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Hmmmmmmm.. I have a rare "bachelor weekend" as H is off at a conference this weekend.

Been scanning the news after Yeti's bachelor weekend. I guess we won't need that bail money after all?

Rule #1: No Witnesses.

I loved this theater. They used to run some Asian cinema and way back when I was writing for Hong Kong Film Magazine (like early 90s), we did screenings there. 

Quote:Richmond District’s 4 Star Theater set to reopen, will be a movie house again

Michael S. via Yelp
By Hoodline - Published on November 30, 2022.
San FranciscoOuter RichmondInner Richmond
The COVID-19 pandemic was a dark period for San Francisco movie theaters. But during some of the worst days of the pandemic era, one of the feistiest little cult-hit movie houses in town announced some unexpectedly great news. In September 2021, the Richmond District’s 4 Star Theater announced new ownership, and the new owner promised to keep the place a movie theater.
 
Now, a year and two months later, the curtain is ready to rise for the latest reincarnation of the 4 Star. The Examiner reports that the 4 Star Theater will open again on Thursday, December 1, and will start screening films again on Thursday, December 8.

The 4 Star Theater is now part of the Cinema SF family of theaters, which also includes the Balboa Theater and Presidio Heights’ Vogue Theater, plus the Park Theater in Lafayette. The guy by the theater group, Adam Bergeron, tells the Examiner the 4 Star’s programming will “follow the style and general flavor of the Balboa Theater,” and would screen “a bevy of weekly series including the Asian programming that the 4 Star has long been known for, as well as classic repertory cinema and modern classics.”

Richmond District residents may already know Adam Bergeron’s name from the Balboa. But he also now runs The Laundromat, the new pizza and bagel place at Balboa Avenue and 39th Street (which is not a laundromat, but had previously been one). The new 4 Star Theater concession stand will see pizza and bagels, provided by, you guessed it, The Laundromat.

It won’t be the same 4 Star Theater you remember. “The new 4 Star will have new projectors and sound system, a single screen of 140 seats instead of the ‘economy-class’ 188 before,” the Examiner reports, “with an art gallery replacing the 49-seat second screen.”
And it sounds like the Thursday, December 1 Grand Opening will be more of a gallery show than a film screening. The 4 Star Theater website does not list any screenings for this week, and calls to their phone line went unanswered.
 
The 4 Star Theater originally opened in 1912 as the La Bonita Theater. Local movie house legend Frank Lee bought the theater in 1992, and made it a Hong Kong and Asian film destination. Lee sold the building in 2021, paving the way for this new chapter at the 4 Star Theater.

Looking forward to it. The Balboa (same new owners) is one of my fave theatres.

I was just talking to my friends that live near 25th and Lake about this...Adam who owns the Balboa, used to own the Crepe Place in Santa Cruz. He finally passed it on because the commute was killing him. He's a great guy. I've heard good things about the Balboa. 

--tg

Quote:One of San Francisco's best pizzas now comes with a pre-rolled joint

Lester Black, SFGATE
Dec. 3, 2022
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[img=414x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/27/76/43/23062770/3/1200x0.jpg[/img]
The signature Margherita pizza at Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco on Oct. 18, 2022. Owner Tony Gemignani was recently recognized in a world's best pizza competition.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
One of San Francisco’s top-rated pizzerias has a new pizza pairing that is worth raising a lighter to: Tony’s Pizza Napoletana is now selling the “Up in Smoke” combo, a wood-fired pizza that has an official pre-rolled joint pairing. 


Both the pizza and the joint are adorned with fantastical illustrations from beloved local artist and former SFGATE burger inspector Jeremy Fish.

Tony’s teamed up with nearby North Beach Pipeline, the neighborhood’s first pot shop, to create the pairing. Fish told SFGATE that the pizza, pot and art collaboration is a celebration of North Beach, the city’s iconic Italian neighborhood, of which the artist has been deemed the “unofficial mayor.” Fish said he hopes it will bring more people into the neighborhood, which has struggled with a lack of tourism during the pandemic. 
“Do me a big favor and come out and smoke a doobie, enjoy a pizza and celebrate my neighborhood,” Fish said. “Help support this side of the city while tourism is a little bit fractured.”

