San Francisco, CA

Did you know that there are ghosts haunting San Francisco? If you believe in that sort of thing, it makes sense that San Francisco would be a place where spirits would linger since it’s a place that’s filled with rich history and some definite periods of trauma (such as the 1906 Earthquake). Even if you don’t quite believe in the haunted tales, they’re interesting to learn about. Here are some of the places where you can go to learn more about the ghosts of San Francisco:

- The Ghosts of San Francisco - Admittedly I know quite a bit about this book since I’m its author. But I’m not ashamed to spread the word because I worked hard to do a significant amount of research on the topic, relating tales gathered from a variety of different sources.
- San Francisco Ghost Society - This is one of the most extensive resources on ghosts in San Francisco. Make sure to listen to their podcasts which provide a wealth of interesting information.
- Walking Tours - There are walking tours in the area that show off the history and information about ghosts in San Francisco. Learn more from last week’s post on the topic.
- SF Heart’s list of haunted places in San Francisco gives you the brief story about a number of reported ghost sightings. See that here.
- About.com has an interesting article on one specific haunted location in San Francisco: The Queen Anne Hotel.
- Haunted San Francisco: Ghost Stories from the City’s Past is another book about the topic. This one is by Rand Richards.

If you want to get a sense of the creative spirit of San Francisco, you really only need to step outside. It’s in the air. But if you’re seeking something a bit more organized or focused, there are a number of places that you can go to see San Francisco’s artwork. Here are nine choices that you might consider checking out:

1. 111 Minna – This SoMA gallery has some sort of event going on nightly. You can see art while checking out DJs, fashion parties and magazine launches.
2. Cartoon Art Museum – Come on, San Francisco has a cartoon museum; why wouldn’t you go check it out?
3. Clarion Alley in The Mission – This is an actual alley located in the Mission neighborhood. It’s got a changing array of murals and you can often see people working on their art. It’s beautiful and interesting and interactive and wonderful.
4. DeYoung Museum – Located inside of he massively beautiful Golden Gate Park, this museum has all sorts of different stuff going on during different times of the year. Friday nights feature special events at a lower price if you want to see some of the gallery without paying for it all.
5. FLOAT – Well, this one is over in the East Bay but it’s worth noting. It’s actually a flotation center where you can go to immerse yourself in relaxation but there’s a gallery there as well.
6. Gallery 444 – For a smaller art gallery that has some beautiful paintings, this is a good choice.
7. SF Camerawork – This is a non-profit gallery that supports the work of local artists.
8. SFMoMA – There’s a reason that people go check out San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. It’s an amazing art space that has changing exhibits and a lot going on. You can see it for free on the first Wednesday of every month. Or simply go check out the bookstore and the building itself since there’s no charge to do that and it’s pretty neat.
9. Space Gallery – It’s as much a bar as it is an art space and there’s always something interesting going on.

Trying to find something to do this weekend in San Francisco? Here are a few of the things that you might want to check out, starting with events that are happening tonight:

FRIDAY:
• Bluegrass Bonanza (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eve/391117133.html) @ Plough & Stars. Starts at 9 p.m. and costs $6.
• Femina Potens (www.feminapotens.com). New location celebration for this local women’s art gallery.
• Friday Nights @ DeYoung Museum (http://www.thinker.org/deyoung/calendar/day.asp?calendarid=3206&day=8%2F17%2F2007). Circus art and museum exhibits. Starts at 5 p.m. and only costs $5.
• La Leche League Trunk Show (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eve/381143413.html). Starts at noon and goes until four.
• Persian Girls: A Memoir book reading (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eve/388719227.html). Starts at 7 p.m.

SATURDAY:
• Bay Area Tap Festival and Rhythm Exchange. Learn more: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eve/388670130.html.
• Drag King Contest (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eve/389257874.html). Girls will be boys. Starts at 8.
• Hot Mamas on the Mic @ Purple Onion (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eve/390069195.html).
• Juxtapoz magazine party at 111 Minna. Starts at 9 p.m.
• Mission Indie Fest. Designers get together in the Mission to show off their clothing and accessories. 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
• Rock the Bells – The big Rage Against the Machine plus more concert that’s touring is coming here this weekend. Tickets may be available on Craig’s List to the sold out show but they’ll be pricey!
• Roller Derby @ Kezar (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eve/393685610.html) is starting up again. Watch those gals rock!

