Guardian videographers Rhyen Coombs and Eric Zassenhaus reported from the Bicycle Music Fest on June 21.

By Ariel Soto

The syncopated sounds of the Fillmore Jazz Festival made their way through the huge crowd this 4th of July weekend. The fair-goers perused the many stalls lining Fillmore street, that were filled with vibrant art, jewelry and hats, some of which were directly influenced by the jazz theme that enveloped the weekends festivities. Kids ran around while saxophones blared from three different stages and adults threw back margaritas being sold by women with crazy glasses who were running stalls in front of local bars. Friendly, docile greyhounds were up for adoption (I so wanted to bring one home!), whose booth was conveniently located next to the bar-b-qued oyster and turkey leg stand, which I'm sure kept the dogs noses consistently pleased. The Fillmore District, famous for being a mecca for jazz music for many past decades, seems to be keeping the spirit of the music alive through this yearly event.

By A.J. Hayes

For Tim Lincecum’s sake lets hope that there’s some validity to the phrase "What you don't know, can't hurt you."

After the Giants young ace - billed as “The Freak” - was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated last week, Lincecum claimed he had no prior knowledge of the famed S.I. Jinx. Over the years the bad luck curse has claimed past cover boys ranging from Rick Barry to Barry Sanders.

“All it is s a magazine, right?” said Lincecum. “In elementary school we had Sports Illustrated for Kids. But I never heard of a jinx. I did hear of the Madden Curse though.”

Ah, the video game generation.

Guardian videographer Ariel Soto visited the Old Skool Cafe Gospel Brunch at Farmer Brown restaurant, and really enjoyed the bacon.

By Phil Eil

For those of you who declined invitations to Dolores Park on Saturday: Don’t worry, you didn’t miss much. It was the usual scene: young people drinking Tecate, dogs chasing Frisbees, an eight-year-old guitar prodigy playing Creedence covers.

What’s that? There isn’t usually a third-grader playing to throngs of fans? I see. OK, then. Maybe you did miss something. Here's what happened:

At around 6 p.m., I was lounging on the grass near the center walkway, talking with a friend, when I heard the unmistakable guitar intro to “Suzie Q.” But then, instead of a grown-up Fogerty-wannabe belting out the lyrics, I heard a tiny, determined voice wailing, “Oh, Suzie Q, baby I love you…” Curious to see who was singing, I shuffled toward the source of the music. By the tennis courts, I found a raucous crowd of hipsters whistling and hooting around a kid with an electric guitar and a microphone. Behind him, sitting on an amp, there was an older guy playing back-up guitar. I sat down and stayed mesmerized for the next 45 minutes.

My PS3 abilities no longer seem so impressive ...

Eddie Grant, swinging from the heels in the pre-hex days
By A.J. Hayes

When compared to other noted sports hexes - notably, the Chicago’s “Billy Goat Jinx” and Boston’s now squelched “Curse of the Bambino” - the San Francisco-directed “Plague of the Plaque” falls short of the fences in terms of romantic heft.

The mysterious malediction is not centered around a larger-than-life superstar who was peddled to a rival club to help finance a Broadway play, nor does it have anything to do with a rogue farm animal that was ejected from Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series for behaving and smelling like an, er, rogue farm animal.

No, the protagonist in this whammy was a gaunt infielder turned World War I hero named Eddie Grant, who only managed to hit his weight in 10 big league seasons because he was so darned skinny.

But if you’re inclined to believe in the sporting spirits, or you think “Field of Dreams” was a pseudo-documentary, you just might buy into the “Plague of the Plaque,” AKA “Eddie’s Affliction.”

By A.J. Hayes

They haven’t been teammates since Jimmy Carter’s swansong year in the White House, but when John “The Count” Montefusco and Ed “Ho-Ho” Halicki got together this past weekend and saucily ribbed each other like a couple of high schoolers - one might have suspected the tart-tongued former Giants pitchers were still Candlestick Park locker mates.

