Mike Leigh was a member – and so were David Baddiel and Sacha Baron Cohen. How did a club for ‘hippy Jewish scouts’ become a hothouse for the entertainment industry? Sacha Baron Cohen (circled) with his fellow Habonimniks By Peter Stanford The Independent On its website, Habonim describes itself as “a Socialist Zionist Culturally Jewish youth movement”. Given that even [...]

A scene from “The Lead Shoes,” by Sidney Peterson Anthology Film Archives Photo By Manohla Dargis The New York Times Is geography destiny? Or, to put it another way, why did the San Francisco Bay Area become a humming hub for so many great avant-garde film and video makers, a veritable crossroads of the alternative world? The filmmaker and [...]

IsraelNationalNews.com Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Paris on Thursday said French President Nicholas Sarkozy wants the PA to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the Associated Press reports. “What I heard from President Sarkozy is that they must recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people,” Netanyahu said outside the Elysee Palace in Paris. Netanyahu described his [...]

Louai Faisal, a Palestinian, spent time in Israeli prisons, but when he was seized by the Palestinian Authority and accused of belonging to Hamas, the treatment was “much worse,” he said. Photo By Rina Castelnuovo By Isabel Kershner The New York Times HEBRON, West Bank — Louai Faisal, 27, a Palestinian resident of this West Bank city long considered a Hamas [...]

Too tame for a billionaire? By Kashmir Hill Forbes When the San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was upgrading from a Craigslist rental to a $7-million manse in Palo Alto, it declined to give the exact address citing a desire to respect the privacy of the previously-stalked Zuckerberg. It was a futile attempt. [...]

Here are the hot stories in the Bay Area for Friday, May 6, 2011: Burglary suspect arrested inside Oakland home A trespassing investigation led to the arrest of a convicted thief suspected of numerous home burglaries in Oakland and other East Bay cities, police said Friday.

Jeffrey Chin San Francisco : Hillstone on 2011-05-14

La Fabbrica Av : Nicodemo@La Cantina dell' arte on 2011-05-14

Jai Uttal Larkspur : YogaWorks Larkspur Landing on 2011-05-14

Stephen Kellogg The Sixers San Francisco : Swedish American Hall on 2011-05-14

Peter Lehel FRANCE : Junger Kammerchor Baden-Württemberg & Peter Lehel on 2011-05-14

Heikki Bourgault FRANCE : Ampouailh morbihan tour on 2011-05-14

The Hi San Francisco : Bender's with The Ogres! on 2011-05-14

ARIEL Oakland : FM Smith Recreation Center on 2011-05-14

Rod Y Gab Release Live In Japan Album DVD San Francisco : SF Oyster Fest on 2011-05-14

Hayes Carll San Francisco : Slim's 94103 on 2011-05-14

This weekend, Husby and I are off to Galveston for the weekend for a little birthday celebration so I’ll leave yall with the Pirates series matchups: Friday, it’s the Wand Man vs lefty Paul Maholm – one of their 1st rounders who actually worked out for them – he came up in 05 and has put [...]Read the full original article...

On the same day Angel Pagan suffered a setback in his rehab from injury, his replacement showed he can be quite stable. Jason Pridie, called up two weeks ago when Pagan went down, hit a 3-run homer in the 6th inning to give the Mets the lead for good in a 6-3 win. The Dodgers [...]

One wonders: If Detroit had played like they did in the 1st period the first three games, surely this would look like a different series.

Highlights from the blog this week:1. SFoodie bloggers locate two dishes I've been curious about for a while: Luis Chong finds Taiwanese-style shaved ice in the Outer Sunset, just in time for a...

By Dan Pine Staff Writer JWeekly.com That’s how it goes when it comes to divergent attitudes toward circumcision, even among Jewish physicians. A proposed citywide ban on circumcision has garnered enough signatures to qualify for the San Francisco fall ballot. Whether it is ultimately certified and approved for the fall election is yet to be determined, but meanwhile the [...]

Whole Foods Market plans to open its fifth East Bay store on May 18 in Lafayette at 3502 Mt. Diablo Blvd. The 25,000-square-foot store takes the place of a former Albertsons grocery store in the Park Plaza, a shopping center that includes McCaulou’s Department Store, El Balazo taqueria and Bank of America. Whole Foods already has East Bay stores in Walnut Creek, San Ramon, Berkeley and Oakland. “Whole Foods Market is so excited to be a part of the Lamorinda community,” said Gary Ramirez, team leader for Whole Foods Market Lafayette, in a...

Alza Corp. is suing Impax Laboratories Inc. for patent infringement for the Hayward company’s generic version of blockbuster attention deficit hyperactivity disorder Concerta. Concerta extended-release tablets, ranging from 18 milligrams to 54 milligrams, registered sales of $1.4 billion in the 12 months ended in February, according to Impax (NASDAQ: IPXL), citing statistics from health care information company Wolters Kluwer Health. Filing the suit in U.S. District Court in Delaware, suspends Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug for up to 30 months and could lead the companies itno settlement...