SUNDAY:
• Summer of Love Celebration in Golden Gate Park. Free concert all day long. Head to Speedway Meadows to be in the midst of the action. Seriously, it’s free and it’s interesting, why list anything else?

If you live, or are planning a visit to San Francisco, you may not be aware that a delicious delight, is manufactured right at your city’s back door.

If you travel east of San Francisco towards Sacramento, there’s a town off the highway called Fairfield, where the gourmat jelly bean, known as Jelly Bellies, is produced. All 50 something flavors for your choosing.

When you get off the highway you will be in a industrial zone with many warehouses and manufacturing centers, I’m assuming.
As you enter the building the company logo is front and center, so you’ll know you are there.

Greeted while waiting for the tour, a worker may approach you and ask if you would like to try a  certain flavor of a “Jelly Belly” jellybean. Which of course you reply, Yes!

You will be led on a guided tour of their factory, and will see the process of these famous little jellybeans being made. From start to labelled and packaged. It’s really quite an interesting tour, with video clips of the history of the company, the jelly belly bean, as well as other candies they produce.

At the end of the 15 minute tour, you can check out their gift and candy shop, to buy your favorite candy, and flavors. They also offer assorted flavors in nice gift boxes. Logo Shirts, caps, the whole nine yards.
If your hungry for more than candy they even have a little restaurant inside, that will serve you up pizza or burgers in the shape of a jelly beans.

Great trip for the kids, with quite a bit of interesting displays of “JellyBelly” portraits of famous people from Ronald Reagan to Elvis Presley.

I was impressed at every turn of the factory tour. Nice place to visit while in San Francisco and I would definitely recommend it for the kid of all ages who loves candy.

San Francisco is a place that’s filled with creativity. As such, there are lots of artistic people here to adore. This is only a partial list but it introduces you to some of the artists I know of in the city who are doing some impressive things:

• Adrian Litman – After over twenty years of working as a commercial artist, Litman switched to doing more of his own stuff and he’s doing it well.
• Clint Imboden – Combining photographer with found object mixed media art, Clint creates works that are worth taking a second look at.
• Ginny Mangrum – Ginny is a local photographer who does black-and-white photos that take public spaces and give you a new perspective on them.
• Jessica Stafford – This mixed media artist with a feminist focus did a series of birth control collages that I found interesting.
• S.N. Jacobson – Jacobson’s photography could be considered risqué but I just see it as beautiful.
• Salma Aratsu – This India-born painter has made San Francisco her home and adds to its beauty with her own artwork.
• Scott Mickelson – Scott’s use of color in his paintings is what really drew me in although his interesting choice of subject matter is also worth noting.

San Francisco is an inspirational place so there are plenty of artists other than these to give your attention to but start here to begin exploring some of the art being created in the city today.

Most people know that there are plenty of activities going on in San Francisco all of the time, but they don’t know where to find out about them. Here are some of my favorite spots for learning about off-the-wall events (and major activities) happening in San Francisco on any given day.

• SF Station: San Francisco’s City Guide – SF Station is the spot that’s got the most listings for various events. It can be overwhelming but they have ways of narrowing down the search results, like letting you check what’s going on any particular day or letting you search by type of event. This is a good spot for finding out about city events like festivals.
• Craigslist calendar – There are all kinds of random things posted on the Craigslist calendar, some of which are worth checking out. You just go to the main page and then click on the date you want to search on the calendar that’s located on the left-hand column of the page. The results are divided into “events” and “classes” so scroll down if you think you might want to learn something on any given day. Really, they’ve got everything from erotic dance classes to learning business marketing techniques.
• Specific venue listings – Oftentimes, I’ll just check the calendar listings for my favorite venues. These include Red Devil Lounge, Café du Nord, and The Independent for music and Space Gallery, 111 Minna and Madrone Lounge for art and other events.
• The social networking calendar sites – There are a lot of people in the city who post events that they’re going to on the various sites so it’s a good way to find out what’s going on. Eventful, Zvents and Upcoming are the ones I use most often.

