Is using <a href="#"> still the right way to do it?

Is using <a href="#"> still the right way to do it?

I'm one of those crazy dudes who does mostly back-end work, and as such I don't work with JavaScript all that often (but when I do, jQuery is the ONLY way I roll!).  However, recently I'm finding myself using the "old school" practice of making an empty same-page anchor the href for an anchor tag so that a js function can fire (which I'm starting to do by assigning callbacks instead of onclick events - I'm gettin' there!).

But honestly, and maybe I'm just nitpicking here, it's ugly as hell having that stupid hash mark show up in your browser URL, and it seems to me that, after 10 years (that's how long it's been since I last took a serious look at using javascript - no kidding!), I figure, there's GOTTA be a better way!

Is there?  Or is using a hash mark still considered a best practice?

Thanks guys :)