Culture + Travel Archives

We Asked San Franciscans Their Favorite Memories of ‘The Bay Lights’

8Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks, Hyperlocal News + Stories

We Asked San Franciscans Their Favorite Memories of ‘The Bay Lights’

The Bay Bridge's glowing light installation had existed as a "nighttime sister to the Golden Gate Bridge" up until this past Sunday. When “The Bay Lights” shuttered this past Sunday, it was the end of a decades-long era. The evening’s balmy, wet weather only added to the deflating mood. Illuminate, the nonprofit behind “The Bay Lights,” has assured the public these lights could be back as soon as the fall. Nearly $75,000 for “The Bay Lights 360” — a project that would better weatherize these lights, in addition to expanding their visibility to other parts around the San Francisco Bay — has been raised in donations, thus far; it’s still a far cry from the million dollars the current fundraiser’s goal; all in all, the project is expected to cost $11 million with the majorit...

The Lineup for SF’s Biggest Music Festival This Year Is All the Fire Emojis

7Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

The Lineup for SF’s Biggest Music Festival This Year Is All the Fire Emojis

Artists and bands like Lana Del Rey, Foo Fighters, and Megan Thee Stallion will descend on San Francisco come August. Outside Lands — the San Francisco outdoor concert series that regularly attracts over 200,000 humans each year — has historically been hit or miss in regard to its lineup. (Last year’s 2022 iteration saw mixed fanfare from attendees; the concert, itself, saw perhaps the most maddening, obscenely annoying crowd in recent memory.) However, we’d wager to believe that no one will have a qualm with the roster of talent for Outside Lands 2023… which had our jaws hit the floor when it was officially announced the morning of Tuesday, March 7th. “Today Another Planet Entertainment, Superfly, and Starr Hill Presents are thrilled to announce the 2023 festival lineup [for O...

Fuck… The Bay Lights Will Officially Go Dark This Weekend

3Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

Fuck… The Bay Lights Will Officially Go Dark This Weekend

After ten years since it first debuted, the thousands of individual LEDs that illuminated, danced, and shined on the Bay Bridge will dim Sunday night. Rumors around The Bay Lights shutting off (for at least a few months) had been floating around as of late amid talks about the public artwork’s financial stability. Well, those whispers grew into a resounding roar this week when Illuminate — the SF-based nonprofit that is behind the light artwork, among other various public art projects (e.g. The Golden Mile project along the JFK Promenade) — announced The Bay Lights would go dark Sunday. The reasons don’t exist on a monolith; they span the gamut between financial strain to the actual time it takes to properly maintain the 25,000 LEDs. However, the years following the installation's debu...

Are You Keeping Up With the Bay Area’s Giant Therapy Rabbit?

3Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories, News to Know

Are You Keeping Up With the Bay Area’s Giant Therapy Rabbit?

Thumbing through the Instagram handle of Alex the Great — a nearly 30lb therapy rabbit at SFO — is an exercise in serotonin-scrolling. The San Francisco International Airport is no stranger to left-of-center therapy animals crisscrossing its terminals, offering relief from apprehensions around flying for those who pet them; touch them; hug them (when permitted). In 2019, SFO added a 5-year-old Juliana pig named LiLou to its “Wag Brigade” — a group of now sixteen therapy animals at the airport tasked with easing anxieties among passengers. LiLou quickly captured the hearts of thousands with her painted nails, flouncy tutu skirt, and ability to balance a captain’s hat atop her head as she trotted along the airport’s well-worn carpet. Among the gaggle of serotonin-affording mammals crui...

This Drone-Shot Scavenger Hunt of San Francisco Is So Soothing

16Feb

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks

This Drone-Shot Scavenger Hunt of San Francisco Is So Soothing

Captured in stunning 4K resolution, the almost six-minute video captures some of SF's more iconic structures in new vantage points we can appreciate. We’re massive fans of hyperlocal drone content. Not only do y’all like it — so long as our readership metrics aren’t fibbing in their summations — but they offer certain bird’s-eye views of San Francisco that allow us to see the city in new ways; familiar structures are afforded fresh textures, dimensions, and tones through elevated cinematography. In a metropolis that measures just 49 square miles, you can sometimes be lulled into a false sense of guarantee that you’ve, in fact, seen and touched and experienced everything it has to offer. Alas: We all know that’s the farthest thing from the truth regarding San Francisco. (I, for example,...