San Francisco is filled with creative people and that means it’s a city that has got a lot of blogs coming out of it. Which ones are actually worth reading? Here are some of my recommendations (including self-promotion on one of mine – hey, you were warned!)

Do Not Ask Questions. We all know that San Francisco is widely associated with the gay scene. And I hope that we all know about the diversity of creativity that comes from a scene that’s got a wide labeled applied to a very varied group of people. This is a blog by a local guy who is out there dating and relating in the San Francisco gay scene. He is witty, he is insightful, he is filled with life … and he’s totally worth reading.

Tablehopper. If you have any interest at all in San Francisco’s restaurant scene, this is THE blog to check out. Marcia Gagliardi is a freelance food critic in the city so she’s always checking out different restaurants here. She gives you the latest news on openings and closings and other gossip along with her reviews and general SF restaurant news. And she’ll even touch on not-quite-food issues such as the recent case of a woman who was snatching purses in the city. Even if you don’t eat out much, you should live vicariously through her posts.

The SF Weekly Blogs. There’s All Shook Down and The Snitch, which I can only tell you a little bit about since I’ve only recently discovered them. But they give you all kinds of information about the city, primarily in newsy format with that lean towards the alternative.

San Francisco Party Party. Learn about all kinds of events in the city in a way that feels like you’re getting the info from a friend’s email, not from some informative site. It does have occasionally news stuff but in a very non-newsy way.

Design Nurd. Visual people with an interest in the SF art scene will like this one, as it’s image posts of a local artist’s work. He’s one of my favorite creative people in the city and he’s always got interesting stuff on there. It’s total eye candy and inspiration for your imagination.

And finally, there’s San Fran Voice. This is the self-promotion post for my local arts and music blog. But I wouldn’t put it up here if I didn’t think it was worth checking out (believe me, I have other work that I’ve done that I won’t be directing you to anytime soon). Why read it? It’s got interviews with local artists and musicians from all mediums and genres as well as reviews from the local music scene. It’s one of the few places that gives equal opportunity media attention to people who aren’t quite making it in the scene yet but who are playing out around the city.

A couple of weeks ago, I came home and saw that a complimentary issue of 7×7 magazine had been left at my doorstep. In fact, four of them had been left for all of the people in my building. So I picked one up and brought it inside; after all, you don’t ignore free reading material when you’re tripping right over it. But I was kind of wishy-washy about it because I have mixed feelings about 7×7.

See, I’d bought 7×7 before and I thought that it had some interesting articles but not enough to make them worth paying for, so I stuck to reading what they had to offer on their online site and stopped picking up the print magazine. Was the print publication bad? No, not at all. But it wasn’t suited to me. It seemed to be geared more towards people who buy $350 jeans at San Francisco’s designer boutiques than, well, what I can afford on a writer’s budget while living in North Beach. So it was okay, but it didn’t really speak to me.

Nevertheless, I perused the complimentary issue because a free magazine fits in to my budget. And I have to say that 7×7 may not have been a case of love at first sight for me but it was one which made a better impression the second time around. Sometimes you just have to get to know your reading material before you really understand it.

What had initially turned me off was that the first section, Scene and Heard was … well, just a little bit too scene queen for me. I know that I should know the who is who of San Francisco but at the same time, I really don’t care where they were spotted most of the time and that’s what I’d dismissed this section of the magazine as being all about. But when I looked at it a second time, what I saw was that there’s a plethora of information in the captions about a whole bunch of places and functions that are actually somewhat worth knowing about.

