The San Francisco Citizen

Are you prepared to spend hundreds of dollars in an attempt to retrieve your lost pet? If so, check out FindToto.com.

Just tell them where your pet went missing and they’ll robocall your neighbors with a pithy message to be on the lookout for Fluffy or whomever. Their system is up and working and making calls in the Bay Area today, so consider this an option.  

Another lost pet in San Francisco, via Lulu Vision’s Photostream

Well, check it out. Today, Southwest Airlines (LUV) is crowing about their lack of fees.

So that means “NO First or Second Checked Bag Fees, Change Fees, Fuel Surcharges, Snack Fees, Aisle or Window Seat Fees, Curbside Check-In Fees, or Phone Reservation Fees.” Hurray!

What the “legacy” carriers don’t seem to understand is that some people really, really don’t like hidden fees. Like how some restaurants in San Francisco hit you with an undisclosed 4% tack-on when you get your bill. 

Fly with Southwest and you’ll think you’ve been transported back to the 1970’s, when fees were a four-letter word:

Nostalgic photo via Church of the Customer

Now, some may quibble about a few things, like how the cheapest fares from Southwest are only available online. But that’s as it should be, since reserving a flight by yourself lowers the expenses of running the airline. This is a better approach than a company advertising a price and then surprising you with a fee that you didn’t even know existed. The point is that Southwest has none of the new fees all the other airlines seem to have.  

Now this might put SWA at a disadvantage when they advertise their rates, because they lose all those little “profit centers” the other airlines take advantage of. But just remember that Bags Fly Free, and lots of other things are free, when you fly with LUV.

Hurray. Certain other airlines should take notice of this.

When they’re not eating flowers, the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill like to fly around San Francisco in big flocks.

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Wild parrots above the KPIX-TV building on Battery Street and also near 202 Green Street, where Philo T. Farnsworth invented television a while back. 

Some people are afraid of these red masked conures, but others would like them to become the state bird of California instead of the Valley Quail. We have some quail in San Francisco as well, but not all that many.

Will the Parrot cell phone-accessory company be able to change our state bird from quail to parrot?

Only Time Will Tell.

All that copper over your head - that’s where the Internet lives.

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Ninth Avenue, The Sunset Distict of San Francisco

To find out, let’s hear from Jordan Kobert, former Strategic Operations Manager of the San Francisco Chronicle. After getting numerous phone calls to get him to sign up for six months of home delivery, he talked with a salesperson and then rejected the idea:

“Less than a dime a day and I said no.

Did I mention I used to work at the Chronicle…”

That’s got to hurt. Apparently, the folks selling subscriptions are wheeling and dealing, so you can get it for less than a dollar a week. They might even let you name your own price and they might even throw you a $10 Target gift card.

It’s quite obvious the Chronicle, like the free San Francisco Examiner, gets a great deal of value from your eyeballs reading their ads reliably on a daily or almost daily basis. Maybe this is a good deal  for you?

Which job is lonelier - shilling for the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle? Tough call.