I lived in San Francisco for thirteen years. All of my twenties. A fragment of my thirties.

I’ll miss the fog and the summers in the Mission and the drum circle on Hippie Hill. I’ll miss the burritos. I’ll miss the Haight-Ashbury, the neighborhood that I’ve been lucky enough to call home for the past two and a half years. It’s going to be extremely hard to find a replacement for Rockin’ Java, where many things were written, or the Booksmith or Ploy II or, hell, just everything really. I’ll miss the fag hags, the creative swindlers, the misunderstood people on the more interesting half of Polk Street, the guy who drums the same beat for hours on plastic buckets on Powell Street next to the meticulously groomed evangelist telling all who will listen that sex is evil. I’ll miss Frank Chiu, the tech geek crowd, the strange exhibitionist empathy, and the unapologetically corrupt politicians. I’ll miss Dan Leone’s Cheap Eats column. I’ll miss many friends and acquaintances, those noble soldiers of the Sunday Writing Circle, and I’ll even miss the sneers of some of my enemies. I’ll miss trips to Berkeley and the Great American Music Hall and the Red Vic and the Lucky Penny, easily the worst diner on the West Coast. I’ll miss Ross Mirkarimi. I’ll miss the incongruous automated voices inside MUNI buses, the capacious thatch of Dolores Park, the dogs flitting about Duboce Park, the almost perennial sixty degree temperature, the sex subcultures, the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, Bottom of the Hill, the Edwardian and Victorian houses, the many confused kids and misfits demanding spare change, the martinis at Blondie’s, the post-2AM crowd at Sparky’s, The Mint, the hills and the valleys, the earthquakes, the smell of oak trees in the Panhandle, the interesting developments around Divisadero Street, the snobs at Reverie, and the pretentious Marina crowd. I’ll miss the Exit Theatre, the Castro Halloween Parade, the lonely people I talked with during Christmas, the nice Russian ladies at the Yellow Submarine, the influx of Indian food in recent years, the notebooks at the Blue Danube, the sand hills near the Pacific, the drunks writing for the Guardian, and too much to list here really.

Goodbye San Francisco. It was a great run.

I uncovered this remarkable Craig’s List ad:

Small publishing company seeks qualified writer to interview director Michael Moore during press conference June 19 in New York. The ideal candidate will have the ability to write and communicate and produce the interview quickly and cleanly. Candidate will have access to Mr. Moore’s press conference. The candidate will have to deliver the article by June 22 with 1,300 words and incorporate the asked questions during the interview (specific questions will be sent to you in order to provide guidance and focus for the article/interview). Payment for the final written article is limited to $200.00. We understand this is amount is low, but the opportunity is unique for a strong writer to interview Michael Moore. Send resume and writing samples to editor Karl Hente by June 12.

I’m wondering precisely how any journalist can “write” or “investigate” a piece, if the journalist’s questions are “prepared” by another party in advance (were these questions, for example, pre-approved by Michael Moore?). A Google search reveals that Karl Hente appeared with Ivan Weiss at a May 2006 conversation, revealing that he copy-edited at the Washington Post (“Current projects: new business development, grantwriting, research.”). Hente’s involvement with the Washington Post is corroborated by his work here on an April 2007 “Community Guide” as copy editor. Although Hente claims to have left the Post, a “Karl F. Hente” is listed on the WaPo staff page.

So what happened? Was a Post staffer assigned the Michael Moore piece? And did he then walk away in disgust when Moore’s staff demanded all of his questions cleared in advance? Did desperate editors proclaim that a Michael Moore piece was too important not to feature, no matter how fabricated the journalism, and did copy editor Hente then continue on in panic? And did this then result in the Craig’s List ad with this “unique” “journalistic” opportunity?

I will be making calls on Monday to determine if this was indeed a Washington Post article or possibly a side project. I certainly hope that such dubious ethics aren’t being practiced by the Post or elsewhere.

Memo to Giuliani: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

RELATED: Gothamist: “According to Time’s Up!, Robert Carnevale was arrested while videotaping the bike raid after he asked one of the officers for his badge number. Carole Vale, a nurse observing the scene, was also arrested when she asked why Mr. Carnevale was being detained. Mr. Carnevale was held for 22 hours and Ms. Vale was held for 13 hours. Time’s Up!, along with the 6th Street cycling community are asking for a meeting with the commanding officer of the Ninth Precinct to explain the actions of the NYPD and to ask for their bikes back.”

• I would like to join my fellow bloggers in denouncing the provincial specifics of book review editors. This is, after all, a more pressing issue than the number of column inches available and the quality of coverage. I demand that all book review editors live in the same town, 365 days a year! No vacations! No retreats! Not even BEA! This is the only way that we can be absolutely sure of a book review editor’s integrity! To step foot outside of Chicago or Atlanta for even a week is to commit a journalistic disgrace that can never be forgiven. Of course, there are other things to denounce here. It’s almost as bad as being a Chicago blogger writing a blog post from Washington, DC. But we forgive bloggers because they are all based in Terre Haute.
• Paris Hilton’s prison diaries. (via Bookninja)
• Rub-a-dub-dub. Books in a tub.
• Jennifer Weiner on Cormac’s Oprah appearance.
• It’s a beautiful statue in the neighborhood. (via Jeff)
• A radio interview with Sherman Alexie.
• It appears that Patricia Cornwall is attempting to stop anyone from spreading rumors and accusations about her on the Internet.
• So go figure. Ian McEwan takes questions from readers and then proceeds to openly insult them: “Publishers seem to be very keyed up to embrace the Internet, but I don’t have much time for the kind of site where readers do all the reviewing. Reviewing takes expertise, wisdom and judgment. I am not much fond of the notion that anyone’s view is as good as anyone else’s.” Okay, Ian, we get that you’re an elitist. If that’s the case, why subject yourself to the rabble of Time readers? Ain’t that a big hypocritical? Or do you truly feel that such sad interlocutory specimens as “When you are writing a book, do you expect it to influence your readers in a certain way?” are somehow better because they came from a magazine reader (as opposed to someone from the Internet, who may very well have offered the “expertise, wisdom and judgment” you call for)?
• Annalee Newitz on the problems with Wikipedia: “Besides, who is to say what is ‘notable’ or not? Lutheran ministers? Bisexual Marxists? Hopefully, both. For me, the Utopianism of Wikipedia comes from its status as a truly Democratic people’s encyclopedia—nothing is too minor to be in it. Everything should noteworthy, as long as it is true and primary sources are listed. If we take this position, we avoid the pitfalls of 19th-century chroniclers, who kept little information about women and people of color in archives because of course those groups were hardly ‘notable.’ Yet now historians and curious people bang their heads against walls because so much history was lost via those ‘deletions.'”
• Apparently, it’s big news to Marc Ramirez that African-Americans are interested in culture. Wow, who knew?
• What goes into a great translation? (via Orthofer)

My review of Richard Bachman’s Blaze appears in today’s Los Angeles Times.