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Feature

Power Failure

A three-month electrical outage exposed a tenderloin apartment building as a firetrap. How did the nonprofit property manager let things get so bad?

By Mary Spicuzza

Published: February 28, 2007

Ali Algahim was working his usual night shift as a janitor when his family called to tell him the lights had gone out. He was worried and wanted to rush home, but didn't have anybody to fill in for...

Matt Smith

Shake-down Tour

Is this what you get when a rapacious American capitalist takes U.S. bike racing for a spin?

By Matt Smith

Published: February 28, 2007

Mauro Gianetti, the elegantly thin, fashionably bald Swiss former pro racer who runs the Spanish Saunier Duval-Prodir cycling team, engages me by cellphone in a game of fantasy racing. "The Tour...

News

Must Work for Free

By not paying their interns, some Bay Area publications may be violating the state labor code

By Martin Kuz

Published: February 28, 2007

S an Francisco serves as the Bay Area's lifestyle bible for senior executives and trophy wives. Each issue of the monthly magazine seduces readers with plush images of exotic food, haute couture,...

Sucka Free City

Open-air Crack Market

By Scot Bishop

Published: February 28, 2007

It's an open secret that you can get crack in the Tenderloin 24/7. Drug slingers operate in the city's nastiest neighborhood with little fear of getting busted, it seems — some even openly...

Sucka Free City

Dark Sunset

By Alastair Bland

Published: February 28, 2007

Off the icy Pacific rolls the fog, over the beach, across the Great Highway and into the streets of the Sunset. The cold ghostly mass advances up Taraval, quieting the chilly morning air, dampening...

Sucka Free City

Unbroken Ground

By Eliza Strickland

Published: February 28, 2007

When the city spends half a million dollars and nothing happens, does it make a sound? Yes, eventually. At the end of January, the controller's office emitted an agonized squawk over $479,219 in...

Letters

Letters to the Editor

Week of 2-28-2007

Published: February 28, 2007

Black and White Consider the source : I want to commend you on what Chief Sanders and I think was an excellent article on our book, The Zebra Murders ("Earl's Last Laugh," Feb. 21)....

Music

Slip Inside This House

Gris Gris frontman Greg Ashley makes pop oddities with pocket change

By Jennifer Maerz

Published: February 28, 2007

City living creates a tendency to shove the music you like into competitions with other attention hogs. When you're just one of a million maggots, hooks that compete with skyscraper cranes and...

Music

The Astute Aussie

Macromantics' Heavy Flow

By Dave Segal

Published: February 28, 2007

White. Female. Australian. Rapper. These words rarely appear in the same sentence. But with the debut album by Macromantics (Romy Hoffman), Moments in Movement , this alien concept blossoms into...

Music

Let's Talk This Out

BARR attempts to understand everything

By Frances Reade

Published: February 28, 2007

Brendan Fowler's not fucking around when he declares, "I'll fully talk this thing into the ground" on the title track of his new record Summary . Recording under the name BARR, Fowler makes a...

Reviewed

Hella

ThereÕs No 666 in Outer Space (Ipecac Records)

Dave Pehling

Published: February 28, 2007

If you hadn't heard Hella's output during its original incarnation as an impossibly hectic spazzcore duo, you could characterize the group's latest effort as some of the most batshit-crazy rock to...

Reviewed

Clinic

Visitations (Domino)

Dave Segal

Published: February 28, 2007

Disenchanted Clinic fans may think Revisitation is a better title for the Liverpool band's fourth album. Accusations of sonic repetition increased following 2004's Winchester Cathedral , and...

Reviewed

Patriarch

Son of a Refugee (Revolution Now Records)

Toph One

Published: February 28, 2007

Anger, frustration, and an almost desperate pride infuse this debut disc from Bay Area-raised rapper Patriarch. Born into a Palestinian and North African family, his music nonetheless comes...

Bouncer

German dreams and Gavin nightmares

Katy St. Clair

Published: February 28, 2007

When you're dreaming, certain things seem completely normal, and it's only when you wake up and really think about it that you realize something funky was going on. For example, you could be having...

Hear This

Shed excess pop with OK Go's power calisthenics

By Ed Masley, Frances Reade

Published: February 28, 2007

The guys in OK Go are coming off a Grammy win for their video "Here It Goes Again," a classic moment in the history of goofy music videos that shows them executing truly ridiculous dance...

BeatBox

MSTRKRFT whip up frosty electro milkshakes

Jennifer Maerz, Mike Munz, Tamara Palmer

Published: February 28, 2007

Los Angeles' Guns N' Bombs can be viewed as a reaction to austere minimal techno or simply as club rats seeking new ways to express surplus energy. GN'B — Johnny Love and Ima Robot's Filip...

Eat

World Cup

And very tasty sweets that your Midwestern grandma would cook

By Meredith Brody

Published: February 28, 2007

Once or twice a year I'll find myself, usually in the company of one or two girlfriends, having tea, in the British afternoon tradition, in a hotel or a rather quaint tearoom. It's a set meal,...

Fresh Eats

A weekly listing of new restaurants around town

Published: February 28, 2007

A weekly listing of new restaurants around town. To recommend a spot, e-mail fresheats . Amélie: 1754 Polk (at Washington), 292-6916, www.ameliesf.com . Nob Hill . Wine bar, small...

Film

Killer Instinct

David Fincher's Type-A approach to filmmaking pays off

By Scott Foundas

Published: February 28, 2007

When the editorial cartoonist turned amateur sleuth Robert Graysmith published Zodiac , his sprawling, meticulously researched account of the eponymous San Francisco serial killer, he wrote that...

Film

Like Pigs to Slaughter

Cast of old men in leather pants on the road to nowhere good

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: February 28, 2007

Wild Hogs — in which John Travolta, William H. Macy, Tim Allen, and Martin Lawrence play emasculated suburbanites taking a cross-country motorcycle trip to rediscover their masculinity...