Arts & Entertainment

Portola Music Festival Announces Dates For 2023 — and It's Not Folsom Weekend

Members of the LGBTQ+ and fetish communities who are also fans of electronic music will be thrilled to know that the second annual Portola Festival is happening the weekend after Folsom Street Fair weekend.

Arts & Entertainment

SF Pride Rescinds Invite For 80s Rocker Dee Snider to Perform After Weird Anti-Trans Tweet

SF Pride thought they had a real publicity coup in the making with Dee Snider of Twisted Sister — who no one under the age of 45 is likely to remember — agreeing to perform his 1984 hit "We're Not Gonna Take It" at this year's Pride festivities.

Arts & Entertainment

Heklina to Make Final TV Appearance With Peaches Christ on New Hulu Food Show

Premiering May 31 on Hulu will be 'Drag Me to Dinner,' a new, tongue-in-cheek cooking competition show in which drag queen friends compete against each other hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and husband David Burtka, along with Bianca Del Rio.

SF News

‘I Love Tenderloin Week’ Seeks to Beautify, Celebrate the Neighborhood With SF’s Most Checkered Reputation

It’s a week of art walks, movie nights, and family fests in the Tenderloin, plus a big Cinco de Mayo party at La Cocina's food hall, as something called “I Love Tenderloin Week” is now underway, though unsurprisingly drawing jeers from social media trolls.

Arts & Entertainment

Rogue Butterfly Statue Goes Up in Golden Gate Park, But City Hall Swats It Down

Someone modified Golden Gate Park’s former Junipero Serra statue into a statue of the extinct Xerces blue butterfly for Earth Day, but the SF Arts Commission got all aflutter and took the statue down.

Arts & Entertainment

Heklina Memorial Will Be a Block-wide Affair, With Outdoor Stage and Event Projected on a Closed Castro Street

Now dubbed "Heklina: A Memorial (She Would Have Hated This)," the memorial affair for the beloved drag comedienne who died earlier this month has grown into a block-wide event that will shut down Castro Street starting at noon.

Arts & Entertainment

SF Public Library Teaming Up With Amoeba Music To Create Bay Area Artist Streaming Platform

The SF Public Library has announced that it's launching a streaming music platform for Bay Area bands and musicians, paying artists $250 if they’re accepted, and users will be able to stream and download full albums with just a library card.

Arts & Entertainment

Guest Artist Creates Bird-Like Projections for Salesforce Tower, to Call Attention to Migratory Seabirds

San Francisco artist Therese Lahaie has a new work that will be visible from a wide swath of the city this weekend, and starting Thursday night, on the illuminated crown of Salesforce Tower.

Arts & Entertainment

Club Deluxe Has Indeed Closed, Will No Longer Operate at Haight and Ashbury

Despite rebounding from last summer’s shock closure announcement, Haight Street jazz and swing nightclub Club Deluxe is apparently finished for good at its 1511 Haight Street location amidst an ongoing landlord dispute.

SF News

SF Art Institute Has Declared Bankruptcy, Looks Finished After 152 Years

Saddled with $10 million in debt and with only 41 students currently enrolled, the San Francisco Art Institute has declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and the school appears to be liquidating all assets and calling it quits.

Arts & Entertainment

Stern Grove Announces 2023 Lineup: Flaming Lips, Indigo Girls, Patti Smith, And More

The 2023 Stern Grove Festival announced its 2023 summer lineup Tuesday morning, with the Flaming Lips, plus Lyle Lovett, Buddy Guy, the Indigo Girls, and plenty more.

Arts & Entertainment

Ten Years After It Was Commissioned, 102-Foot Twisting Sculpture Installed at 4th Street Central Subway Station

A dramatic, stainless steel tendril, seemingly growing out of the ground and reaching toward the sky, was just installed Sunday morning in the plaza outside Moscone Station, at Fourth and Clementina streets.

Arts & Entertainment

Watch: 4/20 Blankets Hippie Hill With Pot Smoke, Erykah Badu Exhorts Crowd To Smoke Even More

Erykah Badu hit high notes at the most entertaining 4:20 countdown yet at Hippie Hill, as what appeared to be 20,000 happy stoners blazed up a gargantuan cloud of marijuana smoke for a blissed-out 4/20 celebration.

