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School Board to consider plans that would increase inequality in student enrollment
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Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:59:14 +0000
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'Neighborhood schools' are a great idea—unless you have radical economic inequality among neighborhoods. That's The Agenda for Oct. 11-18
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In a speech to the House of Commons in 1947, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously said that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
I have thought about and quoted that statement a lot as I sent two kids through the San Francisco public school system: The SFUSD school assignment system is the worst form of school assignment systems—except for all the others.
It’s complicated: What do you do when neighborhoods in the city are still segregated, both by race and by class, and all students, no matter where they live and what ethnic group they belong to, have the right to a first-rate education—and when SFUSD doesn’t have the money to make every school a top-tier school? How do you decide who goes where?
Coleman Advocates Director Mfalme Mashairi says the district should ‘start from scratch.’ Photo courtesy Coleman Advocates
Add the popularity of language-immersion schools, which thousands more parents want than the district can provide. Then add in the dirty secret of SFUSD funding: Schools that enroll the kids of rich parents raise hundreds of thousands of dollars through their PTAs, and use that money to provide curriculum enrichment and to avoid budget cuts, and none of that money goes to schools with a less-wealthy parent base.
Then add: Wealthier parents, who can organize and give money to groups that push their agendas and help elect School Board members, tend to want to send their kids to neighborhood schools. Sounds great: The parents and kids can walk to school, the kids can meet other kids who live in the same neighborhood, and the local school becomes a neighborhood center.
But that only works if the city’s neighborhoods are not facing radical economic inequality. And they are.
Sadly, neighborhood schools mean segregated schools—not just by race but by class. Wealthy neighborhoods will have great, well-funded schools. The kids whose families and neighbors aren’t rich will lose out—big time.
The current system allows families to apply, under a ranked-choice system, for schools anywhere in the city (with some exceptions). Families from some vulnerable neighborhoods get priority. District data shows that 97 percent of families get one of their choices, and 80 percent get their first choice.
Brandee Marckmann, a board member at the San Francisco Education Alliance, told me, “it’s a bit presumptuous to tell parents whose schools have been attacked by racist disinvestment for years that they can’t try to send their kids to better resourced schools.”
The School Board has been under immense pressure from well-funded parent groups who want neighborhood schools. The board will consider proposals Tuesday/13 that would move the city closer to a system where residents would get a neighborhood school preference.
Under all proposals, families would have some guarantee of access to a school in their defined neighborhood. Access to schools outside of that geographic area would be much more limited.
That would mean more rich kids in schools in wealthier neighborhoods, where parents could raise money for extra enrichment programs, and more isolated, underfunded schools in less wealthy neighborhoods.
Mfalme Mashairi, executive director of Coleman Advocates, told me the School Board should “start from scratch and hold a series of town halls to ask communities what they need.”
The proposals, Mashari told me, would be worse than current system, flawed as it as (and unpopular with rich families as it is). Families in the Southeast part of the city will have less choice and underfunded schools, which wealthier communities will have better opportunities for their kids.
Everyone agrees the best solution is to make sure all schools in the city are fully funded. The state has made that very difficult, by limiting property taxes (Prop. 13) and making it difficult for local governments to pass other sorts of progressive taxes for schools.
If the well-funded groups that say that rich families will abandon the public schools unless they have a neighborhood-based system supported a city income tax, the whole situation might change. But they don’t. None of the parent groups that are pushing this proposal have ever come up with a plan to tax local wealth (including the wealth of their backers) to fund public education.
There’s another element here: The district could insist on a PTA tax, ensuring that some of the money the rich parents raise for their schools also goes to help the underfunded schools. I have suggested this repeatedly, as a journalist and as a public-school parent. Hardly anyone wants to even discuss it.
The School Board meeting starts at 6:30pm, at 555 Franklin.
