Welcome to our calendar feature BIG WEEK. Each week, our expert Arts & Culture writers recommend the best things in Arts, Music, Food & Drink, Stage, Film, Nightlife, and more. Big news of the week: Beloved record shop owner Dick Vivian, 78, owner of 42-year-old Rooky Ricardo’s Records in the Lower Haight, is fighting stage 3 pancreatic cancer—receiving treatments while still opening his shop nearly every day. Friends and family have set up a GoFundMe to help with his expenses. Check it out here.
GENERAL ARTS
Marke B. guides you right. There’s tons more to do and support right here.
THROUGH AUGUST 17: “WAYNE THIEBAUD: ART COMES FROM ART” This absolutely ravishing show—right down to its walls’ neon-trimmed baseboards—fabulously over-explains the revered local artist, who died at 101 in 2021, by relating each of his paintings directly to contemporary influences and Old Masters. (Thiebaud freely admitted to copying, and encouraged his students to, too.) But the painter’s supreme accomplishment was to create images that reflected our weirdly erotic and hallucinatory consumerist culture as if torn directly from America’s dream-psyche, a terrifying hole of nothingness with no past and no future, but plenty of hyperreal blue shadows and dazzling 1960s ennui. His impossibly vertiginous SF landscapes of the 1990s are worth the price of admission alone. Legion of Honor, SF. More info here.
FRI/8: CHINATOWN NIGHT MARKET Fair waring: This awesome event gets packed, with 10,000-18,000 attendees. But the old school Asian night market vibe cannot be beat, with 40+ Chinatown vendors, delicious food everywhere, and DJs and live music giving everything a contemporary spin. 5:30pm-9pm, Chinatown, SF. More info here.
FRI/8- SUN/10: BAY AREA INTERNATIONAL DEAF DANCE FEST Featuring workshops, special events and performances by Deaf and Hard of Hearing artists from Botswana, Colombia, Jamaica, New York, the Bay Area and around the United States, this unique celebration of deaf expression, hosted by the Urban Jazz Dance Company, is accessible art on a global scale scale. Read Mary Carbonara’s interview with founders Antoine Hunter and Zahna Simon here. Dance Mission Theater, SF. More info here.
FRI/8: REVEREND BEAT-MAN “He’ll make your back crack, your liver quiver, and your knees freeze. And if you don’t dig that you’ve got a hole in your soul, so let’s give a big warm welcome for the Rev, your Beat-Man, everybody’s Blues Trash Preacher, the fabulous Reverend Beat-Man.” Well, then! 8pm, Bottom of the Hill SF. More info here.
SAT/9: BAY DAY AT THE EXPLORATORIUM “Hey Marke, ever seen a 2,000-pound ocean buoy pulled from the Bay—complete with live marine life clinging to its sides?” There was no way I was not going to read the rest of that email. The Exploratorium is celebrating the Bay’s dynamic ecosystem with plankton and diatom exploration under microscopes, touch tanks with marine organisms from that buoy and the Bay, DIY ocean exploration prototypes, and tons of artistic and educational family-friendly activities to dive into. 11am-4pm, Exploratorium, SF. More info here.
SAT/9: FEMI KUTI & THE POSITIVE FORCE We all could use some positivity and inspiration right now, in a political context, in a musical context, in a historical context. Afrobeat royalty Femi Kuti has taken his father Fela’s message into wonderful contemporary contexts, from electronic to rock, and you can bet this show will pump out the grooves and powerful messages. 8pm, UC Theatre, Berkeley. More info here.
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MUSIC
Hit up John-Paul Shiver’s Under the Stars column for great tunes and shows every week.
FRI/8: THUNDERCAT This is an Outside Lands night show, but also keep in mind ole Thundie just announced a bunch of fall tour dates that take him on the East Coast and overseas, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a new album drop gets announced sometime soon. I don’t have intel, but that’s what my bass-frequency brain is telling me. What does that mean for you? The possibility of hearing some new tunes from the dude. And that’s always nice. Now it’s a sold-out show, but when has that stopped you before, huh? 9:30pm, The Independent, SF. More info here.
FRI/8: STREET EATERS Get out ahead of it. Oakland post-punk rockers Street Eaters have a new album on the way in September and have released a thumpin’, guitar riff-heavy earworm to remind you just who in the eff they be. Get a chance to hear the new tunes at Eli’s show with Parallel and Chime School in support. 8pm, Eli’s Mile High Club, Oakland. More info here.
FRI/8: NO BIAS FIFTH ANNIVERSARY Those in the know understand this. When a party celebrates that they are ending, the rulebook, as if there was one in the first place, gets its marching papers too. If you are a quality electronic music follower, this is your jam. Bored Lord, who’s put SF back on the electronic music map with others, is for sure packing that WTF set you know you were expecting. Get there early. 9pm-2am, Underground SF. More info here.
FOOD & DRINK
Tamara Palmer’s weekly Good Taste column tells you where to stick your fork. Sign up for the new Good Taste newsletter here!
