San Francisco

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

The Golden Gate Bridge turns 75 on Sunday culminating with a big festival from 11 a.m.-11 p.m. that day with fireworks, entertainment, exhibits and more. The Golden Gate Festival is free and will stretch along the waterfront from Fort Point to Fisherman's Wharf. Other tribute events happening all week and into summer to mark May 27, 1937, the day the bridge first opened to pedestrians. Here are some good bets for those heading to San Francisco next weekend: --A ferry cruise takes you under the Golden Gate Bridge in a two-hour loop that starts at Pier 43 1/2 and swings out around Angel Island.

The Golden Gate Bridge turns 75 on Sunday culminating with a big festival from 11 a.m.-11 p.m. that day with fireworks, entertainment, exhibits and more. The Golden Gate Festival is free and will stretch along the waterfront from Fort Point to Fisherman's Wharf. Other tribute events happening all week and into summer to mark May 27, 1937, the day the bridge first opened to pedestrians. Here are some good bets for those heading to San Francisco next weekend: --A ferry cruise takes you under the Golden Gate Bridge in a two-hour loop that starts at Pier 43 1/2 and swings out around Angel Island.

As its 75th birthday fast approaches, the Golden Gate Bridge is getting a little birthday present. Even though about 40 million vehicles cross it each year and visitors come in droves daily to admire and photograph it, the spectacular span has never had a visitor center. That is, until this month. "The bridge experience up to this point has just really been self-guided and a photo opportunity," said David Shaw, vice president of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. "Now there's this bridge pavilion, which is a really nice welcome center.

Great cities change slowly, over decades, and so it is difficult to name the year when San Francisco finally lost its war with Los Angeles. Perhaps it was 1958, when the O'Malleys saw the future and moved the Dodgers south instead of north. Perhaps 1971, when the Fillmore closed its doors. Or 1986, when the Bank of America fell from grace, revealing San Francisco to be a fading center of high finance. One can argue about these things, but there is no doubt that one of the great urban rivalries of this century has now ended.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Birds do it, bees do it, even wildebeests and zebus do it. And during the "Valentine's Day Sex Tour" at Santa Ana Zoo today, visitors will learn exactly how animals court and mate in a captive setting. Wild stuff? Well, the event is for adults only, but zoo curator Connie Sweet said she wouldn't go so far as to slap an R-rating on the tour. Call it PG-13.

California Shuttle Bus, which runs express buses between the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, began offering fares as low as $5 each way Monday. Previously, one-way tickets cost $45. The move came a day after competitor Megabus, which touted fares as low as $1, shut its Los Angeles hub because of low ridership. Only a few seats on each vehicle that California Shuttle Bus operates on the route will sell for $5; the highest price for a ticket will be $49.

SAN FRANCISCO -- It's "Ring" time in the West. Tuesday night, San Francisco Opera opened its summer season with Wagner's "Das Rheingold," the relatively brief (2 1/2 -hour) prologue in his four-opera cycle. The new production proved but a peek into Francesca Zambello's fascinating concept of Wagner's damaged gods, dumb-cluck giants, malicious dwarfs and clueless mortals as Americans headed down the wrong side of history. The full cycle will be on display in San Francisco in summer 2011.

At first glance, the situation seems like political dynamite: San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein is handed a $152.6-million budget surplus in 1982 and six years later leaves office with a $174.2-million deficit. Is this the kind of manager Californians want for governor? Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, running against Feinstein for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, thinks not--and made the point forcefully in Sunday's televised debate. "There is a word Mrs. Feinstein just can't use. . . .

The battleship Iowa, a storied vessel that languished for years in the U.S. Navy's mothball fleet, is about to start its final journey, from San Francisco to its permanent home as a museum in the Port of Los Angeles. Next Sunday, four tugboats will guide the Iowa, among the biggest U.S. battleships ever built, under the Golden Gate Bridge and out of the San Francisco Bay. One of them, the 7,200-horsepower Warrior, will chug down the coast with the massive ship in tow, taking three or four days to reach Southern California.

The fantastical murals of San Francisco's Mission District are an intriguing dialogue between artists and their city that you can easily experience on foot. On any given day in Clarion Alley, tourists from all over the world mingle with field-tripping students (and the homeless). Start at the Mission Street end of Clarion Alley, then exit at Valencia Street and head south (turn left). Check out the murals all the way to 20th Street. Typically, walk one or two blocks (east or west) to view.