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Best of the Bay 2026 Editors’ Pick: Golden State Valkyries
2026/10/best-of-the-bay-2026-editors-pick-golden-state-valkyries/
Sun, 11 Oct 2026 14:15:42 +0000
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Fresh WNBA expansion team hits the finals in their second season—and sparks a wellspring of Violet Pride from Ballhalla Stans.
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We’re celebrating Best of the Bay 2026 with a multitude of Editors’ Picks of things we love. Please join us at our 13th Annual Gala on October 27 to celebrate even more!
The Bay is buzzing right now with news that our first big league women’s basketball team is headed to the WNBA finals. It’s been an astronomical rise. In 2025, the same year the Oakland Athletics moved into the 15,000-capacity Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, home of the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, the Golden State Valkyries made their highly anticipated debut at San Francisco’s Chase Center. The team defied typical expansion-team struggles, finishing 23-21 and becoming the first expansion franchise in WNBA history to make the playoffs in its debut season.
Valkyries fans at Chase Center July 18. Photo by D.A. Mission
But that transmittable energy, the effect they had immediately on Bay Area fans, was electric. Anyone who commutes on BART in the early and late parts of the evening that inaugural season witnessed something a bit different. That Valkyrie Violet kept popping up, appearing in droves of fans, boarding the train either after another Golden State Valkyrie win or still quite excited despite a close loss. Either way, Valkyrie Fever took over the city and never relinquished its grip. But to change the vibe during the evening’s BART commute?
Valkyries play Mystics at Chase Center, July 18. Photo by D.A. Mission
That’s sacred. Filling that ride, which at times can be a bit of a snog, with pride and enthusiasm. The Valkyries have invigorated the professional women’s basketball fan base ever since. Adding more success to the Bay Area sports landscape. Rikki’s, San Francisco’s first women’s sports bar, located right in the Castro district—and winner of Best of the Bay 2025 Best Sports Bar—opened in June 2025 and has not looked back.
Valkyries play Mystics at Chase Center, July 18. Photo by D.A. Mission
Bay Area promoters Noise Pop and Do The Bay have engineered downtown evening events around watching those Valkyries. Valkyries Pride fills the streets. Chase Cater has been unofficially renamed “Ballhalla.” Women’s basketball is the hottest ticket in the city from June to October, and we’re all the better for it.
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Best of the Bay 2026 Editors’ Pick: Far Out Gallery
2026/10/best-of-the-bay-2026-editors-pick-far-out-gallery/
Sun, 11 Oct 2026 12:27:59 +0000
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Perched amid the mists of Outer Sunset, a plucky space opens the doors of the art world to creatives in need.
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We’re celebrating Best of the Bay 2026 with a multitude of Editors’ Picks of things we love. Please join us at our 13th Annual Gala on October 27 to celebrate even more!
When Ann Herbst and Peter Munks opened their gallery on Taraval and 40th Avenue, right across the street from Walgreens, they thought of calling it Walnut. That name didn’t seem quite right—and somebody suggested Far Out West Gallery. They adopted it, minus the “West”—being able to run with the acronym FOG seemed fitting so close to the misty shores of Ocean Beach.
Herbst, a painter who got both her BFA and MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute, decided to open the gallery in 2015 for a few reasons. She was in her 50s, was feeling stalled-out in her own art career, and her father had recently died (her mother passed away too, a week before the gallery opened.) When a spot three blocks from her house opened up, she felt it was time to make a bold move.
At first, Herbst thought that she might use the space as a studio, but a commitment to supporting other artists inspired her to use it to house a gallery instead. Once a year, she puts out a call for artists to exhibit in a group show, free of any jury process or fee. This is decidedly not how most galleries operate.
Herbst used to feel relegated to the perimeter of the art world herself, and anintroverted nature made it difficult to sell her work. Now, she loves to champion other artists’ work and says it’s a triumph when someone who first comes into the gallery thinking of art as something that only exists in museums, buys something for their home.
For the past 11 years, Herbst’s partner, Munks, a musician, has supported her with whatever she needs to make the gallery an accessible and welcoming place. That now includes a singing circle on Sundays—and outpourings of artistic camaraderie to spare.