“So when we got on the plane I flushed Ed’s socks down the toilet!” - John Montefusco, on one of his Giants days pranks

Though they haven’t spent much time together since 1980, Halicki and Montefusco have a world in common.

Each former pitcher was born in New Jersey in 1950. They were both signed by Giants scout Buddy Kerr in 1972 and made their major league debuts with San Francisco two seasons later in 1974. Each was a classic clubhouse prankster.

And each ace threw no-hitters for the Giants. Halicki, fired his, a 6-0 win over the New York Mets at Candlestick Park on August 24, 1975. The Count, earned his no-no, a 9-0 domination of the Braves in Atlanta on September 29, 1976.

No Giant has pitched a no-hitter since Montefusco’s bicentennial year masterpiece.

In between bites of mini-pizzas, pigs- in- blankets and other hors d’oeuvres and reacquainting themselves with former teammates such as Jim Barr, Mike Sadek, Tom Griffin and Elias Sosa - Ho-Ho and the Count told us what it was to be a Giant in the 1970s.

Montefusco, on hiding Halicki’s socks in St. Louis:

Ed had just beat St. Louis on the road in 1977 and we were headed to the airport to fly back to San Francisco. Ed had a date that night back in the city and boy, was he dressed to kill. He was hot and all sweaty and was the last one to come out of the locker room and he’s yelling ‘I can’t find my socks!’ He’s looking all around and going, ‘someone took my fucking socks!’ – so he ended up putting on these bright orange sanitaries (baseball socks) that we started wearing as part of the uniform that season – so he’s all dressed to kill, but he’s got on these orange socks… well he gets on the bus and the guys start screaming at him ‘cause he was late getting on the bus and Bill Madlock is sitting there laughing at him.

Ed goes up to Madlock and screams “you better give me back my fucking socks!”

Guardian videographer Ariel Soto visited the Crucible's 8th Annual Fire Arts Festival (and talked to some firemen!) for SFBG TV.

The wrestlers in action.

I ride my bicycle past the Armory just about everyday and I’ve always wanted to get inside for a tour, particularly since this magnificent, historically significant building was purchased by fetish porn purveyor Kink.com. So when the company invited me to attend Friday night’s taping of its Ultimate Surrender erotic wrestling matches, I couldn’t resist.

It might have been the weirdest event I’ve ever covered, except for the fact that it seemed so, well, normal. Only in super freaky San Francisco do we take in stride hardcore, kinky porn being made in a building once used as the staging ground for soldiers headed to war and National Guard troops suppressing local labor and social justice movement actions.

Attendees (mostly invited journalists and Kink subscribers) were treated to an open bar and got a chance to mix and mingle with the four young women who participated in this three-round tag team wrestling match, all porn actresses with an athletic side, all very sweet and charming and fairly matter-of-fact about the spectacle in which they starred.

By Phil Eil

The Jackson Arms Shooting Range in South San Francisco has plenty of promotions. Mondays are Ladies Night (half-priced lane for ladies), Tuesdays are N.R.A. Night (half-priced lane for cardholders), Wednesdays are Law Enforcement Night (second shooter is free with a law enforcement I.D.), and Thursdays are Group Night (third shooter is free, free handgun rental). But while the perks for cops, ladies, groups, and gunsters are nice, the real reason to go to Jackson Arms isn’t their marketing scheme. It’s the noise. It’s loud in there -- terrifyingly, front-row-at-a-Van-Halen-concert loud. It’s so loud that when you step up to shoot, there’s no way anyone can hear what you’re saying.

Why does this matter?

By Sam Devine

“I sit and watch as tears go by …” –Mick Jagger

It was a lovely day on Columbus Avenue in the heart of North Beach. No one suspected they were about to be clowned.

There was hardly a cloud in the sky and the heat wave had brought a lunch-hour rush of tourists and locals alike to the street-side tables of North Beach. At Café Grecco, patrons sipped coffee on the shaded side of their tables – the first inkling of shade that the awnings would provide for the day. A family chatted while an old man next to them hunched over a newspaper.

