As City Insider reports, the Recreation and Park Commission announced it's organizing a Warren Hellman tribute concert honoring the beloved philanthropist and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass founder who passed away last month. The concert will take place on February 19th from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at either Hellman Hollow (formerly known as Speedway Meadow) or the Ocean Beach parking lots. more ›

Local billionaire and philanthropist Warren Hellman has died at age 77. The cause was complications from leukemia. He's well loved of course for creating and bankrolling the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, and fear not, it will continue on without him thanks to an endowment he created for that purpose. But Hellman should also be thanked for funding the San Francisco Free Clinic, spearheading City pension reform, creating the Bay Citizen, and building that underground parking garage in Golden Gate Park between the DeYoung and Academy of Sciences. more ›

There's a staff editorial in this week's SFBG discussing the decline of the Chronicle and a new KQED/Warren Hellman-led non-profit venture to create a new online news source for San Francisco. The Guardian takes a few moments to get in some digs at the Chron -- in particular at such conservative columnists as C.W. Nevius who we'd probably agree seems to "disdain everything about San Francisco and urban life in general" -- and they assert, "It's little wonder then that a significant percentage of San Franciscans (in particular, younger people) see no reason whatsoever to pick up the San Francisco Chronicle." more ›

It looks like there might be peace in our time as a deal is in the works over the whole Healthy Saturdays thing. Apparently, city officials are trying to work out a compromise between fans of the plan and supporters of the Dede Wilsey Shrine to Her Wilsey-ness. No details have emerged yet, but apparently Gavin has been meeting with both sides to figure something out. more ›

Were you among the tens of thousands who attended the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival this year? We cannot say enough good things about this event. If you're a fan of folk, Americana, country, bluegrass, or roots music of any ilk, you should have been at Golden Gate Park on September 30th and October 1st. This year's Hardly Strictly drew over 50 acts, most of which were headliners in their own right. Lucky for us, a friend of ours who was performing hooked us up with all access backstage passes, and we were able to witness how the vibe was as nice among the artists as it was among the crowd. more ›

We have mixed emotions about Diane B. "Dede" Wilsey's pet cause, the new M. H. de Young Memorial Museum building. For years the antics surrounding that concourse -- museums moving, buildings being torn down, garages built -- have provided pages and pages of entertainment in the local press. More recently, the unfinished structure loomed darkly over John F. Kennedy drive like an aircraft carrier that somehow made it inland from Ocean Beach (and we're not alone in making that observation). But once we got a chance to look inside and hear from the architects, we admit that a lot of our apprehension fell away. more ›