Image: Adobe Tour Tracker Pro cyclist and former San Francisco resident David Zabriskie (shown above leading the chase in today's stage of the Tour of California) has announced Yield to Life, a non-profit dedicated to making roads safer for cyclists. This is good news for San Francisco: the most recent issue of the SF Bike Coalition's newsletter, the Tube Times, revealed to us that Bay Area cyclists feel that roads should be safer! The......

FILM: In Being Michael Madsen, the titular star "turns the tables on notorious paparazzo, Billy Dant, by hiring a trio of documentary filmmakers to chronicle Dant's life, loves, and troubles." Crafty! The film also stars David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, and Virginia Madsen. Screens at The Roxie. READING: Michael Layne Heath and William Taylor Jr. read in honor of Abraham Lincoln's birthday (and of being our first gay Republican president!) at Dog Eared Books. *......

Photograph of Michael Strahan, coach Tom Coughin (holding the Vince Lombardi trophy) and quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning by Tien Mao Gothamist was amazed after the Giants won the Super Bowl, the city went wild, and it witnessed a ticker-tape parade.Barack Obama drew 20,000+ ahead of Seattle’s Saturday caucus.Londonist had Super Tuesday too.Elusive guerrilla street artist Banksy revisits Los Angeles.After the Patriots lost the Super Bowl and came this close to making......

Because Valentine's Day is about necking, red roses, and Whitman's Samplers -- and not about making that special someone your creampie cutie for the night, you perverts -- the San Francisco Zoo's annual adult-only "Zoo Sex Tour" has changed its name to “Woo at the Zoo.” Why? No idea. But the zoo tells us: Contrary to common belief, the animals will not “mate on cue” during the Zoo’s adults-only affair (21 years and older),......

Already Gone: It seems that "222 Club finally gets enough electronic grit to match its Tenderloin milieu." (Hmm, does this mean you're gonna get shot or can shoot up? We hope not. But go and find out for us, okay.) Kid 606's beatnosie party features UK 2-Steppers Silverlink, Lemonade, and DJ Peeplay. (Also, it should be noted, that 222 is a gorgeous, intimate, unpretentious club--not the arena-ish headaches or inaccessible table-service nightmares you might......

N Judah Chronicles' Greg Dewar will not be pleased. And neither will the rest of you. Just weeks after colliding with a 90-year-old woman on the corner of 9th Avenue and Irving Street, an inbound N Judah stuck a man at 31st Avenue, dragging him to 28th, killing him in the process. Overhead news helicopters, a Judah Street closure, and a police investigation followed suit. What's more, according to the Gate: The incident was the......

Tickets, tickets, anyone want some tickets? We have two tickets to Friday's concert at Slim's featuring: Until June, Matt White and Melee. We've already told you that you don't want to be late to this show, because all three bands are equally as good. Until June, from sunny Phoenix, traveled to Los Angeles in hopes of a record deal. Obviously, at first, they got lost in the mix, but promised themselves that if they didn't......

Lace up those Converse and get ready to scratch those chins, Radiohead fans. They're coming to San Francisco! When? No clue. Where? We can only assume the Empire Plush Room, of course. But the fine folks over at SF Weekly's All Shook Down just got word that everyone's favorite band to claim that they love will be making a San Francisco pitstop during the leg of their North American tour. Eee! While this Oxfordshire......

Here's todays sports stories...

-- Red Meat: God bless the Rickshaw Stop. And if (s)he existed, he totally would. Why? For many reasons. Take, for example, the fact that they often have extraordinary talent gracing the stage on Monday nights. (Mondays are, after all, the new Fridays.) Red Meat blends honky-tonk, bluegrass, country, and western swing with hints of gospel harmony. Mmm. Eilen Jewell (read more about her here), Axton Kincaid, and DJ Lenny & Squiggy (hee) also......

Found Magazine's inexhaustible founders, Davy and Peter Rothbart, will be at Berkeley's Pegasus Books tonight and at SF's The Dark Room on Thursday night for Found's "There Goes the Neighborhood Tour 2007." We're excited to see what's in Davy's trunk of "sparkling, brand-new finds" and be privy to Peter's songs based on notes from Found #5, aka "The Crime Issue." The Bay Area marks the halfway point in the bros.' "65-city, 36-state, 3-month rampage!" Found......

Prints + good tunes = the Pipettes -- The Pipettes: This all-female, British, Phil-Spector-sounding band gains more and more popularity by the day. See them tonight so that by next year when they're too big for SF venues, you can say you saw them when. They perform with Social Studies and Monster Bobby (read our interview with him here!) -- the Ladybug Transistor, who were scheduled to go on, will not be appearing -- tonight......

Leaving a label and starting a new one (with her new husband), Charlotte Martin finally has the musical freedom she has craved. Since her last release, On Your Shore (2004), Martin left RCA Records and created Dinosaur Fight Records with co-producer and husband, Ken Andrews. With this newfound freedom Martin has released two EP's, Darkest Hours and Veins and her latest full-length album, Stromata. Critics have lauded her latest efforts saying, "Stromata follows adventurous suit...reveling......

Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers (a band with a breakfast cereal/basketball name - catchy, right?) have started their Dirty Ol' Fall Tour on the West Coast, starting in Long Beach, then L.A. and tonight in San Francisco at Cafe du Nord. At the beginning of December, they will end up in their hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts playing two final shows at Iron Hall Music Hall. Playing over 300 shows in the last two years Stephen......

Brandi Carlile Plays the Fillmore...

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

On Saturday, the roads of west Marin and southern Sonoma counties were rife with those two-wheel vermin known as cyclists. Nearly 2500 of them. No, Critical Mass didn't make a drunken wrong turn on Friday night. This was an impressive gathering of the tribes known as the Marin Century.

