After their American Idol hour was unforgivably interrupted by the San Francisco Police Department making an announcement last night, a reader writes to SFist asking: At about 8:55pm tonight, my viewing of American Idol was disrupted by the SFPD making an announcement in the middle of our street that there will be several rounds of LIVE AMMUNITION fired in the next few minutes as they test a new gun fire detection system. I live......

Matier & Ross were all over this nugget of news today: bronze plaques will be placed in locations where the city's homeless have died. The "memorials" will be placed in Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi's districts, which include the Tenderloin, Civic Center, Haight-Ashbury and Western Addition. Each will be 2 feet by 2 feet "human-shaped plaques" and "[inscribed] with details of the deceased's lives and the circumstances of their deaths," according to the Chron. Let's......

We thought that this issue was neatly swept under the rug. What gives? Is the neighborhood patrol still kicking it in the Western Addition? Well, time to come home, fuzz. It looks like someone in the Marina/Cow Hollow vicinity was recently attacked, and SFist won't rest until San Francisco is a solid police state. According to Marcia Gagliardi over at the esteemed food site Tablehopper: I don't have many details about this, but I......

BeyondChron has a civil point/counter-point debate going on about Yoshi's SF, which opens its doors today. But let's go back a bit, shall we? If you didn't know, San Francisco has the most cheery pockmark on its record: the "Negro removal" period. During this time historic buildings were torn down and black Western Addition residents were shooed out of the city. A movement that "never succeeded in driving all blacks from the Fillmore," but......

Just what San Francisco really needs – renovated horse stables in Golden Gate Park! That's right. Proposition G, if passed, would raise $750,000 towards revitalizing the existing dilapidated stables. Proponents of the prop claim that this is all for the youth of San Francisco. Well, they must be thinking about little Spencer and Avery of St. Francis Wood, cuz we're pretty sure that the kids who go to John Muir Elementary in Western Addition......

Free bike light giveaway today only. ...

101, the highway of doom! There was a drunk driving death near Willow Road Wednesday morning, along with all those random shootings the day before. The cops, for what it's worth, say none of those random shootings are connected -- but still: we'll take 280 this week, thanks. A student at Merritt College in Oakland was attacked and acid was thrown in her face in a college parking lot a few weeks ago. The police......

-- Bridge? Closed. (They're gone! Quick, put away the bongs, and bust out the vodka, straws, and mirrors!) [Examiner] -- Near, far, wherever you are, free Wi-Fi must go on. [eWEEK] -- Two bodies found in Ingleside Heights. [Chron] -- Also, four other attacks in SF. How lovely. [SFist] -- While out jogging, Ross Mirkarimi helps apprehend two Western Addition drive-by suspects. Oh, Ross, you's so strong! [Chron] -- Good to the last drop,......

WE LOVE IT WHEN ROSS MIRKARIMI SAVES THE DAY!!!!!! Remember when he stopped a robbery? And then when he saved the life of a guy in Buena Vista Park? And today, he caught two people involved in a drive-by shooting!!! (Thanks to commenter Rah for calling our attention to the story!) Ross Mirkarimi, the supervisor for the Western Addition/Lower Haight's District 5, was out for a jog this morning around 9:45 a.m. (guess Ross doesn't......

Some very sad news. According to Bay City News, "[t]wo men among the midday shoppers" smashed the storefront window at Gucci (Union Square) and stole an undisclosed amount of jewelry. No one has yet to be arrested for the luxury-store violation. During midday? Really? Wow. Were they super villains? Because how else did they evade capture in the afternoon light? Someone at Burning Man is found and arrested for flicking their Bic during a......

Happening "primarily on Chestnut Street [with a some attacks happening] near Fillmore and Greenwich, two to three [persons] dressed in all black wearing Halloween skeleton masks" and brandishing guns, it seems, committed at least 11 attacks on men and women over the past three weeks. Grabbed while walking on the sidewalk -- including one woman who was reportedly forced into her apartment -- the victims were all robbed of their personal belongings (i.e., backpacks, purses,......

(7pm-ish, 7/10, McAllister and Divisadero) An anonymous tipster sent in the above image, which is curious since the entirety of the SFPD was required to stake out a three block radius from last night’s All-Star Game, searching for elusive Alyssa Milano boob. No, not really, but we’re dying to know more. (Excuse the pun.) This shot shows at least five people in the process of being arrested, and was reportedly captured one hour after......

Photo of Jesse Jackson's address in the Western Addition. ...

A couple blocks south of where Lower Mervyns Heights butts heads with Upper Chopper City, Divisadero’s business-dominated stretch begins to take shape. There’s a little of everything on this block between McAllister and Fulton, from the throwback corner diner, to the auto body shop, to the bar whose front window announces a list of “rules” to be obeyed. There’s also the Muslim center and the tattoo parlor. Even the pair of pizza places on the east side of the street take divergent approaches. The block’s eclecticism doesn’t seem to bother anyone early on this Sunday evening. The pies at sit-down place Little Star Pizza (deep dish or thin crust – you choose) look to be as popular as any in town tonight, while down the sidewalk at quick-service Stelladoro, police officers and less-armed customers quickly nip in and out for cut-rate slices. A door or two away, at the corner of Divisadero and Fulton, the sticker-strewn counter at Eddie’s Café appears as if it’s been helping mitigate hangovers with omelets, bacon cheeseburgers, greens, and grits for decades....

