Photograph of investigation at Times Square recruiting center by kerfuffle & zeitgeist on Flickr Gothamist found that an explosive set off outside the Times Square army recruiting center may be similar to five past bombings in New York City.Seattlest worried when severed right feet and bottles of rat poison started washing up on local beaches.Shanghaiist was surprised by Bjork's rooting for Tibetan independence at her concert (see video), and the political fallout has only......

Nicole Atkins starts this week off strong with some soulful tunes from the Jersey shore over at The Independent, starting at 8pm. She's crazy-cool and has a voice of gold. If you're more of a rocker, than get to Cafe du Nord early to see Cold Hot Crash and Filter play. It looks like the only way you can buy tickets is at the door and there's not too many of them. A Fine Frenzy,......

Photo by Phillyist's Matt Johnson, SkyscraperSunset.com, December 19, 2007. Phillyist explored an impending implosion and lived to tell the tale.Gothamist marveled at the city's new NYC-branded condom campaign - especially the use of a Toronto landmark in the advertising. (Also, fun fact: Gothamist turned five years old yesterday.)Tired of the worldwide Scientology protests? Torontoist totally isn't: they covered the big downtown protest the day it happened, and followed up with an examination of all......

Here's todays sports news...

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......

A pod of orcas has been seen off the coast of Monterey Bay, way far south of where the whales normally travel. Scientists are guessing that the "collapse" in the chinook salmon population is responsible. Normally, these whales from the Puget Sound, never need travel south of the Columbia River, which empties on the border between Washington and Oregon. Since this is the sixth year the whales have been seen off of Monterey, the current......

The three boys who took part in the shooting death of Ichinkhorloo "Iko" Bayarsaikhan in Washington Park in Alameda last Halloween, and then reportedly boasted about it, were sentenced in juvenile court today. One of the teenagers, the 16-year-old, will spend seven years behind bars, but the other two first-degree killers, the unidentified 15- and 13-year-old, were ordered to attend the Rites of Passage program, which is "a structured camp in the Nevada wilderness."......

Here's what's been going on in the wide world of sports while we've been fighting off the flu......

It nice to see that the farming and ranching traditions of Livermore's past live on to this day. You see, seven men were nabbed this past Sunday in connection with a cockfighting ring on the 4000 block of North Livermore Avenue. Ick. Busted while a fowl fight was in progress, officers arrested three gentlemen from Alameda, two blokes from Livermore, one from San Jose, and another from Las Vegas. Police officers also uncovered "300......

The Washbag shuts its doors for good. (But didn't they, like, invent drinking? Or something like that?) [Culture Blog] Beware of the guerilla knife sharpener. [Curbed] Tetris cookies are good cookies. [The Snitch] FasTrak violators cost the Metropolitan Transportation Commission $3.5million. For shame. [Examiner] SF is oh so similar to Second Life. [ValleyWag] "O-N-E-L-E-S-S, I wanna be one less, one less." [SFBG] The real Ron Paul. Ick. [IKnowWhatImDoing] Image credit goes to artist Guy......

Gavin Newsom began his second term as mayor of San Francisco this morning ...

The NFL's 2008 Wild Card Wknd has arrived at the same time as this rainstorm front......

San Francisco started the year with a bang. Literally. 1/1: The title of First Murder of 2008 was snatched up just a few hours after midnight. An unidentified man was shot to death on the 300 block of 9th Street in SOMA yesterday morning at around 4:50 a.m. No suspects, no arrests. 1/1: Two non-fatal stabbings occurred at 2 a.m in Washington Square Park. No word yet at to whether or not a pizza......

Two brothers and a friend (ages 16, 15, and 13) were convicted in juvenile court today of first-degree murder. While neither of the three rapscallions was the actual shooter, they were found guilty "because they aided and abetted in an attempted robbery that led to the death of Ichinkhorloo "Iko" Bayarsaikhan in Washington Park after a night of trick-or-treating." Oh snap. And all three of them could receive the maximum sentence: stuck in juvie......

S.F. files against the Cosco Busan...

O! What we wouldn't give to attend this press screening in Washington DC tomorrow! DCist has the pleasure of reporting on the anti-invert, pro-missionary sex group called Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH). Tomorrow they will unveil "raw and unedited" footage that they shot during this year's Folsom Street Fair for the National Press Club. "Raw" footage, you say? Oh my. You may remember that there was a scant bit of controversy due to......

San Francisco is America's most "walkable" city...

Update: Sen. Barack Obama's campaign office in Rochester and John Edwards' offices have also been evacuated. Our sister site, Bostonist is live-blogging the situation right now. Apparently, a man wants to "speak to Hillary Clinton. He has two hostages (maybe more) and [allegedly has] a bomb strapped to his chest ... police have asked the media not to take live shots of the building." Yikes. A little bit of breaking news well outside of......

