Featured Articles from SFGate

Forty years ago, Don Ed Hardy blew off a Yale fine-art fellowship to pursue the rogue art of tattoo, a timeless and often taboo tradition that captivated him as a boy in the Orange County beach town of Corona del Mar. By 10 he was drawing cars and eagles on kids' backs and arms with wet colored pencils and Maybelline eyeliner. At the San Francisco Art Institute in the early '60s, Hardy mastered the demanding art of intaglio etching under the tutelage of the late Gordon Cook, a no-jive blue-collar guy who instilled in Hardy a love of craft, Asian art and the quiet power of Giorgio Morandi's little still life pictures.

Gardeners have been fussing with fertilizers since the first human stuck a seed in soil. The goal of fertilization is to create the richest soil possible since it is in the soil where plants draw the essential nutrients that make them grow. Organic gardeners rely on fertilizers made from plants and animal by-products avoiding the chemical fertilizers that have flooded the farming and gardening industries for the past 50 years. Synthetic fertilizers do nothing to support the microbial activity that makes soil and plants healthy.

That the tub (ofuro) in a Japanese bathroom is for soaking not for soaping up and rinsing is widely known at least here on the Pacific Rim; but other features of a modern Japanese bath - especially some rather high-tech ones - might still strike those of us using standard American bathrooms as quite unusual. There are three common design elements to virtually every Japanese bath: a deep tub used solely for soaking an "on-demand" water heater and a separate compartment for the toilet.

Q: Our 1940 home has a brick fireplace and chimney. We had it inspected recently and were told by several people that it has a crack near the roofline and needs to be taken down and rebuilt. The estimate to rebuild it is about $15000. Are there less expensive ways to replace this chimney that do not involve rebuilding it from the ground up with brick? Shannon Pestoni A: It sounds as if at some point your chimney may have sustained some earthquake damage that went unnoticed until the chimney inspection.

One of the great springtime pleasures is seeing cherry trees in full, glorious bloom. These mostly ornamental trees are native to Japan, China and Korea. The species has more than 120 cultivated varieties, which are usually grafted onto Prunus avium stock. Many of the cultivars trace back more than 100 years to Japan. Here is a peek at four of the more popular varieties. -- Prunus 'Akebono' (daybreak cherry) is a medium-size tree with a stiff, upright-spreading crown, eventually becoming umbrella shaped, flowering in March or April.

Cooking for large groups doesn't faze me. Perhaps it's the result of being raised in a restaurant family whose unspoken motto was either"When the going gets tough, the tough get going," or "Why do things the easy way when you can do them the hard way?" On more than one occasion, my parents scheduled a dinner party for 40 church friends, both adults and kids. They also held several dinner fundraisers to raise money for the church's youth projects. We'd start cleaning the house, finish the shopping and begin prepping the food by 8 in the morning -- on the day of the event.

Like a number of highly motivated people, David Butcher starts every day with a workout. His poison: 45 minutes on a stationary bicycle. Fitness is part of the incentive, but Butcher's primary motivation is a long-standing, and possibly obsessive, quest to generate his own electricity. So Butcher's stationary bike, which is wedged in a corner of his detached garage, is not your standard-issue exercise machine: It's a homemade power plant. Butcher designed his ingeniously simple pedal generator for maximum comfort and efficiency: As the rider pedals, a wooden flywheel drives an electric motor, which generates an electric current that flows into a bank of salvaged lead-acid batteries for storage.

  San Francisco Valentine Weekend Revolution It was an "I do" heard around the world. Same-sex marriages with the papers to prove them - endorsed by the mayor - performed beneath the grand rotunda of San Francisco City Hall. It was a Valentine's Day weekend unlike any before and from the historic first ceremony The Chronicle was there. Thursday: Friday: Saturday: Sunday/Monday: Just Married: Rosie & Kelli Tie the Knot: End of the Beginning:

The $789 billion stimulus package may have limited impact on the very industry that brought on the economic downturn: real estate. While the bill could increase home buying, it doesn't do nearly enough to jump-start building or stem the foreclosures that are driving down prices, many real estate observers say. The major housing addition to the Senate's version of the package, an up-to-$15,000 tax incentive for home buyers, was stripped from...

Restaurants A-B C-G H-M N-Z Cuisine Index Restaurant Maps San Francisco North Bay East Bay / South Bay Past Top 100s: 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 Queen Elizabeth II called 1992 her annus horribilis. If you talk to Bay Area restaurateurs they'd probably use "horrible year" to describe their business today.

