by Amanda Witherell
amanda@sfbg.com

At the Guardian's Best of the Bay party last night, we caught up with city officials fresh from a meeting on what to do about that pesky Halloween party in the Castro. Supervisor Bevan Dufty's attempt to quash the celebration last week caught the ear of Mayor Newsom, who quickly mobilized city department heads including the SFPD and the Entertainment Commission, to brew up an agreement that protects the sacrosanct Castro event.

The Entertainment Commission took the stance that cancelling the city-run event would never work: it is ingrained in the Bay Area psyche to report to the Castro for All Hallow's Eve, whether the people who live there like it or not. Police Chief Heather Fong said she would cancel cop vacation time instead and a full force would be dressed in blues and billy clubs for October 31. The plan is to shift the event from Castro to Market Street, but most importantly, the right to costumed revelry is no longer under attack.

The pics from last night's debaucherous Best of the Bay party are just beginning to flow in and be edited by our censors, but here's a couple to whet your whistle, courtesy of Kielbasia, winner of Best Drag Queen with an Accordion. (Accordion not pictured, but very present.) Go, Kielbasia!

Kielbasia and Willie Brown (his show won Best Herb Caen Column on the Radio)

Kielbasia and Guardian editor and publisher Bruce B. Brugmann -- the man!

we'll keep you updated as much as our hungover bandwith will allow. -- Marke B.

By Cheryl Eddy

Maxing out my inbox's credit line today: a press release heralding the Westfield San Francisco Centre's September 28 grand opening. The $460 mil project is sandwiched between Walgreens and the mall that's already down by Fifth St and Market (you know, the one with the spiral escalator -- across the street from that "Jesus Loves You" guy). It's freakin' huge -- 1.5 million square feet, to be exact.

From the curiously punctuated PR missive:

By Steven T. Jones
Mayor Gavin Newsom and his administration are so intent on following through with their promise to deliver free wireless Internet to SF residents that they've basically dispensed with seeking input from the public or Board of Supervisors, locked into private and protracted negotiations with Google and Earthlink, and simply decided not to do the board-approved study of Sup. Tom Ammiano's plan for a municipal broadband system. The unilateral, secretive approach has driven journalists and activists nuts. But there is an opportunity tonight at 6 p.m. to weigh in during a hastily called and little noticed hearing before the Department of Telecom and Info Services. Media Alliance has been raising hell over the issue and this week the group is releasing a study showing that the city could make $2 million per year with a municipal Internet system, as opposed to going with Newsom's so-called "free" system, which wouldn't make the city any money and would subject citizens to targetted advertising. The tradeoff might be worth it, but there are still too many unknown details to know that, so show up this evening to talk about it.

OK OK yes I should be getting back to work, but hey -- I'm the clubs columnist, it's my job to be braindead on Mondays. So I'm about to slip into the wormhole of Pandora.com, which got a few good mentions on NPR (I heard this from friends -- I can't get NPR where I live). It's part of the Music Genome Project, which aims to categorize music by subjects other than "scene" or "genre." Basically, you type in a song or artist you like, and a virtual panel of distinguished musicologists creates a radio station of songs that share basic affinities to your choice -- I'm imagining things like "melancholy" and "string section" and "Peruvian by way of Iceland" to be examples of the qualifying characteristics that link all the songs together. Or maybe it's colors and flavors -- like "Since U Been Gone" is brunette cheesecake and "Hollaback Girl" is purple baking powder. Or maybe it's like computer dating, MP3-style. But who knows? I'm always game to learn more about myself from computers, and lord knows with all the wealth of music out there in Webland I'm totally eager to have someone pick out my jams for me. -- Marke B

You will be missed.

By Tim Redmond

What happens when the people who run the SF Weekly take over a paper in Seattle? It's not pretty. No more endorsements, no more politics, half the staff flees ... Too bad for Seattle.

By Tim Redmond
You learn something new every day. I just learned from the Philadelphia Inquirer that fuck has been in the English language for more than 1,000 years.

They worry abuot that sort of thing in Philly