Culture
9 Books That Actually Get San Francisco Right
Look, we spend a lot of time around here talking about what's broken in this city — the budget gaps, the empty storefronts, the Muni delays. But San Francisco h...
Culture
The latest from The Dissent on culture.
Culture
A Film Worth Your Friday Night: BrainStorm Hits SF
In a city that loves to talk about innovation, disruption, and the future of the human mind, it's refreshing when something actually shows up on screen worth di...
Culture
Circus Is in Her Blood: Gypsy Snider Brings the Big Top to ODC's Dance Downtown
If your last name is Snider and you grew up inside the legendary Pickle Family Circus, you were never really going to end up in accounting. Gypsy Snider — chore...
·Mission
Culture
Superfair Is the Art Show SF Actually Deserves
Let's be honest — most art fairs feel like a homework assignment. You wander through white-walled booths, nod at things you don't fully understand, and leave fe...
Culture
Art as Protest: Iranian Artist Shiva Ahmadi Brings Her Resistance to SF
If you think art is just something rich people hang above their fireplaces, Shiva Ahmadi is here to complicate that notion — and in the best possible way. The...
Culture
Lynn Breedlove Turns Grief Into Gold on New Album
If you know Lynn Breedlove, you know she doesn't do anything quietly. The SF punk legend — frontperson of Tribe 8, novelist, general cultural force of nature —...
·Mission
Culture
Bay Area Hip-Hop Just Got Its Supergroup Moment
The Bay has been quietly running hip-hop for decades — from the hyphy era to the underground scene that never really went underground — and now 1Umbrella is mak...
Culture
Doll Fest Is the All-Women Rock Festival SF Didn't Know It Needed
## Doll Fest Is the All-Women Rock Festival SF Didn't Know It Needed San Francisco has no shortage of festivals claiming to be culturally essential while deliv...
Culture
The Zine That Punked the Mainstream Is Back — And SF Still Needs It
Before algorithmic feeds told you what to care about, before rainbow capitalism turned rebellion into a branding exercise, there was *Homocore* — a scrappy, pho...
·Mission
Culture
Free Tickets Alert: Wallice, HEALTH, Carpenter Brut & More Up for Grabs
Look, San Francisco doesn't always make it easy to enjoy yourself without dropping a small fortune — between $18 cocktails and the sheer audacity of Ticketmaste...
Culture
This Artist Wants to Overwhelm You — In the Best Way Possible
In a city that loves to talk about disruption, Rachel Simon Marino is actually doing it — just with paint instead of a pitch deck. Marino's latest exhibition i...
Culture
The Baths That Beat Jim Crow: Sutro's Forgotten Civil Rights Legacy
Before San Francisco became a city that loves to congratulate itself on progressivism, it actually did something progressive — and the ruins sitting out at Land...
·Inner Sunset
Culture
SF's Pop-Up Magazine Crew Is Turning Cookbooks Into a Live Show — And It Might Actually Be Worth Your Weekend
Look, we know your cookbook shelf is mostly decorative at this point. That dog-eared copy of *Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat* hasn't moved since 2019. But hear us out —...
Culture
SF's Music Scene Isn't Dead — You're Just Not Paying Attention
Every few months, someone publishes a eulogy for San Francisco's music scene. A beloved venue closes, Twitter mourns for 48 hours, and suddenly the whole city s...
Culture
Lights, Camera, Confusion: North Beach Residents Baffled by Mystery Film Crew
North Beach has seen its share of characters over the years — beatnik poets, tourist-trap cannoli shops, guys who definitely aren't in the mob — but this week t...
·North Beach
Culture
The Dark Side of SF's Social Scene: What Mickey Gerold's Case Says About Power and Accountability
San Francisco has always had its social climbers — the type who collect powerful friends like business cards, haunt the right private clubs, and somehow always...
Culture
The Dark Side of SF's Velvet Rope Set
San Francisco has always had its social strivers — the guys who collect powerful friends the way others collect sneakers, who always seem to be at the right tab...
Culture
Dream Gallery, Nightmare Reality: How SF's 'Visionary' Art Philanthropist Allegedly Took Artists for Everything
There's a particular kind of predator that thrives in San Francisco's arts scene: the smooth-talking visionary with a nonprofit letterhead, a Rolodex full of do...
Culture
Hundreds of San Franciscans Paid Nothing to Dig a Hole and That's Kind of Beautiful
In a city that will charge you $18 for a kombucha and $3,000 a month to sleep in a converted closet, something genuinely free and genuinely pointless happened a...
·Outer Sunset
Culture
Free Cherry Blossoms Are Blooming — Don't Sleep on SF's Best Kept Secret Hour
Here's a rare sentence you don't often get to write about San Francisco: you can do something genuinely beautiful here, for free, without a waitlist or a city-i...
·Inner Sunset
Culture
Light Up, SF: Your Complete Guide to Getting High Responsibly (and Beautifully)
San Francisco has always had a complicated, passionate, and occasionally transcendent relationship with cannabis — and right now, that relationship is blooming....
Culture
SF's Nightlife Scene Is Alive, Weird, and Worth Protecting
Let's be honest — San Francisco's nightlife has taken a beating. Venues shuttered, rents exploded, crowds thinned. But if this week's party circuit is any indic...
Culture
SF Theater Right Now: Royalty, Monsters, and the Stories We Can't Look Away From
If you've been sleeping on San Francisco's theater scene, these two productions are a decent reason to wake up. First up: a show that puts kings front and cent...
Culture
The Maine Are Coming to SF and You Could Score Free Tickets
If your emo-adjacent playlist has been getting a workout lately, here's some news that'll make your week: **The Maine** are heading to San Francisco's **Regency...
·Tenderloin
Culture
Lights Out at CBS: SF Workers Strike as Bari Weiss Pulls the Plug on National News Radio
It's a messy week at CBS Bay Area. Workers have walked off the job in San Francisco, hitting the picket lines just as the broader CBS News radio operation faces...
Culture
March Is Actually a Great Month to Be a Museum Nerd in SF
Look, San Francisco has a lot of problems right now. The budget is a mess, the sidewalks are an obstacle course, and don't even get us started on the transit si...
Culture
Picture This: The Symbols That Make SoMa, SoMa
If you had to photograph SoMa in a single frame, what would you shoot? It's a deceptively hard question. SoMa — South of Market, for the uninitiated — is one o...
·SoMa
Culture
One Man's Horrible Road Home: The Ranjit Brar Story
San Francisco has a complicated relationship with the people who love it most. It chews some of them up, spits them out, and somehow — against all reasonable od...