 Whether you aim to follow the crowds or avoid them on New Year's Eve, you may find a recently released Priceline list interesting-and even helpful, if you're unprompted and have not yet cemented your plans.
For the sixth year running, the travel-booking website has put out a list of the top 50 New Year's Eve destinations. The collection of areas globally is based on more than 30,000 "Name Your Own Price" hotel reservations made by U.S. and Canadian customers for the night of Dec. 31 via Priceline.com.
With offerings both grown-up and family-friendly, Las Vegas South Strip area ranks No. 1, as it has since 2007; the North Strip area is No. 11. (Prior to 2007, Priceline organized the zones in a different fashion, and the Strip in its entirety was consistently ranked No. 1, according to Brian Ek of Priceline.)
The top-ranked site in California is the Union Square West/Nob Hill area of San Francisco, at No. 17. Orange County areas near Disneyland sit at the No. 49 and 50 spots.
Destinations are specific to a neighborhood or area in a city or region. For instance, "Central L.A./Hollywood" in the Los Angeles region ranks higher (at No. 33) than the "San Gabriel Valley/Pasadena" area (No. 41), which is also considered part of Los Angeles in this list.
 The blubbery sea lions at Pier 39, one of San Francisco's smelliest and most famous tourist attractions are gone. During the last month of November, they left the wooden docks on which they have spent the last 20 years and no one knows if they'll be coming back. "We have no idea where they moved on to or why," said Shelby Stout, who manages a team that helps stranded animals in the San Francisco Bay from the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California. The sea lions' disappearance is as strange as their initial immigration of the pier about 20 years ago, in late 1989. They just started showing up one day and as their numbers increased, their traditional hang out, Seal Rocks, became less populated. There are all sorts of theories about why the pier became a favorite haul-out spot for the sea lions, but no one knows for sure why the animals' behavior changed. Stout averred that the officials at the Marine Mammal Center weren't worried about the animals' disappearance from their standard location. The sea lions are migratory animals, after all, and it's natural for them to move around. So, even though no one has found them, "there really isn't a reason to be looking for them," Stout said. The disappearance is unusual, though. The animals' numbers usually peak in late fall and many stick around during the winter months before heading south for the summer. The Marine Mammal Centers FAQ on the animals. From late summer to late spring, 150 to 300 sea lions haul out here, though their numbers can run much higher. This year saw a huge influx of sea lions. In fact, a Marine Mammal Center survey conducted in the fall found 1,585 mammals hauled out on the spot, an all-time high. Some of them invaded a neighboring area, the Hyde Street Pier, where they may have been scared away by an itinerant fisherman's dog. Their disappearance drew the attention of San Franciscans like local blogger Gary Soup, who posted the photo above of the deserted docks on Twitter. The animals had become a major tourist and education locus on the otherwise highly commercial strip known as Fisherman's Wharf. The Marine Mammal Center sends docents to the area to answer questions about the creatures. On the other hand, fishermen and others who work the waters of the Port of San Francisco have far less friendly relations with the animals. One recently told a local radio station, "They're cute when they're in here lying on the docks by Pier 39, but they're not too cute out in the ocean when they're stealing your livelihood." It doesn't appear that local weather conditions could have influenced the animals. The weather in San Francisco has been normal, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Canaepa. "It's pretty typical winter conditions," Canaepa said. This is an El Nine year, but the local impacts of that warming of the Pacific have been moderate. "I don't know if that would be enough to make them change their minds and leave the area," he said. The Mammal Center's Stout said they hadn't detected signs of something unusual going on with the fauna of the Bay, either. While it's appealing to think that the animals may have just returned to their previous home at Seal Rocks, locals contacted by Wired.com didn't think there had been much of a change in the sea lion population there. "Nothing unusual has happened," said Jennifer Valencia, who takes reservations at the Cliff House, which overlooks the Rocks.
 The Police Department is slash overtime costs for police officers patrolling special events and neighborhood hot spots such as North Beach as San Francisco works to close its present budget shortfall.
The Police Department must close a $6 million shortage before the end of the fiscal year in June. It also has as much as $47 million in cuts to contract with next fiscal year, when The City faces a $522.2 million deficit. To do so, police Chief George Gascon is axing the overtime. He says he can cut half of that mid-year budget shortage through reducing overtime.
