HEADLINES ARE ALWAYS MISLEADING!!!! I mean, don't believe everything you read.

Have you heard about MEASLES PARTIES!!!??!!  It's all the rage in clueless Marin County, where Uber-privileged parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are INTENTIONALLY exposing them to measles so they'll get the disease and be done with it!

It made for a great story because it played on a current fear (measles spreading as a result of non-vaccinated kids) and allowed us to look down on a privileged group (dopey Marin parents who don't vaccinate).

It smelled like bullshit from the beginning to me.  Here's the Ur-story where it all started, "Health Officials Discourage ‘Measles Parties’."  And here's our key section:

She was approached recently by a friend who knew her kids were unvaccinated. The friend offered to help set up a play date with another child who was sick.

“She said, ‘I know someone who has the measles, would you like to be connected with them?’” Schiffman said.

That's it.  The "reporter" made no effort to contact this mysterious "friend" or otherwise verify this story.  Instead, she just ran with it.  Measles parties!  Makes for a great story.  Of course it all turned out to be BS.

In other PANIC!!!!! news, there was this tweet from SF Weekly:

Yikes! Hemlock Tavern's days may be numbered http://t.co/JKo3b5EX83
— SF Weekly (@SFWeekly) February 10, 2015

I guess all our days are numbered, so it's not really news.  Eventually the Sun will expand to envelop our planet and the Hemlock and every other venue will host its last show.  But for a music scene reeling from the loss of venue after venue, this seemed like terrible news!  Unless you read the article.

Anthony Bedard, the Hemlock's longtime booker (not to mention a staple of the city's punk scene and the man behind the genius Twitter account Folder Rock) echoed that statement in an email to SF Weekly. "The Hemlock has an ironclad lease that runs through the summer of 2021," he wrote. "After that, it's within the realm of possibility that the building owner may opt to not renew our lease." 

So the Hemlock itself foresees ongoing live music into 2021.  But I guess "Yikes! Hemlock Tavern may only have live music for the next 6 years" isn't as catchy a headline.

On a lighter note, and not to mercilessly rag on SF Weekly, but this:

Only in San Francisco: A doggie fashion show http://t.co/6GRdu9i0Hr
— SF Weekly (@SFWeekly) February 9, 2015

"Only in San Francisco" used to mean something. Like when you saw something so outrageous or unconventional you couldn't imagine it existing in any other city.  Like, "Oh, I'm off to my Vegan Polyamorous Texas Hold 'Em Meditation Group." "Only in San Francisco!"

A doggie fashion show is the opposite of "Only in San Francisco."  Not because it's so normie it makes clip-on earrings look like scarrification, but because they have doggie fashion shows in Pittsburgh, PA, Scottsdale, AZ, Providence RI, Somerville, Massacusetts, and probably any other city with at least two Pomeranians and two crazy people who like to dress them up.  A tech douche fashion show might be "Only in San Francisco," but a doggie fashion show most certainly is not.