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Tony’s Pizza Napoletana is considered one of the world’s best pizzerias, recently ranking number 10 on an Italian list of the best pizzerias around the globe. Its new “Up in Smoke” pizza ($30) hits with layers of smokiness, with candied bacon, smoked mozzarella, tomato, basil and volcano salt, all on a wood-fired multigrain crust.
“Tony's Pizza Joint” is a one-gram pre-roll ($15) filled with Mother’s Milk cannabis and dipped in kief, a form of cannabis hash. The Pipeline pot shop sourced the joint specifically to pair well with the pizza from Tony’s. Fish described the joint as having a pleasant herbal flavor. 
You can get a $5 discount if you buy both items in the collaboration. Just bring your pizza box to North Beach Pipeline to get $5 off your joint, or bring your pre-roll package to Tony’s Pizza Napoletana to get $5 off your pizza.
Packaging for each the joint and the pizza is decorated with illustrations from Fish, who's known for whimsical art that found its way onto everything from New Balance sneakersto San Francisco trolley cars. The pizza box features a character wearing a red beanie and suspenders, looking awfully similar to one half of an iconic stoner comedy duo from the 1970s. The lid of the pizza box tears off to create a slot so you can slide it around your neck, turning the lid into a “pizza bib” to protect your clothing from any stray slice droppings. Fish designed the box’s art so that if you use the bib, your face will be outlined by the cartoon’s body.
“It’s a selfie opportunity, and you can keep the pizza from spilling on your clothes,” Fish said.

Artist Jeremy Fish, posing with the "pizza bib" box that he illustrated.
Fernando Godinez
Fish has lived in the neighborhood since the mid 1990s. The historic Italian enclave on the north side is perhaps San Francisco’s most iconic neighborhood. It was home to Joe DiMaggio (and briefly his wife Marilyn Monroe), and it's where Jack Kerouac and the rest of the beatniks launched a world-famous literary movement. He lives and works around the corner from Tony’s Pizza, and he’s served as the official artist of Coit Tower, one of the area's historic landmarks. 
Fish said he got involved with this pizza and joint collaboration to welcome North Beach Pipeline to the neighborhood. He said there was a lot of stigma against opening a pot shop in the historic enclave.
“It took ages for a dispensary to open over here, and it just seemed like a classic Little Italy way to celebrate weed,” Fish said.
Fish himself has deep roots in the cannabis community. He moved to San Francisco in 1994 for art school and quickly got involved in pot activism, including gathering signatures for Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that legalized medical marijuana in California. Fish remembers working with the initiative’s mastermind, Dennis Peron. 

“I would go into Dennis’ office at the time, and you could smoke all of the weed you wanted, but you couldn’t leave with any, because they were under surveillance of the feds,” Fish said. “That’s how sketchy it was at the time.”

Owner Tony Gemignani holds some of his pizzas inside his kitchen at Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco on Oct. 18, 2022. He was recently recognized in a world's best pizza competition.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
Fish is no longer smoking weed, as he had a brain aneurysm and was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2014. Instead of smoking, he now only vaporizes cannabis concentrates or consumes edibles. But he still has a favorite place to get high in North Beach: Washington Square, just across the street from Tony’s.
“Washington Square park is the classic place to smoke weed,” Fish said. “There’s a lot going on there because there’s this beautiful mix of cultures. There’s tourists. There’s older Chinese people exercising. There’s crazy people running around. There’s lovely people walking their dogs. It’s just a great place to sit and get stoned.”
The "Up in Smoke" special ends once Tony's runs out of the Fish-designed boxes. The pizza place said they ordered 5,000 copies.
[i]Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, 1570 Stockton St., San Francisco. Open Monday and Tuesday, noon-9 p.m.; Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, noon-10 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday, noon-11 p.m.[/i]
[i]North Beach Pipeline Dispensary, 1335 Grant Ave., San Francisco, CA 94133. Open 8 a.m.-10 p.m. seven days a week.[/i]

