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Feature

Drug Story (Part II)

Discovered by brain researchers in the early '60s and resurrected by bodybuilders in the late '80s, the semi-illict compound GHB is now marketed on the club and smart-drug circuits as a sexy wonder drug. But beware GHB's knockout punch.

By Jeff Stark

Published: November 29, 1995

Bodybuilding enthusiast Mark Thierman was one of the country's largest GHB manufacturers and distributors in the early '90s, moving $600,000 worth of the drug before an FDA investigation caught up...

Feature

Drug Story (Part I)

Discovered by brain researchers in the early '60s and resurrected by bodybuilders in the late '80s, the semi-illicit compound GHB is now marketed on the club and smart-drug circuits as a sexy wonder drug. But beware GHB's knockout punch.

By Jeff Stark

Published: November 29, 1995

Smoke and house music wash over the crowd at Badlands, a bar at the confluence of 17th and Castro. Men wall the benches, occasionally breaking posture to sway to the dance hymns the DJ artfully...

News

Clockers

Residents of a downtown loft tell you where to get off

By Ellen McGarrahan

Published: November 29, 1995

Six years ago the Clock Tower building at the corner of Second and Bryant streets downtown was an old industrial shell, a tall and stately relic encased in the concrete and steel of the ramps...

News

Dog Bites

By Amy Linn, Ellen McGarrahan, George Cothran

Published: November 29, 1995

Kaiser Kibosh Call it "showdown at the HMO corral." At high noon on World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, ACT UP/Golden Gate plans to protest what it calls substandard care for the HIV-positive and other...

News

Chatterbox

Published: November 29, 1995

Chief Probation Officer Ed Flowers is struggling with his bureaucratic euphemisms these days. At mayoral forums he's been buttonholing pols and stressing that the "cottages" up at the Youth...

Letters

Letters

Published: November 29, 1995

Tragedy Turned Tabloid As a physician concerned about the health care of prisoners, I was saddened by the irresponsible media hype in "Death Sentence" (Bay View, Nov. 15). Both Judy Greenspan...

Music

Samples

By Sia Michel, Silke Tudor

Published: November 29, 1995

Desert Oasis The sprawling fortress at the corner of 11th and Folsom has a long history of short-lived incarnations (the Oasis, Club O, 278 11th St, etc.). Taking it from tony nightspot to...

Music

Night Crawler

By Silke Tudor

Published: November 29, 1995

Great pillars of smoke shoot into the night air, blanketing a two-block radius near Folsom and Main with an ominous cloud of gray-black soot. For those of us not hip (or square) enough to get our...

Music

Recordings

By James Sullivan, Colin Berry, Sia Michel, Sam Prestianni

Published: November 29, 1995

Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks Orange Crate Art (Warner Bros.) In his recent Beach Boys biography, The Nearest Faraway Place, Timothy White notes that the "unmanly" aspects of Brian...

Music

Fazio's Cablevision

How Bill Fazio went from unknown to contender

By Carlton Smith

Published: November 29, 1995

Six months ago, former Assistant District Attorney Bill Fazio was out of a job and so far back in the opinion polls that his challenge of his former boss, Arlo Smith, looked like lunacy....

Music

Final Exit

Urge Overkill's Exit the Dragon: Is it irony or is it Eddie Money?

By Greg Milner

Published: November 29, 1995

Anyone inclined to codify the principles that prop up the bloated enigma that is Urge Overkill should look no further than "Empire Builder," from the band's 1990 Americruiser LP. Beginning as a...

Eat

Dish

By Paul Reidinger

Published: November 29, 1995

Got Milk? When Dish was little, milk still arrived at the back door in glass bottles straight from the dairy. These days most of us get our milk at the supermarket; it comes in plastic jugs or...

Eat

About the Size of It

At Alegrias, small tapas outshine big paellas

By Paul Reidinger

Published: November 29, 1995

Our waiter at Alegrias spoke to us in enthusiastic, rapid Spanish -- a beautiful, singsong language, like its sisters, French and especially Italian. As he spoke, he waved his arms, rubbed his...

Film

All the Rage

Sean Penn's The Crossing Guard may be powerfully visual, but the writing is off the wall

By Paul Reidinger

Published: November 29, 1995

Sean Penn, in his life as in his acting career, has perfected the art of the brawl. Now he has pretensions not merely to being a director, but an auteur -- of the brawl, naturally. His new movie,...

Night&Day;

Night+Day

By Johnny Ray Huston

Published: November 29, 1995

wednesday november 29 Wonderful Weslia Fresh from an extended stay at New York's Algonquin and a show-stealing appearance at a Carnegie Hall tribute to Frank Sinatra, Weslia Whitfield...

Halloween

REAL ASTROLOGY For an Unreal World

By Rob Brezsny

Published: November 29, 1995

Aries (March 21-April 19): One Aries I know hasn't come out of her house in three days. She just sits there poring over old National Geographics. Another Aries friend has retreated full time to her...

Halloween

Slap Shots

By Jack Boulware

Published: November 29, 1995

Piss Factory The blue-tongued skink named Pickles scuttles across the hardwood floor, its spastic progress monitored by two curious house cats. But Pickles is not your average foot-long lizard...

Halloween

Savage Love

Published: November 29, 1995

Hey, Faggot: A few weeks ago, you printed a letter from a man having a torrid but loving incestuous relationship with his mother's sister. You probably didn't intend to become Incest Info Central,...

Halloween

Crushing CRUSH

By Jack Shafer

Published: November 29, 1995

The San Francisco Police Department has finally proved that it is capable of policing itself in a timely fashion. No, I'm not referring to this week's order by Police Chief Anthony Ribera that 12...

Stage

Mississippi Mirth

From the Mississippi Delta forgoes conflict in favor of amusement

By Mari Coates

Published: November 29, 1995

History and literature are full of inspirational stories about exceptional people rising from humble origins and accomplishing heroic feats. From the Mississippi Delta, the autobiographical drama...