This week: The Dipsea Trail, a crow take-over, award-winning BART poem, and site-specific sculptural CD art. Plus, a beloved pop-up bakery gets its own space, a local violinist shines at the Super Bowl, and Black Panther Emory Douglas’s collage images.

Between stations

On a daily ride between San Leandro and the Mission, a young poet found her voice. Sehinne’s poem BART earned a rare sweep of nine-or-higher scores at the 2025 Brave New Voices festival, helping Team Youth Speaks Bay Area take first place.

In the piece, the train becomes a steady, slightly offbeat presence, a place where writing happens in stolen minutes between stations. The poem draws from her internship at Youth Speaks on 16th Street Mission and can be watched in full online. — Bay Area Rapid Transit

In full view

Violinist Rose Crelli’s path runs from one-room cabins in Alaska and the Yukon to the Super Bowl halftime stage. Raised off the grid after being adopted from China, she learned discipline and resourcefulness through long drives for lessons and battery-powered practice sessions.

In San Francisco, she built her own work — teaching, performing locally, and posting online — until a call brought her to Levi’s Stadium to play with Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga, and Ricky Martin. The moment reflected years of work, craft, and a deep connection to her roots. — 7x7

Sweet debut

Grand Opening bakery, run by James Beard–nominated pastry chef Melissa Chou, is now taking orders from its West Oakland kitchen at 2311 Magnolia St. (off Grand), located inside 02 Artisans Aggregate alongside Soba Ichi and other local businesses. Chou, who previously popped up at Mister Jiu’s in San Francisco, offers a menu of whole cakes, pies, and cookies, including a black sesame almond cake with blood orange and a strawberry lychee cheese tart.

Standard favorites like the burnt honey pie and Parisian egg tart remain, alongside a rotating selection of sponge cakes and seasonal desserts. — Berkeleyside

Images of a revolution

At the Fillmore District’s African American Arts and Culture Complex, Emory Douglas’s sharp ink-and-collage images return to the Bay Area, where they first appeared in local papers and the Black Panther Party’s own publication. As the Black Panther Party’s Minister of Culture, Douglas shaped a visual language driven by urgency — scenes of police violence and poverty set beside intimate moments of family life.

The work was never meant for galleries, but its bold lines and clipped photos became inseparable from the movement itself, influencing activists far beyond Oakland. Emory Douglas: In Our Lifetime runs through October at the African American Arts and Culture Complex in San Francisco. — KPIX

Discs of daylight

Inside the Transamerica Pyramid Center, ICA San Francisco opens its program with Stratagems, a room-filling installation by sculptor Tara Donovan. Towering columns made from thousands of recycled CDs catch and scatter daylight, shifting tone and intensity as the sun moves and seasons change, turning the space into something closer to an instrument than a gallery.

The materials are ordinary and familiar, but their repetition bends perception, making hard edges feel fluid and almost biological. Organized with the Transamerica Pyramid Center and timed with SF Art Week, the exhibition runs through July 31. — Groove Atelier

Lifting without limits

In SF’s Noe Valley, Iron + Mettle offers a space where women focus on heavy lifting without intimidation or macho energy. Founder Danielle Repetti built the gym to teach proper form, gradual strength building, and confidence in a welcoming, small-group setting.

Members gradually increase weights and celebrate personal milestones, supported by coaches who understand women’s training needs. The studio blends community, education, and barbell work to make strength accessible to anyone who walks through the door. — Mission Local

Ferns and water

In Marin County, a short trail slips quickly out of the everyday and into something greener and quieter. The 3.8-mile route winds through fern-lined canyons and shaded forest, opening now and then to ocean air, waterfalls, and wide views that feel borrowed from another era.

It’s a moderate hike that rewards an unhurried pace, the kind where you stop often without meaning to. Best tackled with a friend, enough water, and the patience to leave the place exactly as you found it. — California Views/Instagram

A crow boom

San Francisco’s winter crow population has surged to a record 3,260 birds, more than double last year’s count and well above historical norms. Drawn by easy food, warm roosting spots, and fewer natural predators, crows have adapted quickly to city life while other bird species struggle.

