Culture + Travel

Remembering an Afternoon in San Francisco Without Instagram
Culture + Travel, Essays, Hyperlocal News + Stories

Remembering an Afternoon in San Francisco Without Instagram

San Francisco is a city filled with IRL treasures that exist with or without an IG update; two years ago, that sentiment came fully into frame. Far too many of my days are spent inside my otherwise charming domicile. Time tends to collapse in there, typing away at my keyboard, the available space in my Google Drive inching closer to capacity. There’s one specific parrot that will routinely perch on a ledge outside my window — the only one in the apartment; a glass pane that opens up to a concrete pillar where rain refracts onto the potted plants below — alerting me to life outside. Comically, this shrill animal we humans commonly cage for our amusement is conceivably freer, less caged than I am. That same bird visited my window that day in October of 2021 when day Facebook (whi...
The Best Places to Take Your Dog on a Lil’ Stroll in San Francisco
Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

The Best Places to Take Your Dog on a Lil’ Stroll in San Francisco

San Francisco has over 32 public dog parks available to let your pups run wild and free. But there are even more walkable miles around SF they'd enjoy just as much. For those of us lucky enough to call San Francisco home, we know it's a very dog-friendly metro. (In fact, it was considered the most dog-friendly major city in the entire county last year.) Our canine companions — the full balls that brighten our day, madden us with their fits of furniture destruction, invite immeasurable amounts of joy through their wagging tails and effusive lick — are extensions of ourselves. They assimilate into our families, chosen or otherwise, and, by proxy, require the same level of attentive care we'd give to our bipedal kin. Luckily, San Francisco is brimming with dog-friendly walks thro...
How This San Francisco Museum Got a 60,000-Pound Mural Inside
Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks, Hyperlocal News + Stories

How This San Francisco Museum Got a 60,000-Pound Mural Inside

FYI: SFMOMA's display run for Diego Rivera’s Pan American Unity mural is now extended until March of next year — so you've got more time to check it out and marvel at how tf humans managed to get it inside. When the SFMOMA first reopened to the public in 2021 after shuttering for more than a year due to the pandemic, museum-goers were treated to an array of then-new exhibits, among them pandemic-inspired murals. (This, unfortunately, came after former SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra stepped down from his post after a slew of racist allegations had surfaced.) At that time, the Twin Walls Mural Company’s Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams — a self-described deeply personal project from artists Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong, who say that the piece is rich with symbolism, featuring ch...
San Francisco’s Biggest Ube Festival Is Back for 2023, Baby!
Culture + Travel, Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories

San Francisco’s Biggest Ube Festival Is Back for 2023, Baby!

Oh, and it’s being paired with another iconic, equally vibrant, and chromatic food: matcha. “Babe, wake up. An iconic duo just dropped.” That was the conversation we had with ourselves when we heard Kapwa Gardens, San Francisco’s healing and culture space that highlights the city’s thriving Filipino community, announced its ube food festival, Yum Yams, is returning next month, following its prior festival held in September of 2022. What’s even more exciting about the event’s 2023 iteration? Matcha will be joining the chat, thanks to a collaboration with Japantown’s KOHO SF; the partnership exists as a means to elevate and celebrate AAPI month. “Just as the purple yam known as ube has become a signature flavor of Filipino Culture, the finely ground green tea powder matcha has bee...
We Asked ChatGPT Where to Get the Best Matcha in San Francisco 
Culture + Travel, Food + Drink, Hyperlocal News + Stories

We Asked ChatGPT Where to Get the Best Matcha in San Francisco 

San Francisco has some of the best matcha cafes in the world — but does AI know that? The matcha craze that began steeping in 2015 — a frenzy that began stirring after Gwenth Paltrow (and Goop) began pedaling Instagram posts postering the drink — and hasn’t let up. It’s been one of the few foodie trends that’s proven to be evergreen… (literally). In San Francisco, with its gastronomic culture and glowing Asian American community, matcha has a forever safe space. By proxy: San Francisco sits as a bastion for all things matcha. In a city that’s popularized everything from matcha ice creams to matcha layered cakes, it’s easy to stray too far from the center. And when you do come back to that nucleus (read: a v, v, [v] good cup of matcha), it’s important that it’s a truly remarkable trip. ...
I Walked 8 Miles South From San Francisco’s Ocean Beach
Culture + Travel, Essays, Nature + Climate Crisis

