In the early 1900s, San Francisco was considered the most European locale in America. It boasted more restaurants than any city outside Paris, it had one of the world’s largest luxury hotels, and on its main drag horse-drawn carriages gave way to streetcars. The Barbary Coast was in full... More >>

What do the following things have in common? The dining room of the Victoria Sanatorium in Colfax, Iowa. Severe damage in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, from the 1964 Good Friday earthquake. A gas station owned by a black man in 1941 in a town called Brooklyn Bridge, Kentucky. You probably... More >>

It could have been the Bumblebee Bridge, our Golden Gate. Back in 1937 when the iconic span was built, the Navy wanted to make sure ships and planes wouldn’t go careening into it and suggested it be painted in bands of black and yellow. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and the trademark... More >>

San Francisco Carnaval is a cultural arts celebration born of the determination of a strong-willed neighborhood collective. Now in its 34th year, this lively and colorful event has grown into one of California’s largest multi-ethnic events. This year, Carnaval invites locals to... More >>

We think like a photojournalist (natch): Shoot absolutely everything interesting, from every angle and setting, and from the bigger set you’re sure to get a handful of good shots and one that just nails it, the image that wows people and could speak for the whole shoot. Now imagine this... More >>

Asian art is hot, selling at unprecedented highs and eclipsing Western art. San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, one of the largest in the world dedicated to Asian art and culture, taps into that energy with the exhibition “Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past.” Last... More >>

Between 1942 and 1945, 11,200 Japanese-Americans were sent to Topaz Camp. It was located in a parched stretch of desert about 125 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Most of the prisoners were from San Francisco. Some were forced to live in horse stalls at Tanforan Race Track before being... More >>

A collaboration of live dance and three-dimensional visual art takes over Union Square in the form of Bitter Melon. The point? To recontextualize San Francisco’s most foot-trafficked public spaces from the consumerist shopping thoroughfare it is today back to the symbol of victory and... More >>

LGBT performance art thrives on multiple levels in San Francisco. Trannyshack leads the recurring clubs that are escorting drag into the 21st century. Kirk Read and Larry-bob Roberts head monthly open mic Smack Dab. Local choreographers Laura Arrington and Jesse Hewit push boundaries in their... More >>

“Hyperreal” is the watchword for mixed-media artist Adrian Wong’s first Bay Area solo exhibition. It’s called “Orange Peel, Harbor Seal, Hyperreal,” and it identifies the throughline connecting Chinatown’s architecture and the iconic look of 1960s and... More >>

As far as we can tell, San Francisco’s first drag bar was a happy accident -- unofficial history holds that Joe Finocchio established his eventually world-famous “female impersonator” spot in 1936 after hearing a customer in his father’s bar imitate Sophie Tucker, known... More >>

The tree, as a motif, repeatedly appears in mythology and ancient tales, often representing a powerful aspect of nature. There’s Yggdrasil in Norse cosmology -- a tree that is central to all that exists -- as well as the one in the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve weren’t supposed... More >>

Did you know that when the Golden Gate Bridge gets hot, it sits low in the saddle? Course you didn’t: You don’t have a Bridge Thermometer, which looks like one of those scenic coin-op binoculars crossed with a first-person shooter. Peer into it (no coin needed!) and it shows the... More >>

“Audience” does not always equal “spectator.” Have you ever bulled into the thick of a mosh pit, body-surfed at an outdoor festival, or thrilled to the collective power of a political rally? These scenarios and others are presented for what they are -- and aren’t... More >>

Politicians and news outlets have started using the term "WPA" again — have you noticed? The Works Progress Administration, of course, put people to work during and after the Great Depression. Even artists were paid to work; the WPA encompassed projects that employed actors, painters, and... More >>

Have you ever seen a Gritchen in your kitchen? Or dared to dance with the One-Legged Zantz? We can’t think of a better time to start than during the final days before Christmas. Long out of print, Don’t Bump the Glump was Shel Silverstein’s first and strangest collection of... More >>

The unGoogleable inheritor of the Trannyshack art-drag scepter is known as Some Thing; each Friday brings a new theme via semi-pun. It could be simple, such as Some Thing Good, or it could be A Li’l Sumptin’ Some Thing, which is funny but what are you going to wear? The first show... More >>

“What would Jesus tweet?” “Oops, did I just click send?” “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see your nipple-piercing video.” Those lines are from FWD: Life Gone Viral, a play that examines life, death, and the Internet. The idea came when someone sent... More >>

Mushrooms are the new plastics. At least according to San Francisco artist Philip Ross, a man who has spent years coaxing reishi mushrooms into the shapes of blocks and other architectural forms in the hope that they could be the next environmentally friendly construction material. Ross is one... More >>

Charlie Anders, blond of bob and mini of skirt, is the hostess with the mostest science fiction at her literary hootenanny, Writers with Drinks. (She's also the news editor of io9, Gawker's sci-fi/fantasy blog.) Aside from Anders' charming ways, the lineup of readers is always delightful.... More >>

Finding your voice as a writer is hard. Finding your voice as an erotic writer is all but impossible. In one direction is “awkward and clinical.” In another is “Anne Rice.” And there’s literally hundreds of others that result in the rough equivalent of “I have a... More >>

Many San Franciscans associate the gritty downtown neighborhood of the Tenderloin with crime, or Glide Memorial Church, or maybe ethnic restaurants. To documentary theater specialist Annie Elias, it had been a place to get in and out of as quickly as she could, with as little interaction as... More >>

We went to Rome once. One thing that blew our minds was the public art. There’s so much of it that some has been reclaimed by the needs of everyday life. You see people taking lunch on what’s left of an ancient fountain or a big sculpture that anywhere else would be surrounded by... More >>

We want to warn you, because otherwise it might bum you out: You’re sitting comfortably on the Magic Bus, grooving out on a loving multimedia gloss of what happened in San Francisco in the 1960s, and the windows suddenly disappear. Because you’re sitting facing the windows, this... More >>

The Audium was started in 1965 by composer Stan Shaff and equipment designer Doug McEachern. Shows are Fridays and Saturdays, and you have to be there on time — they lock the door. The room fits 50 people or so. There are chairs arranged in a semicircle. There are something like 180... More >>