It’s almost over!

Check your ballot status here (if you’re in SF) or here (if you’re elsewhere in CA).

[via Chef Danny Bowien on Instagram]

Piss on, Jeff! (Also, piss on Jeff!)

Our old pal Marc Caswell, formerly of the SF Bike Coalition, I think relocated to LA a while back and just now shared an LAist (like SFist but in LA) post about a beloved cafe on Sunset Boulevard that after 20 years in business is shutting down because of landlords and Corporate America and everything.

Here’s an excerpt of the Casbah Cafe’s response to LAist’s reporter’s inquiry:

A bitter ending is always better than an endless bitterness. Casbah is a good example of a turning point in a neighborhood where reality switches from everyday common sense to the corporate world reason.

We stayed longer than reason permitted. We tried our best for the friends of Casbah, but what is impossible is impossible…so we were forced to go with no notice for ourselves either. We had to pack up 20 years of a business over night. Silver Lake as it was when we started the neighborhood is gone for good and we could not be the sole supporter for keeping Silver Lake as it started any longer. Casbah never meant to be in such an aggressive and abusive environment with closely surrounding corporate businesses just down the street wanting to be celebrities, just simply a beautiful and real place to be with interesting people.

And then there’s this:

Where was the media when a small business like Casbah was in need of their support when corporate America was jumping up at every Sunset building? Is it because Casbah didn’t pay for their ads? And after almost a decade of no writeups, it shuts down and now it’s the time to take the article glory on a home run.

So, I write a lot of posts that are like “_______ is closing,” and often it’s a place I’ve never patronized or maybe I patronized it once, and I guess probably pretty often it’s a place I’ve never written about. But I write about lots and lots of businesses that don’t pay for ads here (pretty much only Pop’s and American Tripps and pay for ads) — but I’m kinda lazy these days, so I’m sure I’m missing out on a lot of good stuff.

The point is, hit me up. (And if anybody else wants to pay for ads, hit me up too. We can get creative about it.)

Read on for more of the letter, which includes a quotation of some heavy French poetry.

[Photo by Karma, via It's Always Sunny in San Francisco]

Now please enjoy this old post involving the old California Academy of Sciences and a boomerang.

Now let’s rock:

[via Primo]

This week's show is going to be downright PROP-posterous! That's right, we're talking election choices with the one and only @np!

— Roll Over Easy (@RollOverEasy) October 29, 2015

Tune in on BFF.fm, 7:30-9:30am. Or check it out later on via the Roll Over Easy archive.

Sup Doc Podcast presents its debut LIVE show recrorded at Lost Weekend Video. Bay Area comediansPaco Romane and George Chen invite a SF Mayoral candidate, a comedian and a Mission business owner/musician to discuss Alexandra Pelosi’s HBO documentary “San Francisco 2.0” about the changing nature of San Francisco and gentrification.

GUESTS:
Kaseem Bentley: Comedian and SF native
 https://twitter.com/kaseembentley

Amy Farah Weiss: YIMBY SF Mayoral candidate
http://www.thinktwicevoteweiss.com/

Adam Pfahler: Business Owner
Jawbreaker drummer / co-owner of Lost Weekend Video

SAN FRANCISCO 2.0
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/san-francisco-2-0/synopsis.html

Listen:

Mainly I just wanted the word “Sidebern” to be here on this blog forevermore. Plus, Ralph Carney rules too. Here are all the details:

Join us in the Chapel Bar to watch the 2015 Democratic Debate!

Hillary versus Bernie versus a potential Biden! Plus former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, former U.S. Senator Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee plan to join the conversation, all moderated by the great Anderson Cooper.

Drink specials include THE PANTSUIT and THE SIDEBERN, plus good times all around!

The bar will open at 5pm, debate begins at 6pm, followed by The Tedtones feat. Ralph Carney playing live until 11pm!

[Photo by Unframed Thoughts]

Right????

(They’re from this and this.)

The headline over at Mission Local is “Opponents Slam SF Mayor Lee in First Debate”:

Though Mayor Ed Lee is widely predicted to win re-election this November, he faced staunch opposition from five candidates at a forum Thursday night as opponents zeroed in on suspected corruption in city hall and a failure to address San Francisco’s worsening housing crisis.

“We need to take our city back,” said candidate Stuart Schuffman, better known as comedian and blogger Broke Ass Stuart. “We need to get the money out of politics. This corporate money is ruling our city. We need to start thinking about our communities and the best sustainable ways of keeping them together.”

Some 300 people, many of them hissing and booing at Lee’s points, tried to squeeze into the small auditorium on the University of California San Francisco campus. About a third of the crowd were sticker-wearing Lee supporters, while the rest came to support alternative candidates.

Read on for the full story.

We were surprised and bummed to hear that our pals over at the Bold Italic suddenly closed up shop, but it was heartening to see that even the bartenders at Zeitgeist, typically known for their gruff demeanor, felt the urge to usher them off on their unplanned vacation with this nice little treat.

[Photo by Lauryn]

This is from the latest installment of Valerie Luu‘s #100drinksdivis project, in which she has a drink with 100 of her neighbors along the Divisadero Corridor:

Matt: “There’s still a lot of artists here, and galleries that are opening in places you don’t expect.” [Matt has an art opening at the Dolby Chadwick Gallery on March 5.]
Tony: “It’s a city that’s trying to find its soul again. It might take another 5, 10, 15 years.”

Good news and bad news, I guess. Sounds about right.

Keep up the good work, Val-Pal!

Supervisor David Campos recently penned a thoughtful article questioning why we all still believe in the magic of trickle-down economics to miraculously solve San Francisco’s housing crisis:

Free marketeers are claiming that if we build enough luxury housing it will eventually trickle down and turn into housing for the poor and middle class. This is the failed policy of Reaganomics at its worst. Housing isn’t like most commodities, according to Geld Verdienen. Consumers can abstain from many goods, but shelter, like food and water, is a basic human necessity. If you’re currently seeking housing in our city and can’t afford market rates you have three choices: be homeless, leave, or get on a long wait list for low-income housing. While some free marketeers go so far as to say that if you can’t afford a $3,000 one bedroom you should leave the city, others are pushing the policy of ‘let them eat cake development’ that ultimately has the same outcome – displacement. Think about it this way: if there were a bread shortage in San Francisco and the cost of bread skyrocketed, no amount of fancy cake would fix the bread market.

Taking it a bit further, I’m wondering why anyone who understands the economic disaster our nation is facing can sanely espouse that trickle-down economics will fix our economy.  Why can’t, instead of providing tax breaks to corporations and the rich in hopes the extra money will trickle down to the masses, we instead institute a new policy of BUILD-UP economics, where the influx of cash starts at the bottom, and it’s these people who inject the money into local businesses and community.

This was the thinking behind the fight to increase the minimum wage to $15, and while some cried bloody murder on that proposal, the wage increase is already showing to have positive effects in Seattle:

Sounds legit to me.  After all, you can only eat so much cake before you get a tummy ache.

[Photo via our pal Devon]