So, you San Francisco folks have it made. With places like Polished Lounge and Le Crème Spa, you can go get a "natural" manicure and pedicure in a big puffy chair with lots of lovely organic products, fresh fruits and herbs, whenever you wish, with very little schlep involved, and no scary acrylics fumes. more ›

Another stop on our East Bay tour of the best burgers made from "naturally-raised" meat: Luka's Taproom & Lounge. more ›

Unless you see all four of Mike Daisey's "Great Men of Genius" monologues (and see them IN ORDER), you might miss the point. GMOG is NOT in fact one man acting as four different "geniuses" -- Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nicola Tesla, and L. Ron Hubbard -- in four 75-minute monologues. Rather, this is one five-hour monologue, broken up into four segments, wherein the true genius of the piece, Mike Daisey, interweaves vignettes from his life with the excerpted life stories of those famous men. And did we say he's funny? more ›

So, we ourselves are as naïve as anyone else on this topic, having not-too-long-ago extolled the virtues of dishes containing the latest faux-food villain at B Restaurant in Oakland... more ›

To tell you the truth, we were hesitant to share this restaurant review with you, because we were worried that you would swarm our favorite neighborhood breakfast place and extend our wait for corned beef hash, but now, with the collapse of the 80/580 interchange, we have nothing to worry about. So here goes... more ›

We've got two contests this week, one to celebrate over a decade of experimentation and the other to to support some stalwart locals.
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Okay, it's really NOT a soup kitchen, but if you have a boat docked in Oakland’s Embarcadero Cove Marina (down the highway from Jack London Square and across from Alameda's Coast Guard Island), have a pot belly and a brush mustache, and a propensity for telling jokes like: “What kind of fish likes to sing? A tune-y fish!” -- and bursting into laughter at your own brilliance, you, too, have probably enjoyed a basket of fish and chips or a burger at Quinn’s Lighthouse Restaurant and Pub. more ›

You may know by now that we prefer our meat grass-fed, pedigreed, pasture raised, and without ooky hormones, antibiotics or other additives. more ›

Remember those days? more ›

No, not the Laurel Heights familiar to San Franciscans, with its chain stores and baby strollers, but Oakland's Laurel District, home to personable purveyors of down-home cooking, musical instruments and lessons, locally-penned books, equine supplies, and the recently revived Laurel Lounge. more ›

Small plates are certainly très chic these days (even if our propensity for mixing foreign phrases is not), but usually, the price tag is not quite as nice of a fit. Not that we're above spending a fortune on small bites of delicacies. We do have our weaknesses in that area. more ›

Okay, so we admit it. We read your comments, sometimes. And thus, this post is for you, Gene. more ›