by Charles Irwell The Mafia are a disgrace to our species. The true stories of the Mafia – of people too inept to handle laundry, too mediocre to hold someone’s hand or kiss a cheek, yet so brutal as to pull the richest nation’s strings – are at once horrifying,

“we don’t want them in our city,” he continued, “I don’t eventually want to see them leave this city,” he said. “I would have liked for them to have been gone yesterday.” 

I’ve got some awesome news! We received a grant from the Civic Joy Fund to put out a literary magazine celebrating SF and acting to counter the stupid “Doom Loop” narrative. It’s a gift to the people of San Francisco. And after months of working on this project it’s now available

Through the millennia prohibition on drinking of alcoholic beverages, outlawing prostitution, and banning legal abortions has proven to be a failure. Prohibitions do not stop the use, but only drive these activities underground, increase crime, cause death and suffering, and put an unnecessary financial drain on the criminal justice system.

Hidden East Bay Wonders brings you everything weird, whimsical and wonderful in the East Bay. This week: the abandoned Winehaven winery in Richmond.

San Francisco always has had a cast of zany characters. For this week’s installment of SFCentric History, I will take a look at one of those characters in particular–Daisy Simpson, a woman who left a seedy past behind to become one of the few female Federal Prohibition agents, only to return to the other side of the law soon thereafter.

On the edges of Chinatown and North Beach there’s a basement gin joint that takes a secret pass code to enter. Once past the fake door of the sham clock repair shop, you find yourself inside a gambling den and cabaret that’s been filled to the brim with bathtub hooch. Outside, Prohibition has cleaned the streets but you’re a member of the 1930s social elite — low on morals and high on strong cocktails.

I only have eyes for…beer… I always thought it would be cool to be a flapper and live during the Roaring Twenties, wearing feathers in my hair and fringe-dresses, drinking in speakeasies and smoking long cigarettes. Tomorrow night, Speakeasy Ales & Lagers presents Firkin Friday – with FREE brewery tours

I really hate the government. Regulating food and drugs and all that… What gives them the right to ban us from ingesting mass quantities of caffeinated malt liquor, blacking out, and vomiting all over unsuspecting people and things? But it looks as though there is nothing we can do. A