Craigs List Bay Area

June rain breaks records and plans across the Bay Area

Baby goats, bunny rabbits and other furry petting zoo animals seemed like such a good idea for Amanda Sills' joint son-daughter birthday party this month.

Toddler attendees could play with the potbellied pigs Saturday and splash in the Sills family's Moraga pool to cool down.

And then the spring of 2011 hit.

As rain pelted the pool, the petting zoo company canceled because the weather would spook the animals.

Like many other East Bay residents, the Sills family had to improvise this wet weekend. They hired James the Entertainer off Craigslist to make balloon animals inside their dry house for 4-year-old Lucas and 1-year-old Ava's 70 party guests.

"My son was crying but now he's smiling and screaming around the house," Sills said.

Records broke as raindrops fell Saturday, with some long-standing rainfall measurements blown away before noon as a deep low-pressure weather system swept in from the Gulf of Alaska. The resulting precipitation came at a time when outdoor festivals, graduations and pool parties were a part of many people's weekend plans.

By 11 a.m., rainfall levels in downtown Oakland and San Francisco, which are measured each hour, had shattered records. More than 1 inch of rain fell in Oakland, beating the previous high of 0.10 inches, according to Bob Benjamin, a National Weather Service forecaster.

Measurements for other cities are tracked over a 24-hour period so Benjamin said those amounts would not be available until Sunday. But he said the records don't stand a chance.

"All will come toppling down," Benjamin said.

Art patrons in Oakland splashed through the puddles to attend the East Bay Open Studios event, where more than 400 artists in 14 East Bay cities opened their studios to the public.

Attendance was definitely down Saturday, according to program coordinator Jackie Im, but as the clouds began to break up by the afternoon she said the art lovers began to return.

Vendors at the Art and Wine Festival at Walnut Creek's Heather Farm Park who chose to pitch their tents and sell their wares had their pick of spots on the park's fields because many decided to skip the event.

Customers, on the other hand, were hard to come by.

Evone Wilson, co-owner of Hats 'n' More, drove from Oroville to work at the festival but had yet to recoup her costs. She said people tend to buy hats when the sun is shining. When it's raining, they stick to umbrellas.

Bay Area cops use Craigslist to make 57 sex arrests

Melissa Gira Grant — Happy holiday weekend from the Alameda County Sheriff's office! They're already ahead of your Labor Day discount sex-shopping plans. Police answered Craigslist ads in the "erotic services" section and set up appointments in Dublin and Castro Valley hotels, posing to the prostitutes as clients looking for a late-night session. At 2:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. on Wednesday, between both stings, the cops made 57 arrests , the majority for prostitution and "suspicion of aiding or facilitating prostitution."

Aiding the cops: their search button. This is one of the bigger busts off Craigslist this year, with two twists: targeting the late-night working girls, and doing it when rent is due and women are more prone to risk using Craigslist, which makes them easy targets for vice cops. For all they want to call their raid a remedy to "cyberpimping," the cop strategy is as old-fashioned as it gets.

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