Written By 
Lester Black
Reach Lester on
[url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/lester-black-31128726/]
Lester Black is SFGATE's contributing cannabis editor. He was born in Torrance, raised in Seattle, and has written for FiveThirtyEight.com, High Country News, The Guardian, The Albuquerque Journal, The Tennessean, and many other publications. He was previously the cannabis columnist for The Stranger.

Quote:San Francisco just had its second-rainiest day since 1849
Katie Dowd, SFGATE
Updated: Jan. 1, 2023 10:31 a.m.
[/url][url=https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfgate.com%2Fweather%2Farticle%2FSan-Francisco-just-had-its-second-rainiest-day-17688646.php%3Futm_campaign%3DCMS%2520Sharing%2520Tools%2520(Premium)%26utm_source%3Dt.co%26utm_medium%3Dreferral&text=San%20Francisco%20just%20had%20its%20second-rainiest%20day%20since%201849&via=SFGate]
[img=414x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/30/76/31/23324279/3/1200x0.jpg[/img]
A view of Highway 101 flooding in South San Francisco as heavy rainstorm hits California on December 31, 2022. 
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
On the last day of 2022, an atmospheric river parked over San Francisco. And it rained and rained and rained.
There was so much rain that the National Weather Service announced the city saw its second-wettest day since record keeping began in 1849. In 24 hours, San Francisco’s downtown gauge measured 5.46 inches. That’s second only to Nov. 5, 1994, which beat that number by a hair at 5.54 inches.
The historic downpour caused widespread flooding, road closures and even mudslides throughout the region
According to the National Weather Service’s Bay Area office, that single day of rain made up nearly 47% of the city’s December rainfall total.

Atmospheric rivers are tropical storms. That means they’re warmer than typical winter storms and they can pack a punch; if there’s no wind carrying them along, heavy rain can sit for hours or days over a region. That’s exactly what parts of the Bay Area saw yesterday, as flood waters rose and rain continued unabated.
In Oakland, records go back to only 1970, which means yesterday’s tally of 4.75 inches is the most ever measured. The previous record was set in January 1982. The third-rainiest spot in the Bay Area yesterday was Redwood City. It got 4.47 inches, the third-rainiest day on record since 1906.
The Bay Area gets a break from the rain on Sunday, with clear skies expected for New Year’s Day. A second atmospheric river is in the forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, and it could potentially bring eye-popping amounts of rain, too. 
“Our soils will not be dried out by then,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brooke Bingaman told SFGATE Saturday. “All the impacts we’re seeing today will reoccur or be a little worse next week.”

https://kingbob.menu11.com/

I think KB needs to make a City Trip to visit his vassals.

Also: https://www.bobsdonutssf.com/

I do want to get one of those Bob's Donuts coffee cups if they still have them. Maybe I could get the Yeti tour. Once the semester ends, I can easily take a day off.

The Tour is just me drinking coffee in various places while glaring at the Nouveaux Douche

Yeti Too has got to be a euphemism for something that happens in back alleys off Folsom street (and I mean the old Folsom street, not the new gentrified one).

Nouveaux Douche however...

I've always wondered about these. I remember (and this might be a false memory) that ED pointed them out to DM when they were high...