"We have to look at places where we can cut and overtime is one of the areas where we've been insistently concentrating our efforts," Gascon said. "We surely do not have the money to set public on overtime to patrol."
Police have consistently been second only to the Municipal Transportation Agency in overtime spending. In fiscal year 2007-2008, police overtime cost $41.7 million, and last fiscal year it was about $34 million.
One confront that the police will be facing is patrolling special events and rallies without using overtime hours, Assistant Chief Kevin Cashman said. It's very potential that enforcement will be "creative" in the future, he said.
Officers and detectives have been transfer from the Hall of Justice to neighborhood stations already as a way to put officers on the streets without using overtime, according to Cashman.
One neighborhood that has already been affected by the overtime crackdown is North Beach.
After three years of increased police attendance along Broadway, Gascon has pulled the plug on overtime to patrol weekends on one of San Francisco's rowdiest strips.
Mayor Gavin Newsom and then-police Chief Heather Fong announced a crackdown on the corridor during 2006. Dozens of police officers were called in to work obligatory overtime. The Sheriff’s division brought out mobile jails. Tow trucks waited for nightfall before clearing the street of cars.
But now police will have to influence officers at Central Station to cool the violence, causing several in the neighborhood to worry crime will seep back into the area. Rico Reyes has worked in North Beach as a bartender and as safety for strip clubs.
"When you see cops position everywhere on Broadway, it can be a little intimidating," Reyes said. "But I think people like it. It makes them feel safer."
In 2006, police foot patrols became a heated issue at City Hall as the Board of Supervisors mandated officers at several stations to walk a beat during most of the day. Mayor Gavin Newsom opposed the legislation, saying law enforcement official should determine police staffing issues, not lawmakers.
Though people may see smaller number officers along Broadway, Central Station still plans to staff foot beats. How the overtime crackdown affect patrol in the rest of The City may become clearer in the coming months.
Labels: San Francisco city tour, San Francisco city tours, SF City Tours
 To remember the 75th anniversary of the groundbreaking San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, several events are intended, including the launch of The Anniversary Show, a museum-wide exhibition, December 19, 2009-January 16, 2011, with more than 400 works from the collection.
On display are seminal paintings, drawings, sculptures, videos, photographs, design objects, and archival resources by a diverse range of artists including Paul Klee, Frida Kahlo, Jeff Koons, and the videos of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol.
The installation show the time-frame of the museum's exhibitions such as Jackson Pollock's first solo museum exhibition in 1945, the story of 1941's Alexander Calder show, and 1952's acquisitions from the estate of Alfred Stieglitz, include his photographs juxtaposed with Georgia O'Keeffe paintings.
The show opens with many renditions of San Francisco from painting to poster, features the California School of Fine Arts' faculty and students, such as Mark Rothko, the Mission School, and local Beat artists like Bruce Conner. Highlights from the museum's American Pop Art group include key works by Robert Rauschenberg, the Rouen Cathedral Set V (1969) by Roy Lichtenstein and Land's End (1963) by Jasper Johns.
A complete view of early modern European artists shows works by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Constantin Brancusi, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and more recent acquisition by Yves Tanguy, Jean Arp, Alberto Giacometti, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, and Man Ray.
A special three-day weekend festival, January 16-18, offers free admission and features the debut of a new multimedia tour, performances, family activities, and film screenings. In the Backstory and Overlook Lounges are demonstrations on how exhibitions are installed. Each day, 75 gallery talks relate personal 7.5-minute stories about desired artworks in the museum.
On May 14, a gala party is intended with artists, patrons, and enthusiasts, from a rooftop garden dinner followed by a birthday party of live performances, cocktails, dessert, and surprises.
