Crafting DIY-style is already pretty punk rock -- but combine it with actual live tunes, and you've got yourself the Rock Make Street Festival, a street celebration of music and art.

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Photos by Bowerbird Photography

Essential life skills surely include knowing how to tie a bow tie, or how to saber champagne. Ok, maybe the second one is more like a glorified party skill, but it's probably one worth having, just for shits and giggles.

If you were at the Skill Exchange Launch Party last night at Store Front Lab then you learned how to do BOTH of those things. And for the next three days, you can feast on a smorgasbord of other wonderful instruction, including urban chickenry, the basics of wiring a lamp, letterpress printing, and bike mechanics.

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Shots by Bowerbird Photography

Models and mannequins started to blend together. Downtown SF was abuzz with fashion frenzy on Thursday for Fashion's Night Out -- a multi-store extravaganza taking place in urban areas across the country.

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Black lace, kimonos, and colorful wigs ruled the day this weekend in Japantown at the J-Pop Summit Festival Aug. 25-26. Also popular this year, for those of you trend-spotting, were sweetly wobbling attenae, which announced the presence of the head attached as they weaved through the booths, stopping here and there to check out the Vocaloid dance contest, an Evangelion fan's robotic get-up, or the Sunday performance by 18-year singer Kylee. Although there was music, food, and things to buy, it was really all about the clothes. Read more »

The push and pull of relationships is a great basis for a dance piece. Not only are relationships intimate, beautiful, and at times frustrating, but they also create magnetic moments, and sometimes pain. This weekend, two dance companies, Detour Dance and the Caitlin Elliott Dance Collective, have collaborated (see? Relationships) to present Along the Way, a production that includes all the basics: love, lust, plain old allure. Read more »

All photos by Bowerbird Photography 

Jenny was visiting from Portland and Sam Love and I decided to take her on a field trip to the Alemany Farm. Portland is well known for their community and sidewalk veggie gardens, so we were excited to show her what SF had to offer in the realm of urban farming. [Ed. note: while they still can! Check out this week's story in the print edition about the impending death of many of the city's agriculture spaces.] Read more »

Photos by Bowerbird Photography

It wasn't too long ago that shopping locally meant hitting up your neighborhood Safeway. But seemingly overnight (in retrospect), farmers markets sprung up like healthy tomato plants. A weekend doesn't go by during which I don't see someone toting their re-usable canvas bag down the street to fill up with fresh produce from local growers.Read more »

The SF Street Food Festival has become such a delight in the summertime. (This year's takes place on Saturday, August 18.) A chance to sample wonderful treats from the around the world (many developed in the test kitchens of entrepeneurial incubator La Cocina), transporting your taste buds to the far reaches of yumminess. The festival can get crazy crowded, so to help you out, here's a list of some fave vendors to make a beeline for:

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Add a disco ball to any situation and you will not decrease its likelihood of becoming a party. When I stopped by ODC Theater earlier this week to snap some photos of the Alyce Finwall Dance Theater's rehearsals for the upcoming three-day dance festival Werk It Out!, it appeared that the dancers were in a festive mood. Read more »

I'm a sucker for pickled things, probably because I grew up in a house where my dad always had a pot of kimchee fermenting on the counter or a bottle of homemade pineapple vinegar, getting perfectly bubbly on top of the fridge. Preserving food also feels very nostalgic for the times when our great-grandparents would can the summer's bounty so we could eat peaches and tomatoes through the winter. So you can imagine how excited I was to take my dad with me to La Cocina for a pickling party with Emiliana Puyane of Jarred SF Brine, to brush up on our fermentation implementation. Read more »