A man suspected of stealing an expensive violin from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music was arrested Thursday night after dropping the instrument off at a church, a police spokesman said Friday.

Reporting by Sarah Phelan and Linda Man. Photographs by Sarah Phelan
Thirty-six candidates have filed papers in the 2011 mayor’s race, but only former Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, Sup. John Avalos, Board President David Chiu, former Sup. Bevan Dufty, former Sup. Tony Hall, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, venture capitalist Joanna Rees, City Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, and Sen. Leland Yee got to publicly race out of the starting gate May 5 during the first official mayoral forum. And while the decision to exclude the other 25 candidates was understandable from a logistical perspective, it raised the perennial question as to how the concerns of marginal communities and marginal candidates will be addressed during the campaign. (N. B. Write-in candidate and taxi driver Harold Miller used the forum to circulate his campaign literature, a strategy he also employed during this week’s cab driver protest around MTA credit card fees)<!--break-->

The May 5 mayoral forum, which the University of San Francisco’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good and buildOn, a national non-profit organization, hosted, was apparently modeled on the 2008 Presidential Candidate Forum on Service. And it was intended to enable candidates to ‘address substantive questions about the future of service and engaged citizenship in San Francisco,” according to a USF press release.

But while the forum gave the audience a chance to meet nine mayoral candidates up front and personal, and though the candidates sought to differentiate themselves as best they could, the open-ended nature of the questions that students got to pose, resulted in more talking around the issues, and less answering of the questions. By forum’s end, the one message that the mostly student audience seemed to have gotten was that the city is out of money, thanks to a $350 million dollar deficit, and that folks need to volunteer, and, come to think about it, why not volunteer for someone’s mayoral campaign.

“It was more like mayors promoting themselves. Are they supposed to be like that?! The main thing I learned was that the city is in huge debt,” one student observed, after listening to the candidates talk about their experience giving back to the community and what they hope to change if elected.

 USF student Christina Lopez, in her junior year and majoring in Politics, told the Guardian that if she had to vote at last night’s candidate forum, she would have chosen Yee. She said that out of all candidates, Yee offered more insight on how he would change things and what he would do if he was mayor. “The forum was helpful because I didn’t really know all the candidates,” Lopez said. “ I will follow the campaign and see how they actually fall through with what they said about rebuilding SF.”

Audience member Jack Frohlich said he still has no idea who to vote for. “I want to hear where we are going to get the money to do what we are going to do,” Frohlich said. “I want to hear somebody proposing a surcharge on the richest people in the state to close the budget gap.”

USF student Andriana Duckworth, a sophomore majoring in Politics, said she would vote for Avalos. “I liked how he said that we don’t need to take money from other local budgets to fix our public school system,” Duckworth said. She also noted that she liked how Alioto-Pier talked about disabilities and would like to hear it addressed more.  “When people hear diversity, they think of race and class but not disability,” Duckworth said.

So how did the candidates seek to frame and differentiate their candidacies?

Hall characterized himself as “an independent,” but then waffled his way through a long and confusing explanation of his 34 years in public service that included the claim that he was “very successful” as a supervisor.

Alioto-Pier talked about the defining moment in her life: the day she broke her back when she was only 13 years old, thanks to a ski lift accident, and how she subsequently began, “fighting for equality and the rights that I knew were mine.”

Herrera, like the bright lawyer he is, won Brownie points for noting that the location for the mayoral forum on public service was very apt, given Leo McCarthy’s service-oriented political career. Herrera then highlighted the positive changes that his office has made in recent years, including its efforts to promote marriage equality and universal healthcare. “These are real changes that started in San Francisco and had a positive impact,” he said.

Board President David Chiu cast himself as a champion of immigrants, civil and tenants’ rights, and took credit for helping usher in a new era of civility at City Hall. “For the last ten years, City Hall has not been as functional as we would have liked,” Chiu said. “I’m very proud that the tone at City Hall has changed.” He said that balancing the budget, reforming pensions, bringing in the America’s Cup and nurturing and retaining tech companies like Twitter, and creating a world-class public transit system were top priorities. ‘We’re losing families, tenants and homeowners,” Chiu warned.

Venture capitalist Joanna Rees made the biggest visual impression of the night, thanks to a bright orange jacket that made this reporter speculate that Rees was trying to raise her name recognition by making a subliminal connection with the famously bright orange wrapped Reese's Pieces. Either way, Rees cast herself as a political outsider who would breathe fresh air into an otherwise, allegedly, uninspired room. “We’ve lost the spirit of innovation at City Hall,” Rees claimed, as she committed to creating an online clearinghouse that would allow people to share their talents and meet the needs of various services, and thereby “foster more public and private partnerships.”

