In case you east coasters missed last night's occupation of Bank of America in San Francisco, it's truly wonderful. And this picture is something I hope our great-grandchildren see. (If The Machines that run the banks that will be running the government by then let them see any pictures, of course.) Sounds like Bank of America doesn't really even need our help in running the business into the ground though—and trying to take America with it as it prepares to cut 30,000 jobs. Meanwhile, right now in New York.... READ MORE

Everywhere you turn, a gay crisis! First it was the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, and now, it's San Francisco Gay Pride? "Its board and staff didn't realize they'd veered sharply into the red until the organization outspent its revenue by nearly 25 percent.... In the months since, Pride has also experienced a leadership exodus befitting a Central American junta. Its dysfunctional board has burned through four presidents in eight months." But all is not gloom in the world of gay nonprofit events! "Folsom Street Events"—which runs the Folsom Street Fair, which is a fun, friendly and definitely kink-friendly event—"is run tighter than a size-L pair of chaps on a XXL derriere. One intriguing indicator of the esteem in which the city holds Folsom is that the Department of the Environment tapped the leather festival to pen the official city best practices guide on large-event recycling." The Folsom Street Fair organization also now donates almost three times as much to charity as SF Gay Pride does.

Each time I visit Northern California, I remember how it's funny that I never seem to remember how beautiful it is when I'm not there. This happened again last week, when I went there with with my wife and my kid over spring break. READ MORE

The email came with the subject line "SEMINAR ((nfltr8))." It purported to be from a group called the EPWA, a grassroots guerrilla group dedicated to overthrowing the Jejune Institute, an evil group of free-love pseudo-scientists who’ve been vying for control of San Franciscan minds since 1972. The email told me to report to the Institute's temporary offices in the Hyatt at the Embarcadero. There I was to swipe some mysterious objects called “BIOTIC-4CE GLOBES,” which I would find in a screening room. This task, the email said, was of the utmost importance. It was time to take down the horrific Jejune Institute once and for all. READ MORE

Dear friends in San Francisco, won't you save this date? You are cordially invited to drinks. Details: READ MORE

There was a slight chance we were being indoctrinated into a cult. READ MORE

News finally comes to the east coast from the small port town of San Francisco. "Samantha," a local woman therein, has been infected with a strange new disease, it seems! Though she is just 19, she apparently has a case of the hybristophilia, and so she is on the cover of the weekly newspaper that the townsfolk enjoy. (The quaintest thing about the article? Even the main relationship that documents this woman's condition (with JonBenét Ramsey murder false-confessor John Mark Karr!) is only alleged. Why this lass could also be a fabulist as well!) That's only one of, say, several dozen weird things going on here. Here is part of a more synthetic take on the sudden bolt of limelight on this young creature: "The piece is so symphonically campy ('a young woman in black descends a winding staircase…her dark, wavy hair bounces atop her small frame'), it’s like Mia Farrow phone-ordering bathroom fixtures. Samantha is currently getting killed by commenters, most of whom are still missing the point: that this chick, while a nutter, is no crazier than every other hypertense sexual black hole 19-year-old selling stuff on Etsy and chain-smoking outside Matador. They’re just trying to get scummy hipsters to notice them, that’s all."