While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a picture displaying the woes of cruising in a tacky limo on the streets of San Francisco. more ›

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. more ›

Former president Bill Clinton announced the Clinton Climate Initiative during the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit yesterday. The CCI is an ambitious program to help 15 cities (Bangkok, Berlin, Chicago, Houston, Johannesburg, Karachi, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo, and Toronto) renovate/retrofit buildings with more energy efficient products. Clinton has managed to get ABN AMRO, Citi, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, and UBS to each put up $1 billion "to finance cities and private building owners to undertake these retrofits at no net cost, doubling the global market for energy retrofit in buildings." From the press release:

As part of the Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program, cities have agreed to develop a program to make their municipal buildings more energy efficient and provide incentives for private building owners to retrofit their buildings with energy saving technologies. The retrofit program will be consistent with, and work within, city procurement and tendering rules. Participation in the program will be open to local banks and companies, who will be invited to contribute to the funding pool and to expand the list of green products used in retrofits. This is the first of many programs that CCI is organizing with partner cities in the C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, an association of large cities that have agreed to work together to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Street artist Highraff recently came to the United States for the first time to raise awareness about the culture of his hometown São Paulo, Brazil, where he’s been painting in the streets since 1997. The twenty-nine-year-old artist, whose given name is Rafael Calazans Pierri, currently has work on display here in New York as part of Ruas de São Paulo: A Survey of Brazilian Street Art at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. If you think his psychedelic murals are coming off the walls, it’s because he uses MDF material to turn colorful scenes into three-dimensional sculptures. Gothamist caught up with Highraff and asked him what he thinks about the New York graffiti scene. more ›

The Brazilian street artists have landed, and we're tracking their every move as they get ready to launch Ruas de Sao Paulo: A Survey of Brazilian Street Art at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery this Saturday. Here’s an account of the movements of Boleta, Fefê, Highraff, Kboco, Onesto, Speto, Titi Freak, and Zezão. more ›

There seem to be a lot of LVHRD events lately! Tonight they present Bi-FOLD II: Street. more ›

Let's take a look back at a week that raised this Zen koan: if Kevin Federline got into a wrestling ring with a wrestler, who would you root for? more ›