Of all the indignities visited upon Frank McCourt over the last couple years - fan boycotts, pickets outside Dodger Stadium, "Frankrupt" T-shirts - McCourt never had to pick up a copy of the Los Angeles Times and stare at a full-page advertisement in which fans demanded he mind his manners or sell the Dodgers. But, hundreds of miles to the north, another fed-up fan base had its say last week. In a full-page ad in the Oakland Tribune, under the headline "An Open Letter to John Fisher, Majority Owner of theOakland A's," Fisher was urged to commit to a new stadium in Oakland or sell the team to someone who would.

Crowd-sourced travel world to L.A. : Love your sunny disposition, flawless beaches, cool night life and amusement parks galore, but not that much. Los Angeles wound up at No. 6 for U.S. and No. 21 for the world in destinations TripAdvisor travelers love the best. New York City , San Francisco , Chicago , Las Vegas and Honolulu outclassed L.A. as Nos. 1 through 5, respectively, for the U.S. list. The City of Angels does, however, rank above New Orleans, Seattle, San Diego and Orlando, Fla., which rounds out the top 10. On the Travelers' Choice world destinations, London takes the top spot followed by New York City; Rome; Paris; San Francisco; Marrakech, Morocco; Istanbul ; Barcelona; Siem Reap, Cambodia; and Berlin.

Wells Fargo & Co. has become so dominant in the mortgage business that major investors and federal regulators are worried that a financial hiccup at the giant bank could roil the already beleaguered real estate market. Wells originates 34% of all home loans - more than the combined total of the next seven biggest mortgage lenders. That's why regulators are closely watching the San Francisco bank, Paul J. Miller, a former Federal Reserve bank examiner, said Thursday. "The problem is there's a lot of systemic risk when one company has that much of the market," said Miller, an analyst specializing in mortgages at FBR Capital Markets & Co. Wells Fargo's balance sheet is viewed by analysts as being among the strongest of the nation's banks, and a major distress in its mortgage business is seen as unlikely.

SAN FRANCISCO - Dropbox can now tick off one of the major benefits of being a booming tech firm - fabulous new digs, complete with cafe, gym and music lounge. Founder and Chief Executive Drew Houston gave the city's tech-friendly mayor a tour of the company's sleek new headquarters that sports major-league views of the San Francisco Giants' ballpark and the San Francisco Bay. The tour came just a day after Google introduced its own competing cloud storage service that lets users load photos, documents, and videos and access them from Web-connected devices.

A big white bean has taken over San Francisco -- a very big white bean. "They're huge -- they're so big they're almost like small animals," says Staffan Terje, chef-owner of Perbacco, a new Italian-Provencal restaurant. "They're fantastic, meaty beans." Cannellini beans might be far more familiar, but it's impossible to overlook coronas because each is about the size of a quarter. And chefs all over Frisco (I dared say it!

Reporting from San Francisco The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that Proposition 209, the ballot measure that banned affirmative action by government, did not violate the federal Constitution. In a 6-1 ruling, the majority rejected a defense argued by San Francisco after it was sued over a program that gave women and minorities an advantage in obtaining city contracts. The court said the affirmative action program may continue only if the city shows it was narrowly tailored to address intentional discrimination by the city against businesses owned by women and minorities and that preferences were necessary to rectify the discrimination.

SAN FRANCISCO — Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive John Stumpf got to keep his pay, but little else went the banker's way during an acrimonious annual shareholder meeting. Demonstrators swarmed the Merchants Exchange Building in San Francisco's financial district to protest the bank's lending and foreclosure policies. Some shareholders couldn't get into the meeting as the crowd, which police estimated exceeded 1,000 people, shut down nearby streets. Inside the meeting, Stumpf was disrupted by protesters who made it into the auditorium: "The time for talk is over," said Richard Smith, an Episcopal priest in the low-income Mission District who urged Wells Fargo executives to show compassion for struggling borrowers.

In the upcoming HBO movie "Hemingway & Gellhorn," actors Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman bring to life the passionate and stormy relationship between Ernest Hemingway and World War II correspondent Martha Gellhorn — the inspiration for the writer's classic novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls. " But the real star of the cable network's film, which premieres May 28, is San Francisco and the Bay Area. Although the movie takes place in nine countries, it was shot over 40 days last spring entirely on location within about 20 miles of the Northern California city.