When the alarm went off this morning I looked at my phone and saw I had eight texts, all from a variety of unconnected people. Considering my birthday is in four days, my first thought in that foggy, not quite awake state was “is it my birthday?” I looked at

It must have been 2009 that I first braved the line at The Brainwash. I remember it was cold, and I remember going with my friend from college who had never been to an open mic. I had been to mics before, but this one felt different. There was a

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was pronounced dead last night at 1:11 am at SF General Hospital, he was 65 years old.  Former Mayor Willie Brown told CBS 5 that the cause of death was a heart attack and that Lee suffered the attack while he was grocery shopping in his

This post is done in conjunction with The Melt. Wanna support an article on the site? Holler at Alex@BrokeAssStuart.com As you know, I teamed up with the fine folks at The Melt on Market Street and we did something incredible: The Greatest Grilled Cheese and Music Giveaway Ever! And the puns

Progress isn’t always progress. When you sit in traffic tomorrow morning wondering how much it’ll cost to get your bashed-in rear window fixed, or how you’ll find a spot near work, just remember— it wasn’t always like this. The East Bay used to be home to streetcars, trains, and ferries

It’s been a grueling week for Oakland city workers and a dysfunctional shit storm for the city itself. As Day 4 of the strike dwindled down, the dispute over the two-year contract was still far from resolved. Approximately 400 union workers and allies raised picket signs and carried bullhorns at

This originally appeared in my Broke-Ass City column in the SF Examiner. It has been slightly modified for republication. On March 30, 1981, a mentally ill man named John Hinckley Jr. tried to kill President Ronald Reagan and instead put a bullet in Jim Brady’s head. After years of scuffling