While you’re howling about the 32 percent fee increases, you might be relieved to know that some things are right in the world—the Berkeley City Council just voted to protect windsurfers while at the same time approving a ferry terminal.

The ferry will be another mode of transportation between here and San Francisco. Has potential, right? Think of it as a splashier alternative to BART.

OK, the skeptics sneer, a ferry’s all well and good, but what will windsurfers do? We’ve got you covered there, too: There’s a provision that insists that the ferry cannot “disrupt the flow of the windsurfers who frequent the area.”

Well that’s settled, then. A ferry and some rights for windsurfers. That’s all we really wanted.

Image source: cookipediachef under Creative Commons
Berkeley votes to protect windsurfing [NBC Bay Area]
City Council Approves Plan for Berkeley Waterfront Ferry Terminal [Daily Cal]

It’s the story of an Oxford-bound Londoner whose delightfully taboo love affair with a man old enough to be her father catapults her into an identity crisis similar to the protagonist’s struggle in your girlfriend’s latest short story, which she totally ripped off from Graham Greene, but you told her you loved it anyway. In a Nabokov-meets-Anais Nin sort of way.

Why she’ll be excited? The film was written and produced by everyone’s favorite, or should we say favourite, contemporary English novelist Nick Hornby. Yeah, the guy who wrote High Fidelity, which lead to the film adaptation you’re probably thinking of starring John Cusack. (What is it with American girls and John Cusack??)

The screening will take place Wednesday, Oct. 7 at the Embarcadero Center Cinema at 8:30 p.m. The price of admission, admittedly somewhat steep, includes the screening, an up-close-and-personal Q&A sesh with Hornby himself, as well as a collection of Hornby’s columns from the Believer called “Housekeeping vs. the Dirt.”

While your girlfriend may scowl and tell you that she’s been a Believer subscriber since Berkeley’s own Judith Butler made the cover in 2003 and therefore has every column Hornby has ever written catalogued on her bookshelf, lovingly remind her that none of those back issues bear a personalized inscription from the author himself.

Get your tickets here.

Image Source: Mr. Kimberly under Creative Commons
Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency [site]

What do Steve Martin, MC Hammer and bluegrass have in common? If you don’t know the answer to that question then you must have stayed at home watching Hulu this weekend. [SF Gate]

Have you ever slept in the common room because you were sexiled or had to resort to an uncomfortable cough to alert your roommates that their upper bunk dry hump session isn’t as subtle as they think? Students at Tufts apparently haven’t. [The Paper Trail]

If you decided bluegrass or the library (yawn) was a better way to spend your weekend than donning your tutu and raving to techno, don’t worry, here are some pictures. It’s almost like being there: minus the music, the people and the fun. Yeah, it’s really nothing like being there. [San Francisco Citizen]

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San Franciscans seem to agree, at least in the realm of cycling.

Reps from the Municipal Transportation Commission, BART, and the ever-omnipotent SF Municipal Transportation Authority sat down yesterday with a gaggle of bicycling advocates, using European urban planning tactics to blueprint improvements for bike commuters.

In other words, a convention of Bay Area fixie-snobs wishing they lived in Amsterdam.

Three years in the making, the initiative includes striping bike lanes and improving bike rack security. Methods of coping with bully motorists are also in the works. While our two-wheeled tantrums have failed to get the message across, perhaps a hip public service campaign (or a sharp influx in meter prices) would really serve to stick it to that Audi-driving, suspender-wearing bald man whose life’s ambition appears to be running you out of his lane.

You know Baldy, cyclists can speak middle-management jargon too. See the deposition we just faxed you from the ample storage unit above our rear tire for more expletives.

We all know San Franciscans can talk the talk until they’re green and 100 percent sustainable in the face. And yes, bike programs are the cheap way out of building a new highway. But will a simple infrastructure plan motivate would-be bike commuters to really pedal to the metal?

The panelists flown in from Holland, Belgium and Denmark by the German Marshall Fund remain skeptical. Dutch bicycle advocate Hans Voerknecht insists that the plan’s success hinges not only on a sizable financial investment, but an ideological one. Be it our chronic fear of bikes polluting the streets at rush hour, or our tendency to measure success by the make of our luxury vehicles, the European bicycle experts seem to view our efforts to increase ridership as a royal waste of everyone’s time.

As always, we remain optimistic and pedaling. After all, inciting road rage is half the fun of braving the asphalt jungle.

