so, I just built a (non-spatial) index on another char field, used that in the select and ran just the name match takes 79ms the first time through and 9ms afterwards using the spatial st_within(), I now get the following exception (on the exact same working query) NOTICE: Topology Exception: side location conflict -121.968 37.4189 ERROR: GEOS within() threw an error! SQL State: XX000 ?!?