Quote:The story behind the 'Grim Reaper' building that watches over downtown San Francisco
[img=855x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/32/07/42/23623845/5/1200x0.jpg[/img]

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Andrew Chamings, SFGATE
March 30, 2023Updated: March 30, 2023 8:23 a.m.
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There’s been a lot of talk about downtown San Francisco becoming a ghost town of late. But even before the streets felt eerily abandoned, a dozen faceless ghosts in pale robes watched over the bustling streets from the black roof of 580 California.
The 12-foot-tall specters stand stark white in front of the dark glass 350 feet above the city. Their heads bowed, watching over the living below; an empty blackness where a face should be. The sculptures can be seen from over a mile away. If you stare up from Portsmouth Square, they watch your every move; from the backside of Coit Tower, the three north-facing ghouls hover at eye level, floating over Chinatown.
Since they were first lowered onto their lofty plinths by helicopter in 1984, the statues have been described as godly, deathly, ominous and cloudlike. But what exactly do they mean, and who put them there?
[img=840x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/32/07/47/23624160/3/1200x0.jpg[/img]
The rooftop at 580 California St., San Francisco. 
Zac Rymland/Getty Images/500px

The construction of the 23-story office tower on the corner of California and Kearny was controversial from the start. It was set to replace a four-story historic insurance building and clock tower, but planners were met with pushback from those in City Hall dismayed by the “Manhattanization” of San Francisco. It would cast a shadow over Kearny Street — “the last broad sunlit street downtown,” attorney Sue Hestor complained when planning hearings commenced in 1982.
Outside of development concerns, something else in famed architect Philip Johnson’s plans was making City Hall anxious: 12 statues made by elusive New York artist Muriel Castanis that Johnson had chosen to crown his latest addition to the San Francisco skyline. (Johnson was also responsible for the Neiman Marcus building in Union Square and the skyscraper on stilts at 101 California.)
“What are they? What is their meaning, if they have meaning?” Planning Commissioner Susan Bierman remarked at a hearing in 1982. “Can’t you think of anything else? A ball? An orb?” Others joked that the strange statues represented the 11 city supervisors and Mayor Dianne Feinstein. An Examiner columnist called the statues a “monumental joke.”
Despite the one-liners and critiques, Johnson’s design was approved. And even before ground was broken on California Street, the building was creating a buzz. Businesses bought advertising space announcing they would be occupying the new skyscraper, next to page-length sketches of the tower topped with three distinct white figures.
[img=840x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/32/07/47/23624161/3/1200x0.jpg[/img]
Advertisements for 580 California St. and architect Philip Johnson holding a model of the building in 1983. 
Archival
The New York Times compared Muriel Castanis’ fiberglass sculptures to the Invisible Man — bodiless, shaped only by their drapery, like the horror icon’s bandages.
While most agreed the statues were strange, it seems no one quite realized how ominous they would appear in real life. Maybe it's the way the light falls on the black-glass mansard roof and its gothic stylings, an aesthetic not obvious in the planning renderings. Or maybe it’s the way the white robes are now backlit at night. Or maybe it’s the body position of the middle female figure on each side — arms outstretched behind, as if ready to dive off her 350-foot-tall granite column to the street below or sail over the city like a Dementor.
On what must have been an eerie day, in 1983, the statues were placed onto the building one by one, via helicopter. A sky full of ghosts all heading to their new home in the Financial District. The sight reminded some of the iconic opening to Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” in which a helicopter swings a statue of Jesus Christ over Rome.
