Ah! The sun! Would that I weren't typing this in a cafe with an excessive amount of windows. Or that I was in one of San Francisco's last stalwart salons to eschew the wired world. That's right, there are still cafes out there that don't have wireless Internet. Spots where you can sit your sweet self down and feel absolutely no urge to chain-check your Facebook newsfeed.

These are places where you're still keeping up with your double soy latte joneses, but are forced to devote your attention to finishing (continuing, starting, rueing) your multi-dimensional wade through Gravity's Rainbow. Or to eavesdropping on your neighbors' conversation about the recent spate of cats on leashes sightings. Or even – gasp! – have a conversation of your own. And should all the actual reality get to be to much don't fret, I don't believe these places are confiscating iPhones. Yet.

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Not all of us are brave enough to face up to a future of robots farming vast high rises of our fruits and veggies. But Tim Donohue is. And not only does he have the same last name as me, but he's also started a think tank called Key4Hope, which is mainly comprised of friends and family and examines just how we can solve all these bothersome social-environment-economic-psychological kerfuffles we find ourselves in these days.

Yes indeed – and you can see the surprisingly technical (Donohue has a master's in international relations from San Francisco State) results of these down home solutions on the group's website. Fancy a close-knit cabal from Mountain View solving such quandries! Of course this interview is not to endorse what they've come up with. But the point is that they're talking about change. And as Donohue told us in a recent phone interview, it's really more about getting the conversation started.

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“When people tell someone a history it's always one side of it. What I know is a little darker.” Assemblyman Tom Ammiano had seen our post on this weekend's Other Cafe reunion (Sat/25), and had a bone to pick with our description of the defunct Haight-Ashbury stand up club's progressive approach to comedy. Namely, the Other's attitude when it came to gay comics during its 1980s heyday – a view which club founder Bob Ayres vehemently disputes. Read more »

“The stage used to be right here.” Bob Ayres, founding partner of the classic Haight-Ashbury stand up comedy club, The Other Café, is sitting in his old yuckster stomping grounds, now a neighborhood crepery. He’s gesturing to the corner of the restaurant, roughly where we’re sitting, and where his small stage used to host everyone from Robin Williams to Jerry Seinfeld. Now in its place it’s just me and Bob and a guy eating a sandwich two tables down. Could a desire for resurrection be driving Ayres’ Other Café reunion show this weekend (Sat/25)? Read more »

Well, hell, I thought, shutting Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals after reading its last page. There goes that. I have been a vegetarian (careful omnivore, pescatarian) off and on for fifteen years now. But having read the author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close's latest offering, Safran Foer's exploration of the horrific world and consequences of our current addiction to factory farming, I realized I could no straddle the fence. There would be, I realized, no more salmon on my plate, or "cage-free" eggs, or cheddar cheese. Why? Well besides the whole institutionalized torture thing in most slaughterhouses-dairy farms-egg factories today, here's a fact to chew on: omnivores generate seven times more carbon emissions than vegan. And I can live without eggs and bacon. Call me Natalie Portman if you must. I chatted with Safran Foer over the phone about his lyrical horror story in anticipation of his SF appearances next week, including a benefit for 826 Valencia (Weds/22). He's no activist, but I like him.

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