San Francisco Bay Guardian

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed the astonishing ad that ran in The New York Times defending the pope. Maureen Dowd picked it up in a nicely savage column that suggests the holy father undergo an inquisition. Read more »

Six candidates are running for two judicial seats in San Francisco, and over the next few weeks, we'll be interviewing all of them (and at the end of April, we'll be publishing our endorsements). The interviews make for interesting listening, so we're posting the sound files on the web. Here's Rod McLeod, who is one of four candidates seeking to replace retiring judge Wallace Douglass.

 Read more »

By Brady Welch

In a story that continues to amuse and fascinate, it appears that the human biosolids compost shit show we wrote about last week has left town… and ended up in, of all places, Alice Waters’ own backyard garden. That’s right: the seasonal, local, and cage-free proprietor of Berkeley’s fabled Chez Panisse has emerged as a staunch and unlikely defender of fertilizing your garden with sewage sludge compost, which San Francisco officials have recently discontinued giving away because of environmental concerns. Read more »

The Guardian recently received a hostile letter in response to last week's cover story, The New War on Fun, which spotlighted the aggressive tactics of two undercover officers at the center of a crackdown on San Francisco nightlife.

Unable to verify the author's identity, we've withheld his name. As champions of free speech, however, we decided to give this writer an opportunity to share his opinion not just with the writers he seeks to attack, but a wider audience of readers, who undoubtedly also hold strong opinions. While this letter might amount to hot air from one individual whose opinion holds about as much sway as any internet troll creeping across the blogosphere, airing it can perhaps shed some light on the mindset of someone who would position progressive values -- not to mention fun in San Francisco -- squarely in the crosshairs. And it's kind of funny, too. Read more »

"The fossil fools ain’t no joke – but that doesn’t mean we can’t fight them with one," say activists at www.fossilfoolsdayofaction.org as they announce plans to pull pranks April 1. Read more »