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San Francisco is pulling out all the stops to prevent a party in the Castro tonight, including the unkindest cut of all - unleashing an army of tow trucks on hapless parkers. Police posted scores of "No Stopping" special event signs on several blocks surrounding the traditional Halloween party zone Tuesday. And as soon as the parking restrictions go into effect, starting at 1 p.m. Wednesday, officers will be on hand to write up $60 parking citations and call in tow trucks for $250-get-out-of-hock bills. The city Department of Parking and Traffic is putting 47 parking control officers on the...

Mayor Gavin Newsom, who earlier this year said he'd change the way his office issues proclamations after he unwittingly honored a gay porn studio, found himself in hot water Wednesday over two more controversial proclamations. This time, a representative from the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice said proclamations would be given to Perry Mann, founder of the Exotic Erotic Ball, and rapper Snoop Dogg, who earlier this year pleaded no contest to felony gun and drug charges and who is accused by critics of glorifying the gangster lifestyle in his music. Snoop Dogg is scheduled to perform a benefit concert...

It was another cold and lonely Friday evening for the candidates looking to be San Francisco's next mayor. With a chilly wind swirling across Civic Center Plaza, seven of the 11 people challenging Mayor Gavin Newsom joined again outside City Hall and tried to give serious answers to serious questions before a group of listeners that barely broke into double-digit numbers. Although the mayor's office was within easy earshot, Newsom was nowhere to be seen. And while election day was barely a month off, there was little sense of excitement for a re-election race that's been viewed for months as...

If voters send Mayor Gavin Newsom back to City Hall for another four years, he'd like them to do it without passing Proposition E, which would require him and future mayors to meet face to face with the Board of Supervisors for a scheduled "question time" each month. Since last November, when a similar advisory measure passed easily, the mayor has ducked every invitation to appear in front of the board for the monthly interrogations the measure called for. Now, with his re-election a virtual given, the mayor is working to raise money to beat Proposition E and bury the...

San Francisco -- The pack of longshot challengers vying to unseat San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had their first - and likely only - chance in the campaign to go head to head with the incumbent during a candidate's forum Thursday, and they wasted no time getting right to the point. The most important issue facing the city, said H. Brown, a local writer and blogger, is "how to get the mayor to listen to us. Any candidate on this stage except the mayor, I guarantee you, will listen to the opposition more than five minutes every four years." Newsom...

Is San Francisco anti-military? Mayor Gavin Newsom said Saturday, "I am sick and tired of this city being depicted as anti-military. The extreme right exploits the exception, when I believe there is a predominant respect in this city for the military, vets and those serving today." Newsom had a point when he said that critics of The Special City will not "allow the facts get in the way." Stories about Ess Eff turning away a crew filming a Marine recruitment ad apparently were much ado about nothing. The city did issue a permit - if not for the day the...

SAN FRANCISCO - -- Mayor Gavin Newsom, attending Fleet Week festivities on the Marina Green today, lashed out at conservative critics who mocked San Francisco's consideration of a measure to ban the flight of the Navy's Blue Angels over the city during this week's celebration. He cited that criticism and reports that the city turned down a U.S. Marine request to make a television recruitment commercial in the Financial District as examples of what he called exploitation by conservatives who don't "allow the facts to get in their way. "Shame on the extreme right," Newsom told The Chronicle. "I am...

FILM SYNOPSIS Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate? Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival, Dan Karslake's provocative, entertaining documentary brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and Biblical scripture, and in the process reveals that Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias is based almost solely upon a significant (and often malicious) misinterpretation of the Bible. As the film notes, most Christians live their lives today without feeling obliged to kill anyone who works on the...

With an informal deadline looming, Mayor Gavin Newsom and his staff spent Sunday vetting possible replacements for Supervisor Ed Jew, while Jew's attorneys vowed to fight his suspension every step of the way. "The first step would likely be up the federal courthouse steps to ask for an injunction," said Jew's lawyer Steve Gruel, who is defending the supervisor against a federal mail fraud complaint that accuses him of instigating a $40,000 shakedown of local businessmen.If Newsom suspends Jew, a hearing before the Ethics Commission would follow, probably leading to a trial, in effect, before the Board of Supervisors.Gruel argues...

The standoff between San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and embattled Supervisor Ed Jew shot up another notch this weekend with the mayor asking the city attorney to draw up charges that could lead to Jew's forced removal if he does not resign. According to sources close to the case, the paperwork is being drawn up today and will likely be ready sometime this week."It's not a position I want to be in," Newsom said late Saturday after Jew didn't return repeated phone calls. "But I'm compelled to move because this is just the type of situation that the City Charter...

