SF Weekly

Horrible publication. Out of all the local publications that have gone down. WHY NOT this one?! When I first moved here 23 years ago it was great what happened?! Mis information and terrible writing.

After going over Harmon Leon’s most insipid article in
about « Unilocaling Unilocal», and discovering that before writing for SFGate, he was in the SF Weekly and that they ousted this author in their paper.
This is more of a review of Harmon Leon himself than it is the SF Weekly, but I could not find a way to make Harmon Leon a separate entity on which we could comment.
I have always found his articles in the
dull, uninspiring, tasteless (especially the one about the swinging lifestyle he encountered) for the most part and that if Village Voice Media has dismissed his drivel and now keep it from seeing ink in their free weekly in San Francisco, perhaps there is some hope for that company, even though it looks like it is trying to do in
through its
website.
Needless to say, Harmon Leon deserves the lowest rating possible no matter who he writes for these days.

Corporate weeklies STILL suck!

Yep, still sucks. The format looks better. but other than that still crap

This paper’s feature stories are among the best in the city. I like that this paper doesn’t seem to have an obvious slant, and instead lets it’s features writers dive into what they would like to explore. Most, if not all of these features are about issues that affect a large cross-​section of the San Francisco citizenry. A good example of this is this week’s cover story, «The Muni Death Spiral.» This is an issue that affects us all. It’s covered in a straightforward way, and proposes a fix to the issue.
The other two free papers with large distributions in San Francisco, the Guardian and the Examiner, both read like personal political mouthpieces for the extreme views of their wealthy owners. The yellow journalism embodied in the pages of the Guardian and the Examiner make me glad to have the SF Weekly in town.
Finally, props for their new magazine format with a laminated cover that stays together when I read it.

Thanks, SF Weekly! Today my dog took a poop on the sidewalk and I didn’t have a bag. I was able to grab one of your highly regarded journalistic, integrity-​driven (& free!) issues and use it to scape her poo off the walkway.
I wish I could teach her to drop a few right on your newsprint… hmmm. we’ll have to work on that.

I have read SF Weekly every Wednesday for as long as I can remember.
Highly recommended over the Guardian or East Bay Express, both of which I find incredibly boring and bland.
My favorite aspect of SF Weekly is for discovering upcoming live shows, be it a big stadium gig, or some obscure band that is playing Café Du Nord or Bottom of the Hill.
This is what I used before the «interwebz» and gosh darn it, this is still gonna be my go to for «useful» «funny» or «cool» events in the Bay Area.

On the ranch where I grew up, there was an artesan spring located in a pasture full of sand dunes and scrubby brush. Next to the spring was a grove of cottonwood trees, where I occasionally idylled for ten minutes or so before getting back to work. The bark of the trees was smooth from decades of cows rubbing against them, in search of curing an itch the way animals with no opposable thumbs must. If you know the sound that wind makes in the leaves of cottonwood trees, and can add in the occasional call of a meadowlark, you can closely approximate what I experienced while leaning against those trees, eyes closed. And it occurs to me that there are maybe 9 people in the world who know where this place is. You can add this to the immense wealth of worthless knowledge I’ve accumulated during the years and can’t seem to find anything to do with.
Now, why do I mention this? First of all, I mention it because it is, apparently, the sort of detail the folks at SF Weekly hate. Second, I mention it because I happen to think that, in order to understand the review, you need to understand the reviewer, at least a little bit. I’ll never have rave reviews for vegan or raw-​food restaurants, and that has more than a little bit to do with the fact that I view grilled T-​bone steaks as perhaps nature’s most perfect food. And unless you knew that, you’d be in danger of misunderestimating my review.
Not that I’m alone on this one. Alan Richman, the celebrated food critic for GQ for the past 20+ years, seems to have no problem peppering his reviews with some historical and personal notes. I can only assume SF Weekly views Mr. Richman’s restaurant reviews as crappy (since they hate that kind of thing), although I haven’t seen anything in SF Weekly that qualifies them to carry Mr. Richman’s notepad. Alternately, you can read Roger Ebert’s reviews, and see how much personal information he tends to include (a lot). And Ebert managed only to win a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. How many of those has SF Weekly won, I wonder?
Now, one can’t help but feel a little bit bad for people who toil in a rapidly dying medium. Print newspapers have got maybe a few decades left in them, tops. Weekly rags, much less than that. And if they hope to compete on the intarwebs, they’re going to have to draw a lot more readers and a very different ad protocol. So, perhaps we ought to forgive them their tantrums.
But while we may all be willing to cut them some slack, we can’t forget the primary, underlying problem: the inherent anger traditional media has towards what might be broadly called the Blogosphere. A vast cadre of unpaid amateurs, many of whom write more intelligently than your average hack. Most vulnerable to this incursion of amateurism: the weekly rags that garner little critical acclaim. Like SF Weekly. So, I tend to view their front-​page rage as a desperate attempt to stake out territory they are rapidly loosing to other, BETTER performers. And viewed thusly, it’s a bit childish, really.

