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......

No, you didn't dream it! There was a 4.2 temblor this morning at around 4:42 a.m., centered two miles east of Oakland on the dreaded Hayward Fault. It knocked out power in Oakland (poor PG&E, it's been a busy week), and broke the windows of the Safeway on Shattuck and Rose in Berkeley, and at a doughnut shop on College and Ashby (but with no interruption in donut service, they added) -- but in......

You know you’re dealing with an isolated stretch of Montgomery St. when a driver can’t reach it without first leaving Montgomery St. And in an addressing quirk that must drive new workers at the North Beach post office bonkers, the northernmost apartment building on this block is actually 303 Greenwich, even though Greenwich as a cross street doesn’t exist here. After all, the only cross traffic up here on the precipitous eastern slope of Telegraph Hill is on foot. Stunning bay views, folial grandiosity, and hill-hugging construction schemes dominate this block of Montgomery, bookended by the famed Filbert and Greenwich steps. The street itself is a bi-level roadway divided by a tall center wall lined with numerous pine trees, not dissimilar to Lawton St. in Golden Gate Heights, or Arlington Ave. in the Berkeley Hills. It’s designed for neither speed nor mass amounts of auto traffic. Aesthetically, however, it’s nearly unbeatable....

Part of the flock of our famous red-masked parakeets flying above Telegraph Hill. By now, we're sure that you've heard of the San Francisco Board of Supervisor's vote to ban feeding these very cute wild parrots in Ferry Park and everywhere else in the city. It was national news last week. What you might have missed over the weekend was Chronicle photographer Frederic Larson's short video that really shows what it's like see these animals......

Everyone loves the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, right? This poor little girl doesn't. And actually, we don't blame her. This video looks like something right out of The Birds......

-Everyone in Hayward mourns the shooting of two four year old cousins. -Another building in Telegraph Hill gets a yellow tag and it's not because of a sale. -Eight members of the DeAnza College baseball team suspended under suspicion of allegedly raping a High School student. It's like the Duke Lacrosse story except worse. -The early primary gets the worm. -There was a teeny tiny little earthquake in the East Bay yesterday. -Now you......

-San Francisco is only the 41st most expensive city in the world. -The Parrots of Telegraph Hill get their tree back, still pine for the fjord....

-There was a protest in the Mission over the the latest bit of immigration raids. -Flaks o' Gavin on gay porn proclamation: we did what? Oopsie. ...

We always thought Chinatown would be a great place to do a Treasure Hunt as we're pretty sure you could find anything there-- artwork, toys, opium, you name it. Well, there is an official Chinatown Treasure Hunt, the 17th annual Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt, and we just happen to be holding a contest to giveaway tickets to take part....

For most of the day it looked like a total Cinderella story for unknown Jason Donald, but when the very last rider of the 2007 Tour of California (TOC) prologue crossed the finish line Sunday, it was Levi Leipheimer who had tears in his eyes.

A Credit Agricole rider suffers his way up the last 300 meters to the finish line atop Telegraph Hill. Photo from SF_Chris.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the national anthem, Jean-Marc Marino of team Credit Agricole rolled down the starting chute at 1:00 p.m. sharp and the prologue was on. In a time trial like Sunday's prologue, riders race alone and against the clock rather than against each other en masse. Following Marino, 144 more riders attacked the course at one-minute intervals for the next two hours.

Clip in sports fans, between the weather and the Amgen Tour of California (TOC), it's going to be a great weekend for cycling in the Bay Area.

Whether you're tackling Mt.Tam on your Saturday morning club ride or comparing yourselves to the pros with a summit of Stage 3's infamous Sierra Hill climb, pack the sunscreen today and leave the rain shell behind.

On Sunday at 1:00 p.m., the TOC starts with the prologue, a 3.0 kilometer time trial from the Ferry building to Coit Tower.

Housing maybe the hardest thing to find in the city but there's one group who won't have to worry about finding housing-- the Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Thanks to proposed legislation, they might not have to fly the coop or whatever it is you call it. ...

That's right Cutters, the Italians are coming, along with the French, the Spaniards, the Americans, the Germans, the Dutch-- yeah, even the Dutch. They're all going to be in the City this weekend to compete in this year's Amgen Tour of California.

We're talking the real deal. This isn't some club-level Saturday morning crit for free tubes at the local bike shop (no offense), this it the best road cyclists in the world, competing for top-tier elite international cycling teams like Discovery Channel, CSC, T-Mobile, Rabobank, and more, in serious competition.

Quick -- which one of those pictures above is of Valencia Street in SF and which is of Williamsburg in Brooklyn? Bay Area blogger Overstated has put together his list of what New York neighborhoods correspond to which San Francisco ones. Check out his list, and let the great debates begin! Here's some calls we agree with: --Totally Williamsburg is the Mission. Last time we were on Bedford Avenue, honest to God we thought......

Two stories from last week are still being stories this week, so we thought we'd update everyone on what the latest has been. First up, North Beach, where yet another big, fun festival has had the fun taken out of it. This time it's the North Beach Jazz Festival which also got it's liquor license revoked by the Parks & Rec Department. That means no booze will be allowed. Once again, it's at the bequest of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers and their Errand Boy, Aaron Peskin who are upset about the possibility of the peasants running around all drunk and ruining their jazz music & wine drinking. The vote had the usual not-quite-on-the-up-and-up shenanigans and suspicions that Peskin is sticking it to Marsha Garland of the North Beach Chamber of Commerce again. Organizers of the Jazz Fesitval are claiming that they'll have to close up shop because most of their money comes from booze sales. ...

With the sun finally appearing, it's time to think about our favorite springtime city activities. Like street fairs. Our favorite street fair? The North Beach Festival. Nothing we love more than hanging out in Washington Square Park, downing some brews, then drunkenly stumbling into the maelstrom for more food, booze, and White Boy Blues. Man, what fun. Oh wait, there's going to be no booze allowed this year? Nevermind. ...

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...

For 127 of the best road cyclists in the world, it was five minutes of pain. For Americans Levi Leipheimer, Bobby Julich, George Hincapie, and Floyd Landis, it was a little less. For the American cycling peloton, veteran cycling announcer Paul Sherwen called it the Holy Grail they've been seeking. For the spectators, it was an instant classic....

It's not exactly the Tour, but this weekend the Bay Area plays host to the opening stages of the 2006 Tour of California. This eight-day, 600-mile, multi-stage road race brings the excitement of international professional cycling back to the Bay Area....

Even the rich aren't immune from the laws of gravity -- the folks living in those multimillion dollar homes perched precariously on the edge of Telegraph Hill are all a little on edge themselves with the news of rockslides down the hill. The less-well-off who live at the bottom of the hill are probably not very happy either, but no one seems to be interviewing them. Aaron Peskin raced to the defense of his district, and can probably be seen doing many, many interviews (click on video) on your local news tonight. San Francisco officials have called for the folks at the top of the hill to hire private geologists to evaluate the stability of their homes -- but no one actually had to evacuate because it turns out that of the two houses on that part of the hill, one is unoccupied and the folks in the other are on vacation. Everyone's thinking that the slide is probably due to all that rain we've been getting, but recent construction in the area may have contributed to the general rock instability as well. Fatalistic engineers note that Telegraph Hill, like all of the city, is just going to ultimately fall into the ocean anyways (in like five billion geologic years, we hope!) And oh hey, Standing Room, you'll like this -- the only thing that got hit by the falling rock? A Cushman. Picture from KRON 4...

You know, with all this Bill O'Reilly brouhaha, we totally realized that, as stalwart San Francisco residents, we'd never actually been to Coit Tower. In fact, we only know it as the leftmost icon in the SFist logo. Gotta go before it's gone! Like Daly said, Coit Tower was built on land donated to the city by Lillian Coit to commemorate SF firefighters (with whom she was a little obsessed). The Tower opened in 1933, and our government, flirting with socialism, decided to pay artists to paint public works of art in it. And now Bill O'Reilly wants it destroyed! Parking is always a nightmare on Telegraph Hill Road, so either schlep up on foot or take the #39 bus. The 39 only goes from Fisherman's Wharf to Coit Tower -- and it only runs every 20 minutes, but hey -- you paid for that FastPass, it's free to you! The Tower's open from 10 to 5; it's free to view the WPA murals on the first floor. It's $3 to take the elevator to the top, and you can only see the murals on the 2nd floor on the Sunday 11 a.m. tour. ...

Fans of fancily feathered fowl were flummoxed a fortnight ago when they awoke to find that the flora that many of the famous parrots of telegraph hill called home was cut down. And yes, the sentence above makes no sense, but go with it. The trees were cut down early Monday morning by property owner John Cowen who said he had to cut down the tree because it was old and falling apart and needed......

In media news, looks like Google got caught with their Craigslist-killer pants down over the weekend when their new database system was accidentally revealed to the public. Their shiny, baggy, flowing pants. Tom Foremski talks to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster about all things classified ad. These are probably some of the things talked about a recent Scoble and Winer 'geek dinner' in Berkeley that Scott Beale snapped some pics of. But the buzz around......

Bono makes appearance at Glide Memorial on Sunday, singing "Stand By Me" and talked of meeting the pope and offering him his "fly" shades. San Jose State cheerleaders get into a somewhat violent altercation with fan who thought their routines bordered on the lascivious. It looks like the electioneering communication reform bill will become law in time for the next campaign period. Everyone's been assured that bloggers will be exempt. Nancy Pelosi gave Tom......

For the past two years, visitors to Telegraph Hill have had another attraction to sightsee, Twiggy the Mannequin. Decked out all glamtastically fab, the mannequin has been perched on the balcony of jazz singer Carol Peters' house on Telegraph Ave. Tourists took pictures of her, the neighbors adored her, Aaron Peskin praised her. She was oh so San Francisco. Last week, Peters put Twiggy up for sale on eBay, having been forced to get rid......

We know that Menlo Park might be a bit far for some of you to travel, but we thought you might want to know about a special showing of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill at the Guild this Saturday, March 12th. Director Judy Irving and (human) star Mark Bittner will introduce the 7:00pm showing and answer questions after both the 4:55 and 7:00pm showings. But forget them - they'll also be bringing one of......

February is maybe the dreariest month, what with its being the dying days of winter and there being a dearth of sports on TV, but cheer up, San Franciscans, the Board of Supervisors has come to the rescue! A resolution passed this week proclaims Feb. 9th as "Wild Parrot Day" in honor of those colorful and loudly squawking birds that have made a home out of Telegraph Hill. "The wild parrots' great-hearted lunacy makes us laugh," reads the proclamation, although we like what one Telegraph Hill resident said about the birds: "I think, most profoundly, they're a daily reminder that San Francisco is still an oasis for exotics." This is actually the second "Wild Parrot Day" to occur, as there was a previous one in 1999 that SFist fondly remembers as a day when everyone dressed up in bright, beautiful colors and bar hopped tiki bars. ...

SFist has been told by our coworker that it is our sworn duty to end up passed out in a gutter tonight. We humbly accept this mission, and encourage everyone to do the same. We'd like to suggest some places where you can get liquored up enough to do just that on this beautiful Friday evening....

Pigeons - with their penchant for cooing, darting, eating garbage, and soiling cars and innocent passersby-may comprise the biggest bird population in the City, but they aren't the only avian species around. The most famous are the wild parrots, which have been extensively documented by local birder Mark Bittner on his website and in his recently published book The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. (A handy tip: The red-headed parrots are the Telegraph Hill mob; the other flock, which are mostly green with a white patch on the wing, hang out around Dolores Park.)...