WHAT IN THE NOISE, INDEED

Did any of you hear anything weird in San Francisco around 9:10pm last night?

I was sitting in my living room watching a rerun of Mythbusters with the windows and porch door open (it was hot in my house) when I heard and felt a loud crashing noise come from outside. And when I say "felt," I mean it: It was like standing in front of a giant speaker stack that emitted a single, sharp bass note -- a resonation in my chest and a brief feeling of pressure on my body in general.

My first thought, I'll admit, was "Something blew up outside." I hadn't seen a flash of light, but it seemed like the only credible explanation for the loud crashing sound and what had felt to me like a shockwave. Maybe a car had slammed into a gas truck on Lincoln Blvd or the Golden Gate Bridge? I went outside and greeted a neighbor who'd walked out at the behest of his wife to find out what the hell had just rattled their windows. No lights, no noise, no sirens.

My neighbor went back inside, and I walked down the stairs to Lincoln Blvd just to see if there was something, anything. The abandoned building on Hoffman apparently has an alarm system, because I could hear it going off, but other than that, nothing. An owl hooted a few times. I went back up the stairs.

I still have no idea what could have made that kind of noise -- accompanied by a shockwave that rattled windows in my neighborhood along with my ribcage -- that leaves no trace nearby. I went to put gas in my car later that night, and on the way home, there was no sign of a disaster on the Golden Gate (traffic would've been bad). What the hell was that? A ghost exploding? A boom tube? A mini-Tunguskan interdimensional cross-rip event?

I got nothin'.