We've ridden Muni's new hybrids along both the 27 and 48 routes for a couple of weeks now, and our experience has been slightly mixed. The good aspects are that the buses are sleek and extremely quiet, and their layout seems more ergonomic and conducive to large amounts of people getting on and off on a frequent basis. There are many more straps for standing passengers to grab onto, and every vertical pole has......

Friend of SFist Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp's CEO and co-founder, just shot us this note: "Guns drawn in front of Yelp office..."...

Got any found photos, objects, or letters/notes/lists you'd like to share? Send them to found at sfist.com! The items must have been found in the Bay Area and their ownership unknown. Let us know where and when they were found and any other helpful info. The above tv was captured Monday by Marsha Vdovin on 20th between Valencia and Mission. Be sure to check out her fabulous blog! We found Marsha's photo via the SFist Flickr stream. So, label your found items with the sfist tag, and we'll be scouting you out, too! If you'd like to be even more helpful, put where and when you found the item in the caption. After the jump, check out SFist Jeremy's cool contribution!...

Adding to the estimable Alternative Press Expo coverage by Jeremy comes a little more APE coverage, albeit a teensy bit late. (Hey, its been a busy week!) Among our favs of the day were local art collective Germart and of course, Ker-Bloom, which we blogged about here ....

We had already been pretty fascinated with the growing trend of online user reviews lately. Then last week, the Chronicle came out with an article on "amateur" food blogs and restaurant reviews, about which SFist Jeremy posted an awesome rant, prompting some great dialog in the comments. This further prompted us to ponder how much online user reviews affect, and reflect, our own daily consumeristic lives....

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express: Well, this is interesting! Bottom Feeder Will Harper is leaving the EBX to become the executive editor of the SF Weekly. We're sorry to see Harper leave, but we're excited to see what he does at the sister SF publication! Plus, this collection of Bottom Feeder's greatest hits is pretty exciting. We may not be making as much money off stem cells as everyone says we will --......

--The Niners were thinking about including a House of Blues in their stadium proposal to Santa Clara. --Jake McGoldrick wants to make FastPasses cheaper for SF residents between the ages of 18 and 24. --Chronicle readers are coming out in favor of keeping the carpet on BART because tile floors will make the BART too loud. We must admit that this is an angle on the BART carpet issue that we've never before considered.......

You know we've got this thing now where whenever an SFist staffer appears on TV, we do a drinking game for 'em! Well, our brave Trimethyldixoypurist/Top Chef Go To Man SFist Jeremy's a featured guest on Check Please! Bay Area, the KQED show! We've never watched Check Please! before, ever, so we're going to be kind of making up the drinking game based on the description of the show on their website -- so if......

Looking at the Green Apple site the other day, we were struck by their Staff Picks section, which describes said staff as "helpful and friendly book and music lovers without the indie attitude." Any reader of Box Office Poison (thanks for the recommendation, SFist Jeremy! We love it!) can tell you that working in a bookstore is oftentimes a thankless task. Props to those Green Apple kids, who do their jobs with a casual grace,......

Thanks again to everyone who made our Second birthday party kick total ass. From DJ Ted of BAGel Radio, to Kerri and Jen of Varnish Fine Art (and who can forget our tireless bartenders?), to IODA for providing us with SFist Bingo swag (our swag is empty now! Someone send us some stuff!), it was a great shindig. But most of all we want to thank everyone who came, and saw, and drank (special props......

Man, we were all set to start up a new column about our new favorite reality show "Who Wants To Be A Superhero?" (which is tied as our new favorite show with our other new favorite reality show, HGTV Design Star. Project Runway and So You Think You Can Dance are our other favorite reality shows.) So the premise of Who Wants To Be A Superhero is that Stan Lee, of Spider-Man and Fantastic Four......

SFist Sam had a sandwich by our famous Golden Gate Bridge as she closes off the 23rd letter of her ongoing dine-around-the-alphabet series, while SFist Ced also stops by the Ws with a trip to Winterland. In SFist Family news, let's all raise our grande-sized paper latte cups wrapped in little cardboard sleeves in honor of SFist Jeremy and his new son! (And then let's run in fear from SFist Jeremy's wrath that we're going to a coffee place where they call medium-sized drinks "grandes"!) That makes two SFist babies in one month! Moving from babies to pets -- SFist Franny's going to do her doggie best to power San Francisco, and .... would you look at that adorable fat cat? The Tour of California huffs and puffs its way up Telegraph Hill, while down the street in North Beach, Mayor Gavin Newsom huffs and puffs his way through two dates over a whirlwind weekend. Barry Bonds'll be huffing and puffing his way through training camp -- that is, until he drops out again. And we move ever closer to getting citywide wireless internet access, which'll make it that much easier to steal elections in the future. Picture by SFist Sam...

We're getting ready for Valentine's Day! Take your pick: sex parties, the South Bay, the Dating Game, theater, or the gift that keeps on giving, fennel. We're also in full-fledged festival mode: IndieFest, the Korean-American Film Fest (check out our interview with Korean auteur Kang Je-gyu -- thanks, contributor Mihi!), WonderCon. Lots and lots and lots and lots of movie reviews! And we hope you had a nice time at our two Dalva parties -- it's always great to see you. Welcome to our new column, Whines And Dines, which covers SF from the dog's eye view. SFist Jeremy is proud to announce the winner of our online 7x7 poll, "I will take and maybe read a free 7x7" at 30%. "Earth First should punish 7x7 for wasting trees" came in third, at 27%. It was a week of police brutality by the Chron, and Chron brutality by the police. Cab fares and real estate are both going up -- and lumber is falling down. Plus -- news flash! SF hates Bush. (We are loving the "rename Bush Street" movement a well-meaning someone has launched.) Plus -- Mavericks ruled. ...

