› kimberly@sfbg.com
The Greek deities might throw lightning bolts and issue stormy protests, but when I first saw Erase Errata in November 2001, they seemed less a fledgling local all-girl band than scruffy goddesses sprung full grown from the temple of ... Mark E. Smith. The year-and-a-half-old foursome opened for the newly reenergized, near-surfabilly Fall and they were staggering — seeming grrrlish prodigies who picked up the sharp, jagged tools discarded by Smith with a confidence that seemed Olympian (as in Washington State and Zeus's heavenly homestead). Read more »

MEXICO CITY (July 11th) -- A full week after the most viciously contested presidential election in its modern history, a Florida-sized fraud looms over the Mexican landscape and the nation has been divided almost exactly in half along political, economic, geographical and racial lines.

Mexico has always been two lands -- "Illusionary Mexico" and "Profound Mexico" is how sociologist Guillermo Bonfils described the great divide between rich and poor. Read more »

With the AFL-CIO split last year, and millions of undocumented workers fighting for their jobs, the climate is ripe for the Bay Area to celebrate its labor solidarity. San Francisco has long been a wealthy city, but it also has the most organized labor movement in the nation.
For 13 years, LaborFest has celebrated that movement here and around the world. Read more »

› superego@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO Oh, the endless string of characters! Clubland just keeps ’em comin' in glorious, sequin-spangled kablooeys. Go on, children, do it while you still got freedoms. And tits to you for saving Pride. Pink Saturday was a nightmare, the Dyke March was a walkathon, and despite the amazing turnout — that whole outpatient rehab thing must really be catching on — Pride Sunday found me huddled at the foot of the Tylenol PM booth, cursing the sunlight and desperately searching for something, anything, worth following home. Read more »

› paulr@sfbg.com
Middle East–ward the course of empire takes its way these days — a sorrowful and futile operation that does at least confer onto some of us the benefit of being able to look the other way without feeling quite the same pangs of dread. At the edge of the city, the rays of the westering sun glint on the churning waters of the Pacific, most eminent of gray eminences, and if the Pacific has now become mare nostrum, as strongly implied by the president's recent creation of a "national monument" along a sprinkling of lonely islands halfway to Japan, it also seems quite ... Read more »

› news@sfbg.com
"You are my rabbi," said the caller who claimed to be a Methodist. "Good," said the talk show host, "Everybody needs a rabbi."
This is no shock jock being irreverent — he's a real rabbi. But make no mistake, this is no jolly rebbe kvetching about marrying a nice Jewish boy, nor a lefty Jew talking about justice, diversity, and the Holocaust. He's Daniel Lapin, dubbed "the show rabbi of the Christian right" by the New York Times. And now he's a San Francisco talker, Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. on right-wing radio station KSFO.
But Lapin's more than a front man. Read more »

› gwschulz@sfbg.com
The greatest irony of Proposition A's failure last month seemed to be what took place just a few short weeks after the June 6 election.
Prop. A would have budgeted $30 million over the next three years to fund violence prevention services for at-risk populations, such as anxious teens looking for a break from order during the warm summer months. Read more »

› sarah@sfbg.com
Mayor Gavin Newsom has taken credit and sought the national spotlight for a plan he touts as an innovative way to deliver universal health care access to the city's uninsured. Yet Newsom has consistently ducked the vitriolic public debate over how to the pay for the plan, which a companion measure by Sup. Tom Ammiano would cover with a controversial employer mandate.
But as the measures were headed for the first of at least two hearings before the Board of Supervisors (on July 11 after Guardian press time), a board committee and Newsom's public health director, Dr. Read more »

MEXICO CITY (July 7th) -- Mexican elections are stolen before, during, and after Election Day. Just look at what happened in the days leading up to the tightest presidential election in the nation's history this past July 2nd.

By law, the parties and their candidates close down their campaigns three days before Election Day. Read more »

› a&eletters@sfbg.com We're living in a golden age of commercial radio in the Bay Area: It's now possible to hear "Brandy" by Looking Glass on at least four stations. Ladies and gentlemen, meet 95.7 Max FM, the station that plays whatever it wants, whenever it feels like it, as long as it was a Top 40 hit between 1970 and 1995. Max FM, the station that never plays the same song in the same day, as long as you don't consider John Cougar Mellencamp's "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." and Huey Lewis and the News' "The Heart of Rock ’n' Roll" to be the same song. Read more »