Can you believe Flashdance is turning 15? Not in years, but in incarnations. The fifteenth in the irregular series of dancing flash mobs happens tonight at 7:30. Where, you ask? In the seat of power! Or at least, right outside the seat's window, on Van Ness by City Hall. The rules are few: primarily, they are to come and dance. Text FLASHDANCE to 41411 for SMS updates. Don't carry visible alcohol -- and don't......

Oh my God, we might all blow to bits. Well, some of you in the Mission might, that is. According to Curbed:...

Photo by Whole Wheat Toast Oh my. According to WWT: Just after 7:30 this morning, apparently something happened, and three cars, those I failed to identify, managed to make a Camry flip over! This is the 2nd accident that occurred in this intersection, the other one being a tow truck hitting a food-packing truck on Friday, at the same time. Hope no one was injured.......

At first, before reading this story, we were ready to shake our finger at the Vespa rider in question. Lord knows we worry about you kids. But it seems she wasn't at fault. You see, last night a 24-year-old San Francisco woman was put in the hospital with life-threatening injuries while riding a Vespa on South Van Ness Avenue. It seems that "a 1994 Honda Accord, which was traveling southbound, tried to make a......

Remember Vawanda? The Muni bus driver whose bravery many of you refused to believe in? Well, as fate would have it, local treasure Jameth, who uses her ad image as an avatar, finally found her! Driving the 47-Van Ness with aplomb and nerves of steel, she even has her testimonial poster next her. Nothing short of adorable, folks. Great find, Jameth.......

While Oakland received tons of press over the weekend for its recent spate of murder, this Mission murder, which happened near 25th and South Van Ness (be careful, Phone Booth patrons!), went all but unnoticed. Around 6:45 p.m. last Friday, two men approached 21-year-old Jose Reynoso and shot him in the head and chest. He was taken to SF General Hospital where he died the following day. Police have "sketchy descriptions of the killers"......

Okay, before you ask, this is not the much-beloved Our Locals On Reality TV Project Runway recap, this is the SFist Symphony review -- we'll explain later in the post. We had a little San Francisco Polyphony of our own on our way to the SF Symphony concert yesterday night to see Gyorgy Ligeti's shimmerily-dissonant orchestral piece of the same name -- the driver of our MUNI bus finally got fed up with people sneaking......

It's time again for another Love on Wheels event...

Attention criminals: as of this week, your swashbuckling days of villainy and misbegotten Muni rides have become easy and breezy. Muni has "decriminalized" citations, which means that you won't have to go to court to deal with them. Now, you can contest or pay them through the Customer Service Center at 11 South Van Ness, just like parking tickets. You can also deal with citations via phone, or mail; and allegedly you can pay......

Those Ron Paul People are Everywhere...

-- On Saturday Friday at around 10:40 p.m., Jan. 26, 24-year-old Ernesto Williams was shot and killed while standing outside his car at the Chevron station at Sixth and Harrison streets. While waiting with his 26-year-old girlfriend, police claim a suspect drove up to the couple, exited his vehicle, and then "approached the victims and started shooting," killing the Oakland man and wounding his female companion. The suspect then "returned to the vehicle and......

It's the new year so it's a new Ask a Muni Security Guy question. This one was inspired by seeing some lady eat chinese food on BART while also reading a magazine.... How do you handle food on MUNI? Technically it's not allowed but everyone kind of does it....

Michael Pollan: Come hear this foodie sensation talk about his latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, in which he suggests that you should not "eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize as food." (Impossible. Also, yes, Michael Leaverton, we DO need to know the exercise logs of the fowl we plan on eating.) Catch him tonight in conversation with restaurant critic, Hayes Street Grill chef/co-owner, and local food celeb......

If you took Coolidge Corner and moved it to San Francisco, you'd wind up with something very much like West Portal, a nicely-kept secret neighborhood with folksy shops and restaurants and a theater, about a 10-minute subway ride from the Castro. And get this: it's about to get even nicer, thanks to some sprucing-up by Muni. "Underinvestment in the Muni system has brought us to a point where we cannot postpone this work," says......

A city worker ignores city policy...

Have a rant against Muni? This week, our Muni Driver rants too, all in a response to a comment from last week. And remember, folks, if you got a question, send them to jon@sfist.com. We may not get to your question automatically, but we'll get to them as soon as we can. ...

Alas. We hit the 100th murder mark over the weekend. And this big 1-0-0, as you know, is not a cause for celebration. Early Saturday morning at around 5 a.m., Jose Alberto Chel Camara, 21, and Jaiber Nah Carballo, 20 were shot and killed on 18th Street and South Van Ness. (The assailants were "described as two men in their 20s, but it was unclear whether one or both were the shooters" and no......