At dusk, the birds gather in large, coordinated flocks — a daily spectacle shaped by both social behavior and survival. — SFGate

Top image: Rose Crelli Violin/Facebook

Previously: Field Notes: 124-Year-Old Light Bulb, UC Davis’ Cheeto the Cat, and ‘Trash Falcons’ Art Exhibit

This week: The real story behind the Winchester Mystery House, a historic artist’s studio-turned-artwork, a gifted local teenage violinist, and entrepreneurial high schoolers. Plus, hiking via public transit, the Presidio’s native plants, all things ube, and tasty holiday latkes.

Trail lines and transit stakes

Content creator Bike Curious hiked the De La Veaga Trail in Orinda to draw attention to looming transit budget cuts while demonstrating how residents can reach Bay Area trails without a car.

The moderate route sits on municipal land, with permits available online, and was found through Hiking by Transit’s public database. — Bike Curious

Restoring the dunes

About 100 volunteers gathered at the Presidio’s Sunset Scrub near Lincoln Boulevard last weekend to plant native species as part of an ongoing habitat restoration effort. The Presidio Trust planted roughly 2,000 natives, including coastal buckwheat and dune tansy, to help rebuild sections of the city’s historic dunescape.

The work supports insects, birds, lizards, and rare plants such as San Francisco lessingia and spineflower. The newly restored area now connects Sunset Scrub with the north dunes, creating a continuous habitat corridor between Washington and Lincoln boulevards. — KPIX

Blue conversation

Artist Catherine Wagner’s Blue Reverie at 500 Capp Street fills the late conceptual artist David Ireland’s iconic Mission District home with layers of blue. Ireland spent decades transforming the house itself into a sculptural work, altering floors, walls, and objects to explore space and domestic life as art.

Wagner builds on that legacy, adding photography, projections, and subtle installations that play with light, color, and architecture while keeping a conversation with Ireland’s ideas alive. Hidden blue moons, filtered windows, and glowing furniture turn corners of the home into unexpected moments of discovery. Blue Reverie runs through January 10 at 500 Capp Street, with a catalogue launch on December 16. — 48 Hills

Labyrinth of memory

The Winchester Mystery House has long been surrounded by salacious ghost stories, but most of them were urban legends created by locals and later promoters, not Sarah Winchester herself. These tales helped turn her eccentric home into a tourist draw, which in turn preserved it from demolition.

Beyond the myths, the house is a rare glimpse into late-19th-century San Jose architecture, built in popular Queen Anne Victorian styles and shaped further by the 1906 earthquake. — Bay Area News Group

Oven work and open doors

At Miramonte High School in Orinda, special education students are running a small dog treat business as part of their school day. In Asia Pavicich’s essential skills class, students research what’s safe for dogs, design the packaging, bake pumpkin–peanut butter treats, and sell them under the name Matadogs.

Pavicich started the project to give younger students real, on-campus work experience, beyond practice exercises. It’s also created easy points of contact between the students and the rest of the school community. — NBC Bay Area

Quiet strings, wide reach

Sausalito violinist Sydney Li-Jenkins, 15, has been named a winner of the 2026 YoungArts Competition, which recognizes young artists across visual, literary, and performing fields.

A sophomore at the Branson School in Ross, Li-Jenkins joins a national group of artists whose work reflects a rare level of focus and ambition at this stage. — Marin Independent Journal

Crispy threads

Delfina chef Craig Stoll has put a lighter, gluten-free spin on the holiday latke, balancing crisp potato strands with just the right touch of onion and potato starch. His careful prep — starting the potatoes the night before and pressing out every drop of moisture — keeps each patty tender inside and golden outside.

The latkes are perfect for the Festival of Lights, which kicks off December 14, bringing a fresh take to Hanukkah tables. For those skipping the kitchen, the restaurant offers a to-go option with a dozen flash-frozen latkes, plus add-ons like apple-quince conserva, crème fraîche, or Gingrass smoked steelhead lox. — 7 x 7

Purple by way of Alameda

Alameda baker Henry Awayan has leaned fully into ube, the Filipino purple yam he grew up with and now builds an entire cookbook around. Known for custom cakes at Whisk Cake Creations, Awayan’s The Ube Baking Book gathers more than 50 recipes — from classic halaya to ube focaccia, chiffon cakes, and breakfast pastries — tracing both flavor and family history shaped by his Filipino upbringing and years running a bakery a block from his childhood home.