The Obama administration this week announced a new government program that will help some struggling homeowners to reduce their payments on a second mortgage at the same time they are modifying their first. This is great news if you're a homeowner who can't repay your debts, not so great news if you would rather not see tax dollars subsidizing second mortgages. During the housing boom, many homeowners took out a second mortgage - either a home equity loan or line of credit - to make a down payment or pay for home improvements, medical bills, college bills, cars, vacations or other expenses.

2005-08-10 04:00:00 PST Jerusalem -- This is one in a Chronicle series on Israel?s planned evacuation this month of approximately 9000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. The stories are told through the lives and voices of individuals touched by the conflict. TODAY: An Arab religious leader in Jerusalem believes war between Muslims and Jews is both inevitable and necessary.. "Who do you think my father looks like?" a grinning Ashraf Maraqa asked from behind the counter of his electronics shop as his father spoke to a customer nearby.

Students at Cal State Stanislaus discovered evidence that documents related to an upcoming speaking engagement by Sarah Palin were shredded and dumped after the university claimed that no public documents existed, a state senator said on Tuesday. The students appeared at a Sacramento news conference with state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, Tuesday morning and said they found the documents on Friday in a trash bin outside the university's administration building in Turlock.

Google Inc. directed its disruptive technology at yet another industry on Wednesday, announcing plans to build broadband networks as much as 100 times faster than most cable and DSL services. The Mountain View Internet giant said the one-gigabit-per-second, fiber-to-the-home connections, which it plans to test in a few locations, will offer improved access to the Internet and greater choice in providers. The zippy network also promises to enable far more data-intensive applications online, in the same way the move from dial-up to broadband invited wider use of video and music.

Q: I live in a two-story house that has T-111 plywood siding. As you know, this siding has a vertical groove every 8 inches. Across this siding I have a 2-by-12-inch board. My question is, should I caulk the top of the board to keep water from coming between the 2-by-12 and the siding or is caulking not necessary? If caulking is required, what would you recommend? A: T-111 siding is a type of plywood siding that was used a great deal in the '60s, '70s and '80s to give a rustic appearance in the day when Mother Earth News and the "back to the landers" were all the rage.

Paper or plastic? Not anymore in San Francisco. The city's Board of Supervisors approved groundbreaking legislation Tuesday to outlaw plastic checkout bags at large supermarkets in about six months and large chain pharmacies in about a year. The ordinance, sponsored by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, is the first such law in any city in the United States and has been drawing global scrutiny this week. "I am astounded and surprised by the worldwide attention," Mirkarimi said.

Six Democratic senators want to hit U.S. airlines with a tax if they charge passengers for their carry-on bags. The senators said Wednesday that this would keep more airlines from following Spirit Airlines' lead. The small Florida airline said last week that starting Aug. 1 it will charge its customers as much as $45 to bring a bag aboard its aircraft and put it in an overhead bin. Air travelers have been forced to pay a barrage of fees for once-free amenities since 2008, for everything from checked bags to pillows to food.

A sprinkling of hidden cottages are nestled near the shore of Tomales Bay at Point Reyes - and they can provide exactly what so many are looking for in the Bay Area: a romantic hideaway that also works as a jump-off point for the neighboring land of adventure. At Dancing Coyote Beach in Inverness cottages are set 50 feet from the beach with water views. At Holly Tree Inn the Sea Star Cottage is set at the end of a 75-foot dock sitting on stilts over the edge of Tomales Bay with a distant view of Mount Tamalpais.

Rachel Purcell is a determined type. An industrial systems engineer by training, Purcell is attracted to complex questions that require precise answers. So when she discovered during the inspection of her new Alamo home that it was full of toxic mold and asbestos - OK, yes, she flinched. But then she got to work. The solution, it turned out, came rolling in from a factory in Nebraska on seven convoys of trucks. In less than three days, her new 6,000-square-foot house was stacked and bolted together.

Kidnapping victim Jaycee Dugard and the two children authorities says she had with her alleged abductor do not want any information about them to be released, her attorney said in court documents released Tuesday. The children also do not want to be represented by court-appointed attorneys but instead have retained their mother's lawyer, celebrity attorney Shawn Chapman Holley of Santa Monica, the court filings say. On Monday, Holley notified Judge Douglas Phimister of El Dorado County Superior Court that she objected to the judge's decision in February to appoint lawyers to represent Dugard's children, ages 12 and 15. Holley also said she objected to the release of any confidential information about Dugard, 29, or her children, who were allegedly fathered by Phillip Garrido, who is accused of kidnapping Dugard.