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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...