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In ‘Character Development,’ personae made of monsters, makeup, and dark magic
2026/10/in-character-development-personae-made-of-monsters-makeup-and-dark-magic/
Sat, 10 Oct 2026 19:57:25 +0000
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Kadist and Minnesota Street Projects team up for an exhilarating video show that examines layers of self.
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Lately it’s been challenging to write art reviews in San Francisco. As numerous journalists have reported, the closure of galleries and schools has made the arts landscape seem rather bleak. After Kadist, an international arts organization and collection, shuttered its Mission gallery earlier this year and a number of prominent galleries have vacated the gallery complex at Minnesota Street Projects (MSP), the two have teamed up for the exhilarating exhibition “Character Development” (through October 31).
Kadist’s inaugural director, Joseph del Pesco, is now its Americas director, guiding the organization’s programming from North to South America. In his first local curatorial project after returning to the Bay Area, del Pesco showcases six exceptional videos by national and international artists from Kadist’s own collection and, refreshingly, beyond its holdings. Installed at 1201 Minnesota Street, the large video projections capitalize on the dark cavernous project space, making it one of its most successful installs to date.
Within the works, many of the artists borrow elements from their lives as artists or everyday lives, while also pushing the parameters of self by adopting characters or personas. As the artists blur borders between fiction and reality, Korakrit Arunanondchai’s and Alex Da Corte’s videos captivatingly use strong references to horror films and ritual to push the emotional desire for emotional or psychic connection.
From Korakrit Arunanondchai’s ‘Unity for Nostalgia’ at ‘Character Development’
Based in Brooklyn and Bangkok, Korakrit Arunanondchai presents a two-channel video called “Unity for Nostalgia” (2025), which fuses traditional Thai references, horror films, and the global art world. Appearing as an artist with footage of a Thai contemporary art biennial, Arunanondchai also crosses over into a world where he attempts to conjure the ghost of a large monkey with five glowing green eyes.
In Arunanondchai’s dark film, orange filters, thermal imaging, the fire of candles, and a burning effigy radiate heat and evoke cycles of destruction and rebirth. The video dives into the macabre with a troop of macaques nibbling on a life-like replica of the artist’s face, and scenes of bloody, writhing bodies. As ritual moves between embracing Thai tradition and the visceral uncomfortableness of dark magic, Arunanondchai proposes a fluidity between the two.
In contrast to Arunanondchai’s chiaroscuro world, Philadelphia-based Alex Da Corte slowly makes and unmakes himself as Frankenstein on an austere white set in “Slow Graffiti” (2017). With shot-by-shot references to Jørgen Leth’s quasi-anthropological black-and-white short “The Perfect Human” (1967), Da Corte’s transformation mirrors the ritual of Leth’s sartorial man and woman preening themself for the evening. In watching Da Corte slowly apply prosthetics, makeup, and clothes, the directness of his transformation imparts a vulnerability.
From Alex Da Corte’s ‘Slow Graffiti’ in ‘Character Development’
In contrast to the beautiful couple presented in Leth’s film, Frankenstein’s/Da Corte’s languid body lying on the floor, dancing to a silent song, and eating a solitary dinner, evoke deep empathy for the misunderstood and maladapted.
Additionally, Da Corte’s video strongly evokes the iconic monster movie actor and star of three Frankenstein films Boris Karloff. Born William Henry Pratt, the actor was split between the numerous horrifying cinematic characters that brought him fame; his expansive professional stage life as “Karloff,” which extended beyond the horror genre; and his off-stage “Pratt” life. As De Corte evokes Karloff’s many layers of self, image, and profession, the artist impart another level of mixed realities.
Embracing fiction and artifice, Arunanondchai’s and Da Corte’s works hold space for the incomprehensible and unresolved. Astutely, the artists use the horror genre as a guise to address the layers of contemporary global culture and the lines between beauty and the monstrous.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT through October 31 at 1201 Minnesota Street, SF. More info here.