A Cancerous Mass; a San Francisco Farewell (to an Old Bastard)

10Feb

By kellidevanedwards3 Comments

Culture + Travel, Essays

A Cancerous Mass; a San Francisco Farewell (to an Old Bastard)

'I’m covered in squirming blanket puppies, soft wet tongues followed by sharp bites of my earlobe. Their mother pants in the nearby shade, thankful for the reprieve.' I stretched my upper eyelid to apply the brown waxy line along the top of my thinning lashes. The yellowed corner of my eye stuck out like a dingy armpit stain on a cotton-white shirt. So, this is how it ends when your liver finally gives in. A lump of nausea roared its way up in protest. I hear my daughter’s muffled voice in the emergency department of Cedars Sinai, “My mom has a neuroendocrine tumor that has metastasized. She recently completed the first dose of a phase one clinical trial drug. A few days ago, she presented with yellowing eyes and skin. Her blood work showed a spike in bilirubin, and now she is fill...

What Lies Beneath: The Ships Buried Under San Francisco

1Feb

By Azucena RasillaNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks, Feature Pieces

What Lies Beneath: The Ships Buried Under San Francisco

Every day in San Francisco, people walk the city’s streets unaware of the history that our concrete jungle holds in its depths. Little do most people know that roughly 40 ships are buried underneath the Embarcadero and the Financial District, which used to be the city’s original shoreline. Most vessels are remnants of the Gold Rush, left behind by men who arrived in the San Francisco Bay from near and far in search of fortune. Today, the abandoned ships are all around us—a hidden reminder of the city’s history. So much of San Francisco is its relationship to the water. “Other cities have their claims to fame,” said archaeologist James Delgado, who has been studying SF’s ships for decades. “But beneath our streets and sidewalks lie the bones of the Gold Rush city and the decks of sh...

San Francisco’s New Generation of Rock, Revisited

27Jan

By Lucas ThorntonNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Essays

San Francisco’s New Generation of Rock, Revisited

San Francisco is dead. Everyone says so. Everyone's wrong. Out-of-state publications love to decry the state of the City by the Bay, from the spiraling cost of living to the endemic homelessness the city seems powerless to address. Natives grumble that the influx of tech workers has driven them from their neighborhoods and replaced authenticity with artifice. Among non-tech transplants, conversations steer towards when — not if — they plan to leave the Bay Area. A common theme emerges: The city has become too expensive for the music scene and bohemian culture that once attracted as many to its rolling hills as tech does now. San Francisco, once a haven to freaks and outcasts with nowhere left to go, is now seen as the poster child for late capitalist decadence. Yet an attempt...

At SF’s HAUM Yoga, Community and Creativity Find a Warm Home

24Jan

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Queerness

At SF’s HAUM Yoga, Community and Creativity Find a Warm Home

Almost two years in, San Francisco’s queer-owned yoga studio, HAUM — which now has two locations: its original 2973 16th Street wellness hub and the newer studio that took over the former Yoga Tree Stanyan space at 780 Stanyan Street — is cementing its staying power as more than just a workout space. The intersectionalities of queerness and community exist in the same thought — breath and crossroad of self. To be a member of the LGBTQIA+ community is to simultaneously surrender to life outside perceived norms and understand that senses of family and tribe go beyond genetic makeup; the latter-mentioned two collectives can be chosen. Oftentimes, the arts and wellness act as chain links connecting queer people to one another. Such a display was on full show at HAUM’s “Art of Yoga” eve...

After Their Rent Was Doubled, This SF Queer Arts Boutique Needs Your Help

24Jan

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Queerness

After Their Rent Was Doubled, This SF Queer Arts Boutique Needs Your Help

In less than a year, San Francisco's Queer Arts Featured has amassed an enormous following and prestige, but rising operational costs could see the gallery close in the not-so-distant future. Harvey Milk’s legacy lives on in physical glimmers and flickers across San Francisco — including at the SF Bay Area’s busiest airport. Opened in Milk’s former camera shop at 575 Castro Street, Queer Arts Featured — a.k.a. “Queer A.F.” — moved into the space last June; the Castro storefront also formerly housed the former Human Rights Campaign merchandise store for over a decade. Since debuting, the open-space gallery has grown into a communal balm; a showcase for various queer artists to display their works; both an event and learning venue where people can indulge in their creative eccentrici...