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I ran into a man I'd known for years at a supermarket the other day. He's an old San Francisco guy, so I was surprised at what he said. "I'm moving out of the city," he said. "San Francisco is not the city I grew up in anymore. I'm through with it. "Yep," he said, "I'm gonna sell my house and move to Novato. You know what? The sun shines there in the summer. I mean they have sun - that big yellow thing - sun in July and August. I'm tired of the fog - fog every night and...

San Francisco would be the first city in the nation to sell and distribute medical marijuana under legislation proposed Tuesday by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. Mirkarimi, who spearheaded legislation more than three years ago to regulate the city's proliferating medical marijuana dispensaries, asked the city attorney to craft a measure that would create a pilot program for medical cannabis sales. The details are still being worked out, Mirkarimi said, but he envisions a pilot program under which the Department of Public Health could distribute pot to medical marijuana patients of city clinics. Mirkarimi called the legislation the "next step" toward codifying...

For at least the seventh time since November, a portable toilet was set ablaze near Russian Hill in San Francisco this morning, according to the fire department. The fire was reported at about 12:45 a.m. near the intersection of Union and Taylor streets and was nearly extinguished by the time firefighters arrived, according to a fire dispatcher. An arson team was out to investigate the scene, the dispatcher said. The fire department warned construction workers on Dec. 9 about an arsonist and asked them to keep the toilets locked and out in the open to prevent damage to surrounding objects....

San Francisco's budget deficit for next year has grown to $575.6 million - equal to nearly half the city's discretionary spending account. It's a financial crisis Mayor Gavin Newsom called one of the worst the city has experienced since the 1930s. Newsom will announce his plan for cutting up to $125 million from this year's $6.6 billion budget today, but gave few details about what it will include. "This is nothing we've seen before," he told The Chronicle. "As difficult as these cuts will be, the real challenge is in the next three, four, six months." Today's announcement is expected...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Vandals have defaced a Holocaust memorial outside San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum, painting swastikas inside a Star of David and on a granite plaque, authorities said. San Francisco police were notified of the vandalism at about 9 a.m. Wednesday when the swastika was found drawn in black marker on a bench in Lincoln Park, Lt. Neville Gittens said. ---snip--- Jill Manton, director of the city's $80 million collection of public art, said the Arts Commission deals with graffiti on many of its public installations, and that anti-Semitic graffiti has shown up on the memorial in Lincoln...

As San Francisco and the blue state majority of California nurse their election euphoria hangover, let's point out the obvious about the passage of Prop. 8: Gavin Newsom screwed it up. Voters are the ones who make the decision but no one person handed the Yes on 8 campaign a more persuasive and compelling sound bite than our own mayor. Even if there were other flaws in the anti-8 operation, he was unquestionably the poster child for the pro-8 push, whether you like it or not. And unlike Willie Brown, whose 70s high afro and muttonchop sideburn photo got used...

SAN FRANCISCO — While this city is known as the epicenter of the gay rights movement, the Castro has been its hypocenter — the origin of the explosion. And Tuesday night was no exception. As results rolled in for Proposition 8, which would amend the California constitution to prevent same-sex couples from marrying, part of Castro Street was transformed into an election dance party, complete with thumping music, colored lights and thousands of energized voters. But it was unclear what, in the end, they would be celebrating. The race was tight. With a little more than a third of precincts...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is paying thousands of dollars a week in city money for private security guards to play scarecrow over the "Victory Garden" growing in Civic Center Plaza. Only in this case, it's not birds that are being shooed away, but the homeless people and the drunks who drift into the plaza once the sun goes down. The garden is a collection of veggies and herbs planted over the summer as part of the privately sponsored "Slow Food Nation" festival. At first, it was protected at night by volunteers. Once the food fest ended in late August,...

San Francisco officials have agreed to pay back $5.2 million in federal grant money the city now admits it was not entitled to under a U.S. program to compensate local law enforcement for fighting border crime. The U.S. Justice Department audited its Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative grant program last year and concluded that San Francisco - through a private consultant - had applied for money it was not entitled to claim for prosecuting cases for federal authorities and incarcerating defendants. Rather than basing its claims on specific cases that federal officials referred for local prosecution, as required by the program...

(10-03) 17:58 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal grand jury is investigating whether San Francisco's policy of offering sanctuary to undocumented immigrants violates U.S. laws against harboring people who are in the country illegally, city officials say. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said his office has hired a criminal defense lawyer to represent employees who might be questioned or asked for documents. Both he and Mayor Gavin Newsom said they would cooperate with the investigation. San Francisco, like about 80 other U.S. cities and five states, has a law prohibiting the use of its funds to help enforce federal immigration law...