The San Francisco union that represents nearly 1,000 city government managers and department heads announced Thursday that it will not endorse Mayor Gavin Newsom in his bid for re-election this fall, a move that signals deep-seated discontent among the city's highest ranks. Though Newsom is running against a field of political unknowns and appears to be cruising toward re-election in November, the San Francisco Municipal Executives' Association voted not to endorse Newsom - or anyone else running in the race. The move follows a request by Newsom last week that nearly all department heads and members of his senior staff,...

From short and sweet, to long-winded overtures, the letters have been pouring in following Mayor Gavin Newsom's edict this week that hundreds of city officials hand in their resignations by the end of the day today. Many letters consist of a single, get-right-to-the-point sentence: "I hereby tender my resignation." Others read more like resumes than resignation letters, with officials attempting to make their case to stay on the job. And some are just plain comical. "As my work here in San Francisco began with your call, it will continue with your call, until such time as you find my vision...

More than 2,700 paroled sex offenders across the state, including nearly 400 in the Bay Area, have been given 45 days to pack up and move or risk going back to prison. The reason: They are banned from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, under a new law California voters approved last fall. Finding a new home won't be easy for many of them, however. That's especially true for those living in a big city such as San Francisco, where it's nearly impossible to find a residence that isn't within 2,000 feet of a school or park....

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's push to have hundreds of city department heads, mayoral-appointed commissioners and senior staffers in his office submit their resignation letters by the end of the week was met with pockets of resistance Tuesday, with some city officials vowing to defy the order. The day after Newsom surprised most department leaders and told them to hand in their letters of resignation by Friday because he wants to start his second term with "a clean slate," some city officials bristled at the request and many were downright puzzled. Port Commissioner Mike Hardeman, a longtime Newsom supporter whom...

San Francisco -- Saying he wants to start his second term with a clean slate, Mayor Gavin Newsom today asked all city department heads and anybody he has appointed to serve on a city commission or board to hand in their letters of resignation. On Friday, Newsom also told all senior staffers in his office to do the same. Newsom told department heads at his regular Monday department head meeting that he wanted each of them to turn in letters of resignation, but didn't say how many resignations he ultimately would accept, according to Mitch Katz, director of the city's...

It is the week after Labor Day, the traditional start of the election season. Except in San Francisco. We're not having an election. Instead we're awarding the mayor's office to incumbent Gavin Newsom by default. The filing date to run for mayor came and went in virtual silence. The one credible candidate that stepped up, conservative Tony Hall, stepped back just as quickly, calling off his run Friday, citing a lack of support. "I decided," Hall said this week, "the best thing I can do is back off and give people another dose of this guy." Another dose? What more...

Marghi Dutton is 90 and losing her eyesight, but nothing was going to stop her from trekking to midspan of the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday with the anti-war group Code Pink: Women for Peace. She joined a crowd of about 100 demonstrators dressed in hot pink hats, shirts and scarves and fought the wind to raise her sign: "Impeach Bush and Cheney!" "My arms are aching, but I'm getting energy from the drivers - so many are honking in support," she said. Code Pink, a national grassroots peace movement inspired by Bay Area women, organized the protest to call...

The Great Pumpkin will skip San Francisco this year. City officials said Wednesday that there will be no official Halloween celebration anywhere in San Francisco in October - not in the Castro neighborhood, the traditional home of the event, and not at a parking lot near AT&T Park, which had been considered as an alternate site. "There will be no party," said Audrey Joseph, president of the city's Entertainment Commission. Officials had been quietly working on plans to snuff out the Castro event, where a shooting last year injured nine people. The goal had been to instead hold a large...

Everyone agrees Robert Rawson is a chronic drunk and a public nuisance. So why can't we get him off the street? Rawson camps out in the Golden Gate Park Panhandle, and often drinks much of the day. San Francisco police Capt. John Ehrlich of Park Station says Rawson was arrested in December for being drunk at 9:40 in the morning and following a 15-year-old girl into a bus shelter. On Christmas Day, police found him drunk and having sex with a woman on a park bench at Haight and Masonic. And then there is the long list of times he's...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom may not face a serious threat to his bid for re-election this fall, but he has been fundraising as though he does. Newsom raised nearly $1 million in the first half of the year, bringing his re-election campaign total to nearly $1.6 million. The money poured in from San Francisco society families, national political heavy-hitters and Hollywood actors, as well as from the core group of downtown businesses who helped elect him nearly four years ago. Everyone from his family members and inner circle of City Hall senior advisers to his girlfriend and ex-wife's brother...