Image Source: = xAv = under Creative Commons
Europeans School Bay Area Transportation Agencies on Bike Plans [SFAppeal]

Good news for all of you who have been panicking for the last four days about your lack of transportation: The BART strike, scheduled to start in just a few short hours, has been called off.

Apparently a tentative agreement has been reached with the union, and the trains will continue running tomorrow morning. Now here’s hoping this is the last we hear of this for awhile.

Image Source: Thomas Hawk under Creative Commons
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BART strike averted, tentative deal reached [SF Chronicle]

Ok, so we hate to bug you with this again, but we’re hearing it’s for real this time.

According to Jesse Hunt, head of one of BART’s unions, announced at a press conference today that workers will be striking beginning at the close of business Sunday. So, if you were planning on using BART to get into the city Monday morning, now would be the time to make alternate plans. If you need to get to the city, try taking a Transbay bus or researching other options.

Hopefully things will be resolved soon enough, but if they aren’t, it could prove for massive disaster when the Bay Bridge closes over Labor Day weekend.

Image Source: Thomas Hawk under Creative Commons
Earlier: All Remains Uncertain
BART Strike Now On Sunday Night [SFist]
What to do if BART strikes [SF Chronicle]
BART Strike When Bay Bridge is Closed? [East Bay Express]

Well, we alerted you awhile ago to the possible BART strike. At the time, we said the contract deadline had been extended until July 9. Perhaps, after said date coming and going without incident, you felt you were safe from any major transportation-strike hijinks. O fair transit-goer, how wrong you were.

No strike has happened, yet but it remains a viable possiblity, as one BART union unanimously rejected a new labor pact agreement. The second largest BART union will vote on it tomorrow, at which time it may become clearer whether or not a strike will actually be taking place.

For those of you reliant on BART for your bay-crossing and other needs, BART has put together a page of fairly obvious and/or useless suggestions and options in the case that a strike does occur.

Image Source: Thomas Hawk under Creative Commons
SF Bay Area BART Strike May Be Back On [Examiner]
Updates and Options in the Event of a BART Strike [BART]

According to Eventful, an aggregation site of local events, Berkeley ranks No. 2 as a “Small but Eventful” city. W00t. More bragging rights. So who beat us out then?

Pasadena. OK, so it has some cool museums (e.g. Norton Simon) and a decent playhouse and some Rose-related things or another (Bowl, Parade, etc.)–but that’s it, we swear. Hailing from the grand 626, we can confidently claim that there is not much event in an average day in Pasadena besides walking up and down Colorado Boulevard in Old Town 50 times over. So there.

Most of the other cities on the list are college towns:

1. Pasadena, Calif.
2. Berkeley, Calif.
3. Hartford, Conn.
4. Cedar Rapids, Iowa
5. New Haven, Conn.
6. Syracuse, N.Y.
7. Ann Arbor, Mich.
8. Gainesville, Fla.
9. Charleston, S.C.
10. Columbia, S.C.

As for bigger cities, San Francisco sits at No. 3 under New York City and Los Angeles. We’ll take that one. Bay Area, word is bond.

Image Source: mrtwism under Creative Commons
San Francisco and Berkeley are Officially Hip [NBC Bay Area]

… cold enough to snow in San Francisco, apparently. And in all the high hills from Sonoma to Santa Cruz. But … no, no. We couldn’t possibly hope that–perhaps, maybe? Down here? Murphy’s law? Seriously, if there are snowball fights in Berkeley the day we get back to SoCal, we’re going to punch someone in the throat. [SFist]

… and it’s only getting colder for the university’s money supply (or hotter, depending on whether you favor a “Financial Armageddon” by fire or ice.) You know something’s really up when R-Birge sends out a 1,843 word-long “message” to the campus community about the “Current Economic Situation.” We’ll admit we skimmed it, but that’s all it took to get the gist: we’re f*cked. [CalMail]

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So you’re drinking age now and you think you can hang with the big boys in San Francisco. Not so fast, bucko. You’ve got to know where to go, and you’ve got to know what to avoid.

Eater SF debuted its continuously expanding map of douchiest bars in the city, so now you can thank your lucky stars you’ll be spared holier-than-thou hipsters and suits with hair gel up the wazoo.

Medjool and Matrix top (bottom?) the blacklist, but really there’s enough douche to go around a few more bars. Go on, stand up for your right to drink in a fine establishment.

Image Source: joeywan under Creative Commons
Eater Map: Your Guide to San Francisco’s Douchiest Bars [SF Eater]
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