rebecca@sfbg.com

The lack of a director at the Fine Arts Museums comes at a time when staff members say morale is low and some key employees have been dismissed. The agency is still suffering from the fallout of the firing of Lynn Orr, former Curator in Charge of European Art, who was stationed at the Legion of Honor and is widely respected in international art circles.Read more »

rebecca@sfbg.com

A little more than a year ago, Therese Chen, director of registration at San Francisco's de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, sent an email to another staffer concerning "Mrs. Wilsey's new Matisse."

That would be Diane "Dede" Wilsey, the wealthy art collector who is also president of the Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.Read more »

news@sfbg.com

While the looming federal budget cuts known as sequestration were designed to equally hit Democratic and Republican party priorities, from social services to the military budget, in the Bay Area they would disproportionately target society's most vulnerable citizens and strain already-stretched local agency budgets.Read more »

marke@sfbg.com

AIDS is so hot right now.Read more »

steve@sfbg.com

The Western South of Market area is ground zero for the city's War on Fun, a place where nightlife often comes into conflict with residential expectations, particularly on the raucous 300 block of 11th Street and, to a lesser degree, Folsom Street's old "miracle mile" of predominantly gay bars.Read more »

news@sfbg.com

Although few have ever heard of it, there's probably no number more important to the global financial system than the London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR. Defined precisely, LIBOR is a set of different interest rates that the world's largest banks charge one another for cash loans denominated in US dollars.Read more »

steve@sfbg.com

Service Employees International Union Local 1021 strenuously resists the wage and benefit givebacks regularly demanded in recent years by employers, including the city of San Francisco, which is now trying to slash the salaries for more than 40 city job classifications.

At the same time, Local 1021 is asking its own employees for benefit givebacks during new contract negotiations, a move that their own union is blasting as hypocritical.Read more »

news@sfbg.com

The market for smart phones has reached the saturation point in the United States; it's hard to find anyone who doesn't have a mobile device. Hard, maybe — but not impossible. There are still thousands of people, many of them seniors, who rely on that old-fashioned, low-tech landline for their inexpensive connection to the world — and they're about to lose out.Read more »

rebecca@sfbg.com

Somewhere in rural Southern California, a Craigslist user is offering a Hi-Point 9mm carbine, a kind of semi-automatic rifle, for "straight trade" in exchange for a quad or dirt bike. A post from Craigslist in San Mateo screams "i NEED AMMO" — in bulk, for various kinds of rifles. And across the state, Craigslist ads for Glocks, Berettas and other handguns commonly turn up in the mix, often instructing prospective buyers to respond by text message only.Read more »

steve@sfbg.com

Talk about karma.

The Synthesis 2012 Festival, which marked the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, was supposed to be an opportunity to bring spiritually minded people together around the Kukulkan Pyramid in Chichen Itza, Mexico to help usher in a new age of cooperation and goodwill. That was the vision espoused by Executive Producer Michael DiMartino, a Californian who said he had been leading tours in the area for decades and setting up this event for years.Read more »