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Imperial Teen: ‘We refuse not to be hot’
2026/10/imperial-teen-we-refuse-not-to-be-hot/
Sat, 10 Oct 2026 17:55:13 +0000
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With 'All Over You,' the indie pop heroes show they're still playful, restless, and frequently horny, three decades in.
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Three decades into indie-pop group Imperial Teen’s career, vocalist-guitarist Will Schwartz has no interest in acting his age.
That seems particularly appropriate for All Over You, the San Francisco-born quartet’s seventh studio album (out Oct. 9 on Merge Records).
The release, which the band’s promoting with a Bottom of the Hill performance on Thu/15, is playful, restless, physical, and frequently horny, wrapping observations about aging, creativity, and the music business in the fuzzy guitars, buoyant melodies, and overlapping vocals that have long defined Imperial Teen.
Even its title is deliberately suggestive. Are you all over someone—totally over them—or coming all over them?
“I think that’s why we chose it, because it does have all those interpretations,” Schwartz says, coyly.
First single “Overdrive” makes the point more explicitly—or at least more sensually. Schwartz sings, “I just want to get you in the bad light, light you up like a cigarette,” though he pushes back against describing the song as overtly sexual.
“I’d say it’s more like sensuality,” he says.
More interesting to Schwartz is the assumption that pop music, sexuality, and visual self-display necessarily belong to the young.
On Imperial Teen’s two previous records, the band became conscious of getting older and sometimes responded by stepping back from the foreground.
But that self-consciousness appears to have evaporated. “At this point, we made the video for ‘Overdrive,’ and we’re all in it,” says Schwartz. “And yeah, we’re a little older, but I feel like there’s still a sexiness.”
Later, talking about the band’s recent shows, Schwartz puts it more succinctly: “We just refuse not to be hot.”
That attitude has roots in San Francisco, where Imperial Teen formed in the mid-’90s. Schwartz arrived after growing up on the East Coast and in Beverly Hills, attending NYU, struggling with drugs, getting sober, and eventually heading north for an internship at Kiki Gallery, the influential queer art space founded by artist, activist, and cultural impresario Rick Jacobsen.
San Francisco offered something he hadn’t experienced before.
“It just felt like freedom—a sexual awakening,” he says. “I didn’t have anybody watching me, like I did when I’d have to go see my family in LA for the holidays.”
Schwartz didn’t come out to his family until his thirties. In San Francisco, however, he found himself surrounded by queer art and performance.
Beyond Kiki Gallery, he remembers The Bearded Lady, Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint, and seeing performers like MX Justin Vivian Bond and Joan Jett Blakk in a city where queerness seemed to exist in the open.
“There was just all this queer performance and art, and we absorbed it,” says Schwartz.
At the same time, underground and alternative music were pushing toward the mainstream. Nirvana, Hole, Sonic Youth, the Breeders, and other bands demonstrated that pop and rock could accommodate identities and aesthetics that had previously been kept at the margins.
“And Roddy was very out there,” Schwartz says of bandmate Roddy Bottum. “He was just like, ‘Yeah, I’m gay,’ and there really wasn’t anybody else doing that in pop or alternative music.”
Schwartz was younger and initially less comfortable defining himself publicly. When a Spin Magazine interviewer asked whether he was gay, Schwartz wasn’t ready to answer.
“So I gave him a quote: ‘I’m tri-sexual. I’ll try anything sexual,’” he recalls. “I had a sense of ambiguity for the first couple of years.”
Eventually, he decided the vagueness itself had become ridiculous. In a 1998 San Francisco Chronicle interview, he finally embraced the “gay” label.
Imperial Teen nevertheless encountered the limits of the supposedly liberated alternative-rock era. Schwartz recalls radio stations refusing to play the soon-to-be inescapable “Yoo Hoo,” even as the band appeared poised for greater mainstream exposure.
“We were still marginalized as a band, because that’s what the period was,” he says.
