling us we shouldn't be driving at all in our fair city.

Ever since the Examiner has been bought by religious arch-conservative Philip Anschutz, everyone has been waiting to see how the Examiner would fit it's publisher's political views into a free daily in the most liberal city in America. Sometimes they manage to do it (sort of) but every once in awhile, the veil is lifted as it were and the Examiner goes a little nutty. Like today. For their main editorial, they implore San Francisco to honor economist Milton Friedman.

The dining scene in Hayes Valley got a little rough-and-tumble Friday night, as a car fleeing the scene of an accident on Oak and Webster smashed into Cafe Delle Stelle on Gough and Hayes. Fortunately, the car missed the front windows, but a bar from a street sign hit two pedestrians on the sidewalk, and three people were taken to the hospital with injuries as Delle Stelle employees and people from the restaurant next door extinguished the car fire that subsequently erupted. In the scene, no one managed to stop the two men who sprinted out of the car and fled the scene. A San Mateo man is recovering after an accident on Sunday, when he was run over by his own car. The man had parked his van on the street, but after he got out of the car, it began to roll backwards. The man then tried to jump back in, but fell out, and the van ran over his leg. The van rolled back about 70 feet and stopped after hitting a 1994 Mercedes. Emergency brake! ABC 7 is reporting that at noon today, a MUNI bus will go out of control in Russian Hill after a bus driver has some kind of medical-related blackout. Watch out around Hyde and Leavenworth in a few hours! (We assume this happened like yesterday or something; we in particular are really in no position to mock other people's typos.) And 30-minute BART delays this morning -- say it along with us: Switching Problems. Picture of car from CBS 5; picture of bus from ABC 7

Well, the cat's out of the bag about the new blog from Gawker Media. We've known for a while, but have been pretty good about keeping mum about it due to this SFist's work with Fleshbot. As PJ Corkery revealed Wednesday, it's going to be called Valleywag, and it's going to be helmed by the affable Nick Douglas, who's moving on from his post as editor at Blogebrity.

Today, SFist would like to hoist a few for a man who has brought probably more joy and merriment to anyone over the past hundred years. In fact, one could argue that he's probably had more of an impact on people's lives over the past century or so than anyone. The man? Master Brewer Joseph Owades, inventor of Lite beer and Microbrews, the Thomas Edison of beers. Owades, a Bay Area resident who lived in Sonoma, died yesterday at 86.

Because they have free Wi-Fi connection, we could have written this review live from Nook, in the heart of Russian Hill. But, despite our internet addiction, we prefer to travel with a simple moleskin notebook (no lines). Nook is a quirky little cafe identified by rosy splashes of colour and warm red and dark woods that brightly fill the space previously occupied by a quiet but cool-looking architects office. (Lets hope they just moved on instead of under.) Shoot for the best spot: There are banquettes around the edge of the room that afford the best opportunities for nosing at the other customers. If you are in a more day-dreamy mood then the window seats are particularly appealing, especially if the warm afternoon sun is grazing through the glass at just the right angle so that the heat melts onto your skin and you can gaze out idly at the Hyde Street Cable Cars clunking on by.

Oh, you gotta check out the picture of this on the front page of the Chron this morning (not online, unfortunately). So a tourist is visiting our fair city, driving a rented SUV. You know how it is when you rent a car -- whoops, I accidentally turned on the windshield wipers, are those my fog lights?, etc. Well, this tourist smells a funny smell and notices that his emergency brake has been on the entire time he's been tooling around Russian Hill. Well, he stops on a scenic block, fiddles with it, and finally gets the brake off. As soon as he turns off the brake, though, the car starts rolling backwards downhill. Guess where he is? Lombard and Hyde -- the crookedest street in the world!! (yes, we know that street in Potrero is actually crookeder.) He loses control of the SUV trying to navigate the turns backwards, it flips over, and he and his daughter have to break their way out of the window. They're both fine, or we wouldn't be giggling so hard. In our two other obligatory crime listings, Anna Ayala the Finger Lady is reporting that people are sending her anti-Hispanic mail, and there was a murder in the Mission at 20th and Folsom last night.

Update: A roving correspondant (or possibly a stumbling drunk) informs us that lights are on downtown, around Union Square and Civic Center, in Hayes Valley, in the Tenderloin, and down towards Twin Peaks. So, really, who cares?