Denver -- As Bill Clinton and Joe Biden dominated center stage Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was presiding over "Unconventional '08," a street party held in an artsy warehouse corner of the city featuring indie bands and a knot of people young enough to be Biden's grandchildren. There, mingling beneath an art gallery facade full of iconic images of Sen. Barack Obama was the evening's host - the former Sen. Hillary Clinton delegate Newsom. Four years ago, Newsom was a pariah at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Democrats were angry that he had...

A San Francisco city commission has taken a defiant stand against Mayor Gavin Newsom's directive on young immigrant felons by urging officials to permit the offenders to remain in the city and help pay for their housing, job placement services and immigration lawyers. (snip)

A quick reading of the measure that will go before San Francisco voters in November to decriminalize prostitution easily could leave you with the misimpression that the measure is an exercise in fairness that demands that prosecutors go after men who abuse prostitutes and implement policies "to reduce institutional violence and discrimination against prostitutes." A careful reading of the initiative, "Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Workers," however, shows a measure that shields child prostitution and traffickers of human beings. "If I had just heard from the proponents, I would probably vote for it myself," said the Rev....

The San Francisco Democratic Party has veered dramatically to the left, telling voters that on Nov. 4 they should elect a raft of ultra-liberal supervisorial candidates, decriminalize prostitution, boot JROTC from public schools, embrace public power and reject Mayor Gavin Newsom's special court in the Tenderloin. That's just what some party members feared after Supervisors Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly and Jake McGoldrick along with others who billed themselves as "The Hope Slate" were elected to the Democratic County Central Committee in June. The powerful, 34-member panel worked late into Wednesday night deciding endorsements that could play a big role in...

African Americans are leaving San Francisco because of substandard schools, a lack of affordable housing and the dearth of jobs and black culture, according to a report by a committee looking into the exodus. The African American Out-migration Task Force, put together by the mayor's office last year to figure out what can be done to preserve the city's remaining black population and cultivate new residents, presented its findings at a public hearing Thursday called by Supervisor Chris Daly. San Francisco's black population has dropped faster than any other large U.S. city's. It went from 13.4 percent in 1970 to...

Last week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to make the city the first in the country to ban the sale of cigarettes in pharmacies such as Walgreens and Rite Aid. And that's only the city's latest effort to make us all healthier. The supervisors also voted to require chain restaurants to post nutritional information, including calories and fat content, on menus. This follows the creation of a program to recognize restaurants that don't use trans fats and an idea by Mayor Gavin Newsom to levy a fee on retailers of sugary sodas. The board is also taking up...

A mayor knows he's having a bad week when its saving grace comes in a jailhouse. Such was the case of Mayor Gavin Newsom, who found himself pleading with jailed tech whiz Terry Childs to give up the access codes to San Francisco's computer system. Childs did, and even some of Newsom's critics were crediting him with a heroic move in using his powers of persuasion to keep a Y2K from paralyzing the city's computer systems in 2008. It sure beats talking about Edwin Ramos or the city's sanctuary policy. Fairly or not, Newsom's chances in the 2010 governor's race...

SAN FRANCISCO — The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday called on Mayor Gavin Newsom to allow the federal agency full access to information about local inmates, saying the city should rescind its policy that prohibits ICE agents from reviewing jail logs and records. A letter sent to Newsom from ICE director Julie Myers urging more access to inmate records was the latest flare-up following accusations that a San Francisco policy to shield undocumented immigrants also caused the city to shelter felons charged with serious crimes. Eileen Hirst, chief of staff for San Francisco County Sheriff Michael Hennessey,...

San Francisco is a funny place. Everybody says that and nobody laughs. The issue of Propositions F and G in next month's election is a perfect example. If Proposition G passes, the groundwork will be laid to turn the huge abandoned Hunters Point Shipyard into 10,000 houses. A public housing project could be rebuilt, and toxic hot spots will be cleaned up. Some 300 acres of parks and open spaces are planned, in addition to the possibility of a new NFL stadium for the 49ers.If Proposition F passes, the developer has said it couldn't afford to do the project because...

San Francisco -- Talk about strange bedfellows. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, and John McCain, the Republican presumptive nominee, joined forces this week to repeatedly remind voters that Barack Obama was - where else? - in San Francisco when he talked about "bitter" American workers who "cling" to religion and guns out of frustration. And in the latest 2008 presidential campaign brouhaha, the City by the Bay has again become a potent symbol for that perceived liability of Democratic candidates: a tendency to be flaky, out of touch and entirely too liberal to appeal to Joe Sixpack...

