- It's officially Up Your Alley street fair weekend — though anxieties around monkeypox hover. The annual Up Your Alley leather and fetish fair is expected to go on this weekend in SoMa.... despite the recently enacted local health of emergency around the outbreak; some former attendees are skipping out this year amid fears of contracting the disease — "my perspective is that there there’s always the future when things calm down" — while others are cheekily saying that "here’s never been a better time to dress from top to bottom in latex or leather." [Chronicle/Mercury News]
- There's a new wine bar and restaurant coming to the Chase Center this winter, which will be helmed by a husband-and-wife pair of sommeliers. [Eater SF]
- After closing in March 2021, Noe Valley Malaysian restaurant Mahila will be reimagined as Azalina's; it's set to open in the Tenderloin on September 1. [Hoodline]
- A Walnut Creek man allegedly tried to stab himself in a suicide this week; local police officers responded to the suicide attempt on Thursday afternoon where they found the man holding a knife to his throat and stomach; though the man was taken to the local hospital, his condition is unknown. [KRON4]
- Someone finally won that massive $1.28B Mega Million in Illinois, though at least one $1M prize was also drawn somewhere in California. [ABC7]
- Here's a reminder that CA's inflation relief checks are expected to start hitting bank accounts sometime in October. [KRON4]
- In a welcomingly good bit of conservation news: Nepal was aiming to double its wild tiger population since 2010.. but the country, in fact, tripled its pullulation of these regal big cats, which now is estimated to number 355 individual animals. [Mongabay]
- This refreshingly approachable opinion piece published in the New York Times today features canvassed insights from readers of the newspapers on their favorite slow, ostensibly "mundane" joys of the summer. [NYT]