Hi, folks -- welcome to the latest edition of the Top 5. As SFist is community driven, we enjoy picking out some of the best comments that you folks contributed -- the ones that raised the discussion level, taught us something we didn't know, or made us laugh. This week, commentary on Ed Jew, Western Addition Shootings, the budget, and more made the Top 5. ...

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

This situation with Thursday's Western Addition shooting is just sad, sad, sad, and not just because a lot of people got hurt (seven, according to the news outlets who actually have time to investigate these things). It's becoming pretty clear that it is, yet again and as always, the result of a bunch of people making very poor choices indeed. The comments lit up on our last post -- whose fault is the recurring......

It wasn't just that shooting in Western Addition this morning -- it's been kind of a violent 24 hours there and in the Mission. At around 5:40 p.m. yesterday, there was a stabbing at Capp and 17th -- a guy was stabbed with an ice pick after getting out of a car. The stabber then jumped into another car and tried to run the victim down, and then jumped out of the car and stabbed......

San Francisco's most pleasant neighborhood had its cheery, safe veneer shattered this morning with a shooting -- 8:50am, Steiner and McAllister. We are shocked, simply shocked. Surely, city officials, police leaders, and representatives of the nearby public housing will take swift and effective action to ensure that this is the only time citizens ever feel unsafe while walking through the Western Addition. SFist_Jim was fortunate enough to be in the neighborhood at the time, that......

Well, all of San Francisco politics is trivial, isn't it? Get that confirmed at tonight's 4th Annual Political Trivia Contest, featuring Chris "Whiskers" Daly, Ross Mirkarimi, and Jake McGoldrick, at a benefit for the John Muir PTA, for a spelling bee for the Western Addition. Categories of questions include: "Streets (and Transportation) of San Francisco," "Interesting Characters of San Francisco," and, in a bracing slap of reality, "Only Trivia That A Policy Wonk Would......

The last of our slightly less-than-timely coverage of the Alternative Press Expo, which took place last weekend, focuses on folks telling their sequential art stories in a longer form. Which, as much as we love the other stuff, is really what we dig the most. We focus on Ted Naifeh, Dave Dwonch, Joseph Costirlos, Von Allan, Jaimel M. Hemphill, and Javier Gonzalez....

In a big press conference yesterday, city officials announced plans to have police officers start patrolling four projects in the Western Addition. Up until now, police weren't able to patrol those places due to issues concerning who had jurisdiction over them-- San Francisco or the Federal Government. The Federal Government had supported community policing in those areas, but the money dried up years ago. After looking through what Ross Mirkarimi called a "Khafka-esque" relationship between HUD and the SFPD, a solution was reached. ...

-Repair crews begin to clean up landslide in North Beach. -A 19 year old is shot in Western Addition and three were shot in the East Bay. -That civil injunction thing in the Bayview appears to be working. -Alex Tourk opens a lobbying and PR firm. -Anne Coulter's favorite person, John Edwards, is in town today. -If you want to see SFGate's collection of photos from the Chinese New Year parade, go here.......

-Police say they're taking a bite out of crime in the Western Addition. -And today's minor earthquake was in Lafayette. We still think there has been way too many of these minor quakes lately....

As we all know, there's been a huge upswing in shootings in this city, especially in the Lower Haight/Western Addition area. We also know that the Powers that Be don't seem to know what to do about stopping it all As a result, people in the neighborhood are in full "mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore" mode and organizing. Their request? Send cards, letters, and e-mails to Gavin, Kamala Harris, and Police Commission Heather Fong telling them to do something, anything, about the violence. Like, now. ...

It looks like we're not the only one's to have noticed an uptick in violence lately as the Powers That Be Have too. This in response to the four recent shootings over the weekend, two of them in broad daylight. ...

If you, like us, heard very stressed-out-sounding BART announcements on your commute home today about the Hayward BART station being closed because of a police action and needing to take Richmond trains to get to Fremont last night, that's because four people were shot in the area of the Hayward BART stop around 5:48 p.m. No one is dead, but one person was found injured on a platform and another in a bus zone (we......

Last Friday, the Examiner got their hands on a bunch of statistics and a calculator and crunched a whole bunch of numbers about crime in the city. Their verdict is that curiously, the number of homicides has gone up but the number of people arrested for said homicides has gone down. It doesn't take a math major to realize that's not very good. ...

San Francisco just received a grant of $1.8 million dollars that will go to helping clean up the streets in certain neighborhoods. The program, called the Community Corridor program, is already being used on Irving Street and with the new, extra money, will be expanded to the Haight, Western Addition and the Fillmore. The money goes to assigning a "block sweeper" for each section who goes around making lists of things that need to be cleaned and fixing them. There are similar programs in cities around the world. ...

-St. Boniface Catholic Church in the Tenderloin is having a money crunch which could affect it's ability to handle the homeless. -Cabbie is found shot to death in the Richmond Annex ...