And speaking of problems with pizza, Marisa Lagoshas wrote a handy-dandy little post with info on two separate funds set up for Thanh Thach's family, Check it: Two funds have been set up for the family of Thanh Thach, who was shot to death Monday night as he attempted to deliver a pizza in Richmond. Pizza Hut set up a fund for donations at Bank of America. Contributions can be made to the Thanh......

After screwing up mandated drug tests and failing to report the severity of the oil spill in a timely fashion, as of this morning Coast Guard Captain William Uberti is out. And an experienced specialist in oil SNAFUs, Capt. Paul Gugg, is in. According to the Chronicle, Gugg, 49, has "has crafted spill regulations and response plans in Washington, D.C., and helped design emergency tactics after the catastrophic 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska."......

Image: EFF The secret room at AT&T's Folsom Street facility is in the news again. Staffers from the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation are in DC this week and next, trying to convince Congress that telecoms shouldn't be given retroactive immunity for their cooperation with the NSA's secret (and illegal? or illegal-ish?) wiretapping programs. Mark Klein, the AT&T technician who spotted the NSA's wiretapping room in the AT&T building and blew the whistle, is......

-- Chicken John hosts the Loser's Ball. Which a lot progressives did. Lose, that is. [Politics Blog] -- Although Prop A might pass due to prog efforts. (See where horizontal pastels get you, Mr. Fisher?) [BeyondChron] -- Washington Packing Corporation's abandoned, graffitied tuna cannery. [WhatImSeeing] -- Bay Bridge fender bender spills "mysterious" oil into the Bay. [Oakland Tribune] -- Henry K. Lee live-blogs, as they say, on the Hans Reiser murder trial! [SFGate] --......

Three boys -- possibly ruining their lives at the wee ages of 15, 16, and 17 -- were arrested yesterday, all of then booked on suspicion of murder. The fuzz believes that the three of them were among the five boys who tried robbing a group of friends hanging out at Washington Park in Alameda, killing one of them. "One of the assailants fired several shots in the air and then shot Ichinkhorloo in......

If you remember way back last week, 15-year-old Ichinkhorloo Bayarsaikhan was shot and killed at Washington Park during a botched robbery attempt while kicking it with some friends. The group of boys responsible for her shooting escaped on a bus, but now it seems that some or all of them have been caught. We'll update in the arrests when we know more....

Last night at Washington Park in Alameda, a 15-year-old girl was shot and killed in a robbery. According to the the Chron, "the girl was with about 10 friends when five or six teenage boys whom they didn't recognize approached them." One of the guys in the approaching gaggle shot five shots into the air, and then one in her back. She was pronounced dead at Highland Hospital in Oakland. No arrests have been made in connection with her murder. (Don't they draw the bridges, or something like that, when a serious crime happens on the island?) ...

Last night we had the opportunity to bear witness to a most common SF annoyance - cable car operators not collecting fares. Shocking? No. But, what did throw us for a loop was the brakeman, who accepted a tip. When our relative from out of town just had to ride a cable car before his departure from our superior city, we decided to indulge him and follow some tracks until we caught up a with......

It really is all about the other side of Market Street now. Along with neighborhoods that we've heard of before like Pike Place in Seattle; Hillcrest in San Diego; and Park Slope in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- our xenophobia runs deep, folks -- as well as hoods that we've never heard of such as Chatham Village, Pittsburgh; Eastern Market neighborhood of Washington, D.C.; Elmwood Village in Buffalo, N.Y.; and Old West Austin in Austin, our......

Thursday is almost as bad as Monday when it comes to overcrowded primetime line-ups. We'll start with ABC and the "Ugly Betty" premiere at 8 p.m. Every time we watched an episode last year we thought, "Wow. We should really be enjoying this more than we are." Occasionally cute, occasionally funny, it was never consistently anything. And we especially hated how they decided to change an entire storyline during the middle of the season......

The Washington Blade tell us that an Italian physician claims that bisexuality is on the rise. No, not because female admissions are up at colleges, or because coke use among male emo-hipsters is at an all-time high. Dr. Umberto Veronesi, "prominent Italian physician," thinks that: ...sexual intercourse is becoming less about reproduction and more about affection. He said that shift could, within three generations, cause more people to identify as bisexual. Activists and bisexuals......

Thank goodness. Let the blessed distraction begin. For just a little while, there there be kickoffs and touchdowns and the illusion of a level playing field. Tonight, it's time for the National Football League's 2007 regular season to begin. Wonderful....