Three decades later, the cultural landscape has changed dramatically, but so has San Francisco. Schwartz no longer experiences the city as quite the same refuge he encountered in the ’90s.
“SF is in a really weird space,” he says. “There’s so much income inequality and then the tech thing, and so it seems harder to have that sense of a queer art scene.”
That makes Imperial Teen’s upcoming Bottom of the Hill show especially poignant. The band has been playing the club since the ’90s, and this gig comes as the venue approaches closure at the end of the year.
“I just thought it would be a special thing to play there,” says Schwartz. “It’s just like a marker of the end of an era.”
For a band whose members now live in different cities, simply getting everyone into the same room has become an achievement. Schwartz, Bottum, Jone Stebbins, and Lynn Truell still make Imperial Teen records collaboratively, in various combinations, which means songs can take years to complete.
“It’s really hard to get together because everyone’s so fucking busy,” Schwartz says. “So it takes us, from the conception to the actual finished mix, forever to do it because we have to be really intentional to make it happen.”
What has changed most dramatically is everything required after the music is finished. All Over You arrives in an industry dominated by social media and a seemingly bottomless appetite for content.
“It’s all about creating these little vignettes or these visual representations of the music somehow… and just having these short-attention-span assets to promote the album,” says Schwartz.
Not everyone in Imperial Teen is equally enthusiastic about feeding the beast. So Schwartz is searching for a middle ground: something spontaneous enough to satisfy the demands of social media without becoming phony.
A quickly shot backstage video for “All Over You” provided an answer. It wasn’t particularly polished or well thought out, Schwartz says, but it felt like them.
Now that the album is done, Imperial Teen will take it on the road, beginning with West Coast dates and continuing through the East Coast before more shows next spring and summer.
For Schwartz, the future beyond that remains intentionally unsettled. He may make another non-Imperial Teen record. He may resurrect his 2000s side project, Hey Willpower, for a few performances. He knows only that he likes to give himself something new to pursue.
That impulse may explain why Imperial Teen has lasted. All Over You sounds like four people who still find something unpredictable in one another—and who reject the notion that growing older requires becoming respectable, sexless, or nostalgic.
As Schwartz puts it, “I think queer people just refuse to not be hot.”
IMPERIAL TEEN Thu/15. Bottom of the Hill, SF. More info here.
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OPINION: It’s all about male power
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Sat, 10 Oct 2026 02:08:23 +0000
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Lurie, Wiener, and Mandelman should be required to listen to anybody who would like to tell them how it feels to be deep-faked, mocked, and sexually harassed
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With epidemic sexual assault by powerful political men and the widespread use of artificial intelligence to confuse voters, it especially hurts when the alleged perpetrators are from your own community. You don’t have to be Jewish to be appalled when gay Jewish state Senator Scott Weiner questions the citizenship and mocks the accent of his naturalized American immigrant opponent, Supervisor Connie Chan. You don’t have to be gay to be saddened when gay Jewish café owner and former District 8 Supervisor candidate Manny Yekutiel was accused of sexual assault.
It was astonishing for Jews and gentiles alike that Jewish Mayor Daniel Lurie would endorse Yekutiel after a credible allegation of sexual assault. You don’t have to be a man or a woman or LGBTQI to be horrified that the gay Jewish President of the Board of Supervisors Rafael Mandelman seems to feel that gay men do not believe in consent in the same way as women.
The author at the Bar on Dolores. Photo by Michael Nguyen
How can Jews and gay men do these things when they are living in a world that increasingly targets them, using sophisticated technology? Doesn’t Weiner know that Jews are being held responsible for the mythical theory that we are conspiring to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants such as Chan? Doesn’t Yekutiel recognize that Jews are seen as being cunning sexual predators? Or that Lurie, a millionaire businessman, is validating the belief that Jews only are interested in their own money and power? What if it has nothing to do with being Jewish or gay?
Mandelman’s suggestion that consent is different for gay men than for women may be key to answering all those questions. Take out the word “gay” and one is left considering if consent for sex is different for men than it is for women.
