Due to the distressing lack of microhoods in San Francisco, the pioneering cartographers at The Bold Italic have been dicing up San Francisco's large and unwieldy neighborhoods into smaller, more digestible blocks of hip happenings.  It's led to fashion corridors like Valencia Bottoms, non-lether, asexual drinking along FolSoma, and the “cool but still crappy” Mid Riff—quaint corners of San Francisco previously in a sorta need of some distinctive flag to fly.

This week, the Bold Locals noted they were “never quite sure what to call the strip of Mission south of Cesar Chavez and north of Cortland.”  We always thought it was “La Lengua” (and so did Google Maps, CBS 5, The Examiner, and even Old Bruce over at the Bay Guardian got hip to what all the kids are callin' it these days), but apparently we were wrong.  It's “Bernal Flats”, so don't get it confused.

This revelation makes way more sense anyway—it's near Bernal Heights, but it's flat.  Get it?  Bernal Flats.  Isn't that easier?  Besides, I never saw tongues around the neighborhood, and licking the Mission Street sidewalk sure as shit doesn't taste very good.

(Interesting side note: commenter Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable thinks he accidentially coined this whole “Bernal Flats” confusion two years ago.)

[The Bold Italic]

Sassypants Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly dispatched Jesse Watters to the smut-ridden streets of “Nancy Pelosi stronghold” San Francisco to ask: “Why do people hate 'The Factor'?”  The resulting segment is, perhaps, one of the best pieces of journalism ever produced:

I do have to say, I was quite disappointed with Skater Jesus's resounding praise of Bill after his epic build-up, but let's move past that for a second.

After the duo of tort reformers joked about suing their punchy detractors, they got all perplexed as to why The Haters By The Bay couldn't describe why they were down on their brand of righteous Fair and Balanced journalism.  In their minds, if the freaks within the capital of lefty intelligentsia can't make the case against Fox, the network must be a-okay, right?

But it's curious that they couldn't find a single person capable of calling out the network for pushing a right-wing agenda to such an extent that Comedy Central devotes an entire half-hour show to ridiculing them for it.  Or that Bill says “some people say” every time he wants to inject baseless opinion into the discussion (I saw that Robert Greenwald movie, too).

Maybe it's because they were interviewing people with cats on their shoulders?

Anyway, hope Jesse had a good time visiting SF and belittling trannies!

The NY Times (teaming up with illustrator extraordinaire Wendy MacNaughton) took a look at the Wiggle yesterday, teaching East Coasters how we manage our elevation problem:

The first time I set out along the Wiggle, I carried a wrinkled receipt with the street names scrawled in blue ink on the back: Fell, Scott, Haight, Pierce, Waller, Steiner, Duboce. Through the first few turns, I checked and rechecked my cheat-sheet, but by mid-Wiggle, I realized that no cheat-sheet was necessary. The flattest route was obvious — in fact, it was marked on the pavement with faded arrows — and more important, the flow of bikers was thickening.

This, even more than its flatness, is the power of the Wiggle. It’s a funnel. I rode my bike to work most mornings after that, and I always looked forward to the effect. I’d start out alone, pushing up that shallow grade. Next I’d curl through the corner of Golden Gate Park and into the long green strip of the Panhandle, where I’d pick up a few fellow travelers. And then, the thickening: I would zigzag through the Wiggle, gaining new companions block by block, and emerge onto Market Street in possession of a posse, an impromptu bicycle gang, a protective cohort.

Read on.

Apparently the wheel of misfortune won't stop landing on bankrupt for the poor folks at the Chronicle, considering the lack of proofreading that went into their front door signage.

(But I heard they started printing in full-color or something a few years back, so there's that.)