Culture + Travel

The "WELCOME" light display — a miles-long piece of artwork that spans down Market Street — is expected to return on June 23rd, helping cement San Francisco's stance as a safe space for queer people.  It’s Pride Month, which means San Francisco is again proudly displaying its moniker as the gay capital of the world. Market Street is danced with Pride flags; almost every storefront has some iteration of Pride-themed marketing that screams “Hi, gay!”; we’ve all surrendered to the idea that our dry January selves now exist in a vacuum chamber — a partition we’ll reopen sometime soon, but definitely not in June. In 2022, Illuminate — the SF-based nonprofit responsible for many regional public light art installations, like the “Bay Lights,” which could return before the end of the year ...

Artist Leah Rosenberg’s artwork for San Francisoco's foremost culture center is a love letter to the "healing and happiness" that emerged from the pandemic — an ode still relevant a year after its debut. The pandemic opened up a chasm of conversations around mental health. When the peripheries of our individual realities were bound to our confines, we all went a bit stir-crazy — to say the least. For many (like yours truly), the majority of 2020 was spent oscillating between various degrees of sanity. Some days were better than others; a few days were spent shackled to my bed by crippling anxiety and sinking depression; most days, however, were organized around more limbic responses — falling dominos of fight-or-flight reactions. It was hard. Really hard. For all of us. T...

In 1986, San Francisco's Bay to Breakers race had a staggering 110,000 registered runners — cementing its place as one of the most popular foot races anywhere in the world. San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers race is one of the most popular and well-attended footraces on the planet. It’s estimated some 18,000 runners participate in the annual 12K each year — and that’s not accounting for the bipeds who run in tandem with the race or jump in from the sidelines. The parties that spill over the race, both during its entirety and afterward, are something of hyperlocal folklore.   (I vividly remember running my first Bay to Breakers race in 2016… which I then, somehow, found myself at a  Bay to Breakers-themed sex party in the Castro a few hours after crossing the finish line. Mind ...

Arguably the most famous relic of San Francisco from the 19th century, the Sutro Baths was not just a place to swim — it also once had SF's largest indoor skating rink. In a time not all too far long ago (when compared to the universe's utter vastness and endless entropy), San Francisco housed the largest collection of indoor swimming pools… anywhere in the entire world. Replenished by the pull of the sea, the Pacific Ocean was capable of filling all seven of the pools in Sutro Baths with a collective volume that was estimated to be north of 1.6 million gallons of water.  (Fun fact: Sutro Baths also had one of the deepest public swimming pools in the world as well; its most plunging water holes could take swimmers down 20 feet.) Because of the varying depths and lengths of the p...

Kicking off June 8th with a cult classic, the Sundown Cinema series in SF for 2023 has its best film lineup yet. Babe, grab the e-bikes — we’re heading to Alamo Square to get high and watch ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ Should we find ourselves in an open relationship between now and June 8th, this will be a line of dialogue we will unironically utter to ourselves. Why, you ask? Because dear reader: San Francisco’s favorite outdoor movie night series is slated to return this summer.  Announced today, May 10th, the SF Parks Alliance released the film list for 2023’s Sundown Cinema — now in its fifth season. “This season of Sundown Cinema will feature seven films in seven parks across the city, ranging from feel-good rom-com to thrillers to family-friendly hits,” reads ...