This week: Kids capture Tenderloin in photos; Rainbow Sierrans hike decades-strong; “HOLE” digs theater at the beach; Fairfax still hums Summer of Love; Bimbo’s has secrets; Butterfly Fest blooms; Wonder Funday sparks STEAM; Architecture + the City unfolds; Voices of Adventure screens outdoors.
Back patio school talk
SFUD families are invited to attend San Francisco’s Education Alliance’s monthly Education Meet-Up. They’ll be taking over Hot Johnny’s back patio in the Castro this month on September 16.
The gathering brings together families, advocates, and neighbors to talk about creating a fully funded, inclusive, and supportive local school system. — SF Education Alliance
Butterflies in the garden
The Secret Garden in Elk Grove hosts its annual Butterfly Fest over two weekends, September 13–14 and 20–21. Visitors can take guided life cycle tours at 11 am to see Gulf Fritillaries move from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to orange-winged adult.
Alongside the butterflies, there’s face painting, a coffee cart, and a fall plant sale with perennials discounted for would-be pollinator gardeners. — Sacramento 365
Win tickets to Exploratorium’s Wonder Funday
Enter by September 15 to win a family four-pack of tickets to Wonder Funday, when the Exploratorium transforms into a festival of STEAM-inspired play.
On October 5, Pier 15 will be filled with demos, design challenges, crafts, and performances — all to support science access for Bay Area kids. — Exploratorium
A community built on the trail
For nearly four decades, the Rainbow Sierrans have met monthly, trading laughter and coffee on ridges and redwood paths while shaping queer outdoor organizing. Founded in 1986 as the Sierra Club’s first gay-and-lesbian affinity group, they overcame early pushback to thrive.
Co-founder Bob Walker helped secure huge swaths of East Bay open space (there’s a ridge named for him in Morgan Territory) and left a trove of landscape photos now at the Oakland Museum. The group later created the Bob Walker Conservation Award in his honor.
Today the Sierrans are often older, often women, and still a safe, expert place to learn trails and meet people — many members found partners on hikes. Leaders are looking to bring younger folks into the loop. Monthly outings vary in distance and difficulty. — The Oaklandside
Fairfax, where the Summer of Love lingers
In Fairfax, peace signs and free parking still coexist. The town of 7,500 has a rhythm all its own: four-hour meters, redwood-ringed parks, and a ballfield once home to a pickup game between Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Shops like Revolution 9 sell $9 posters and D&D dice, while the Fairfax Variety store remains one of California’s last true five-and-dimes.
At Wu Wei Tea Temple, you can sip golden milk, join a Sunday open mic, or simply practice the Taoist art of “doing not doing.” Even with new housing proposals stirring controversy, Fairfax feels like a pocket where the Summer of Love never ended. — SFGate
Swimming in San Francisco’s secrets
Bimbo’s 365 Club has held on to its old-world glamour since opening in 1931, and nothing captures that mystique more than Dolfina, the Girl in the Fishbowl. Tucked behind the bar in a velvet-lined alcove, she appears to float and swim in a tank of water — an illusion of mirrors and light that has outlived nearly every other nightclub trick of its kind.
Current performer Hanna Longwell, who is also directing a documentary on the tradition, described the thrill of sliding into the role, hearing whispers from above as guests tried to guess if they were seeing a mermaid, and later discovering a whole sisterhood of past Dolfinas. Some added glitter, seashells, or wigs; one even juggled a political career while secretly performing. For Longwell, collecting those stories has felt like piecing together a hidden history of San Francisco nightlife — one where empowerment, secrecy, and spectacle all converge inside a fishbowl.
Celebrating architecture in the city
San Francisco’s streets, parks, and skyline are constantly in flux, and the 22nd Annual Architecture + the City Festival celebrates that ongoing transformation. Through September 25, explore three weeks of walking tours, film screenings, panels, youth workshops, and more.
The festival kicks off with an Opening Night Party and the launch of The Reimagined City: San Francisco 2000–2025, an exhibition highlighting the city’s changing architecture and civic life over the last 25 years. — Architecture in the City
Voices of adventure under the stars
On a crisp September evening in San Carlos, the beer garden at Devil’s Canyon Brewery transforms into a gathering of outdoor storytellers and explorers. POST and SYRCL invite you to the Representation Matters Film Festival: Voices of Adventure, where films from the Wild & Scenic library spotlight diverse experiences in the outdoors—activism, community, accessibility, and the thrill of finding where you belong.
Between reels, guests wander among booths for local environmental groups, sip drinks, grab free pizza, and swap stories with kindred spirits. The air is full of curiosity, camaraderie, and the quiet hum of inspiration, both in person and online from September 27–October 5. — Peninsula Open Space Trust
Tenderloin through young eyes
Disposable cameras in small hands capture a side of San Francisco’s Tenderloin often overlooked. For a week in May, 28 students from grades two to five wandered streets, parks, and playgrounds, framing their everyday lives.
The photos record soccer games, family moments, colorful murals, and fleeting moments of childhood — quiet, intimate, and full of pride in a neighborhood usually seen only through crisis headlines.
Mohammed Haidar Khaled, 9, calls the shots through selfies, neighborhood corners, and glimpses of friends at play, preserving a Tenderloin that’s vibrant, connected, and alive in the eyes of its youngest residents. — KQED
Digging together
On an undisclosed San Francisco beach, five performers—and sometimes their audience—dig. Shovels slice through sand, creating a space for sitting, for sweat, for contemplation. HOLE is about obsession, endurance, and the strange joy of shared labor.
Each 75-minute performance shifts with wind, fog, and passerby interruptions, turning digging into theater, theater into meditation. Here, a hole is never just a hole: it’s communal, exhausting, and full of possibilities. Runs the first three Sundays in September at 2 pm and 5 pm. — Mission Local
Image: SF Neo-Futurists
Previously: Field Notes: Michelle Tea’s 'Valencia,' Boozie Brunch, Culinary Cinema, and California Turns 175