Arts & Entertainment

How 4:20 Came to Mean 'Smoke Weed' and Inspire SF's 4/20 Celebration

It was never California police code for marijuana, and it had nothing to do with the date of April 20th. But the origins of "420" as the codeword of stoner culture lie here in the Bay Area, with a group of five teenagers — now men in their 60s — living in Marin.

Arts & Entertainment

Newly Announced SF Theater Seasons Include 'Company,' Pre-Broadway Preview of 'The Wiz' and World Premiere of 'Galileo'

The announcements are in for the 2023-24 theater seasons in San Francisco and Berkeley, and after some sputtering through the last couple years of a pandemic, the show schedule finally looks very full once more.

Arts & Entertainment

The End of an Era: Netflix Announces End of DVDs by Mail

The business that got Netflix off the ground — and put Blockbuster in the ground — sending DVDs through the mail in red envelopes, is going to be no more as of this September.

Arts & Entertainment

Bay Area-Set Jennifer Garner Show 'The Last Thing He Told Me' Is Oddly Obsessed With Local Food

Jennifer Garner's new show premiered Friday on Apple TV+, and it's based on the 2021 mystery-thriller novel by Laura Dave, 'The Last Thing He Told Me,' and set in Sausalito, San Francisco, and Texas.

Arts & Entertainment

SF SPCA Celebrates 155th Anniversary Tuesday Night With ‘Late Night Wooftop Party’

The San Francisco SPCA is fur-nishing cocktails, bites, and DJ dancing at Thursday night’s Late Night Wooftop Party at Dandelion Chocolate Factory, with animal therapy pets on hand to greet you.

SF News

City Hall Inches Forward to Landmark Castro Theatre Seats, Old Contract Comes Back To Haunt Another Planet

An SF Board of Supervisors committee was in favor of saving the Castro Theatre seats at a Monday hearing, and while the vote is nowhere near final, they brought up a skeleton in Another Planet Entertainment’s closet regarding millions in unfinished renovations at Bill Graham Auditorium.

Arts & Entertainment

San Francisco Zoo Welcomes Litter of Nine Prairie Dog Pups, Who Have Just Come Above Ground

The population of black-tailed prairie dogs at the San Francisco Zoo just grew by nearly 50 percent, as one prairie dog mom just birthed nine pups, who have just emerged into the daylight.

Arts & Entertainment

'Poor Yella Rednecks' at ACT Extends an Immigrant Saga With Humor, Rap, and Heart

The second of playwright Qui Nguyen's family-saga trilogy of plays, 'Poor Yella Rednecks,' premiered Wednesday at ACT's Strand Theater.

Arts & Entertainment

Heklina Memorial Scheduled at the Castro Theatre; Heklina to Be Inducted on LGBTQ Wall of Honor In New York

Nine days after the death of SF drag legend Heklina in London, we have word of a big memorial tribute set to happen at the Castro Theatre next month — but wouldn't you know it, the free tickets disappeared fast and it is sold out.

Arts & Entertainment

UC Berkeley Falcons Welcome First Hatchling of 2023

Falcon mom Annie got her first hatchling to hatch on Monday afternoon, and there are three more eggs left to go!

Arts & Entertainment

In Biggest Hunky Jesus Contest Ever, Ensemble Group ‘Haus of Jesus’ Takes Crown, and We Have Videos

JFC, there were more than 50 Jesuses competing for the coveted Hunky Jesus title Sunday at the annual Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Easter party, including several ensemble-cast groups with puppets and stage productions.

Arts & Entertainment

Confirmed: 4/20 Hippie Hill Is On For 2023, With Erykah Badu On Stage

The biggest free cannabis event in California gets its biggest star yet, and this year’s 4/20 Hippie Hill celebration will feature four-time Grammy winner Erykah Badu, plus D’wayne Wiggins from Tony! Toni! Toné!, though legal cannabis sales are not yet confirmed.