C.W. Nevius continues his Homeless Encampment 2007 Tour with a visit to Corona Heights. His verdict? Not so good. He found twenty possible separate campsites as well as broken bottles and needles. Neighbors let it be known that the ever-popular "human feces" could also be added to the list. To make matters worse, there's a school, the Rocky Mountain Participation Nursery School, at the bottom of the hill and, well, won't somebody think of the children? ...

American sports fans, do you know what you're missing right now? -- the magical, the legendary, the completely captivating Tour de France. Yup. In fact, the Tour has already reached its first rest day after eight straight days of racing.

Let's face it: for cycling fans, the Tour is the pure Nirvana. Thanks to the Versus (formerly OLN) network, US fans (all 12 of them) of skinny tires, incredible bike handling, and human suffering can watch cycling every day for three straight weeks. It just doesn't get any better than this. It's like the NCAA tournament, the US Open, the NFL playoffs, the NBA Finals, and the World Series all rolled in to one. Every night -- every goddamn night -- cycling fans can kick back in their recliners (or on their stationary trainers), drink in the international flavor, and let the joy of cycling wash over them. Every night! For three straight weeks!

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

Above poster by Trudy L. Cole If the purple Impeach banner at Sunday's Giant's game got you all giddy with subversive glee, then tomorrow's opening of the Propaganda III World Tour at the Phoenix Hotel is sure to have you hyperventilating. Celebrate our country's {insert George W's voice here} "freedom" {end voice} by perusing hundreds of culture-jamming, political posters from around the globe, the act of which will make old Uncle Sam's hairy, gray......

SFist interviews Craig Billmeier aka Hot Lixx Hulahan, US air guitar champion. ...

SFist ticket contest to hear Jello Biafra at Great American Music Hall ...

The Bay Area Hip-Hop Theater Festival kicks off its two-week run of politically-inspired and racially-conscious dramatic and spoken word arts at Berkeley's La Pena Cultural Center at an event featuring the teen poets of Youth Speaks and their Brave New Voices College Tour. $10, 8 p.m., 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley (between Ashby and Alcatraz Aves.) Other events: --A documentary about Patrice Lumumba, an anti-colonialist who became the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of......

It's never just me, myself, and I when you've got SFist Jenna on your side! Ask the Cube Expat!: Are you plotting ways to escape yet another dreary staff meeting right this minute? Dragging out your coffee breaks? Itching to ditch your day job but don't know where to start? Then you should make the trek over to Sausalito tonight and check out freelance writer and editor Michelle Goodman as she lays down a blueprint......

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express: Hey, maybe you could let the Laotian community know, in Laotian, when your refinery blows up? Cover article (which is by the same person that wrote the Lao article -- Kara Platoni had a busy week!): People hoarding gene patents. Book section: Books about eating, and a book about how a dowser found someone's missing harp. Nontraditional BBQ in Berkeley. And the digital music industry still sucks. And......

Despite a few anxious laps during the climactic Stage 7, wire-to-wire overall race leader Levi Leipheimer (Discovery Channel) found just enough energy to fend off a cheeky breakaway from Danny Pate (Slipstream) and win the 2007 Amgen Tour of California (TOC) . A seven-man group including Pate broke out from the main peloton very early in the race and worked a beautiful pace line to stretch the lead out to 2'50". Pate came into......

Levi Leipheimer successfully defended his gold leader's jersey yesterday in Stage 6 of the 2007 Amgen Tour of California (TOC), but it was Team CSC that commanded everybody's attention. Refusing to concede a single pedal stroke to Leipheimer or his Discovery Channel team, CSC kept the stage hopping with steady pressure on the front from veteran scrappers like Bobby Julich and Stuey O'Grady. For their efforts, CSC locked up the overall team classification and propelled their TOC sprint man Juan Jose "JJ" Haedo to his second stage victory of the tour.

Running 169.6 kilometers (km) from Santa Barbara to Santa Clarita across challenging terrain that included four King of the Mountain (KOM) category climbs, two points sprints, and three 5.6-km circuits to finish, Saturday's Stage 6 featured nonstop, granular action motivated by visions of personal glory and dedication to team and teammates.

It's one thing to sit in a team's slipstream or ride the momentum of the peloton, but the truest measure of a cyclist is how he (or she) performs in an individual time trial (TT). On Friday, in Stage 5 of the 2007 Amgen Tour of California (TOC), 127 bicycle riders looked into the face of destiny to see who would crack and would emerge triumphant. When the dust settled, it had become clear to all that Levi Leipheimer (Discovery Channel) is the best bicycle rider in the TOC.

In an individual TT, it's just the bicycle rider against the clock. No drafting, no group tactics, no jockeying for a sprint finish, no using other riders for motivation. Finishing position is irrelevant, it's all about the time. It is cycling distilled down to its most primal essence: how fast can you go?.

Snoo-zer. Aside from the final five seconds of the race, the most exciting part of Thursday's Stage 4 in the 2007 Amgen Tour of California was the scenery. Relatively undistinguished topography and the desire of most riders to save themselves for tomorrow's critical individual time trial turned yesterday's stage into little more than a placeholder in the week-long tour.

It was a day of defensive rest, with everybody working extra hard to do the least amount necessary to maintain the status quo and playing it as safe as possible while doing so.

There was some nominal bad weather to keep the racers on their toes, a lukewarm breakaway led by Hilton Clarke of the Navigators Insurance team, a minimal response from Discovery Channel and the peloton, and a rather pedestrian, if not historic, sprint finish capped by Paolo "the Cricket" Bettini's (Quick Step-Innergetic) technically brilliant track throw to nip Gerald Coilek (T-Mobile) at the tape. Other than that, we loved it, thanks for asking.