The San Francisco Citizen

Check it. Your old-school TV, the kind that most Americans have, will stop working next year as we’re going to transition to digital service in 2009.

That means that your grandmother, who watches her stories on a TV with a “rabbit ears” antenna, is going to need your help. So you’re going to get her a Digital Television Adapter for free, or almost free, courtesy of Uncle Sucker.

How? Just go here and sign up for your nifty $40 coupons and then head on over to Circuit City, RadioShack, or the Best Buy.   

And you’d better hurry before the Department of Commerce runs out of money.

Wait a second. Don’t sign up for your DTV coupon yet, because better, cheaper boxes are coming. The problem is that these coupons expire three months after they’re sent to you.

If you sign up too early, you’ll have to shell out your own money to supplement the coupon and your box won’t be all that good. If you sign up too late, then you’ll miss out on any subsidy. But if you time things just right, then you’ll get a sweet converter for free.

Or, you can just buy her a new digitally-enabled TV.

Choose wisely.  

It’s not even finished yet but our new California Academy of Sciences building, “on track” to becoming LEED-certified, has some reason to leave its lights blazing.

Perhaps a team of electricians are testing circuits at night? Or maybe the CAS has money to burn what with admission prices going up something like 150%?

Compare this glare with the old-school, non-LEED certified lamp post on the right that would look familiar to the people that acted in Jitney Elopement, a short movie made by Charlie Chaplin  in Golden Gate Park almost a hundred years ago.

Hello lamp post/ Whatcha knowing?/ I’ve come to watch your neighbor glowing.

You see, the street light is turned off, as it wasn’t really needed at that time of day.

LEED certification: It’s in the way that you use it. 

Or maybe they were just testing their expensive solar photovoltaic system - it still seems like a waste of juice regardless.

Here’s the problem: You become famous and then everybody wants to use your image to sell stuff, whether you (and your agent) get paid or not.

Check out this large poster used to promote the idea of wearing “PEARLS” that just happens to right outside a jewelry store on Post Street called Miseki. Is this shot from an ad campaign, or did somebody Photoshop a red-carpet paparazzi photo?

Either way, poor Angelina might not be getting her fair share of the cut. Sadly, Kiera Knightly’s visage is similarly being used by the same store.

The perils of fame!

Back in the day, a few years ago, you could see Red Foxes in Golden Gate Park. No longer.

A vixen and her pup in Strybing Arboretum from several years ago:

Some got run over by cars and others might have been poisoned. Seems like they’re no longer around.

Hey parents! Are you sick of getting only a 62.5% discount for your kids aged 4 to 12 when you ride on the Bay Area Rapid Transit? Well then, May 4, 2008 is your lucky day because that’s when the discount goes up all the way to 100%, courtesy of the Nestle Nesquik Bunny.

The Bunny’s neck bling used to be a giant letter “Q” but it looks like he’s moved on to a giant letter “N”. Fair enough. Mark your calendar today.

yayjackieyay via Flickr

Do people actually make tiny peanut butter and jelly sandwiches only to feed them to squirrels in Golden Gate Park?

Yes they do:

That’s right, Conan the Destroyer has a posse and they’re all rolling on dubs. Check out these 22-inch monsters being used in an official gubernatorial motorcade:

And check out those balancing weights - do you see how much it takes to keep these massive rims rolling true? These wheels are about twice as large as what Vanilla Ice’s Five point-oh Ford Mustang had way back in the 1990’s.

There’s no good reason to have wheels this large on your vehicle. Some think them dangerous. Others don’t like the way they ride. Of course, sometimes you might be like Senator Don Perata and end up with a set of duece dueces because they come with the car, but not usually.

If you want to show off your wheels, why not keep them a little smaller and then load up on some bling bling? Diamond and ruby studded wheels from Asanti only cost $2,000,000 per set - will this be the next trend in fashionable wheels?

Arnold Schwarzenegger might be your role model, but don’t try to copy him with his huge wheels.

Asta la vista, baby.

Gavin Newsom, America’s “most stylin’” mayor, has deservedly gotten lots of national attention for leading the charge against the bottled water industry. Take a look here at a scene from last month in San Francisco - he was somewhere inside this scrum of media and tap water fans. He’s got a tiger by the tail with this popular issue, much to the chagrin of industry giants Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Nestle.

But what started this campaign? It was a conversation a while back the mayor had about his possession of some bottles of Fiji Water. Somebody pointed out a few things about the pros and cons (mostly the cons) of shipping drinking water from the South Pacific to San Francisco. The result is that he is an international leader on this issue.

Fair enough. But now it appears that Fiji Water is leading the campaign FOR bottle water. They’re attacking the anti-bottled water movement at an RSS 2.0-enabled website called FijiGreen. (They’ve just boosted the ad budget so you might be hearing more from them soon.)

First of all: FijiGreen!?! WTF? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Having dispensed with that, check out this blog entry written by ”Fiji Green Gal” where she attempts to debunk the “food miles” myth. As you can see, she’s got her hands full when she doggedly replies to commenters.

You’re on your own after that. It’s up to you to make your own decision about how some people in the Republic of the Fiji Islands might benefit from Fiji Water bottling, about how some chefs just seem to love the stuff, about how they have an SVP working on these issues, etc. You might end up with a nuanced view or you might get so interested you’ll take the TreeHugger Survey.

Add it all up and see how all this compares with turning on the faucet when you’re thirsty or bottling your own tap water for those times when you’re on the go.  

Seen on the streets of San Francisco - a young couple on a straight-out-of-Bolongna Ducati motorcycle. Well, that’s O.K., but check out the passenger’s choice of fashionable footwear. Her bare foot seems uncomfortably close to what could be a hot exhaust pipe.

Fashion has its place on motorbikes of course, but this might be going too far.  

Zoom zoom.

The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Hundreds of thousands of students will come together to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.

San Francisco high school counselor Ian Enriquez notes that the Day of Silence isn’t exactly a visual event so he wants people to dress up in pink tomorrow. It seems lots of people are getting on board, like Senator Carole Migden for one:

“I’m tickled pink that colors like lavender and pink are so widely used to promote awareness about our movement, and for issues like breast cancer and domestic violence. I will proudly wear my pink on Friday and hope that San Francisco is awash in pink in honor of Lawrence King and the countless other young people who are bullied and threatened in our schools.”

Senator Migden shows how it’s done:

But how about the Mayor of San Francisco?

Alex Randolph, [Mayor Gavin] Newsom’s liaison to the LGBT community and District 8, said he’ll wear pink Friday and is encouraging others at City Hall to join him. He said Newsom supports the idea behind Enriquez’s efforts, but he isn’t sure if the mayor will be wearing pink.

Let’s count him in as a “maybe.” 

It’s not necessary to for parents to keep their kids home from school or for school administrators to send students home from school, we all should just get on out there and think pink tomorrow. Why not?