And the rest of the magazine seemed to do a turnabout for me, too. Now, I do have to ask you to keep in mind that the free copy that I received was “The Entertainment Issue” and that could have something to do with swaying my opinion. After all, I’m a big fan of the local arts and music scene and some of that was supported in the pages of the magazine. I learned some new names and discovered some new local creativity and I thought that was worth my time.

I do still think that the material of 7×7 is somewhat out of my league. It’s more like what I envision myself reading when I’m in my mid-thirties, having become somehow independently wealthy and am then able to spend my time frequenting the latest day spas and concerning myself with the attendance of local celebrities at SF events. But that’s not all that there is to 7×7. Girls who enjoy girly magazines will probably find that this is a great one for satiating the local hunger in that area. Plus, the photos are great so it’s good for collage-making.

San Francisco is a great place for seeing movies (despite the fact that tickets at the big places cost more than $10 each). You can check out an IMAX film, you can see the newest release in several different spots and there are regularly limited release screenings held here. There are also film festivals galore. But if it’s just any old day and you want to see a film but you want to go to an off-the-beaten-path place to do it, you have options. Here are five movie theaters that you should note for those days when you want to see something unusual but interesting.

1. The Red Vic – The Red Vic is far-and-away my favorite of the independent movie theaters in San Francisco. It’s run by a collective of volunteers who love film. And it doesn’t matter what you see here because the ambience of this one-theater theater is worth the ticket price. You’ll get popcorn in a wooden bowl, comfortable bench-like seating and an interesting movie. Sometimes they’re indie films, sometimes their second-run blockbusters. Often someone affiliated with the film is there for the Q&A. The Red Vic is always a good choice. Films I’ve seen here (with Q&A) included 24 Hours on Craigslist, Mutual Appreciation, and The Plagues and Pleasures of the Salton Sea.

2. Embarcadero – This is an interesting spot because it’s in what basically amounts to a mall and it’s got the ambience of a big name multiplex. But it shows the foreign and independent films that you aren’t likely to see elsewhere. There are usually four films at any given time and you can bet that at least one will be subtitled. The best film I saw here thus far was Shortbus.

3. Castro Theater – This one has history. You can see it in the ornate décor of the theater room. You can hear it in the organ playing live from a spot that rises up above the stage before the movie starts. And you an often know it from the roster of historic films that are playing, although what’s going to be on is really anyone’s guess. The best movies I saw here were during a triple-play of eighties aerobics movies.

4. Clay Theater – Okay, so this is one you have to do a little bit of planning with. Unlike the others, there’s not a film here every day. And there will only be one to choose from. But the place has charm. It’s one big huge theater room. The floor slants and the snack bar is tiny. And the movie is always an interesting one. Films I’ve seen here included Fur and Who Killed The Electric Car?

5. The Dark Room – This one is sort of “one stop shopping” for the creative heart in your chest. They have comedy and plays and other entertainment in addition to film. But they a neat event that makes them worthy of making the list and that is Bad Movie Nite. It’s every Sunday at 8 p.m., it includes a host and it only costs $5. You go to see a movie that you know will be bad, usually part of some theme for the month, and you go because sometimes bad is good.

During a time when I felt like my life was lacking creativity, I went to the local book store to pick up a book of writing prompts. I was hoping to get a creative jumpstart. What I ended up getting was a book that had no prompts but which has inspired me again and again. It’s a book that I’ve quoted multiple times, a book that I pick up now and again just to read a chapter, and a book which I would be happy to recommend.

A Writer’s San Francisco: A Guided Journey For The Creative Soul is a collection of essays by Eric Maisel, a local author and creativity coach. The essays, which share the common subject of life as a writer in San Francisco, are only a few pages each in length. Within these short stories of life in San Francisco, the history of the literary life of the city is revealed.

San Francisco comes alive as you read this book, not because you are being told how to be creative in it but because you are reminded of all of the reasons why San Francisco inspires you. It doesn’t really matter if you are a writer or not. Any creative individual can appreciate the unique beauty that makes San Francisco an artists’ paradise. The scenery and characters of life in this city are a story worth telling and Maisel reminds you of it with every turn of the page.