Events

From Betty Boop to Beavis and Butt-head, from Fritz the Cat to the lads of South Park, animation has long proved a conducive setting for off-color and off-center characters. (Yes, we know that R. Crumb birthed Fritz in underground comix.) Bad behavior — otherwise known as free thinking and... More >>

Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart has always sounded like a wounded child singing an imaginary synth-pop opera while crouching in some secret sanctuary. That he invites you into this dark psychological space is an act of courage, even if Stewart's quavering vocal whines seem the very opposite of tough:... More >>

Considering that their history goes back 4,000 years, the Jewish people know a thing or two about longevity. That might help explain why in our fly-by-night culture, the Jewish Music Festival has lasted so long. With a schedule based around "revelation and revelry," according to festival... More >>

The current surge of early-reggae and R&B club nights in town shows that the '60s are finally back in an authentic, non-Boomer-centric way. For the last few years, the twice-monthly Saturday Night Soul Party has maintained a spot on the top of the heap. DJs Phengren, Paul Paul, and Pink Panzer... More >>

We all have our own tales of chocolate depravity. Ate too much, didn’t regret it; stole Mom’s; ate too much, regretted it. Our own favorite San Francisco chocolate memory is of Faerie Queene Chocolates, a magical shop on Castro Street back in the weird old days. The entire place was... More >>

A three-story stained-glass globe, a Turkish ghost town, and a museum of antique broadcasting equipment — the Atlas Obscura recommends them to its readers. A compendium of the strange and wonderful, the Atlas is a Web site of bizarre ephemera that fall outside the usual tourist... More >>

From the Great Mistakes file: Chris McCaw was trying to do something involving long photographic exposures, but he spaced out. Thinking his now super-long exposure had ruined the image, he instead found that the sun, while burning the paper, had also made an interesting shape. The images in... More >>

Sculptor Mildred Howard often makes room-sized sculptures; she likes multiples, it seems. At this show, she's focused on one of the most ridiculous multiples in, uh, the world: The globe. Not the actual one, the big one, but the ubiquitous round representation of where we live. Necessarily... More >>

Space, sea creatures, and beadwork make templates for the imaginary world of Barbara Takenaga. At "Paintings," she exhibits abstract acrylics on linen, canvas, and wood panel; all swirl around a tight circular center and radiate out in tentacly lines of smaller circles. They could be... More >>

Artist Libby Black makes luxury consumer items — Yves St. Laurent suitcases, Hermès saddles, a Louis Vuitton workout room, an entire Kate Spade store — out of paper and hot glue. It’s priceless, commingling the insubstantial, chimerical value of the luxury industry while... More >>

Margaret Harrison's bemuscled specimens at "The Bodies Are Back" are superheroes on their way, sporting a cacophony of gender-signifying genitals, upper-body arrangements, and clothing: If Captain America were to get fruity in the boudoir, this might be the result. In other words, the artist... More >>

No matter how penniless you are, no matter how lifeless and dull your own accessories have become, and, to quote Diana Ross and the Supremes, “No Matter What Sign You Are,” gazing upon beautifully crafted, deeply expensive things has a way of slapping the spirits back into shape.... More >>

Batman is many things to many people: hero, gay icon, debonair billionaire, foiler of world-domination plans. He's also an historical figure suitable for course credit and maybe the guy who prevented you from being slowly lowered into that vat of hot oil. To artists, however, he’s often a... More >>

At first glance, Maya Hayuk’s art might make you timid: Her bold, colorful graphic shapes hint at an earlier era, when abstract art was a confusing thing for serious people to sort out by yelling at one another. Then you might come across a strange little bubby psychedelic space-alien... More >>

A love of magnificence and psychedelia unites Seth Armstrong and Christopher Russell. The two-man show featuring these two men, “Fort Big Mountain,” is even curated by two men, gallerino Gabe Scott and the hotness that is painter Jay Howell. The men in question gaze thematically on... More >>

Robert Adams loves a nice tree-lined street. But not the fancy manicured kind. The photographer stands around Colorado in the 1980s and appreciates imperfect asphalt, weedy lots, and servicable trees. Admiration for plain old suburbs doesn't spring into the hearts of every talented... More >>

The Holga is the Rocky Horror Picture Show of cameras. Both are cheap and seem like they could fall apart at any minute, yet hold images and tell stories of enduring beauty and deathless, cultworthy absurdity. At the “International Juried Plastic Camera Show,” the Holga and its toyish... More >>

Jonathan Burstein’s portraits are exactly the sort of thing we like to see from the Art on Market Street Kiosk Poster Series: Stuff that makes us stop – walking, running, acting like a loser in public, whatever – and reflect. In Burstein’s case, we reflect on what an awesome... More >>

For new residents, it takes a while to see Defenestration on Sixth Street, because there are so many interesting things to look at, to step over, to run from — even to furtively purchase — at street level. But by and by they’ll finally look up, blink, and have an exquisite... More >>

They may have had fabulous hair, hand signs, a complete intolerance for disrespect, and fierce loyalty to one another. But the Mission High students known in the 1980s as the Tiny Locas were not a girl gang. They were friends, not criminals. At "Two Four Home Girls Circa 1980," a collection of... More >>

Love them for their hidden secrets, as in the Luggage Gallery's careful sanding project to find years-old Margaret Kilgallen paintings, or hate them for their bland logistical problems, walls are inescapable rock bottom for artists. Anchored by two vintage graphite and crayone works by Sol... More >>

Practitioners of comedy routinely remind us that our own families are growhouses for laughs — in fact, this may qualify as a universal truth. Solo performer D’Lo grew up queer in a Hindu Tamil Sri Lankan family in Southern California. His mom (and surely others) had some thoughts on... More >>

San Francisco hosts 50-some film festivals every year – do the math – but the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is in the top three and nobody argues about that. The city buzzes and glitters more than usual during its takeover; its pull is so strong it creates... More >>

John Chiara climbs inside his camera. Michelle Blade serendades a city. Brice Bischoff plays with an iconic real fake landscape. At "Alchemy," curator Sarah Smith has put together the work of people trying to change plain, sturdy materials into something shimmering and interesting. So the fact... More >>

Daniel Ellsberg was an ex-Marine, trusted analyst, and Cold Warrior under Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who, “from the entrails of a bureaucratic war machine”—per a latter-day peacenik cohort—converted to antiwar dove. Leaking 7,000 Xeroxed pages of the Pentagon... More >>