GET LOST IN THE RANGOON ATLAS OF SAN FRANCISCO If you’re looking for a self-guided, fun, and creative food activity to do this (or any) weekend, consult the new, free Rangoon Atlas of San Francisco by @San.FranciscoVintage and check out one or more restaurants that specialize in the Bay Area’s own fried crab classic. “I somehow decided mapping every crab rangoon in San Francisco was an essential public service,” San.FranciscoVintage wrote on Instagram. “Fun fact: Crab rangoon was invented right here in the Bay Area in the 1950s by the founder of Trader Vic’s, a pioneer of tiki culture. That’s right, we didn’t just birth sourdough and tech bros. We birthed crispy, creamy greatness.” Thank you to Tablehopper for spotting and sharing this project!
FRI/8-SUN/10: TIME FOR OUTSIDE LANDS’ TASTE OF THE BAY AREA Outside Lands ticket holders will find a lot of food tips in the obsessive early guide I published in Good Taste a few weeks ago. Give it a gander before you go, and follow 48 Hills on Instagram for weekend video coverage from Andrew Brobst and yours truly. We’ll share secret menu items, first-time treats, and other fun food finds that can be scored at the festival and at various Bay Area restaurants and pop-ups after.
SAT/9 + SUN/10: 32ND ANNUAL PISTAHAN PARADE AND FESTIVAL Graze among 14 local Filipino food vendors at this weekend’s 32nd Annual Pistahan Parade and Festival. For more information about this event as well as exclusive access to my personal map of beloved Filipino snack shops and restaurants, subscribe to the brand new Good Taste weekend newsletter. Free, 11am to 5 pm at Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco.
STAGE
Charles Lewis III hits up theaters and performance spaces every week for his Drama Masks column.
THROUGH AUGUST 23: “NIGHT DRIVER” In her new solo show at the Marsh, Pearl Ong reminisces about arriving here from Hong Kong in the pre-AIDS era before she found a job as a programmer. But “Night Driver” isn’t a nostalgic jaunt back through the wonderful, pre-Reagan era of SF—where our humble narrator found her queerness driving a cab—but rather a means gazing back with astonishment that she’s able to tell the story. The March, SF. More info here.
FRI/8-AUGUST 24: SAN FRANCISCO FRINGE FEST In true underground DIY spirit (and very reflective of our moment), Exit Theatre‘s annual independent 15-play thespianic onslaught Fringe Festival offers everything from “I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Going to Take It Just a Little Bit Longer” to “Due To an Unforeseen Apocalypse This Will Be Our Final Performance”—with everything from parlor seances and generational trauma to frenzied improv and voices of the formerly incarcerated in between. Exit Theatre, SF. More info here.
FILM
Dennis Harvey’s long-running Screen Grabs has tons more flicks to recommend.
OPENING FRI/8: IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY Amy Berg’s documentary pays probably definitive homage to the short-lived singer-songwriter (son of famous folkie Tim Buckley) who completed just one album, Grace, before he drowned at age 30, in 1997. We hear from his mother, ex-girlfriends, collaborating musicians, and admirers like Ben Harper. Inevitably, a certain tragic hindsight sentimentality begins to obscure the real-world person. Still, he does fascinate as a figure whose scant surviving work was singularly accomplished—and with so many creative impulses warring within him, who knows what he might have achieved later on? Roxie, SF. More info here.
OPENING FRI/8: KEROUAC’S ROAD: THE BEAT OF A NATION Jack Kerouac’s On the Road—is still the boho Bible for those seeking literary permission to roam in life, almost seventy years after publication. It was followed by so much…but who reads Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance now? Yet somehow the allure of the Beats and its most famous author lingers, generation after generation. Ebs Burnough’s doc is an ode to the book’s long-term influence, purportedly with room for criticism (Natalie Merchant discusses the Beat Generation’s embedded misogyny), but heavier on the thankful accolades from such latterday celebrities as actors Matt Dillon, Josh Brolin, W. Kamau Bell, and Jay McInerney. At Berkeley’s Elmwood and Marin’s Rafael Film Center.
NIGHTLIFE
Marke B. usually knows what’s up. Check out his club The Stud for more great parties.
FRI/8: JULIANA HUXTABLE The word “fierce” has been so overused that it’s due for a comeback. It’s certainly the only word I have for describing this New York DJ and queer creative icon’s style behind the decks. She’s at the Squish party playing with one of my favorite people, Kudeki. 10pm-4am, F8, SF. More info here.
FRI/8: TIGER & WOODS Oh man, the disco edit days of yore (2005-2015) were a heady time that yielded some true classics, like once-mysterious Italian duo Tiger & Woods’ inescapable, brilliant 2010 rework of Imagination’s 1982 “Music & Lights”—called “Gin Nation,” natch. They’re at the Italo Disco night at Monarch, which is a bit of a left curve for that lauded, spandex-drenched ’70s-’80s genre (despite T&W’s new album sampling it heavily), but hey, if the scarpetta fits… 9pm-2am, Monarch, SF. More info here.
SUN/10: BLACK COFFEE Some DJs are able to create a whole new way of hearing music, which only they can conjure from the smoking vinyl before them. South African sensation Black Coffee has been bending ears and slapping behinds (figuratively!) for more than two decades, melding African deep house and hyper-contemporary techno aesthetics into a hypnotic arc of sound. 10pm-2:30am, 1015 Folsom, SF. More info here.