The building was opened with corporate tenants, mostly banks, filling every floor on Dec. 12, 1984. The reaction by architectural critics to the statues atop 580 California can best be described as vicious. An Examiner criticdespised the skyscraper so much that they stooped to using an ableist slur to describe it, calling it “a hodgepodge of unrelated styles that amounts to a case of retarded Victorian confusion.” Years later, the Sacramento Bee flat out called it the “Grim Reaper” building.
[img=840x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/32/07/65/23625084/3/1200x0.jpg[/img]
A view of the "Corporate Goddesses" statues by artist Muriel Castanis, atop 580 California, in downtown San Francisco.
sswj via Flickr CC 2.0
After Castanis’ death in 2006, the Los Angeles Times looked back at what the publication referred to as a “Chilling existential riddle: Why no faces?” In that story, some looked up to the “Corporate Goddesses” — a name given to the art by their maker — as a warning against the sins of greed and unbridled capitalism. (Curiously, another lofty, chilling warning watches over the city just a block away, at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral: "Son, observe the time and fly from evil.")
“They’re creepiest after dark,” one investment banker who worked in an office across the street told the newspaper. “There are these black crows that fly around the building and nest inside the faces.”
A few liked the building’s audacious design. The Philadelphia Inquirer called the statues “subversive” and “provocative.” One blogger noted that if the finale of “Ghostbusters” had been set in San Francisco, not New York, surely the rooftop at 580 California would have been where Gozer tried to enter the earthly world.
One San Francisco resident told the Examiner that they were his favorite piece of art in the city. “They do not have faces or hands,” Kalman Muller said, adding somewhat spookily, “and yet they seem to have control over their surroundings.”
[img=840x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/32/07/70/23625268/3/1200x0.jpg[/img]
A view of 580 California St. on Feb. 7, 1989.
Santi Visalli/Getty Images
Those who believed the statues had dark, mystical powers would have been shaken Nov. 28, 1989, when the figures watched over a very real tragedy. That morning, a 340-ton construction crane collapsed into the building, ripping through several floors and crushing a school bus at the intersection below. The disaster took five lives and injured 21.
Muriel Castanis rarely spoke about the meaning behind her creations and seemingly only once publicly commented on the statues at 580 California in her lifetime. “It arouses wonderful feelings. People stop and pause when they see them. It does make them think,” she said in a rare interview in 1983 after the design was finally approved by the Board of Supervisors, adding that the sculptures would “look like clouds going by.”
On a rainy March day, I strolled around Giannini Plaza, the park at the base of 555 California under the statues across the street.
“It’s a little scary,” San Francisco resident Antoine Levi tells me, looking up through the rain at the faceless beings. “Is it about death or something?”
“They’re interesting, one might say scary,” French tourist Jean-Baptiste Ferrian says, before taking in the surrounding nondescript glassy towers and looking back at the sculptures. “No faces! They’re different, unconventional. I enjoy them."
[img=840x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/32/07/47/23624162/3/1200x0.jpg[/img]
The lobby of 580 California St., San Francisco, March 29, 2023.
Andrew Chamings / SFGATE
The lobby on the ground floor of 580 California was recently remodeled. The redesign included the installation of a smaller, orange version of Castanis' vision. The designers described the statue’s orange makeover as “both a continuity, a wit, and an extension of the most unique aspect of the building in a fresh new manner.” It stands unnoticed to most, by an empty gray chair in the corner of the lobby, as bankers and delivery people hurry to and fro. A more accessible, and far less chilling version of the 12 macabre icons 23 floors above.

