Elevators

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

With his decision to elevate Susan Rice to become his national security advisor and the nomination of Samantha Power as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, President Obama is not simply rewarding the loyalty of two women who have backed him from the start. Nor is he merely increasing the diversity of his foreign policy team. Rather, their promotions hints at a new source of fireworks in a growing foreign policy battle in the Obama administration. Liberal hawks and doves in the White House and the Democratic Party are struggling for hearts and minds over whether it makes sense to intervene in Syria and to attack Iran.

With the rash of questions being raised in the wake of the horrible fire at the First Interstate Bank building May 4, there's one question--and answer--I have yet to hear. This is the heat-sensitive control buttons used on so many elevator systems. With the obvious problems they produce when a fire occurs, why were they ever permitted to be put into use? It seems to me that the conventional pressure-sensitive button controls work just as efficiently and conveniently--and without the hazard factor inherent in the heat-responsive buttons.

In downtown Los Angeles, elevated pedestrian walkways - called pedways - slice the air between tall buildings on Bunker Hill, like a 1970s vision of a future metropolis. That's exactly what they were intended to be - the first phase of what would become a mechanized people mover. Those plans were abandoned long ago, but the existing 10 pedways have something of a cult following among the residents, office workers, bike messengers and high schoolers who traverse them. Yet as beloved as they are, the pedways are something of a stepchild when it comes to getting the resources and funds to erase graffiti and repair smashed lights and guard against future vandalism.

United Technologies Corp.'s Otis Elevator Co. said it will form a joint venture to put video screens in elevators to deliver news, weather and perhaps advertising to passengers. Otis said it will finalize the deal soon but that it is too early to predict revenue from the venture. UT's partners in the venture, called E-Display, are IBM Corp., which will provide technical assistance and perhaps hardware and software, and Next Generation Network Inc.

The doors close. You are in a small elevator with a handful of strangers and you start to feel awkward because somebody is standing too close to you and the silence gets heavier with each passing floor. What do you do? Talk. At least that's the advice of Frederick Rainey, who has worked as an elevator operator for more than six years. "The important thing is to relax and enjoy the ride," Rainey said.

A freight elevator overloaded with construction workers and their tools plunged eight floors Wednesday at the swank Knickerbocker Hotel, injuring at least 16 people, authorities said. The elevator probably was carrying more than 1,000 pounds above its rated capacity of 2,500, a hotel manager said.

A coyote being chased by crows scampered through downtown Seattle and ducked through an open automatic door into a busy federal building to escape. It ran into an open elevator and the door closed, trapping the panicked animal. Animal-control officers removed the animal unharmed after 2 1/2 hours.

Two elevators will be built inside Rome's Colosseum to allow visitors to easily reach the ancient arena's second tier when it reopens to the public next month, Italian Culture Ministry officials said. The elevators will be in place by June 21, when an exhibit on gladiatorial combat and life during the Roman Empire will open. The elevators are meant to allow the elderly and disabled to reach the second tier more easily.

The three of us walked into the elevator together, down in the bowels of the subway station. He and she appeared to be acquaintances, meeting there by coincidence. I was a stranger to both. He was short and bespectacled. She was tall, with big hair. I was medium. The elevator was a shower stall. We did the obligatory about-face and began our long ascent to street level in silence. So far, so good. "So," she said. Oh no. "So how are you and what's-her-name getting along?" "Fine.

By opting for surgery to remove her breasts while they were still healthy, Angelina Jolie joined a growing number of women who have used genetic testing to take control of their health. Here are answers to some common questions about how DNA influences breast cancer risk and what women can do about it. What genes are involved in breast cancer? The two primary ones are known as BRCA1 and BRCA2. Hundreds of variants of these genes have been found that make a woman - or a man - more likely to develop breast cancer.

The TV career of Edgar Allan Jones Jr. began with a phone call in early 1958 from a producer who needed to cast someone knowledgeable about the law. Although Jones taught law full time at UCLA, he was nervous at the prospect of auditioning: His only acting experience had been a walk-on part in a high school production of "Julius Caesar. " Several professional actors also vied for the job, but the role went to the amateur. Jones was cast as the judge on KABC-TV's "Traffic Court," one of the medium's earliest nonfiction courtroom shows.

SACRAMENTO --  Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who served as acting governor while Gov. Jerry Brown was off on a week-long trade mission to China, used his newfound authority to deputize the artichoke and avocado as California's official vegetable and fruit, respectively. But Newsom didn't stop there. He used his broad powers to declare the almond as the state nut and rice as California's official grain. Somewhere in the Central Valley, there's an angry quinoa lobby plotting its revenge.

If Shaquille O'Neal needed a nickname on his first day as a Laker, it could have been the Big Worrywart. As dominant as he was, the best big man in the NBA recognized he represented just a fraction of the Lakers centers who had come before him. George Mikan won six titles while becoming Mr. Basketball. Wilt Chamberlain won two titles (one as a Laker) and scored 100 points in a game. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won six titles (five as a Laker) and was the league's all-time leading scorer.

As edgy Irish comedy-thrillers go, Robert Massey's “Rank” largely ranks as “Martin McDonagh Lite,” but like its more extreme noirish forebears, Massey's 2008 caper tale revels in skillfully expressive language, even in the most trivial exchanges - loopy digressions and non sequiturs are the main attractions in its U.S. premiere at Odyssey Theatre. Adhering to its genre formula, the play's Irish-inflected love of gab goes hand in hand with its mounting sense of menace, as down-and-out cab driver Carl (Kevin Kearns)

Jack Beasley died. You might say "Who?" and I wouldn't disagree. I knew him like I do so many people: To say hello, chat a little, laugh a little, so I really didn't know him at all. But you probably saw him, a regular part of your life maybe on some Saturdays, or at the very least you looked through him. He was the guy standing on the concourse monitoring access to the press box elevator, a fixture at the Coliseum since 1967. He worked hundreds of football and basketball games and saw none of them.

This is a capital where gunfights erupt in the streets, the tap water reeks like sewage, and mosquitoes carry a strain of malaria that can kill you overnight. But what makes visitors really fear for their lives? The elevator at the Hotel Le Meridien Presidente, which has a nasty habit of dropping 20 stories at a time. An erratic elevator in a developing nation ravaged by three decades of civil war may seem as ordinary as a traffic jam on a Los Angeles freeway.

NASA didn't have to write any checks at this year's X Prize Cup competition in Las Cruces, N.M., after judges decided Sunday not to honor any of the competitors in a $200,000 space elevator competition. Ben Shelef, an executive with the Spaceward Foundation that organized the competition, said the entry by the University of Saskatchewan climbed a 200-foot-high carbon fiber ribbon in just two seconds over the time allowed.

WASHINGTON - The encounter was as awkward as it appears in the photograph . Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) shared a Senate elevator just minutes after the veteran defense hawk assailed the tea party libertarian on the chamber floor for his "ridiculous" filibuster of the CIA director confirmation over the nation's drone policy. No pleasantries exchanged. None of the breezy banter that sometimes makes the Senate still seem the famously chummy club of 100. "Hi, Rand," McCain said, interrupting his own conversation with a reporter.