10.22.09

Just as it announced a plan to cut 100 positions from its newsroom, The New York Times has sprouted a sapling in the Bay: the new Bay Area Blog.

Launched yesterday, the blog serves as the online companion to the Times’ week-old Bay Area section, a two-page spread to appear twice weekly in print. Its first spread got quite a rise out of Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein, who seems to view the project as little more than carpetbagging.

Mission Loc@l’s own Armand Emamdjomeh will be contributing to the new blog. Check out his first post about the Board of Supervisors’ new proposal requiring that stores offer a 10-cent rebate for each bag a customer brings from home. This law would apply to the same large supermarkets and chain pharmacies that were subject to the plastic bag ban, reports the SF Weekly.

Good news for domestic violence programs in California: Gov. Schwarzenegger signed into law yesterday Senator Leland Yee’s stopgap proposal to restore some of the state funding for the state’s 94 domestic violence programs — funding that was entirely eliminated this summer in an 11th-hour line-item veto (see the Mission Loc@l report about the impact of these cuts on Mission District-based shelters.)

The bill provides a $16.3 loan, siphoned from an alternative fuel and technology fund, that must be repaid by June 2013, reports the New York Times. It also shifts the administration for these 94 programs from the Department of Public Health to the state’s emergency management agency. (Interesting note: The New York Time’s coverage of this is much more in-depth than what you can find in either the Chronicle or the Examiner.)

This shining moment for Schwarzenegger came just as a federal judge rejected his proposal to reduce the prison population yesterday because it fails to meet the terms of an earlier court order, the Associated Press reports.

On the heels of its proof-of-payment study, the Municipal Transit Authority is considering legalizing backdoor boarding on its buses and F-line streetcars in an effort to speed boarding, reports the SF Streets Blog. The MTA would implement a proof-of-payment system similar to that of the underground Muni to address the rampant fare evasion problem, enforcing payment by random transfer checks.

In honor of El Rio’s 31st birthday, Burrito Justice compiled an awesome historical review of its location on Valencia and Mission streets dating back to 1886 — when the then-vacant lot was “next to some dude’s house, a glove factory and Misters Somers & Healy’s Hay, Grain, Wood and Coal Emporium.” Who says blogs don’t do their research?

The weekend is nigh — don’t miss Kid Sister tonight at the Rickshaw Stop with Flosstradamus.

–Vanessa