The San Francisco Entertainment Commission last night voted to restrict the hours, sound limits, and other operating conditions for Brick & Mortar Music Hall -- the Mission Street live music venue that has received a series of noise complaints from its neighbors on Woodward Street -- until it completes soundproofing work to deal with the problem.Read more »

Are BART passengers in San Francisco being subsidized by Muni riders and by BART customers from the suburbs? Or is it the other way around? And does it really matter, or should we just be thankful that people are choosing BART over clogging the roadways in this transit-first city?Read more »

Locally focused journalism in San Francisco took another big hit today with the announcement that The Bay Citizen — which was founded by the late Warren Hellman in 2009 specifically to augment declining reporting on San Francisco and the Bay Area — is being folded into Center for Investigative Reporting [Updated below].Read more »

The unemployment rate continues to drop in San Francisco and all over California, according to new numbers released today by the California Employment Development Department, which were trumpeted by Mayor Ed Lee as vindication for his economic development policies.Read more »

Larkin Street Youth Services does great and important social work with homeless youth in San Francisco, for which it receives generous support from city taxpayers, as well as federal grants. That’s why its employees and some prominent local officials are questioning the organization’s aggressive, deceptive, and anti-union resistance to the request by a majority of its 88 employees to be represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1021.Read more »

 San Francisco Housing Action Coalition and San Francisco Magazine posed an intriguing question at a forum they sponsored last night in the W Hotel: “San Francisco’s Housing Crisis: Can the Tech Boom Help Us?” Unfortunately, it wasn’t a question they ever really addressed at an event of, by, and for developers and their most ardent supporters.Read more »

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise to dangerous levels, but still our political leaders delay taking meaningful actions to address the looming crisis. The latest example: Gov. Jerry Brown is borrowing $500 million from the state’s new cap-and-trade program -- money designated specifically for efforts to address climate change -- to help balance the revised state budget proposal that he released today. Read more »

The California Coastal Commission today upheld San Francisco’s plan to replace the Beach Chalet grass soccer fields at the west end of Golden Gate Park with artificial turf and high stadium lights after an emotional five-hour hearing, but not before voicing concerns about the loss of natural terrain and urging the city to do wildlife habitat restoration work on adjacent land.Read more »

The California Coastal Commission will decide tomorrow (Thu/9) whether San Francisco and its Recreation and Parks Department violated the Coastal Act in approving a renovation of Golden Gate Park’s Beach Chalet soccer fields that uses artificial turf and stadium lights and seating. [UPDATE 3pm: The commission just approved the project. Full story coming soon.]Read more »

City Attorney Dennis Herrera today announced another batch of settlements with restaurants that have been fraudulently using surcharges on customers’ bills to cover their city-required employee health coverage and using some of that money to simply pad their profits.Read more »