Last month a federal judge awarded $35,000 in compensatory and $6000 in punitive damages to a man state troopers arrested for video taping them. The ruling finds violations of the plaintiff's first and fourth amendment rights.
cops have to pay $41k for stopping man from videoing them
A rare instance of good news!
Aeon Flux
Ok, I must hesitantly admit that the Aeon Flux trailer looks pretty cool. It seems to have little to do with the cartoon, but it might be a fun movie anyway.
no ski = zombies
Dammit! The ski jump down Fillmore street, originally scheduled for this saturday, has been cancelled due to whining!
I was planning on getting up early and everything.
That means there's only one thing left to do: Zombie Invasion of the Beijen/Tulchin wedding!
But perhaps no one is more irate than Laurie Beijen and her fiance, Ben Tulchin, who are getting married at the historic Flood Mansion at Broadway and Fillmore the day of "Icer Air 2005."
"I can't even describe how hard this has been, to come down two weeks before our wedding," she said. "No bride should have to face this before she gets married."
The Flood Mansion, which costs $8,500 to rent for a wedding, did not receive notice of "Icer Air 2005" until recently.
(Brains.)
today in Killdozer news
Man Charged With Drunken Bulldozer Ride
A man was drunk when he tried to run down two law enforcement officers while driving a 10-ton bulldozer, authorities said.
William Armstrong, 52, refused to stop as his Caterpillar excavator rumbled toward a Geauga County sheriff's deputy and Thompson Township police chief who had parked in his path Monday night. He missed the retreating officers, but damaged a parked sheriff's car.
Officers eventually persuaded the Thompson Township man to stop the vehicle. Armstrong's blood-alcohol level was .244 percent, more than three times the legal limit of 0.08, according to sheriff's tests.
"I'm glad talking worked, because I don't know how else we would have stopped him," said Sheriff Dan McClelland.
Armstrong was jailed after pleading innocent Tuesday to two felony counts of assault on a law enforcement officer. His bulldozer was confiscated by the sheriff's office.
dirty, dirty, dirty movies.
Some day a real rain will come: The back of a dump truck delivering 20 tons of dirt to businesses on Sixth Street in San Francisco tipped and crashed into an adult video arcade this morning, narrowly missing three patrons. The back of the truck tipped over to the side and into the wall of the store, shattering windows and dumping dirt into the part of the store that houses booths for video peep shows.
Firefighters used a thermal imager to ensure that no one had been buried dead or alive under the mound of dirt. Then they closed off the area and waited for a building inspector to deem the building structurally sound.
This is the second accident in as many years to damage adult stores at the corner of Sixth and Mission streets. On Dec. 15, 2003, a 14-Mission bus slammed into the Golden Gate Adult Superstore across the street from the Liberty Bookstore. Seventeen people were hurt in that accident.
today in Afghani Extreme Sports news
Paragliding heroin smuggler shot down
Yesterday, when he crossed the ranges that divide Afghanistan from Tajikistan, his canopy was brought crashing to earth in a hail of machinegun bullets. In the wreckage 18kg of heroin was discovered, although by the time the Tajik guards were able to retrieve it the smuggler had run off into the mountains.
Sabza Sarkorov, the deputy head of the Tajik border guards, said that the paraglider had probably been injured. An investigation is under way.
Paragliding is a popular sport in Tajikistan, where the topography is similar to that of the Himalayas. But this is thought to be the first instance of a paraglider regularly transporting contraband.
Arrrrrbecue photos
Tags: firstperson, photography, sf
Current Music: The Jesus and Mary Chain -- Teenage Lust (Desdemoana mix) ♬
DNA Lounge: Wherein girls who are boys like boys to be girls, or however that goes.
Photos are up of the Tenth Annual Drag King Contest. It was very entertaining! Oddest moment: for some inexplicable reason, shortly before we closed, one of the contest judges decided to hike up her dress and pee on our sidewalk. That's what I like to call "classy with a capital K." It is believed that she's biologically female, but thankfully, none of the staff had a front row seat for that particular sideshow.
I am fully in favor of temporary ski jumps on major urban thoroughfares
It's hard to imagine, but some people are not. Hey, you! Get outta my town! djinnaya explains.
Icer Air 2005, slated for Aug. 27, will put snow, a ski jump, camera crews and crowds on Fillmore Hill to help celebrate Olympic skier Jonny Moseley's 30th birthday and hawk Icer's line of apparel, ski waxes and snowboard waxes. Moseley and 30 other professionals -- including several Norwegians -- will fly off a jump at Fillmore and Vallejo streets, do mid- air acrobatics and land near Green Street.
But neighbors, as well as Hindu monks who worship nearby and a bride who plans to get married at the historic Flood Mansion a half-block away, are upset about the street closures, inconvenience, potential trash and noise. [...]
In February 1934, the Auburn Ski Club of Truckee put 43,000 cubic feet of snow -- four times the amount headed for Fillmore Street -- on six Southern Pacific boxcars and shipped it to the steep slopes of Hearst Avenue, just north of the UC Berkeley campus, for a ski jump demonstration. About 45,000 people, including thousands on Tightwad Hill, gathered to watch the novelty.
But in true Berkeley fashion, the event ended in a riot. College students, many of whom had never seen snow before, stormed the barricades and launched an enormous snowball fight, disrupting the event before it could finish.
"So you see, San Francisco is a bit slow," Klaumann said.