I love to read free newspapers. It’s a rare day that I’m caught without one on public transportation and I feel naked without it. I read them on work breaks, lunch breaks, bathroom breaks… I like them because they often provide an insight into a subject I wouldn’t otherwise know much about, or a POV from an angle I hadn’t considered before. It’s brain food. Usually.
What I like about the SF Weekly is the «Bouncer» column — I’ve generally been entertained and interested in what Katy St. Clair has to say, even if it’s a little mean at times. I love «Savage Love», and I appreciate Meredith Brody’s habit of including public transportation info in her restaurant column.
However, the articles are often either bland and lazy, or sensationalized and inaccurate. The SF Bay Guardian can get both screechy and preachy, but overall the writing is superior and they’re unapologetically political, even if I don’t agree with them much of the time.
Yes, the Unilocal article angered me. But, all it did in the end was confirm a couple of suspicions I already had about their business and journalistic practices, and prove how truly hypocritical some of the reporters can be. Some of the points made were valid. However, having seen her conduct «research» for this article firsthand, I can say that the reporter is more interested in being the next Nancy Grace than having journalistic integrity. Considering that many of her previous articles have generated similar complaints, I can’t say I’m surprised — only saddened that she’s worse than I thought.
So, I’ll keep reading because it’s free and for the other reasons I stated, but if they go bankrupt because of the SFBG settlement, I won’t be particularly upset. Let the better reporters and columnist find jobs in the Bay Area, and the rest go back to journalism school.

Okay, Unilocal story aside, here’s my assessment:
The Weekly was a great paper when I moved here in 04. Hideous Harmon Leon was finally ousted. (Thanks!) Then the editor pulled the crosswords and taunted his readers. (No thanks!)
Katy St. Clair started writing the ‘Bouncer’ article, which reviews bars and entertains us with wisdom and bits of Katy’s life. In a Unilocaler paradigm, it’s sort of a weekly well written and cohesive Unilocal review.
She’s fabulous.
Dan Savage’s Savage Love is there weekly. And Rob Brezny’s Free Will Astrology makes the trifecta complete!
Now,
Since being bought up by what, the Village Voice, the writing has declined.
SuckaFree City is boring. The stories have a decidely «this is the official story so don’t bother finding out the real story» flavor.
Not a fan of the cheesy sidebar. Bring back the Fixie Bike.
Or the Apologist for god’s sake!
Also, the Weekly ran back to back stories on class predjudice and racial predjudice. I waited for the story on gender predjudice, but it never materialized. Instead, just more ads for forced masseurs appeared in the back of the paper.
Will the «BEST OF» once again feature a woman draped on favorite landmarks? I was horrified to move to the city and find this sexist piece o tripe had infiltrated SF. An anemic version of how a woman should look was used to sell papers. How boring. How unenlightened. How not San Francisco! Where were the fat girls? Or the girls actually participating in something? Girls who weren’t window-​dressing !
Katy, could you get on that please?
There are some good stories, and great regular features. But they’ve got to lose the lazy corporate reporting. And sexism, because it ruins their credibility, and promotes bile, allowing alleged «progressives» to still treat women like wierdos.

nothing to do with a Unilocal article, which isn’t necessarily a way to create integrity on a site by having site users lamblast something that isn’t about the business, but just an article.
Guys come on… be mature. We need you to suck it up and make Unilocal look better in light of the one or two drunken scenesters who are giving a bad name to *you*. So my review?
The Bay Guardian is the most sensationalist, conspiracy driven, pseudo countercultural rag I have ever read, and it saddens me the paper in this town with any semblance of investigative journlalism or integrity is the SF Weekly, clearchannels billboard.
But, that Unilocal article was pretty bad. Playing at expose. But not very well.

As Music Calendar-​4 stars.
No editorials please, just do what you have been doing best and cover the music scene (good article on Unilocal though).

Faux Stars??? Really, how ’bout NONE!
SF Weekly staffers are lucky to have a job in the first place. How many jobs are in the world even exist where people get PAID to do something or create a product that’s given away for free? «Oh, I’m just your friendly factor worker, trying to make a buck building this car but GE gave it away for free.» NOT — Get Real!
SF Weekly staffers are simply jealous WE can spout off and they have to try to preserver their whatever it is agenda. If anything is true about businesses trying to buy off bad reveiwers, then I’ve never heard about it. I’ve been on Unilocal since 2005, Elite for 4 years and NOT ONE BUSINESS HAS EVER CONTACTED ME EVER bad or good starts in hand!
The Weekly is more frequently used as «bachelor man emergency TP» than actually read in 95% of the entire SF Bay Area. Fact Checkers at the SF Weekly, get a stat on that, OK?
~ Damn! Ms. Ali told you!