Written By 
Andrew Chamings
Reach Andrew on
[url=https://twitter.com/AndrewChamings]
SFGATE's Editor-at-Large Andrew Chamings is a British writer in San Francisco. Andrew has written for The Atlantic, Vice, SF Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney's, The Bold Italic, Drowned in Sound and many other places. Andrew was formerly a Creative Executive at Westbrook Studios.

Quote:

• San Francisco Art Institute declares bankruptcy, paving the way to liquidate millions in assets

[/url]
[url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/author/sam-whiting/]Sam Whiting
April 25, 2023Updated: April 25, 2023 6:24 p.m.
[img=348x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/32/36/66/23719304/3/1200x0.jpg[/img]
The iconic tower of San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, Calif. The school filed for bankruptcy, the start the long-troubled institute's final chapter. 
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle
The San Francisco Art Institute has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, a move that will force the 152-year-old institution to liquidate its assets and abandon its legendary campus on the edge of Russian Hill. 

The Art Institute filed for bankruptcy on April 19, according to documents reviewed by The Chronicle.  


“It was a good run for 152 years and it is such a tragedy that it is gone,” said John Marx who served as co-chair of the institute's board. “The passion was there until the very end and up to the moment that we filed we were still trying to get a couple of billionaires on the East Coast to help us out but it just didn’t work out.” 
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Added his co-chair Lonnie Graham, “after every single possible effort we just weren’t able to get the support that was necessary to keep it going. It is tragic.”
Chapter 7 bankruptcy requires liquidation of assets in order to repay creditors. A meeting of the creditors will be held May 17. Most prominent among them is the University of San Francisco, which claims  it is owed around $6 million for costs incurred in exploring a relationship between the two institutions in an attempt to save the art school. But USF ultimately decided not to go through with it in July 2022, and the Art Institute announced it would cease operations, ending a San Francisco tradition that dates back to 1871. 
[img=598x0]https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/32/36/66/23719305/3/1200x0.jpg[/img]
“The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City” painted by Diego Rivera in 1931 sits in a private gallery at San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, Calif. 
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle
The other main creditors are the Art Institute’s landlords, who claim they’re owed unpaid rent. The Regents of the University of California own the building and the land at the main campus, 800 Chestnut Street, under a complicated arrangement of a will that donated the property. It claims $450,000 in unpaid rent. 
 Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture owns the pier under the graduate school, a $14 million campus that opened in 2017 in a spectacularly ill-timed expansion in the face of dramatically declining enrollment and an increasing debt load.
 The Fort Mason campus closed in March 2020, with the Art Institute abandoning a 55-year master lease. It was finally evicted for nonpayment of rent last year. The space remains vacant. The Fort Mason claims it is owed in excess of $750,000.
 “SFAI’s closure and pending bankruptcy is a loss for every San Franciscan who values the city's creative spirit,” said Mike Buhler, President and CEO of Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture. 
AT&T is owed $30,000, PG&E is owed $6,900 and the annotated list goes on for 49 pages, all the way to Bay Alarm, which is owed $1,305 and Dewey Pest Control which is owed $816. Also among the creditors are every faculty member who has lost his or her job in the upheaval and is owed severance. 
Total liabilities listed on the bankruptcy filing total little more than $10 million. 
Among assets the Art Institute lists $9.35 in an account at Silicon Valley Bank, and $125,000 in the value of an untitled painting by noted Mission School artist Alicia McCarthy. There is also $50,000 in office equipment and art-making machinery. 
But the main asset is “The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City,” a mural painted on commission by Diego Rivera in 1931. It hangs in its own namesake gallery on the main campus. That is valued in the bankruptcy declaration at $50 million, though the statement notes that it has not been appraised within the last year. 
The total value of assets is just under $65 million, according to the Art Institute.   
When it became known that the Art Institute was possibly shopping the Diego Rivera mural around, it was declared a city landmark and cannot be moved without permission of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Had it been allowed to sell the Rivera mural for $50 million, as was rumored, it would have saved the Art Institute, Marx told The Chronicle.
“It is the last chapter of a long running civic education arts tragedy,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin who sponsored the legislation to landmark the mural. “The legacy lives everywhere. All around this city and this country is the art that this institution produced and fostered, from Annie Liebovitz to North Beach’s own Dennis Hearne. But at this point it is over.”
The Rivera fresco will remain and Peskin is already looking into ways to put it onto public gallery.   
This year the Art Institute established a Legacy Foundation and in March the 152nd anniversary of the school was honored. The foundation rented space at Crown Point Press for the SFAI archives and it is not known if those materials will be affected by the bankruptcy filing. 
Through a spokesperson, administrators at the University of San Francisco confirmed it was a secured creditor but declined to comment further. The UC Office of the President also did not respond to a request for comment. 
The Art Institute closed its main campus in 2022 after many years of failed board reorganizations, capital campaigns and fundraisers that were mounted to stave off ruin at the once proud art school where Ansel Adams, Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud taught. The student body, which had been as high as 700, was down to 41 students at the time of its closure.  
“The reality is that schools this size that are tuition based are a vanishing species,” said Gordon Knox, a former president of the institute. “And there is no changing evolution.”    

bummer

They shuttered last year. Such a loss. I hope that building is landmarked.