Welch is usually right. I think this time around we both hope he's wrong.

Because some of what Newsom is planning to do is pretty bad – and some of what he isn't doing is worse.

We all know – and we pointed out last week – that Newsom has tough choices to make and that nobody will be completely satisfied with his decisions. But as Rachel Brahinsky reports, there are some really brutal cuts coming down the road – to basic frontline medical and social services for the most vulnerable populations in the city – and they don't need to happen. There's still some fat in the city budget that ought to be trimmed before crucial services are axed.

But the budget cuts Newsom has released don't include (for example) fire station closures, or much of anything else that will hit the wealthier parts of the city.

. . .

On a (much) happier note, this week's year-end edition of Noise looks at a question that's been hanging around since 1967: what, exactly, is the San Francisco sound? As music editor Kimberly Chun points out in her introduction, "Google the phrase 'San Francisco sound,' and apart from references to the Art Hickman Orchestra and certain house mavens, one definition dominates, like a boomer legacy blotting out the sun for all latecomers, claim jumpers, and junior Girl Scouts, and it includes the Summer of Love, psychedelia, the 1960s, the Haight-Ashbury, and of course the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Country Joe and Fish, Moby Grape, and so forth.

"Even bloated '70s and '80s hit makers like Journey and Huey Lewis and the News, or punky hipsters like the Flaming Groovies and the Dead Kennedys, can't wiggle onto that jam-packed, patchouli-scented, limited-breathing-room-only list."

But that was (way back) then, and this is now – and there's a lot of new San Francisco sound(s) out there – loud, lively, different, and part of a very vibrant local music scene.

Tim Redmond