Every two months, Valentina visits about 30 men enrolled in San Francisco's "john school" to tell them a sex story they don't want to hear. The men are part of the city's First Offender Prostitution Program because they've been arrested for soliciting a prostitute, usually in the Mission or Tenderloin. If they agree to pay a $1,000 fee and spend a Saturday afternoon listening to sex-trafficking experts, neighborhood activists and doctors who subject them to photographs of venereal diseases, the district attorney's office will drop the misdemeanor charge. Valentina, a striking Russian woman with jet-black hair (to protect her privacy,...

What a letdown. The Olympic torch run turned into a barely seen security entourage that dodged the thousands who turned out to watch. The sudden re-routing of the relay along near-empty sidewalks invites the question: Is City Hall unclear on the concept of a public event? Clearly, organizers were worried about the crowds who turned out along the Embarcadero, an assemblage that included both China boosters and critics. The surprise switch in directions succeeded in dodging the worst-case scenario of police scuffles with angry protesters, as happened in London and Paris. But it did little to showcase the Olympics or...

If you're one of the estimated thousands of illegal immigrants living in San Francisco, you're now learning via billboards and TV spots that this town is a self-declared sanctuary from federal border controls. You can visit a health clinic, report a crime and enroll your kids in local schools without fear of refusal or deportation. San Francisco, via a $83,000 campaign in five languages, wants this slice of its population to know about these humane policies. Except none of it is really true - or necessary. San Francisco isn't a deep-moated castle protected from federal immigration rules, which trump the...

The U.S. Department of Justice wants San Francisco to repay $5.4 million in grant money earmarked to help fight the war on drugs in states bordering Mexico because federal auditors found the city was not eligible for the funding. San Francisco had sought the grant under the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative, which compensates law enforcement agencies in California and other border states for the costs of handling prosecutions in lieu of federal authorities. As of March of last year, the city claimed it had handled more than 2,241 such cases, but a federal audit released this week found that none...

San Francisco is on track to spend nearly $62 million more on overtime for city workers than it intended to in this year's budget, and officials blamed the soaring cost Wednesday on a shortage of police officers, nurses, firefighters and bus drivers. The skyrocketing figure was discussed the same day hundreds of young people marched on City Hall to protest cuts proposed by local lawmakers who must eliminate a projected $338 million budget deficit for the coming fiscal year. In the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, San Francisco is expected to spend more than $171 million on overtime...

San Francisco's picturesque skyline would be dark at night under a first-in-the-nation law proposed Tuesday that would mandate all skyscrapers turn off nonemergency lights after work hours. Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said his measure would reduce the energy wasted in the city's downtown. "Anyone who has passed through our Financial District after dark knows that many large financial buildings in the downtown keep their lights on throughout the night even when there is not work or janitorial service going on," Peskin said. The proposed light ban is reminiscent of the so-called "watt cops," the police officers who patrolled...

San Francisco's lawmakers have proposed dramatic measures to meet a huge city budget shortfall for next year, including what could be immediate layoffs for high-paid city employees and an unpaid furlough for most city employees between Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The proposals come days after three City Hall budgeting offices estimated that the deficit for next year had grown to $338 million. By law, Mayor Gavin Newsom must submit a budget with no deficit to the Board of Supervisors by June 1. The board has until the end of July to pass a final budget. Board of Supervisors...

Unlike many other California cities and counties, San Francisco is taking in boatloads of money - yet it's still sinking in red ink. Thanks in part to a hiring binge and raises handed out last year with the blessing of Mayor Gavin Newsom, the city is staring at a $330 million-plus deficit that could lead to layoffs for hundreds of city workers. Not that there isn't plenty of good news, says Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda: "We certainly have healthy revenues. The recession hasn't hit. Sales taxes continue to be up. The number of passengers flying into SFO is up. Conventions...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a restaurateur turned politician, called on his former colleagues in the restaurant business Thursday to stop selling bottled water to customers and start serving local tap water instead. The mayor made international headlines last year when he banned city government from spending tax dollars on bottled water for its employees, saying the containers clog landfills and pollute the environment. But his new request that restaurants make the switch is just that - a request. "Not every restaurant is going to be able to afford to do this," Newsom said, noting that restaurants make a significant...