Labels: san francisco shuttle tours, san francisco tours
Holiday lights lovers can have a magical experience Sunday night, when the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition presents its sixth annual Christmas Lights Ride. Tour the best and brightest  Ride leader Robin Marks is a veteran of evening excursion. She recalls that the night of the first ride was cold and foggy, so she was amazed when 30 adventurers turned up. "A lot of people are kind of afraid to ride at night," Marks says, "so this was a nice way to support people to start thinking about nighttime as a time to ride." For the Christmas lights outing, Marks spends hours scoping out the ideal route, which varies from year to year and is a very much guarded secret. By ride night, the hard work is already done. Just power up your bike lights, dress in layers if the night is cool and get some refreshments to share. Should the courage move you to dress up as Santa Claus or string colored lights on your bike, this is the perfect occasion. "You never know what someone is available to show up wearing," Marks says. One year, one bicycle had a Christmas tree attached, while another cyclist was towing a cart with a Christmas tree on it. Expect plenty of opportunities to ooh and ahh over beautiful holiday displays, much good cheer, creatively decorated bikes and yummy things to eat, the snack stop being a famous feature of the night rides. Labels: san fran shuttle tours, San Francisco sightseeing tour, san francisco tours
 Visitors and residents can now get the chance to see Abu Dhabi as never before with the launch of a new open-top sightseeing bus tour.The Big Bus Company, a family-owned firm that has operated tours in London since 1991 and Dubai since 2002, now operates in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The carefully-designed Big Bus Tour routes take in all the major Abu Dhabi landmarks - from the magnificent Sheikh Zayed Mosque to the historic Heritage Village, and from the luxurious Emirates Palace Hotel to the traditional soaks. A 24-hour ticket allows guests to hop on and off all buses on all routes, giving them the freedom to explore Abu Dhabi at their leisure. A personal audio commentary with fascinating insight into the city's history and culture is also provided in a choice of eight languages - Arabic, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin and Russian. "We are all very excited about this latest addition to the Big Bus family," says Chris Compton, General Manager of Big Bus Tours LLC. "Development in Abu Dhabi at the moment is phenomenal as the city works hard to establish itself on the global tourism map." "The route takes in all of the sights and attractions of this fascinating city and as the city expands, we will grow with it to make sure that all the new sights of Abu Dhabi are included." Tours depart daily between 9am and 5pm from Marina Mall. Tickets are available from sf hotels, online from bigbustours.com, or at the Big Bus sales desk in Marina Hall.
 On a recent visit to San Francisco, I visited the Japanese Tea Garden and ran into this amazing bronze Buddha statue. There really was something that struck me about this statue at that moment. It was my first visit to SF, and I'd spent a pretty magical day w/my husband in the very great Golden Gate Park, which reminded me of Central Park, NYC, only with a Pacific Ocean beach at one end and some bison in the middle. And The Japanese Tea Garden Right at that moment I felt a great sense of peace. Momentary of course, and entirely dependent on impermanent causes and conditions The garden has a history; it was built for a big elucidation (like a world's fair) in 1894. Signage in the garden stated (and the website repeats), "Makoto Hagiwara designed the bulk of the garden and was officially appointed caretaker in 1894 until the hysteria surrounding World War II." The "hysteria surrounding World War II" refers to the internment of Japanese Americans, including the Hagiwara family, in concentration camps in the American West. As the website goes on to say, "In the years to follow, many Hagiwara family treasures were liquidated from the gardens, but new additions were also made."  Evidently, after Japan was defeated by the atomic bomb in World War II, a large American department store company bought this statue and donated it to the garden, whose longtime devoted caretakers, the Hagiwaras, had been sent to concentration camps by US authorities. Makoto Hagiwara, founder of the clan in America, is often credited as the inventor/introducer of the fortune cookie. What a lot of history. Seeing the statue here and reading the plaque reminded me of how yes, we are in the present. It is always and only now, but the causes and conditions of this present moment are myriad and mysterious, resistant to our "make it make sense!" narratives and predictions.
 Bridge officials are searching for a new way to cover the cost of frequent budget deficits and are considering adding an interactive experience and a history center to San Francisco's most famous tourist attraction, The Golden Gate Bridge. In recent years the only option to raise funds was to increase the cost of bridge tolls and transit fares, but the fee increases have been very unpopular with local residents who use the bridge on a daily basis and officials are now recognizing that there may be other options. The Golden Gate Bridge and Highway and Transportation District are planning to explore the idea of building an educational facility that will attract more tourists to the site. The educational facility would include a history center where visitors would be able to learn about the creation and design of the bridge. Along with the educational facility, visitors could also have the opportunity to explore the bridge's cable system, towers and underside. Both the history center and bridge tour would cost a fee which would pay for the recurring budget deficit. Bridge officials have not yet determined what type of participatory tour would be available to the public and have a long road ahead of them before this idea becomes a reality. A meeting of Transportation and Bridge officials will be scheduled after the New Year and a more concrete proposal will be presented at that time.