3 words. Cover Story. Harsh.
ouch. not big fans-​o-​yelp, i can see.
«They shouldn’t call it Unilocal; they should call it Yap.»
«There’s the core of Unilocal which is in their 20s and 30s that drink a lot and like to hook up. They’re basically a bunch of self-​centered twits.»
both barrels. right in the chest. hello. ah, the image in the mirror is so ugly. the truth? not interested in hearing it! if that’s the truth, then lie to me, baby, lie! :)
on the one hand, the SF weekly competes for the same 20’s and 30’s audience, the same advertising dollars, publishes the sames types of restaurant reviews as Unilocal … so it’s hardly an unbiased observer. on the other hand, we are just self-​centered twits. there really is no arguing that. hahaha.

Here is the thing. I’ve never really read SF Weekly because quite frankly… I hate the entire city of San Francisco. That city is full of some of the most arrogant, smug, self centered people in the world, and I segregate myself from that crap.
Now, I read that entire article. Word for word. And while I agree with certain aspects of what was mentioned on that article, I was really upset about the slanderous remarks made against fellow Unilocalers.
Especially Janney B. Now, I don’t know Janney. I’ve never met Janney. I have not said a single word to Janney… ever. Janney B. doesn’t even know I exist. But, of all the things I have heard about her, I have yet to hear a single bad thing about her. People have told me she is quite possibly one of the nicest people you could meet. How anyone could turn such kind words about a person into such slanderous remarks is beyond my understand. But that’s business… controversy sells.
Still, have a little honor… a little respect. Flat out lying about people just to sell a few more newspapers is ridiculous. I can’t believe they would allow such a idiotic person to work for them and actually give them a voice. You should be ashamed of yourself SF Weekly.

It is a rare event when I get the opportunity to know the inside of a story versus what is printed in mass media.
My first hand experience as a Unilocaler and personal knowledge of the people mentioned in SF Weekly’s «Faux Star Review» article lead me to believe that the writing staff is basically worthless and ethically questionable.
On the plus, I do enjoy all the hooker advertisements. Dating is difficult and I may just start paying my way out.
Also, I enjoy painting, and this «newspaper» makes excellent drop cloth.
SF Weekly Haiku!
Selective edits
Sensationalism? Yes.
A waste of paper
Talent? Laughable at best.

The first time I picked up the SF Weekly, I threw it away immediately.
There are SO MANY ads for hookers. This epitomizes the low-​quality of the publication and journalists — who *earns* money from hookers anyway?!
Pimps aren’t respectable.
Lauren Smiley’s choice of sensationalism over journalistic integrity is not respectable either.

Legal Disclaimer — I am an avid weekly reader of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, East Bay Express, SF Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly. I am a Unilocal Elite member and I have attended their events sober. I have eaten Pork in Danville.
There’s already an active thread and I’m sure more review posts will be forthcoming in response to this week’s SF Weekly article on Unilocal.Heck, some business owners who feel that they have previously been wronged by Unilocalers might throw 5 Star «pay-back’s a bitch» review grenades, while hiding relatively anonymously behind their profiles. I am of course disappointed that my reviews were not mentioned or that as a 50-​ish single father, my life wasn’t reduced to a cartoonish stereotype (like being labelled a narcissistic twit). At the same time, this me-​too article (the first appearing in the East Bay Express) doesn’t pretend to pass as journalism. And when you consider the SF Bay Guardian’s relatively recent success in litigating some of the SF Weekly’s business practices, it is often useful to consider the source of your information.
One Unilocal «friend» recently questioned my Unilocal objectivity, based solely on my Elite Status. And over time, after having 3 of my own reviews pulled and complaining long and loud not only to the Unilocal HQ, but once to Jeremy himself, I guess he forgot to tell me that to some, Elite Status might also mean Unilocal Toad. Not this time.

One star for the extra absorbency of this news rag. It is so packed full of advertisements — I mean «articles» — that it’s sheer thickness saved my keyboard once when I spilled my tea.
Also, the star is for the time I found a copy on the street when my dog had some serious diarrhea and I was able to cover it with something so no one would have to step in something nasty.
Other than that, I regularly use this paper to clean off my windows. That’s gotta count for something I guess, right? I mean, no one actually READS it, do they?

Go back to Arizona, you unethical trash rag!
Anyone who calls themselves a true San Franciscan should never read, support, or advertise in this poser paper.
The Guardian is a San Francisco institution, established in 1966.
The so-​called «SF» weekly is a outsider, Arizona-​based money-​driven business that appeared 12-​years ago and was recently made to pay over 15 million dollars in damages to the Guardian for ad price-​fixing.
Do not read this paper if you care about our great city.
One star is too many.