SAN FRANCISCO - -- Protesters briefly clashed with San Francisco police several times today as officers tried to clear Market Street of hundreds of demonstrators marking the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. More than 50 people had been arrested by lunch time in incidents at several downtown locations. In the most recent scuffle, about 80 police in riot helmets and carrying billy clubs surrounded about two dozen demonstrators staging a die-in at Market and New Montgomery streets. The protesters laid in the street around 12:15 p.m., blocking traffic. At least two demonstrators were wrestled to the...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has ordered all city departments to slash salary expenses by at least 8 percent in order to close a projected $300 million deficit, a move that officials say is likely to result in hundreds of city workers being laid off. The latest round of proposed cuts follows Newsom's November mandate that agencies covered by the city's general fund - the city's primary spending account - make 13 percent across-the-board cuts. But many of those departments - namely, public safety agencies like the police and sheriff's departments - did not comply, and as a result, Newsom's...

San Francisco should not have to spend $1 million on a wheelchair ramp in the Board of Supervisors chambers to assure equal access for people with disabilities. There must be less expensive options than the 10-foot ramp that has been through 18 designs and consumed more than $200,000 in planning. One alternative would be to do what the board has done for the past three years - seat its president near floor level, instead of the ornate, elevated podium that would require a significant retrofit of the historic room. Board President Aaron Peskin said he would like to find a...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is considering a 2010 run for governor - a campaign that would embrace many of the same divisive causes he has championed as mayor, including same-sex marriage, universal health care and protections for illegal immigrants, The Chronicle has learned. Newsom has long been rumored to be a potential contender in what is likely to be a crowded field of Democrats looking to succeed Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a list that includes Attorney General and former Gov. Jerry Brown, former state Controller Steve Westly and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. In recent months, Newsom has quietly...

Every week in her notorious public housing development, Darlene Fleming watches another neighbor move out and construction crews come in to nail plywood over the vacant apartment's doors and windows. And every week, she says, more residents get eviction notices, possibly signaling that they could be the next ones forced out. Of the 267 units at Hunters View, 110 are boarded up. Just 157 families remain at the violent and dilapidated development in San Francisco's Hunters Point neighborhood and 116 of them are in danger of eviction because they're behind on their rent or for other reasons. It's just what...

Nothing characterizes the dysfunctional personality of San Francisco like its troubled relationship with panhandlers. While the city bills itself as a free-spirited tourist destination, visitors and residents regularly complain it is nearly impossible to walk down Market Street without being unpleasantly hassled. Ron Hansman, who has worked in the city on and off since 1970, says he took a visiting friend to dinner in North Beach in November and ended up in a confrontation with a belligerent panhandler in front of a Columbus Avenue restaurant. "I was thinking, what happens if we have to fight this guy?" Hansman said. "We're...

Bail was set at $1 million today for the San Francisco planning director's companion, who is accused of setting fire to historic Nob Hill residence of the fire chief where the couple were living. Lance Farber, 47, pleaded not guilty to felony arson and vandalism in a brief appearance at the Hall of Justice, shortly before Superior Court Judge John Conway set bail. "I am concerned that this is a public safety issue," the judge said. Farber was ordered to return to court Friday after being evaluated for migraine headaches. His lawyer said the headaches have worsened since Farber was...

Pretty soon they'll need a scoreboard down at San Francisco City Hall to keep track of the "gotcha" shots flying between Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin and Mayor Gavin Newsom.The game opened with Peskin taking a swipe at Newsom for jetting off to Hawaii with gal pal Jennifer Siebel the day after the big Cosco Busan oil spill.Newsom responded by pulling out of a Chinese Chamber of Commerce trip to China that included Peskin and Rose Pak, the chamber boss with whom Newsom was also feuding.Peskin returned the favor by busting Newsom for using $650,000 in Muni money to...

Dear San Francisco, I love you. You've raised me the hard way, you've lovingly taught me about diversity and compassion and understanding, and most importantly how to say things like, "You go, girl — and take those tacky shoes with you." Our relationship means more to me than anything. But now I feel like I'm getting all grown up on you, and have to get a nagging issue off my B-cups: It is cold and rainy outside. In fact, it's freezing. If you must go out, please put some clothes on. It's not that I don't enjoy the bobbing bits...

Seeing Mayor Gavin Newsom on the national stage with former president Bill Clinton on Monday night is a reminder of how political winds can change. On the eve of the biggest night of the presidential primaries, Newsom shared the spotlight during a town hall meeting staged and broadcast on cable TV and satellite radio by the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign. But just four years ago, current Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is said to have declined to have his picture taken in San Francisco with Newsom, who was then at the center of a national uproar over his decision to...

San Francisco -- San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin made a series of harassing telephone calls to officials at the Port of San Francisco and threatened to eliminate their jobs and cut funding to the agency because staff members disagreed with him over building-height limits on the city's waterfront, the port director said in a letter obtained by The Chronicle. In a letter sent to the city Department of Human Resources and Mayor Gavin Newsom's office, Port Executive Director Monique Moyer said that in August, Peskin threatened the jobs of port staff members in four telephone conversations, which...

