This week: a trinket box in the Sunset, a coyote in Japantown, a denim design legend, a local inventor, and a one-day artist talk on “taking a knee” activism. Plus, remembering Oscar Grant on his 40th birthday, catching crab right off the boat, foraging wild garlic, and protecting the snowy plover.

From boat to pot

On Saturday mornings at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, customers can purchase live Dungeness crab directly from individual fishing boats, then carry it to a dockside popup where it’s cooked — or cooked and cleaned — while they wait.

The market also sells whole fish and fillets from the local fleet, an effort to broaden what people associate with Bay Area seafood beyond crab season. The popup fish market runs Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. through the end of March at 101 Al Scoma Way. — Chronicle

Happy 40th Birthday, Oscar Grant

The Black Panther Party Museum is marking Oscar Grant’s birthday with a new exhibition, Happy Heavenly Birthday, Oscar, celebrating Grant’s life through sound, images, and participatory ritual as part of the 1-800 Happy Birthday project.

Grant, who was killed by a BART police officer in 2009, would have turned 40 this year.

The exhibition runs February 1 through February 28 at the Black Panther Party Museum in downtown Oakland, with an opening reception February 1 from 6 to 9 pm. — San Francisco Bay View

Little treasures

At 48th Avenue and Moraga in San Francisco, a tiny junction box has become a weekend destination. Sunset Trinket Trade overflows with friendship bracelets, claw clips, and tiny ceramic frogs, all curated by Deanna, who cleans, repairs, and sometimes reimagines items to make them swap-ready.

Neighbors and visitors line up to trade, chat, and leave little surprises for one another, turning a street corner into a small, shared celebration. The project has inspired people beyond the Outer Sunset to start their own trinket exchanges, and Deanna reminds participants to keep the goodwill going without disturbing nearby homes. — Mission Local

Side routes around the big game

Super Bowl week doesn’t require a watch party. Around the Bay Area, a handful of low-key options offer a different way to spend the weekend, from ice skating in downtown San Jose to a Bad Bunny lookalike contest at San Francisco’s Tacolicious.

Museums lean in too, with family craft sessions at SFMOMA and a one-day screening and talk by German artist Kota Ezawa at Santa Clara University’s de Saisset Museum on the history of taking a knee during the national anthem, spearheaded by 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016. — KQED

Love, Melody

From a pile of salvaged Levi’s to the suits of Elvis and Tina Turner, Melody Sabatasso built a career stitching together recycled denim into finely crafted, iconic outfits. Her early days involved hitchhiking across the Golden Gate Bridge, arguing for fittings, and discovering her own worth alongside Hollywood legends.

Today, her Greenbrae studio is a working archive filled with machines, studs, and memories, where past creations sit alongside new projects. She still collaborates with musicians, filmmakers, and collectors, keeping her decades of denim craft alive. — SFGate

Windows without walls

A San Rafael filmmaker stepped into the national spotlight this winter, pitching LiquidView — large-format digital windows that stream continuous outdoor scenes — on a January episode of Shark Tank. The idea grew out of years spent working in windowless rooms and gained wider notice after a feature on the Today show, helping the screens find homes in hotels, offices, and memory care spaces around the Bay Area.

Though he didn’t land a deal on the show, the appearance brought a surge of attention and new leads. LiquidView launched in 2021 and now displays places like Rodeo Beach, the Farallon Islands, and Venice in installations across Marin and San Francisco. — Marin Independent Journal

Foraging fever

Three-cornered garlic is spreading fast across Bay Area parks and can be harvested straight from the root. This pungent and flavorful vegetable grows abundantly, so don’t plant it at home since it’s invasive.

Forays organized by local foragers such as Cindy Doe Dee are teaching participants how to identify and gather plants safely, turning the hills and edges of the city into hands-on classrooms. — Cindy Doe Dee/Instagram

Snowy morning

Along Ocean Beach, Western Snowy Plovers make their home for most of the year, delicate birds eking out a life on shifting sand. Fewer than 2,000 adults remain along the Pacific coast, and simple habits — sticking to marked paths, staying near the wet sand — help them thrive.

Observers can watch without disturbing, keeping the upper beach clear for nesting. — Bird Curious SF/Instagram

Courtyard visitor

Amid a string of recent animal visits — from a mountain lion at Lafayette Park to a coyote swimming to Alcatraz — another young coyote, likely from the Presidio, spent three nights quietly in Hotel Kabuki’s garden in Japantown this week.

Onlookers were urged to give it space and to keep pets at a distance while it gathered some respite before disappearing back into the urban wilderness. She’s quite a beauty. We’d love to see some paintings of her! — Hotel Kabuki/Instagram

Top image: ‘National Anthem’(2018); Kota Ezawa

Previously: Field Notes: Ancient Star Map, New Cat Cafe, San Jose’s Batman, and Disquiet in Suburbia

This week: Making use of rotten pumpkins; dancing at the Filipino market; growing up on an Alameda shellmound, and reclaiming the past through kids’ books. Plus, SF Trans Film Festival, teen inventors, the art of falconry, capybara mania, and a serendipitous City Hall photo-op.

New water walkers

At the Sacramento Zoo, a first-time mother named Peppermint Patty just gave birth to five capybara pups — a small herd of newcomers already paddling around the zoo’s pond like seasoned pros. The keepers say the babies are walking, eating solid food, and keeping close to their patient mom.