I Walked 8 Miles South From San Francisco’s Ocean Beach

What started out as an excuse to get some fresh air turned into a geological scavenger along San Francisco's largest beach. It’s not hard to get to Ocean Beach in San Francisco — just go west in the city — but it still seems a little remote. Miles-long, cold, foggy, and forbidding, Ocean Beach is often greeted with a disinterested shrug compared to its more glamorous cousins Baker Beach and Crissy Field. But when you’re there, you really feel like you’re at the end of a continent, especially at night, when the sea is speckled with the lonely lights of little boats. And it’s even more frightening to know that it’s only the northern tip of a nearly 12-mile stretch of beach that extends all the way to the Daly City–Pacifica border. Starting place: The southern parking lot at Ocean ...
On Soft Surrendering at San Francisco’s Fort Funston
Culture + Travel, Essays

On Soft Surrendering at San Francisco’s Fort Funston

San Francisco is latticed with places perfect for contemplation; Fort Funston is just such a bastion to sit back and let the world wash over you. It’s a common practice of mine now to take a last-minute hike before some lengthy air travel departing from San Francisco. Having missed the Christmas holiday with my family — the byproduct of a series of bleak events that ran the gamut from odious price hikes and multi-day cancellations to the first signs of Omicron’s grip on San Francisco — I was hesitatingly eager to return back on the East Coast. But this looming trip comes with a specific heaviness; that unmistakable weight afforded by apparent goodbyes. The past three years have seen the health markers for various members of the family decline at a dizzying rate. My mate...
When I First Moved to San Francisco, I Lived in My Car
Culture + Travel, Essays

When I First Moved to San Francisco, I Lived in My Car

What started as a fresh start in San Francisco turned into an exercise in proving to myself what I need... and what I don't need. When I first came to San Francisco in 2016, I didn’t have a renting situation set in stone (to put it lightly). Before making the 28-odd-hour trip from Austin, I had thrown everything deemed necessary in the back of my ’08 Prius and trashed the rest. While I had a job and somewhat of a soft savings pillow to fall back on, I wasn’t interested in too quickly surrendering it all to an Outer Richmond studio space while I was still finding my footing. At that time, too, San Francisco was in the midst of its Tech Bro era — and the nose-bleeding rents followed in tandem. For those first three months in the city, I technically had a roof over my head, but that roof ...
IYKYK: San Francisco Has an Iconic ‘Floating’ Footpath
Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks, Hyperlocal News + Stories, Nature + Climate Crisis

IYKYK: San Francisco Has an Iconic ‘Floating’ Footpath

San Francisco's McNab Lake has a hidden treasure that's a more level gem to walk, as opposed to SF's elevated public staircases. The seven-by-seven never ceases to delight with quirky gems that sit in broad daylight. One such spectacle is located in McNab Lake, a shallow, human-made lake in the Excelsior that’s a bastion for waddling ducks and the odd red-eared slider turtle. It’s designed in a figure-eight (with a small island in the middle populated by the aforementioned fauna) and continues to be incredibly popular with both the young. You could at one point even take a “canoemobile” through its admittedly murky waters. Oh, and yes: You can take a short jaunt along a “floating” walkway that wraps the lake, which is especially magical to do on a clear-skied day. You’l...
How San Francisco Continues Riding the WFH Vibe Shift
Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

How San Francisco Continues Riding the WFH Vibe Shift

Pro tips: Order some plastic greenery, indulge in some Oreos, and start practicing gratitude to help you not go entirely insane while working from home in San Francisco. For those lucky enough to continue working as layoffs continue unraveling San Francisco, particularly in the technology space, many have still clung to their WFH routines that were born from the pandemic. (I include myself in this cohort; it takes an increasingly desirable lunch ticket or coffee indulgence to pry me out of my apartment during the work day.) As a result, San Franciscans have really honed in its WFH setups. But, alas, we're all capable of hitting a productive rut or finding ourselves a bit unmoored inside a stagnant environment or when our routines grow monotonous. The internet is alive with influ...