Latest posts by Peter Lawrence Kane

When Ro Khanna mounted his 2014 primary challenge against seven-term incumbent Mike Honda, there was a palpable anxiety that the reliable liberal stalwart in California’s 17th District might lose to a Democrat with techno-libertarian leanings. Honda fended Khanna off by four points, but Khanna returned in 2016, winning a 39 percent plurality in a six-way […]

Two-and-a-half years after the 2016 release of Bloom, the members of Rüfüs Du Sol pressed delete. “Let’s get back to where we started / When there was talk of getting older,” vocalist Tyrone Lindqvist sings on “Treat You Better,” the opener to Solace, released in October. Specifically, the trio got rid of all its plug-ins […]

“I need to make music now, right now,” David Crosby says. “As much as I can, as often as I can, and as fast as I can.” This sense of urgency has several causes. Crosby, 77, has had several health issues — most famously a liver transplant, but most recently a cardiac catheterization — and […]

Two food businesses opened in San Francisco last week, mere days apart. One is about personal connection and the other about the social trend toward a lifestyle without it. Bi-Rite Market, the 70-year-old, family-run grocery store and full-service deli with locations on 18th Street and Divisadero Street, opened a cafe in Civic Center. Meanwhile, the […]

San Francisco has many large-scale public art works of note, from Rigo’s One Tree on the corner of 10th and Bryant streets to Brian Barneclo’s chocolate-brown Systems, which runs 600 feet along the curved Caltrain alignment. Others, like BiP’s No Ceiling, are both large and inspiring. (It depicts a young girl flexing a powerful bicep, […]

FiveThirtyEight had a series of fascinating maps out Friday, looking at how the midterm elections for the House of Representatives might play out if only certain sets of voters turned out. The most eye-catching one is what would happen on Nov. 6 if only nonwhite Americans voted. Because a statistically terrifying number of white people […]

There have been perturbations throughout the Bay Area beer universe — the happy kind. On Polk Street, the former Buffalo Theory will soon become home to a medium-term pop-up from SoMa’s Black Hammer Brewing, set to last until February at the very earliest. Further, Chef Tim Luym of Buffalo Theory has landed at Brew Coop […]

The customer base for whole animal butchery isn’t necessarily the moneyed bourgeoisie some people might assume it is. “I have a lot of people who aren’t American-born,” says Angela Wilson, co-founder and butcher at Avedano’s Meats in Bernal Heights. “It’s people who can taste the difference in quality of better-raised meat, and probably they’ve come […]

One of the best things that 11-year-old Thrillhouse Records has going for it is that, in the words of co-owner Fred Schrunk, “The block we’re on is kind of the last shitty block in the whole Mission-Bernal area.” With an empty storefront and defunct print-shop on one side and a 7-Eleven behind a gas station […]

Nome, Alaska, has fewer than 4,000 residents today, which means the entire town could fit twice over inside of Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. But in the early 1900s, it was the most populous city in what was then the District of Alaska, with at least 12,000 people and probably many more — a treeless, subarctic […]