The noises of road construction drifted up the hill from Broadway and foot traffic pressed through itself on the sidewalk. A motorcyclist had just pulled his ‘70s model Beamer away from the curb when the distinct, sound of Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown” came marching through the gentle breeze.

A white, boxy Scion cruised by, calliope and drums blasting from its open windows. Behind the wheel was a man in a plain T-shirt, probably in his early 40’s, wearing a clown nose and white and black frowning make-up around his mouth.

“Wow!” said a child.

“How ‘bout that?” said his mother.

“You can’t make something like that up,” said a young man nearby.

The old man looked up from his paper, saw nothing, furrowed his brow and then hunkered back into his pages of print.

By A.J. Hayes

Our limited experience atop a pitching mound – and the corresponding disastrous results - precludes us from properly evaluating major league baseball pitch counts.

Tim Lincecum

But based on Saturday’s buzz kill of a finish at AT&T Park – Arizona’s 5-3 comeback win over San Francisco - one thing is abundantly clear. If the Giants are going to continue to keep a clicker on young star Tim Lincecum’s deliveries and routinely yank him from the game after a certain number of throws - the club is going to have to come up with a better mound contingency plan when he exits

Any more results like Saturday’s eighth inning implosion and the Giants risk a redux Chicago’s 1978 disco demolition night, sans burning wax platters of Donna Summer’s Greatest Hits.

As usual, Lincecum was rolling right along, striking out a career high 13 batters through seven innings, when he was abruptly yanked from the game. It wasn’t because Arizona had mounted a rally or Lincecum appeared to be gassed - he had just struck out the side in the seventh. No he was sent to soap up with Irish Spring because he had thrown 111 pitches and the team feared possible injury if he pitched any more.

Lincecum had thrown 121 pitchers in his previous game and San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy didn’t want to push the All-Star.

“The consensus was he was coming off a high pitch game. We’ve got to look after him a little bit here in the second half,” Bochy was quoted as saying.

The fact that he seemed to be throwing with just as much velocity as he had in the early innings or that Lincecum has never injured his throwing arm didn’t seem to figure into the decision. He was gone and that was that. Lincecum was yanked, and the beleagued reliever Tyler Walker was summoned.

What happened next was nearly sadly predictable as watching a gaggle of besodden twenty-something in tight fitting denim wobble down Union street on a given weekend night.

First there was this news about a horrifying "puppy mill" being busted in Los Gatos -- then we got this release. Please contact Lt. Le-Ellis Brown of Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-9400 if you have any information!

Animal Care & Control Seeking Info on Stabbing Of Foster Puppy

San Francisco – San Francisco Animal Care & Control is asking the public for help to find the person – or persons – responsible for stabbing to death a seven-month-old puppy in foster care with Grateful Dogs Rescue.

Pogo

The puppy – named Pogo – was being exercised by his foster parent at Ocean Beach in San Francisco at Sunset on July 22. He disappeared behind a sand dune and wasn't seen again until his body was discovered dumped in an unincorporated area of the Bayview on the morning of July 29. Pogo had been brutally stabbed to death.

Pogo was a friendly, trusting pit bull puppy who had been taken from Animal Care & Control – SF's open-door animal shelter – by Grateful Dogs Rescue. He had a genetic defect that required the amputation of one hind leg. The surgery to remove the leg was partially donated by San Francisco Veterinary Specialists - Pogo had fully recovered and was expected to lead a long and normal life. Grateful Dogs Rescue is one of the most active animal rescue groups working with Animal Care & Control. Their volunteers have taken and re-homed hundreds of needy dogs from the shelter.

Pogo was a brindle pit bull puppy with a white blaze, white around his nose and a white chest. He weighed approximately 40 pounds, was missing his right rear leg and was wearing a red collar when last seen.

Anyone with information about Pogo's death – or info on Pogo being taken from Ocean Beach - should call Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-9400. A $2000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator has been established by Grateful Dogs Rescue and The Friends of SF Animal Care & Control. To contribute to the reward fund, please contact Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-9412.