We were on the fence, at first, about the new Mr. T comic book series. But then we turned a page and witnessed our hero entering an evildoer's lair by crashing through a brick wall, and all our reservations fell away. Sure, it's ridiculous, cheesy, and a little confusing. But it just wouldn't be Mr. T otherwise. As James at Isotope Comics pointed out to us, Mr. T's never sold out, never changed, never updated......

First, a little politics. Nancy Pelosi calls for the declassification of her memo to the administration regarding secret surveillance of American citizens. Ann Harrison has an exhaustive first-person account on the recent medical marijuana dispensary raids. Executive Editor Chris Lopez softens the "Wiretap Scandal" headline at the Contra Costa Times. And Dan Gillmore is going non-profit and creating a Center for Citizen Journalism along with Cal Berkeley and Harvard, causing some to ask whither......

Is this chicken what I have, or Wednesdays? Tonight!: The SF Cinematheque is featuring an evening of experimental film called "How to Philosophize With a Flicker." Their website describes it: "Less of a 'how-to' manual than a hall of mirrors, these works move beyond the True, the Beautiful, and the Good to pose their questions with a flicker, wrestling with the world of appearances and searching out subjective spaces rather than smashing them to smithereens." We have absolutely no idea what that means but it sounds like there'll be some cool-looking movies! The flickering starts at 8, at the California College of the Arts. Thursday: it's go go go! The Exploratorium presents "Executive Order 9066," a show by puppet troupe Lunatique Fantastique about the Japanese-Americans internment camps in World War II, as envisioned through found household items. The description warns that children under 13 may need parental guidance. 8 p.m. in the McBean Theater. SFist Jeremy also wants us to remind you to go check out Joshua Wolf Shenk at Cody's SF tonight, who'll be reading from "Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness," which you may remember him discussing just the other day! If those options are too heavy for you, there's also the Bay Guardian's 2005 Goldies Award party at 12 Galaxies starting at 9, celebrating Outstanding Local Discoveries in art and music. Two Gallants is playing, and the $10 door donation goes to the Bay Guardian Community Fund and Katrina relief. And Friday: Remember when people used to rant about sex on paper and not on the Internet? Lisa Suckdog Carver does. Throw it back to the early 90s and Sassy Magazine's "zine of the month" column as Lisa reads from her new memoir, "Drugs Are Nice," at 7:30 at Modern Times. ...

Folks who voted before work were smiling and nodding at each other on public transportation today (in part because -- really, these red "I Voted! Ya Vote!" stickers they're giving out in SF today are awesome) -- if you haven't yet, sneak out of work early this afternoon, or make sure you're at your polling place by 8 p.m. If you've forgotten where to go, you can either go to your City Hall or check here (here for SF). So how was the franchisement process for your faithful SFist staffers? Well.... our well-caffeinated SFist Jeremy reports that his polling place, in the heart of District 8, took 3 minutes, and he got to work early. Damn the efficiency of the Noe Valley voting process! He was disconcerted that the friendly pollsters didn't find it necessary to check his ID or validate his claims of residence in any way. Other than that, smooth as a baby's ass. Everyone's favorite registered socialist, SFist Jackson, used his best handwriting to strike a blow against the man in District 11, reporting: "I relished my opportunity to participate in a democratic system today -- take that, Prince Charles! While Edward Champion had some problems this morning, my experience couldn't have gone smoother. There were six polling places and no line. Maybe it was too early, but sadly there was no bake sale to support Buena Vista Elementary this year. I proudly wrote in Anthony Faber for City Assessor, and also wrote in somebody for City Attorney (let's just say she's a fellow blogger). Now I have a nice "I voted!" sticker to wear with my smirk." Hear about SFist MattyMatt's absentee voter experience, the vigilant pollwatchers at SFist Jon's voting place, and how non-citizen SFist Ced wants to participate in the American Experience after the jump! And staffers and readers, share your voting experiences in the comments as you come back. (Did anyone get exit-polled? We never get exit polled.) ...

SFist tells you what to go see in the theaters this weekend. Trust us....

Oh, it's a sad day for SFist. Not to encourage undue speculation, but it seems like we have all found better things to do than read this week. Is it that our online reserve queue from the SF Public library is currently stalled, ot that we've opted instead to buy our reading material from one of our fine local independent bookstores? We can only hope that next week is a better one for us......

SFist would like to point out that if you haven't had a chance to give for the Tsunami effort, you still can. We know it's hard in the weeks following Christmas, what with your budget probably blown to bits. This is the last time we ask, we promise. That doesn't mean we won't highlight other ways you can help in the future, like HiMY SYeD's Global Vigil for January 26th. We're not perfect. Couldn't......

SFist is broke from the combined evils of holiday excess and rent. We're keeping ourselves entertained on the cheap by reserving books online from the SF Public Library. When we're back to feeling flush, we'll be buying books from our great local independent bookstores. SFist Rita just finished The Punch, about the fight between NBA players Kermit Washington and Rudy Tomjanovich back in 1977 where Washington almost killed Tomjanovich on the court. She figured......

Hey, did you notice that banner up there? The one with the humorous witticisms (thank you, we'll be here all week) and pictures of merchandise? That banner is to notify you that our Cafepress store is officially open for business, and there's no better way to pay your hard earned money in order to advertise for us. So what are you waiting for -- buy some SFist brand schwag! Wow, what a crazy week,......