Just days before an unmentionable substance hit the SFPD fan, the X and the Kron blatted news of a crackdown on unleashed dogs.

For months, Rec & Park has been putting the finishing touches on its dog-run policy, delivering the coup de grâce to the city’s free-ranging canines. The department’s dictum: Tickets will be issued; fines will be levied.

But where? Where not?

The Kron carried a list of parks to poop in. The X’s Adriel Hampton was more obliging, offering a location on the R&P website for guidance.

But… pretend for a moment that you’re an average ordinary reasonably law-abiding scion of the late John Q. Public. Your dog is standing by the front door, tennis ball in mouth. And you’ve lost the Kron’s list. You log onto Rec & Park’s site at www.sfgov.org/site/recpark_index.asp in search of divine guidance.

The angels you seek must be off playing pinochle, because no succor arrives. There are links to Strategic/Operations Plans, Natural Areas DRAFT Executive Summary, Budget Meetings & Information, Capital Plan Update, and the complete text of the New Dog Policy - Final Draft (May 8,2002). But no doggie manna from heaven. The cupboard is bare.

What kind of PR program is this - where punishments are readily available but the means of compliance are hard to find? Communicate, you pusillanimous park panjandrums! Or you’re likely to find yourselves surrounded by a field of fire hydrants, with all of the city’s 120,000 dogs stopping by to christen them.

Tabloid scrutiny has overlooked a strange bending of genders South of Market, a backbend so extreme that it has actually closed the circle - she to he, and back again.

In days not so long gone by, a fine old dame named Hamburger Mary occupied the corner of 12^th and Folsom. Until one day, when the stars moved into new alignment, and Mary morphed into Harvey. Who was a good guy, say all who knew him. But today he is no more. Eschewing the male mode, Harvey’s gone femme. It’s now Mary, plain & simple.

There were rumors: Clarion Alley was going straight. Dark. Shut down. No more vivid paintings and inscrutable graffiti on both sides of the narrow street.

A glance from a position on Valencia seemed to confirm the scuttlebutt: Tarps. Gray stucco. BORING.

But rumors of the little sideshow’s demise turned out to be much exaggerated. You just can’t keep a good scribble down. It’s true that many of the old images are gone, but they’ve simply given way to a new generation of red, yellow & green; peach & lavender; or stark black & white.

Clarion lives!

03.03.03 3:00 - that’s Monday, March 3 at 3:00 - the Planning Commission convenes in “special session” to discuss “land use options” for San Francisco’s Eastern Neighborhoods. (That’s Bayview Hunters Point, the Mission, Showplace Square/Potrero Hill, South of Market, and Visitacion Valley.)

“Eastern Neighborhoods.” How quaint. How exotic.

As the Eastern hordes storm City Hall on Monday, those with vigorous memories may recall hours - days? weeks? - spent at hearings, weighing in on the way they want their neighborhoods to develop.

Don’t get your hopes up, Marc Salomon cautions. The term charlatan charrette is “as relevant and accurate now as it was a year ago.”

It’s time for a new motto in the City That Doesn’t Know How: Something like “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” For the linguistically challenged, that’s French for “Just one more bovine substance hitting the local fan.”