Results tagged “holiday”

         

A few images from last night's Day of the Dead procession in the Mission.

Something called "Take Back Halloween: Part One" will go down at the Embarcadero this year. Brought to you by the same folks behind FlashDance and Black Rock Roller Disco, the All Hallow's Eve party is, we assume, a non-city-sanctioned event, thus it should promise to be a fun one. (Though, this could be a clever ruse by the city to get people to a locale other than the Castro. Hm. Crafty.)

Looking to cause mayhem and hate in the Castro this Halloween, teenagers? Look elsewhere. (SFist's official stance on Halloween in the Castro's ruination is this: scary, scary teenagers are to blame. They always are.) The Castro is, once again, not having a massive bash on Halloween night. SFGate has the police department's official press release. Ahem:

Holy Great Pumpkin, folks! That there on the left is one large gourd, eh? So much so, in fact, that it was awarded first prize at the annual Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival. On Saturday, Don Young of Des Moines, Iowa, beat around 80 or so contenders with the 1,658-pound, 5-feet-4 tall monstrosity above.

On Sunday night, Gov. Schwarzenegger (finally!) signed Sen. Mark Leno's Harvey Milk bill, one that would create Harvey Milk Day. "He really saw this signing as a way to honor the gay community in California," spokesman Aaron McLear told CNN in an interview. Milk's "day of significance," however, would not close schools or state offices; but will, presumably, fill bars and clubs in the Castro next year. Harvey Milk Day will be officially celebrated on May 22, Milk's birthday.

We brought this up in yesterday's Day Around the Bay, but this newfangled holiday sounds so special, it deserves its very own post. What are we talking about? Newsom's lovely hair. Going back to the days when SF Weekly used to pull public stunts, the folks at China Basin devised the first ever "Comb Your Hair Like Gavin Newsom Day," happening this Friday.

The fantastic and fantastically brilliant @rebecca_f informs us of a most important day happening tomorrow: Women Tweeting Women Day. And it goes a little something like this: "the idea is to post information about inspiring women throughout the day. On Twitter please use the hashtag #wtw09 when tweeting about the inspiring women in your life." Also acceptable: Twitter updates about yogurt, dark chocolate, and/or husbands who won't get off the couch. [via Viva La Feminista]

Yesterday, EQCA and Senator Mark Leno (D-SF) delivered somewhere around 40,000 petitions "with names of Californians from every part of the state," demanding Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to -- finally! -- sign into law the Leno's Harvey Milk Day Bill. Schwarznegger initially vetoed a similar bill after erroneously assuming that Harvey Milk was only important to a smattering of residents in San Francisco -- i.e., the gays in the Castro. (How very wrong he was.)

This is our last chance to make the Harvey Milk Day bill law. Now that the Assembly has approved Mark Leno's bill to make Harvey Milk Day a state holiday, it will be on the Governor’s desk by next week. The far (and often effective) right, however, wants you to know that homosexuals indoctrinate children, and that Milk was a raging pedophile -- both of which are lies.

The US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has officially declared this week National Farmers Week. Farmers markets are "important nationwide outlets for agricultural producers." What's more, thousands of farmers markets offer "consumers affordable, convenient, and healthful products sold directly from the farm in their freshest possible state," which benefit people tenfold, economy- and health-wise. Most of us already know about the bigwig farmers markets in the Bay Area (e.g., Ferry Building, Civic Center, Noe Valley), but there are more of them out there. To find the farmers market nearest you, visit apps.ams.usda.gov.

Did you today is System Administrator Appreciation Day? It is. And did you know that most of you should show them more respect than you do? It's true. They're the smarties you call, angrily, after you fill up your system with crap MP3s, never delete your emails, refuse to write down any error codes whatsoever, ignore their important emails, demand them to make your orange iMac laptop "go faster," and never seem to invite to after-hour drinks with your colleagues. Read more about how bad you treat your system administrator here, stop acting stupid, and then go get them a box of donuts, you jerk. But to all the system admins out there, we salute you! [via Laughing Squid]

Wait, you're at work today? On this Independence Day work-week holiday?

                                          

Despite the searing chill in the air, the annual Carnaval festival in the Mission was a vibrant smash. Noted photog Ted Weinstein captured the color and glorious garishness of yesterday's Carnaval parade. (Seriously, these are some amazing images Weinstein snapped up.)

                                   

Originally held on Lombard Street, the BYOBW (Bring Your Own Big Wheel) Race has since moved to the somewhat more (or less?) twisty terrain on Potrero Hill at Vermont and 20th streets. This weekend, daredevils came in droves with their own Big Wheel or fun-size riding device (e.g., an office chair) to plunge down one of San Francisco's steepest hills. Here are some images from Sunday's breathtaking race. Enjoy.