Every year at Thanksgiving, you're bound to forget one or two critical items. A shallot, cooking twine, mushrooms, Ketel One -- something will slip your mind and you run the risk of having your Thanksgiving dinner collapse in on itself. And then you've ruined everything. Everything! But who can we prevent such yellow wallpapered hysteria? This is where you come in: do you know of any grocery stores that stay open late on Thanksgiving......

This lifted our sad, oil soaked hearts. The Craft Gym will be hosting their 2nd annual Craft-Off competition this Friday. Following the model of Iron Chef, there will be a secret 'ingredient' revealed to teams before the 30-minute DIY battle begins. A random assortment of craft supplies and tools will be available for teams to use in the creation of their creative masterpieces. Prizes will be awarded to the winning team, who will be......

As much as we bitched today about the unexpected free-shuttle service on Halloween night, they're actually a nice thing for the city of San Francisco to have. The problem is: where have they been? As mattymatt's weekend guides demonstrate, the city has disruptions like (though not as large, but similar to) the one coming on Halloween night. Why can't we see more of these shuttles for every large to medium-large city event? And while......

We were riding the M line yesterday, thumbing through the Guardian's 41st anniversary special, when G.W. Schultz's lead for the his anti-Muni-privatization article caught our eye: There's a money room in the basement of 1 South Van Ness, where the Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni, is headquartered. Workers literally count by hand bags of cash and coins taken in as fares from passengers throughout the day. After we finished bashing our heads against......

According to this map we saw right near the Ferry Building, it looks like the borders are Taylor, Bush, O'Farrell, and Van Ness, shrinking the Official Tenderloin to a mere twenty-ish square blocks. But wait...isn't Larkin Street now Little Saigon? How'd we miss the official renaming of NoMa? Is it going to have an incestuous relationship with NoPa? Would the kids be heroin-addicted H&M shoppers feasting on rotisserie chicken? The mind reels.......

-- San Mateo Bridge shuts down, then opens. Ta-da. [Examiner] -- Dan Noyes on Jerry Lucas, the sanity-estranged man who followed a then-pregnant Jill Rabinowitz into her garage, severely beating her with a can of paint. He might soon get sprung from the funny farm. [ABC7] -- Streets such as "Van Ness Avenue, Broadway...Harrison Street" and more could turn into toll roads under a proposed city plan to ease traffic congestion. [Chron] -- Viggo......

Do you have any information? A Fremont family is trying to get some answers about the circumstances of their father's mysterious death. The father suffered a heart attack at Van Ness and Market on June 5, and died five days later without ever regaining consciousness. The mystery is that they cannot find the car their father drove into the city that day. They have a garage parking ticket they found in his pocket, but it......

-- Benefit Show Honoring Erno "Tattoo" Szabady: Local rock bands Slowfinger, DickDusters, and the Walker Brothers get together to raise money for a burial "niche" for well-known, recently deceased tattoo artist, Szabady. Show starts at 8 p.m. at Peacock Lounge, 552 Haight Street (at Fillmore); $10-$15. -- Live-in Maid (Cama adentro): Norma Aleandro's dramatic role, about a "wealthy woman and her live-in housekeeper" dealing with the economic collapse in Argentina, finally arrives in the......

-- Giants vs. Brewers: Shouldn't beer be half-priced when we play Milwaukee? Alas. Game starts at 7:15 p.m., AT&T Park, King and Third Streets; $20-$98. -- Graphic Content -- T-Shirt Exhibit: DJ Centipede operates the decks while you buy a nifty one-of-a-kind shirt. Wee! Reception starts at 7 p.m. at Space Galley, 1141 Polk. -- Maureen McVerry: Cabaret star (and one-time Full House guest star according to her IMDB profile) sings songs saluting love......

Uh oh! Did you stop by the Jamba Juice on Lincoln Avenue in Willow Glen in San Jose any time during the first two weeks of August? An employee may have given you hepatitis A. Turns out one of the food handlers didn't realize she was sick and she might have given it to you if she didn't wash her hands properly. If you were at the JJ from August 9-16, get a shot. If......

Photos of the current and future mayor of San Francisco promoting urban greenery ...

-- The 2007 Bay Area Rhythm Exchange: Stepology (which we can only hope is very much like "Vibeology") presents tap stars Channing Cook-Holmes (Riverdance, Gangs of New York, Bojangles), John Kloss (Tap Heat), Deborah Mitchell (The Cotton Club, Black and Blue), Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards (Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, Bamboozled), Sam Weber (Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood). 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre (SF War Memorial and Performing Arts Center), 401 Van Ness; $19-$22. -- Chrome:......

-- hey willpower at Glitterbox: At this "funk punk thrash electro discotheque" (what, no show tunes? Bah), local pop/R&B/dance band performs. DJs Javier Natureboy and Junkyard spin funk, punk, and electro well into the morning hours. At least until 3 a.m., anyway. Starts at 9 p.m. at Cat Club, 1190 Folsom (at Eighth Street). -- Darrell Hammond: SNL comic comes to SF. He goes on at 8 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. at Cobb's Comedy......