Sadly, Mandelman is right. I believe it is different, as we live in a society where being a cis-gendered woman or transwoman or a drag queen or a sissy implies consent. Like the stereotype of the “loud and pushy Jew” it isn’t about being a Jew, it’s about being a man.
Though I am not a woman or a gay man, I too have seen how slickly and quickly men can perpetrate sexual violence. At my tenth high school reunion, I noticed how the previously awkward looking boys had grown up. When a Jewish male classmate approached me drunkenly to admire my outfit (an electric blue dress), I was at first bemused. Then he said “I’m gonna see if these are real” and thrust his hand down my dress to grope me. I froze and convinced myself to chuckle that he found my look convincing.
It wasn’t until I read about Yekutiel’s alleged behavior that I realized: He was aroused because he was expressing dominance by humiliating me in public as though I was a woman. I also thought that perhaps because he was disinhibited and really gay. Regardless, I am haunted by the fact that if he was doing this surrounded by multiple witnesses what does he do behind closed doors? It also didn’t feel like assault because he was smiling and because he is, like me and Manny Yekutiel, a white Jew.
Scott Weiner’s cyberbullying also appears to be obsessed by his opponent saying “no”. Weiner’s campaign and his funders are stuffing San Francisco mailboxes with flyers and booklets to show Connie Chan saying “No” to Weiner’s policies. A van was parked on a major street with a fake mailbox and a large sign asserted that they had to live in their vehicle because Chan hates housing. (The owner of that van, Conor Johnston, does not, to our knowledge, live in his vehicle.) To her credit, Chan has not responded by saying that Weiner hates poor people or women or Asian Americans.
When asked at a debate about his chatbot cyberbullying, Weiner apologized to Chan but did not acknowledge that putting humiliating words in the mouth of a naturalized Asian American citizen has risked the safety of many of San Franciscans, while Trump’s secret police are sending immigrants to concentration camps and bragging about being held liable for sexual assault. Weiner claims to oppose those policies while taking money from the billionaire AI industry.
Yekutiel is not entitled to anyone’s body, and though he has denied the allegations, he has said that perhaps he drank too much, and he was going to end his campaign and “work on himself.” It seems unlikely that he will face any charges, as he hosted the district attorney in his café after being credibly accused of sexual assault and never lost his endorsement from the Police Officer’s Association.
Mandelman is termed out of office in San Francisco and hopes to be elected as a state representative. I would like to tell him face-to-face that telling gay men that they can expect to be assaulted for going to a party is truly disturbing, but I am not going into any space with him alone.
I wish my gay Jewish nurse colleague was still alive to go with me. His name is Lloyd Sonley and I worked with him on the AIDS ward at San Francisco General Hospital. He was a leather queen and a BDSM enthusiast and an exemplar of non-toxic masculinity. He very sweetly offered to show me his dungeon and only giggled when I politely declined. Sonley could have taught Yekutiel and Mandelman and Weiner how to play safely. He would not take kindly to fuzzy lines of consent.
Mandelman, Lurie and Weiner should be censured for their words and actions that have endangered many more people than Connie Chan and the three men who alleged sexual assault. I think they should be required to listen to anybody who would like to tell them how it feels to be deep-faked, mocked, and sexually harassed.
These powerful men seem to feel that they should be believed, not survivors. They believe they are entitled to our bodies and our votes. This is not about policy differences; it is about hatred fueled by AI and billionaires. Their actions may be nothing personal for them. It’s very personal for the rest of us.
Sasha is a retired registered nurse who was the first boy elected as homecoming princess at Montgomery Blair High School in 1977. Sasha worked at the AIDS ward at San Francisco I-will-never-call-it-Zuckerberg General Hospital.
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BIG WEEK: Psyched! Fest, Other Minds, Sex Pistols, High on Fire, Electric Fields…
2026/10/big-week-psyched-fest-other-minds-sex-pistols-high-on-fire-electric-fields/
Fri, 09 Oct 2026 18:02:03 +0000
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Final Girl, Unseen Visions, Oklava Cafe, Derya Yildirim, Assimilation, Never After Dark, more to do!
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This week is a quickie Big Week, because we just put out our 52nd edition of Best of the Bay! Check out the winners for some great suggestions on where to go and what to eat. And grab tickets for our 13th Annual Gala and Best of the Bay Party on October 27!
GENERAL ARTSMarke B. keeps an eye and ear and everything else out.
THROUGH SUN/11: OTHER MINDS FESTIVAL Contemporary and experimental music are alive and well in the Bay Area, and this annual gathering—it’s 30th—bolsters the scenes with performances and debuts by avant-jazz pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, guitar/electronics and drums duo Foreign/Domestic, Black electronic music scholar and hero King Britt, 79-year-old “sovereign of embodied minimalism” Charlemagne Palestine, and many more. Brava Theatre, SF. More info here.
FRI/9 + SAT/10: “UNSEEN VISIONS: A NEW AGE MUSIC AND CULTURE SYMPOSIUM” New Age music long ago beat back accusations of schlock and has become a lifeline to many in the age of machines. “Celebrate the pioneers of New Age music and media at this two-day symposium, featuring performances by Robert Rich, Steven Halpern, Kat Epple(Emerald Web), and Larkin, with visuals by Ken Jenkins; screenings of visionary films by Jordan Belson, Jeanette Stobie, and Dorothy Fadiman; and presentations by scholars Erik Davis (TechGnosis, High Weirdness), Continuum dancer/artist Georgianne Cowan, and Jacob Smith (Bridge to an Unseen Shore: New Age Music as Visionary Art).” Gray Area, SF. More info here.
SAT/10: ELECTRIC FIELDS This free, all-ages, outdoor dance party at Golden Gate Park Bandshell from outstanding party crew Green Gorilla Lounge brings some fantastically diverse tunes from the likes of Reggae Jams, Discoseo, Ledet & J Key, Carrieondisco, and Dj M3 & Dj Cira. Pack a picnic basket and some dancing shoes and let the sonic wind blow through your hair. Yes, there’s an afterparty! 1pm-6pm, Golden Gate Bandshell, SF. More info here.
SUN/11-NOVEMBER 6: PSYCHED! FEST Fabulously independent Psyched! FM Radio is putting on this lollapalooza of a “festival arts, music, diversity, and counterculture” that takes over venues on both sides of the Bay for almost a month, bringing gonzo lineups including Peaches, Allah-Las, DIIV, DJ X’ces, Illuminati Hotties, Pixel Grip, Carrion Kids, Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto, Buena Vista Orchestra, and so many more. So stoked to have another indie fest happening that doesn’t feel co-opted by corporatism. Let’s get Psyched! More info here.
WED/14: SEX PISTOLS: 50 YEARS OF PUNK Legends Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock long ago replaced pissy conservative jerk Johnny Rotten (who, unfortunately, still puts on a good show of his own in Public Image Limited) with Frank Carter, and fans seem to be just as into it. “God Save the Queen” has never felt more comfortably nostalgic, but you can bet there will be more than a whiff of that old punk energy in the air. 8:30pm, Warfield, SF. More info here.
High on Fire
MUSICHit up John-Paul Shiver’s Under the Stars column for great tunes and shows every week.
FRI/9: HIGH ON FIRE A name, a brand forever attached to “redrafting” what a high-velocity metal power trio can do. High On Fire, the nationally recognized and Bay Area-beloved outfit, is touching down in Berkeley this Friday. When the New York Times descends from its throne and launches, earplugs in, into the sweaty pit to declare you the “sludgy resin from 30 years of super-hard-rock history,” somehow your heresy, bombast, and hall-of-fame heaviness have become literally etched in stone. Not too bad. Come early to support bands Windhand and Penury. 7pm, UC Theatre, Berkeley. More info here.
SUN/11: DERYA YILDIRIM & GRUP ŞİMŞEK PLUS THEE MARLOES This is the type of show we refer to around these parts as a ‘two-fer.’ We earmarked Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek last month. They’re the ’70s Turkish funk, acid rock, and psychedelic soul outfit that takes Anatolian folk songs and flips them into evergreen melodies with retro grooves. Shot through a prism of hallucinatory ’70s vibes? Essentially, they slap. HARD. But we missed Thee Marloes. Cousin. This Indonesian trio pulls off both neo-soul and psych-soul while still infusing that energy and appeal of jazz and pop. This IS an Outernational night of sound that SF bookers just love to curate. On this Sunday? Oh, the Chapel gotcha back. 7pm, The Chapel, SF. More info here.
A Turkish treat from Oklava
FOOD & DRINKTamara Palmer’s weekly Good Taste column tells you where to stick your fork.
OKLAVA CAFE July brought the debut of Palo Alto’s Oklava Cafe into San Francisco’s Saluhall—the owners are also behind SoMa’s nearby Turquaz Cafe, which opened in 2025. Both places lead with pastry cases full of housemade and imported sweets, but also excel at savory breakfasts and flatbreads. Like Turquaz, having Oklava—and its Turkish coffee—right near Muni in the city will make me generate reasons to be in the neighborhood and grab a snack and drink. 945 Market Street, SF. More info here.
‘Final Girl’
STAGECharles Lewis III checks out theaters and performance spaces every week in the Drama Masks column.
SAT/10: MISFIT CABARET’S FINAL GIRL Can you imagine what would happen if the sexy victim of a masked killer not only fought back, but had a catchy new song to go along with the fight? Wonder no more! Kat Robichaud’s bawdy burlesque showcase flips the script on high school horror victims, and the slashers who love them. Joining her little sleepover are burlesque stars Ashanti Altovese and Riley, drag star Meatflap, and pole-dancer Jessikr. With a line-up like that, it beats waiting around for The Great Pumpkin to show up.7pm, Great American Music Hall, SF. Further information here.
WED/14 THROUGH NOVEMBER 8: WORD FOR WORD PRESENTS ASSIMILATION EL Doctorow’s tale of a green-card marriages is just one-of-the-two stories in Word for Word’s show about compromised values. Doctorow’s story is paired with Tatyana Tolstaya’s “Smoke & Shadows,” in which a Russian professor living in the US starts to wonder if their adoptive new home is erasing their cultural identity. Directed by local talent Rotimi Agbabiaka, both stories force readers (now audience members) to examine their own personal boundaries and ask when adjusting to circumstance means losing your true self. Z Space, SF. Further information here.
FILMDennis Harvey’s long-running Screen Grabs has tons more flicks to recommend.
OPENING FRI/9: NEVER AFTER DARK This twisty horror thriller avoids genre cliches by mixing both supernatural and serial-killer elements in an effectively matter-of-fact way. Airi (Moeka Hoshi) is a loner who travels from gig to gig, albeit not strictly solo—she has a late sister whose ghost only she can see and speak to. Gifted with paranormal abilities, her unique profession is “to help souls come unstuck and move on to the next world.” That’s now led her to a remote former hotel recently acquired as a private home by a somewhat ditzy widow, who’s been frightened by appearances of a restless spirit. Overriding her adult son’s skepticism, she’s hired Airi, who promptly banishes the two in order to get down to work. Almost immediately, specters and poltergeist-like disturbances reinforce the client’s claims. Jaded Airi begins to grasp that these hauntings might be trying to warn about something else: A “flesh and blood monster” very much to be feared. New People, SF. More info here.
The post BIG WEEK: Psyched! Fest, Other Minds, Sex Pistols, High on Fire, Electric Fields… appeared first on 48 hills.
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Good Taste: Firenectar is a chef’s secret weapon
2026/10/good-taste-firenectar-is-a-chefs-secret-weapon/
Fri, 09 Oct 2026 01:44:18 +0000
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A flavor-bombed pie wit