 Pompeii, with its ancient mosaics and buildings sealed by the volcanic eruption that buried the town, is one of the world's most interesting destinations. But now you don't need to board a plane to visit: It's on Google Street View. Google has mainly focused its 360-degree panoramic service on major living-and-breathing cities around the world like New York, San Francisco, or Rome [USA Today]. But this week the service began to feature Pompeii, allowing people anywhere in the world to tour the antique marvels on site. Italy's culture ministry says it hopes the move will boost tourism to the site [BBC News]. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in 20 feet of ash in 79 A.D., killing everyone there and destroying other nearby towns like Herculaneum. The disaster, however, preserved much of the city until its rediscovery in the 1700s, giving archaeologists a window into 1st-century life in the Roman world. Pompeii isn't the only historical site going live on Google Street View. Among the foreign sites appearing Thursday were Stonehenge, Prague, and the ancient city of Caceres in Spain and famous windmills in the Dutch village of Kinderdijk-Elshout
What if you could see how different Solano County would be in 2100 if projected temperature increases come about as the earth continues to warm?
What if you could see how much of Mission Bay, San Francisco and Oakland airports and large parts of Alameda and San Mateo counties would be underwater if sea levels rose four feet by 2100, as some global-warming models project?
That's the goal of Cal Adapt, a website developed by the California Energy Commission in conjunction with Google and the Stockholm Environment Institute. The initiative was unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at an announcement on Treasure Island.
(Large parts of Treasure Island will also be under water by 2100, according to the projections.)
It may be too early to make real estate decisions based on projected climate change but it is interesting to wonder, where in the Bay Area might be the best place to be if the worst scenarios prove accurate. That cute Emeryville bungalow you've been eyeing may be a watery memory by 2100.
Still in the prototype stage, Cal Adapt currently contains a Google Earth tour of projected impacts of climate change on California, including snow pack loss, increased risk of fire, and sea level rises, narrated by Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Included in the tour is a map of areas vulnerable to rising sea levels in the San Francisco Bay, focusing on critical infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and toxic waste facilities that would be vulnerable. Google's headquarters in Mountain View, along with much of the shoreline of the bay in Silicon Valley, are one of the most vulnerable areas.
Much of the data was taken from a report by the Pacific Institute, which estimates that 176,000 people will be at risk in San Mateo and Alameda counties alone.
Cal Adapts unveiling coincided with the release of the California Climate Adaptation Strategy, which outlines recommendations for coping with climate change in urban planning, agriculture, water conservation and other sectors.
 An oasis of tranquility exists in the midst of bustling San Francisco. A feeling of peace will envelop you as you stroll through the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park. Roundabout along quiet paths and over bridges, you can observe Japanese maple trees, cherry trees, azaleas, dwarf cypress and cedar trees, and ponds teeming with koi. Pagodas, bronze and stone sculptures, and waterfalls give a Zen-like feeling to the gardens. A large statue of a sitting Buddha awaits at the eastern end of the Long Bridge. Cast in bronze in Japan in 1790, Buddha was added to the gardens in 1949. Many visitors come to meditate. Others come to paint or sketch. Gardening is an art form in Japan. Selected stones and plants are arranged in harmony with the landscape.
Stop in at the tea house for a cup of green or jasmine tea and cookies served by a waitress donned in a colorful silk kimono.
Originally designed by Japanese gardener Makoto Hagiwara for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition, the tea gardens are open daily. Admission is $5.00 (cash only). Monday, Wednesday and Friday you can see the gardens for free if you enter between 9:00 and 10:00am.
 How about a San Francisco Giants jersey worn by one of the American caddies during a practice round at The Presidents Cup -- and signed by the entire victorious United States team? The jerseys, which feature the number of Giants greats like Willie Mays stitched below the name of the PGA TOUR player -- in this case, Tiger Woods, are being auctioned off to benefit the Junior Giants program and The First Tee of San Francisco. The auction only runs through 3 a.m. ET on Dec. 7 so you'd better get your bids in now. Click here to make your bid. Junior Giants is the flagship program of the Giants Community Fund and The First Tee, of which the PGA TOUR is a Founding Partner, provides young people of all backgrounds an opportunity to develop life-enhancing values through golf and character education.
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Whether you aim to follow the crowds or avoid them on New Year's Eve, you may find a recently released Priceline list interesting-and even helpful, if you're unprompted and have not yet cemented your plans.
