Yesterday I went to the reliably hokey Alameda County Fair in my hometown of Pleasanton, California. There is always a lot of fun and odd signage there. My favorite this year was a concession stand that featured a picture of a pig cooking a corn dog. As a friend pointed out, the pig could…
Category: SF Bay Area
The Jean-Paul Gaultier Exhibit is ABSOLUMENT INCROYABLE
Run, don't catwalk, to the Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibit at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. If you have any kind of interest in fashion, you will be blown away by the breadth and incomparable vision of this iconic designer. I just saw it, and I can't wait to go back. Slideshow , after the jump…
All-Styles Hip-hop Dance Battle at City Dance: So Sick! (video)
On Friday, some members of my crew and I went to the City Dance Hip-hop Dance Battle / Showcase / Fundraiser at the City Dance studio in downtown San Francisco. It was a solid four hours of non-stop dancing, showcasing the full-spectrum of hip-hop dance. The event demonstrated for me how interconnected and community-oriented…
Teaching Teens about Citizen Science, Mobile Game Making, and California Ecology
You may have noticed that the volume of my posting here and elsewhere has been way down for the past couple of weeks. That's because I've been head-down, 100% focused on facilitating a teen summer intensive for the California Academy of Sciences. The summer intensive involved giving a group of 13 middle-school youth a…
Letting My Inner Queer Shine with the Freeplay Crew at the SF Pride Festival
Here's the Freeplay Hip-hop Dance Crew doing the latest incarnation of our piece "Turn Turn" at the 2012 San Francisco Pride Festival. We were proud to share the stage at the Asian & Pacific Islander Pavillion with many other awesome acts that day. This was my first SF Pride and I was totally blown…
See Freeplay Dance Crew at SF Pride 2012 on June 24
I'm excited to announce that this coming Sunday, June 24, as part of the San Francisco Pride festivities, my hip-hop crew Freeplay will be performing for the thousands of revelers. We will be performing at about 1:45pm on June 24 at the Asian & Pacific Island LGBT Pride stage, on the corner of Polk and…
A Jaw-dropping Disney Haunted House-inspired Routine by Academy of Villains (video)
Academy of Villains is one of the ill-est hip-hop troupes on the West Coast, hell, in the United States. Here they are tearing up the stage at Body Rock 2012 in San Diego last month. I love the Disneyland Haunted House inspired theme, the perfect music choices, and the ridiculous dancing. But nothing beats…
Visiting the Berkeley Friends Church and Christ-loving Quakers
Today I went to my first "programmed" Quaker Meeting for Worship, at the Berkeley Friends Church. There are many strains of Quakerism, only some fraction of which I am familiar with. One of the largest divisions among Quakers are between the "programmed" and "unprogrammed" Meetings for Worship. "Programmed" for Quakers refers to the kind of…
Baby Ostrich Chasing its “Mother” Tim at the Cal Academy
Here's your daily adorable-ness. A baby ostrich on its first exercise run outdoors chases Tim Steinmetz, resident ostrich (ratite) expert at the California Academy of Sciences. As their first and main caretaker, Tim functions as a mother figure for the ostriches, who are under the Academy's care for a short spell, as part of…
Support SF Gypsy Jazz Band Gaucho’s New CD “Part-Time Sweetheart” (UPDATED)
Gaucho is one of my favorite bands, period. Playing in the gypsy jazz tradition, Gaucho puts out an inspired, Django-esque groove that has been entertaining San Franciscans for years. Some of my favorite nights of dancing has been to Gaucho, who perform every Wednesday at Amnesia Bar in the Mission. Gaucho has a new CD…