Additionally, fans can also find a charming pair of capybara sisters at San Jose’s Happy Hollow Park & Zoo, who transferred from Texas through a species survival plan in 2022. Visitors can spot them lounging poolside or nibbling bamboo from Wednesday to Sunday. — FOX40 Sacramento, Bay City News

Flight school

In Yuba County’s Marysville, former West Marin resident Kate Marden runs West Coast Falconry, where guests can step into the old world of falconry — leather glove, hooded bird, and all. Her 14 raptors, from Harris hawks to Siberian eagle owls, live in mews designed for their health and temperament, tended daily with raw meat and steady hands. Marden, who founded the school in 2006, calls falconry a lifelong “virus” — a mix of obsession and devotion that requires love for creatures who might fly away.

Visitors can book lessons or walks through the surrounding oak forest, watching the birds swoop between gloves and trees. West Coast Falconry offers year-round public classes, private sessions, and apprentice programs. — Chico Enterprise-Record

Return to the earth

When the jack-o’-lantern grin fades, most pumpkins end up in the trash, releasing methane as they decompose in landfills. Yet every part of a pumpkin can serve another purpose — seeds can be roasted, flesh can be cooked, and leftovers can feed farm animals.

Even the soft, moldy ones can be composted to nourish the soil instead of adding to waste. — Associated Press

Aisles of light

At Seafood City in Daly City, the fluorescent aisles have turned into a dance floor. What began as a playful idea from Vallejo-born DJ JP Breganza — spinning sets in grocery stores — has become an ongoing series of Filipino supermarket dance parties across the country.

Organized with the SF Kollective, the “Late Night Market Madness” events bring line dances, pancit, and barbecue to the aisles, where remixed love songs and disco hits spill out into the parking lot. The event’s Halloween and Filipino American History Month edition continues through Saturday night. — KQED

Through a different lens

The world’s longest-running transgender film festival returns to San Francisco this month, bringing stories that stretch far beyond visibility — from animated features to intimate documentaries and sharp-edged comedies.

Each program draws on the experiences of trans and gender-nonconforming filmmakers, shaping cinema that reflects, questions, and reimagines identity in motion. Screenings run November 13–15 at the Roxie Theater, followed by a week of online programming through November 23. — San Francisco Transgender Film Festival

City Hall serendipity

Outside San Francisco City Hall, newlyweds Haley Drexler and Pilar Dizon, stars of Netflix’s The Ultimatum: Queer Love, were shooting photos of there special day when they spotted California Governor Gavin Newsom descending the steps and called out “Daddy Newsom.”

ABC7 political reporter Monica Madden, who had just finished an interview with the governor inside, was also there to capture the moment as Newsom, who famously defied marriage bans in 2004, paused for a photo alongside a same-sex couple tying the knot two decades later. — KGO

Breath of possibility

Three Bay Area teens are testing a new way to detect lung cancer early, using a portable breath analyzer that reads chemical signals in exhaled air. The device, developed with a mix of biology, AI, and circuitry, recently showed 96% accuracy in trials with 46 patients in India.

Alongside the tech, the process has been a crash course in teamwork, patience, and problem-solving, from hospital coordination to hardware tweaks. The group hopes their low-cost prototype could one day reach clinics, giving patients earlier detection and a better shot at survival. — KPIX, Patch

Time travel library

San Francisco-born historical archaeologist Dr. Cheryl LaRoche welcomes young readers to step into the past with her new series, The Resurrectors. Through vivid illustrations and time-traveling storylines, children can witness moments from America’s freedom struggles, from the oratory of Henry Highland Garnet to the courage of everyday Black heroes.

LaRoche’s Kickstarter campaign keeps the project independent and interactive, letting readers and educators engage directly with the books before they hit Amazon in early 2026. The series blends imaginative adventure with real history, offering a chance for kids to see themselves reflected in the figures who shaped the nation. — The Bay View

Shellmounds and shadows

Walking Alameda today, the layers of time are almost tangible. Beneath streets and houses, Muwekma Ohlone ancestors lie in shellmounds that have marked this land for over 10,000 years, quietly shaping the city long before anyone called it Alameda.

Gabriel Duncan, a Native American two-spirit adopted at birth and raised in Alameda, threads together personal memory and archaeology — from a vertebra unearthed in a basement to the haunted echoes of childhood homes — through the Native History Project, which seeks to reclaim and share Indigenous histories. — Native History Project

Top image: West Coast Falconry

Previously: Field Notes: Filipino Tea Party, Candelabra Redwoods, Fog and Folklore, and Mezcal Lineage

• Oakland Animal Services is no longer required to accept all surrendered animals amid a 40% surge in intake and significant staffing cuts. [Bay Area News Group]
• Mark Jacobson, a professor at Stanford, says his self-built zero net energy home, which is powered entirely by solar, demonstrates how California’s clean energy goals are becoming reality. [KPIX]
• Firefighters quickly shut off water after a car slammed into a building at 24th and San Jose Streets in the Mission Friday, toppling a hydrant and causing minor structural damage. [Hoodline]
• Stanford robotics researcher Aaron Tan has unveiled Lume, a pair of $2,000 bedside “robotic lamps” that can also fold your laundry — set to launch next year. [KGO]

Image: Leanne Maxwell

Herb Peterson, inventor the the McDonald's Egg McMuffin, died this past Wednesday at the age of 89 in his Santa Barbra home. Peterson started his career with McDonald's as vice president of the fast-food chain advertising firm, D'Arcy Advertising, where he came up with the questionable slogan, "Where Quality Starts Fresh Every Day."

Herb went on to own a franchisee and was co-owner and operator of six McDonald's restaurants in Santa Barbara and Goleta at the time of his death.

"Partial to eggs Benedict," Peterson invented and introduced the tasty morning artery-clogger in 1972 at his Santa Barbara branch, and the rest is breakfast history.

The McMuffin man is survived by his wife, son, and three daughters.