Sup. John Avalos stressed his roots as a social worker and a community and labor organizer. “I’m running because I want to fight for immigrants and support families and diversity,” he said. “We need to figure out how we can bring neighborhood leaders together, and how communities can come together.”

Former Sup. Bevan Dufty was the only candidate to use the linguistically persuasive technique of talking about himself as if he were already mayor. “I’m excited to be mayor, I love San Francisco, it’s a city where you can achieve your dreams,” Dufty gushed, as he pledged to fight to “uphold diversity and buck the trend that’s anti-immigrant." Dufty also did the good job of relating to the audience, largely through his ability to tell funny stories to make his points. And he wins credit from this reporter for crediting Sup. John Avalos for authoring the local hire legislation that Dufty helped pass in December by becoming the eighth vote when then Mayor Gavin Newsom wanted to veto the legislation, and that interim Mayor Ed Lee recently enacted citywide.

Sen. Leland Yee highlighted his long track record of public service, including the times he used to tutor immigrant youth in San Francisco’s Chinatown, when he was a UC Berkeley student. And he stressed his seniority as an elected official, as he ruminated on his experiences on the school board and the Board of Supervisors, and then in the state Assembly and now in the Senate.

“These are extraordinary times,” Yee said. “We don’t have enough money to do all the things we want, but through civic engagement and leadership we can provide.” He stressed that his priority is not to cut education, social services, and services that are in need. “The government is about taking care of people that are in need of help," he said.

Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting talked about his decision, five years ago, to start resetting how things worked in his office, by training his staff, investing in their future and holding them accountable for the work they do. “We were able to bring in $260 million over our budget,” Ting said, stressing that the effort proved that government works better if you have more say and more power. He also noted that his office introduced the city’s first solar incentive program.

"Now we have four times the solar roofs, we’ve doubled the city’s megawatt production, and we’ve created green collar jobs,” Ting said, lamenting that the city now wants to get out of the program. “You are missing from the dialogue,” he told the audience, as he promoted his Reset San Francisco theme.

And then, after a two-hour round of questions, it was back to the campaign trail, where raising money will be one key to getting out the message in this otherwise crowded race. The other key? Having the stamina and staying power to keep on message while pounding the pavement for the next six months.

In the meantime, you can listen to the candidates' closing statements here:

There's a huge debate in journalism and open goverment circles about the wisdom of releasing the photos of the dead Bin Laden with bullets in his head. A lot of people who normally push open-government issues say this one's dangerous; if the photos get circulated, it could incite violence around the world. On the other hand, they were taken by U.S. troops using U.S. tax dollars; we paid for this stuff, grisly as it is, and the public ought to be able to look at it.

But it's complicated. And the topic of today's poll. Check it out after the jump.<!--break--> 

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Free polls from Go2poll.com

Join us at the first-ever annual Decks on Deck party aboard the Cabernet Sauvignon–a swanky, $7 million 125-foot yacht–benefitting the SF chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphona Society on May 20th. This yacht party, full of civic-minded SF citizens and philanthropists, singles out help for and supports one individual per year who is battling a form of leukemia or lymphoma.

They've just confirmed that big-time spinsters Mix Master Mike and DJ Sam Isaac will be helming the turntables for this night on the water, and that means there will be a ton of dancing, and drinks from the open bar to go along with it. This floating oasis will also be a gaming center, where you can gamble and play cards, all in the name of charity.

Get your tickets here, or donate to the cause here. The party boards the yacht at 7:45 pm, and returns to 11:30 pm. See you there!

Peep this video of the Two Gallants performing "Long Summer Day" during their latest surprise show last week, this time at the tiny but packed Ever Gold Gallery down in the Tenderloin.

 

Two Gallants "Long Summer Day" @ Ever Gold from Misha Vladimirskiy on Vimeo.

Like clockwork, the New York Times periodically chooses to publish an in-depth profile of some prominent California politician or politicians, usually under the rubric of West Coast "quirkiness"...

Update: The canceled Dredg show is now just a free show by opener the Trophy Fire. Anyone can come, no ticket required. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the show is at 8. Bad news: Due to the sudden ...

Hunx and His Punx record four songs at Daytrotter. [Daytrotter] Think all the controversial band names are taken? You haven't heard of Glittersnatch. [The Bay Citizen] Yours Truly gets up clos...

This is Steve Kroner, subbing for Henry Schulman for the opener of the series against Colorado ... Bruce Bochy's lineup against Ubaldo Jimenez: Rowand, CF; F. Sanchez, 2B; Fontenot, SS, Posey, C; Huff, 1B; Burrell, LF; Schierholtz, RF; Tejada, 3B; Cain, P. Tonight's first pitch will be...

Vicente Fernandez SITIO OFICIAL California : Cow Palace on 2011-05-07

Everyone firmly believes the New York Giants got a steal with Prince Amukamara in the first round of the NFL Draft, but what about James Brewer in round four?

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If NFL free agency were to begin, could the New York Giants consider bringing back linebacker Kawika Mitchell?

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