Awayan plans to teach classes from the book at Whisk in 2026, with details to be announced through the bakery’s website and Instagram. — The Oaklandside

Top image: Winchester Mystery House

Previously: Field Notes: The Cockettes’ Tahara, Christmas Bar, and SCRAP Jewelry Pop-Up

The 100th anniversary of the SF Symphony is such a big deal, it's sucking the air out of some other impressive milestones. One of these: Alexander Barantschik's tenth year as concert master of the San Francisco symphony. Originally from Saint Petersburg, Russia, Sasha, as he's called, joined ten years ago from the London Symphony Orchestra, one of the best orchestras in the world where he held the same job.

He now plays with the famed del Gesù Guarneri violin, which is on loan to him by the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums. The violin is special, six million dollar special: it belonged to Jascha Heifetz and Ferdinand David, who are the Beatles and Elvis of violin history. It is given only to someone who'll play it"on special occasions by worthy performers," according to Heifetz's will. Well, Sasha is this worthy guy.

He usually sits on the first chair to the left of the conductor, but will be front and center this week: with associate principal cellist Peter Wyrick, principal violist Jonathan Vincocour, principal bassist Scott Pingel, and invited pianist Juho Pohjonen, they'll perform Schubert's Trout quintet as a chamber ensemble, in between two full fledged orchestral pieces: Schubert's Overture to Alfonso und Estrella and Mahler's arrangement for orchestra of another Schubert chamber piece, his Death and the Maiden string quartet. Sasha will also stand out later this season as the soloist in Schnittke's violin concerto. We caught up on the phone with him in the evening last Friday. He was at home while the orchestra was getting ready to play some Strauss.

Scott Sylvester, the man spotted making off with a $23,000 violin on Muni, was arrested yesterday. According to the Examiner, Sylvester left the violin with a Priest at St. Mary's Cathedral yesterday morning. What the Ex declines to mention is whether that was an act of penance because he saw his face plastered all over the Internet or if he was trying to encourage stringed accompaniment at the parish. Either way, the cops rounded him up by 8 p.m. last night. [SFEx]

Anne-Sophie Mutter is classical music's attempt to attract the 18-34 male demographic. She's the symphony hall's answer to Monday Night Football. She can play the violin like no one else, but she also happens to be seriously attractive.

What's more, she'll play at Davies Sympony Hall on Monday 4/7 (a recital of Brahms sonatas with pianist Lambert Orkis). (We'll make the same recommendation re the ballet: guys, take your girlfriends there. For reals, they'll think you're sensitive, cultivated, and sophisticated; in the meantime, you'll have some eye candy to look at, so you'll have a good time. Who knows? You might even end up enjoying the music. )

Part of why she looks so stunning is that she's wearing Dior on stage. Say what you want about the French, they understand what women want, and they deliver. Says Anne-Sophie: "I went to Dior when I was 16 or 17, and they always understood what it means to be a violinist." Strapless, shoulder-free ankle-length gown, that what it means. She adds: "It's a work outfit. It's like a plumber, who has a working outfit." The teenager in us connects plumber fashion to butt crack to Anne-Sophie. He's a dumb teenager for sure, but he's happy.

In all seriousness, we started our chat talking about Brahms sonatas. We had been told that Brahms had a high bar for his work, and had destroyed more than 20 of his string quartets. How about the violin sonatas? "Yes, Brahms was famous for destroying a lot of his pieces. The G major sonata, the first one, is actually his 3rd or 4th attempt to write a sonata. There's a theory that the G major sonata was written after the death of his stepson, Felix Schumann..." She mention the sonata is based on the Regenlied, another song Brahms wrote, which melancholy tone inspired this sonata, and whose theme is folded into the first and last movement.