Category: Arts & Culture
Posted inArts & Culture

Women’s comedy groups offer another outlet for humor in San Francisco

by Ambika Kandasamy

For the women running the Monday Night Foreplays comedy group, their short skits are an effort to fill a large void that exists in the female sketch comedy scene.

The group’s creators, Ruth Grossinger and Kate Jones, said that women are in the minority in leading sketch comedy groups in the city.

“In San Francisco, there are a lot of sketch comedy groups, but there aren’t a lot of just female-based groups,” said Jones. “The voice for female sketch comedy, not just in the city, but across the board, could definitely be expanded on.”

Posted inArts & Culture, Government & Politics, News

State Department courts tech entrepreneurs to aid in development, diplomacy

by Rosemary Macaulay

The Bay Area’s innovators and social entrepreneurs have been invited by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to contribute their ideas for furthering diplomacy and development using new technology. Clinton said the State Department is embracing technological advances pioneered in the Bay Area to aid communication across the globe.

Posted inArts & Culture, Elections, Politics, Transportation

Boxer: Nation needs more green jobs

by Alison Hawkes

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has come out swinging on environmental causes, linking the nation’s longer term economic prospects to growth in the green energy industry. She railed against corporations for sending jobs overseas, vowing to eliminate their tax breaks and reward those who build an environmentally benign economy at home. She is running a high-profile race against GOP opponent Carly Fiorina.

Posted inArts & Culture, City Hall, Elections, News

Arts groups make the case for greater slice of public funds

by Gianmaria Franchini

Nonprofit art organizations are big business in San Francisco, employing 28,000 people and providing tens of millions in state and local revenues. And they want politicians to pay attention. “There is nothing more important we can do than advancing art in America,” said Randy Cohen, vice president of local arts advancement at Americans for the Arts. He said the arts have a large impact on job creation and state and local government revenue.

Posted inArts & Culture, Community, Environment, Food Systems, News, Social Justice

Green hip-hop group pruned by budget cuts

by Ambika Kandasamy

A local organization that promotes environmental consciousness through hip-hop culture is going on hiatus this fall after losing major funding from the city of San Francisco. Grind for the Grind hosted its first — and final — “eco-music festival” of the year in Oakland last weekend. The event, FreshFest, brought local hip-hop musicians, artists and sustainable food producers together for a day of solar-powered live jamming, healthy eats and green-themed crafts. After losing its San Francisco grant, the festival was free to move from Yerba Buena Gardens, where it had been for two years, to Oakland’s Mosswood Park. But there still wasn’t enough money to put on the usual four summer festivals.

Posted inArts & Culture

Book Review: Journalist spins riveting tale of murder and intrigue along the California coast

by Leslie Guevarra

Colm MacCay, the anti-hero of Paul McHugh’s novel “Deadlines” (Lost Coast Press, $16.95), is a besotted, arrogant and wildly insecure newspaper columnist beyond his prime, who swaggers and staggers onto a story of abused personal and private trust and wants to make it his own. Unraveling a seaside murder before the competition scoops him could resuscitate MacCay’s faltering career — and, of course, bring a measure of justice to the victims.

Posted inArts & Culture, Elections, Law & Justice, LGBTQ+, Social Justice

Gay-marriage attorney maps out strategy to defeat ‘state-sponsored discrimination’

by Kristine Magnuson

David Boies, one of the two attorneys in the successful case to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage, said the case evoked fights he participated in during the civil rights movement decades ago, calling opposition to equality the “last bastion of official, state-sponsored discrimination in this country.” He spoke at the Commonwealth Club Thursday night.

Posted inArts & Culture, Labor, Neighborhoods, Parks & Open Space

Restored Depression-era maritime murals recall heyday of public art

by Gianmaria Franchini

The Aquatic Park Bathhouse Building at the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park at Beach and Polk streets is emerging from a rehabilitation project with a noticeable facelift. The Bathhouse was built in 1939 by the Works Project Administration and became the park’s Maritime Museum in 1951. The building, which was designed to resemble the bridge of an ocean liner, is teeming with sea-themed art, none more striking that Hilaire Hiler’s “Undersea Life” mural, which has also been restored.

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