For your pyrotechnical pleasure, enjoy last night’s firework show at the Golden Gate Bridge in celebration of its 75th birthday. If you like things that go boom, this will be for you. (Sorry about the stupid commercial at the beginning of the video).

First, a still photo:

And video, courtesy of CBS:

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Today’s the big day for the Golden Gate Bridge. Gorgeous day or night, in rain or sun. Enjoy some photos of now and then.

The Pan Am clipper flying over the unfinished bridge:

More oldies after the jump:

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For the funniest local news story about the annual 4/20 smoke-out in Golden Gate Park, I present to you San Francisco’s Stanley Roberts.  Not many other reporters would say things like “Never have I seen so many ways to ingest weed” or “For some reason I’m starving,” let alone feature a gas mask bong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgImSIxPmNw

this breaks me; it’s his entire self:

Newtie was in the Bay Area to pick up some cash (hide your wives!), and was asked by someone from the Chronicle why he’s always using the coded phrase “San Francisco Values” — does he mean the values of tolerance and universal health care?  In any event, the question led to him waxing nostalgically about the friendly transvestite he met out here back in 1984…

[ Flash video not available. ]

That would be the motto of the San Francisco Police Department, which today became the first and only police department law enforcement agency in the country to contribute to the “It Gets Better” effort to dissuade LGBT kids from committing suicide.

As much as I can sometimes bitch about the whack-a-doodleness of The City, I can’t imagine a greater place to live in the United States.

And Flying Spaghetti Monster knows I needed a little something to take the edge off after reading Benedick’s post about Uganda and how the GOP is fighting the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.

[SF Chronicle]

Doug LaMalfa, senator for the Great Counties of Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Nevada, Placer, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, and Yuba in the Great State of California, is getting some play on Fox Nation today:

How will parents react when they find out they will be expected to provide workers’ compensation benefits, rest and meal breaks and paid vacation time for…babysitters? Dinner and a movie night may soon become much more complicated.

Assembly Bill 889, authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, will require these protections for all “domestic employees,” including nannies, housekeepers and caregivers.

Of course, that’s just the first two grafs. Let’s go to Graf 4 for the details:

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