Dressed in a tan cloth coat and crocheted white hat and pulling a wheeled shopping basket behind her, Eve Rojek trudged up and down Castro Street in a sputtering rain the other day. She walked up a stretch of sidewalk between 18th and 19th streets and then down and then back up again. Rojek is an actress, cast as a middle-aged extra in a long-anticipated feature film about the life and death of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk that began shooting in the city last week. Like everyone and everything in view of the camera, Rojek needed to convey the...

San Francisco (AP) -- A transgender woman is suing a Catholic hospital in Daly City, claiming medical officials blocked her from getting surgery there because she had a sex-change operation. Fifty-seven-year-old Charlene Hastings already had one major surgery she needed to become a woman. But she says when she called Seton Medical Center to inquire about breast enlargement surgery, an official told her it wasn't "God's will" for her to get that treatment. Hastings says her plastic surgeon told her Seton wouldn't allow him to operate on transgender patients...

San Francisco officials have a moral obligation to try and stop black residents from abandoning the city and should consider a local version of the Marshall Plan to help African Americans, the Rev. Amos Brown, president of the San Francisco NAACP, said Sunday. The city's black population has plummeted from more than 100,000 in 1980 to an estimated 50,000 in 2005, said Brown, a member of the African American Out-Migration Task Force set up earlier this year by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Sophie Maxwell. Brown spoke to about 30 community leaders at a meeting of the civil rights group...

PST SAN FRANCISCO - The city of San Francisco must pay about $1 million in attorneys' fees to a white man who filed a successful race-discrimination suit after he was passed up for a promotion at San Francisco International Airport, a state appeals court ruled Friday. Allen Harmon won $30,300 in damages in a 2004 verdict by a San Mateo County jury that concluded he was rejected for a supervisor's job in 1998 at least in part because of his race. A minority candidate got the promotion, and Harmon's lawyer said he had to wait 16 months to get the...

The last I head about Gavin's personal life, and trust me, I'm keeping tabs, he had the worst weekend of his life in Hawaii. Was it because a little funky oil killed a fish? Nope. It was probably because his gal pal doesn't know how to party. We haven't seen much of Swiss Miss lately, and one has to wonder: Worst weekend of his life? Really? Did they break up? Wouldn't that make it the best? I'm confused. In the spirit of Britney Spears' apparent former flame JT Turnstall or whatever, who announced in his personal ad that we've all...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will join Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on the presidential campaign trail when she comes to town on Tuesday - and Republicans couldn't be happier about it. The way they see it, the more face time the pro-gay-marriage, pro-sanctuary-city, pro-gun-control mayor of the most leftist, liberal city in America spends with the Democratic front-runner, the better. A recent news release distributed by the Republican National Committee to political reporters around the country lambasted Newsom as "Hillary's San Francisco Treat" and took a direct guilt-by-association swipe at Clinton by highlighting the mayor's signature last month on a...

San Francisco -- Bernie Ward, a popular San Francisco radio talk show host and former Catholic priest, has been indicted on federal child pornography charges, authorities said today.

During the Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia last month, Sen. Hillary Clinton found out firsthand just how contentious a subject illegal immigration is likely to be in the 2008 election. Expressing support, however equivocal, for New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's proposal to provide drivers licenses for illegal immigrants put Clinton in her most perilous position to date. It also shed light on her propensity for pandering, considering that in 2004 she fashioned herself a hard-liner on illegal immigration. Clinton soon backed off from her debate stance and, not long after, Spitzer did the same, dispensing with the driver's license plan...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has signed on to lead next June's ballot campaign aimed at revitalizing Candlestick Point and keeping the 49ers in San Francisco. Joining Feinstein as co-chairs of the campaign: former Mayor Willie Brown and Hunters Point-area Supervisor Sophie Maxwell. Word that DiFi will suit up comes a few weeks after Mayor Gavin Newsom tapped former 49ers executive Carmen Policy to act as civic go-between with the team and the National Football League. The 49ers are still intent on moving to Santa Clara, despite objections of Cedar Fair, the company that runs Great America and whose parking lot the...

San Francisco's anti-military shenanigans are legion and have been commented on by yours truly on many an occasion. Earlier this year, for instance, I noted the decision by the San Francisco Board of Education to phase out the JROTC (Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps)from the city's public schools, despite the protestations of students and their families. So when this year's Veteran's Day Parade rolled around, I couldn't help but wonder whether or not the JROTC would be making an appearance. Sure enough, the usual contigent of JROTC cadets marched in the 2007 parade, but, according to this SFGate article, it...