                     

The Sisters of Perpetual (over 200 of them!) are all over town this weekend. Thank God. On Friday, the nuns had a 30th birthday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

What better way to celebrate Good Friday than be getting good and smashed. And tonight's fourth annual Easter themed bar crawl, the Bad Bunny Bar Crawl, will do the trick. While you should try dressing up like a bunny, rabbit attire isn't required to have a festive night. What is required is a strong liver and a desire to start off the holiday weekend early.

                 

Why was downtown so congested on Saturday afternoon? Because of the annual St. Patrick's Day parade. Here are a few images of the cloyingly family-friendly festivities that took place that day. You'll find images of Gavin and Jen, David Chiu, an increasingly handsome Ross Mirkarimi, gingers, the elusive SF blue-collar worker, and more.

We plan on celebrating first day of Lent by burning a verboten Duraflame log under the duress of a doctor-prescribed Vicodin.

"Museum of Broken Relationships" Popular Croatian art exhibit featuring love-stained artifacts from anonymous folks who failed at love. The exhibit showcases objects of heartbreak such as teddy bears and photos, but also bizarre examples like leg prosthesis and a gall stone. Read more about it here.

For those of you giving gifts this year to honor the alleged birth of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, hered is a small list of places to hit if you're pressed for last-minute gifts.

         

Santacon, or Santarchy, happened over the weekend. People dressed up as St. Nick got drunk and roamed the streets of San Francisco.

In honor of Jewish Christmas -- which is today, right? or ended yesterday? or maybe in a couple of weeks? who's to say?! -- we feel pressed to remind you that February 2, 2009, is Official Hug a Jew Day.

          

After a few drinks at Otis (yes, Otis) the other night, local photographer Darwin Bell and SFist stumbled around Union Square to capture images of the holiday windows now trying to grab your attention and your cash. And except for a clumsy Benetton window, most of them are festive and shiny and fashion forward-y. Or at least trying to be.

With Thanksgiving a little over a week away, and before we list the top restaurants for turkey dinners, remember that the SF Food Bank needs you help. With over 300 tons of food (!) moved through their warehouse every week, this fine local organization needs assistance sorting and packaging meals for distribution.

When some of us were still young boys but already chronic insomniacs, we began to demonstrate a talent for obsessive list making. While some precocious and intelligent children stayed up past their bedtimes reading The Red Badge of Courage under the covers with a flashlight, we spent those wee hours making never-ending lists of things that we desired with an all-consuming passion: rooms filled with trampolines, shopping sprees at K.B. Toys (we were obsessed with the idea of having a shopping spree anywhere, really; it could have been at Sears for all we cared), comprehensive psychoanalysis--- the list literally went on and on.

Did you know the Home for Halloween campaign, the effort to get unsavory elements out of the Castro during Halloween night, is still in effect? It is. And their site -- which features a concerned, bejeweled black man all aghast, paired with a selection of autumnal squashes -- will tell you that the Castro is a no-go this year.

As we mentioned last March, Halloween in the Castro as you knew it has been canceled. Boo. The City's official Halloween celebration will instead move to SOMA in the parking lot of AT&T Park. It seems this year's bash will "include an early evening, free gathering for kids and a more adult-friendly, paid event later in the evening, which will feature local musicians and artists." The Entertainment Commission, sigh, is also looking to put on a party at Pier 39. How the city will pay for the event marketing, whether or not booze will be sold, and if gang rapes will see an all-time high on Stillman Street is still up in the air. But we do know that the Castro will probably end the being the place to be again come 10/31.

While only nine cities in the Bay Area allowed to sell "safe and sane" fireworks (i.e., sparklers, fountains, snakes, and flowers [psst, you can totally turn the latter into a mini bottle rocket by drilling a small hole in the end of the cylinder]), one of those cities, Watsonville, might curb their fiery Fourth of July fun. According to the Merc, a ban on the sale of fireworks in Watsonville might take place since the area has, well, pretty much been on ablaze for the last month or so.

Today, June, Friday the 13, is National Pigeon Day. Yay! While some of you detest one of "nature's most successful creatures," today we stand up for the adorable little winged creatures. After all, they've done everything from helping "soldiers behind enemy lines" to providing fecal-based comic relief.

What with Halloween colliding on a Friday this year -- -- the city of San Francisco has wasted no time, so to speak, in attempting to look like it's trying to make the holiday a spooktacular event again. Laura Fraenza, 45, New Jersey native and ballet enthusiast who has worked with Bill Graham Presents and Cirque Du Soleil, was just hired as SF's new Events Coordinator. But that title is a bit broad; she's here to (hopefully) make Halloween in the Castro the sublime and safe event that it once was. God bless her. BAR reports: