The new Exploratorium opens -- are the piers as good as the Palace?

04.18.13 - 12:19 pm | Jessica Wolfrom |

(3)

Opening day at the new Exploratorium, 4/17/13. Guardian photo by Jessica Wolfrom

As someone who was practically bottle-fed on the old Exploratorium space, I was hesitant approaching the science museum's opening day at its new home on Pier 15 and 17. Like many other SF natives, I was attached to the old world charm and neo-classical elegance of the Palace of Fine Arts location, opened in 1969 by physics professor Frank Oppenheimer.

But consider me a convert. Where the Palace of Fine Arts' physical layout seemed to dictate the content of the old museum, the new building, extensively rehabbed to house the famously hands-on exhibits, allows them to exist more organically. The new site now houses the largest pod of solar panels in the city, holds a magnificently vista-ed observatory, and harnesses as a heating source the Bay waters it sits above on 1800 wood and concrete pilings built around a century ago.

Read more »

Cruisin', obsessin', and drinkin': new movies!

04.18.13 - 11:45 am | Cheryl Eddy and Guardian Staff Writers |

(0)

Hollywood is clearly bowing down to the power of Tom Cruise this week, opening no other contenders (sorry, Rob Zombie, The Lords of Salem doesn't count) to compete with what's sure to be an Oblivion-ated weekend box office. (And to be honest, the movie's big and dumb, but actually pretty entertaining. My review after the jump.)

Elsewhere, the must-see movie-obsessive doc Room 237 opens at the Roxie (check out my interview with director Rodney Ascher here; he'll be at the Roxie in person this weekend), and Dennis Harvey takes on a pair of imports that actually do fairy-tale adaptations proud: Blancanieves and Let My People Go! Also worth checking out is the latest from Ken Loach, a comedy about crime and whiskey ... what's not to love? My review follows.

Read more »

Film

Goats, unicorns, Snoop Dogg: What to do in SF for 4/20 2013

04.16.13 - 3:11 pm | Caitlin Donohue |

(1)

Hey stoner stereotypes, see ya at Hippie Hill! I jk -- you can do way better on International Stoner Day this year in the Bay. Instead of watching wobbly teenagers inhale from "joints" the size of their lacrosse stick in Golden Gate Park (also avoid Haight Street today like the plague), steer your buzzed bumblings towards these carefully curated events that are sure to be safe, amaaaazing spaces for mature marijuana users.

It's a great day to hit up your fave dispensary, too -- many are offering deals and free joints to patients [e.g., the Castro's Apothecarium, where the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will be holding court all day.] Other year-round best bets for the blazed: the Audium, the brand-new Exploratorium, or your couch. Read more »

An art benefit -- for the artists

04.16.13 - 10:57 am | Tim Redmond |

(1)

All sorts of political campaigns and causes raise money by asking artists to donate work that can be auctioned off. It's not often that the artists themselves get the benefits.

So Matt Gonzalez -- former supervisor, longtime criminal defense lawyer, and big fan of local arts -- is putting together a different type of fund-raiser. It's an art auction -- to benefit the artists.Read more »

Save the San Francisco Mime Troupe's summer season!

04.15.13 - 9:56 am | Nicole Gluckstern |

(0)

All the world may be a stage, but as San Francisco Mime Troupe fans are finding out, it’s not a free one.

Even as we gleefully contemplate a Fleet Week sans Blue Angels, truly the silver lining of sequestration, the news that the San Francisco Mime Troupe is facing an immediate financial crisis reminds us of its downsides as well. After several anticipated grants failed to be awarded to the acclaimed theatrical collective, including one from longtime funders the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mime Troupe announced that it needs to raise $40,000 by the end of April in order to mount its summer tour of a show about natural resources and climate change tentatively entitled Oil and Water.

Read more »

Neighborhood sounds: MAPPS takes over the Mission

04.12.13 - 1:48 pm | Ariel Soto-Suver |

(0)

MAPPS April 2013. Photo by Bowerbird Photography

Photos by Bowerbird Photography

It's fun to imagine what it would be like to have lived during the Beatnik era, an era full of art salons and improvised performance. An evening walking around the for the Mission Arts and Performance Project (MAPP) with friends seems like close fit to those artistic days, because you never really know what you'll see when you roll up to one of the many venues along the MAPP's guide to the Mission. Read more »

Smell that: Wildflower trains take you away all this month

04.12.13 - 12:30 pm | Cortney Clift |

(0)

If one-too-many overcrowded Muni rides have left you aching for a more pleasurable mass transit experience, the Western Railway Museum has an option that smells less of body odor and more of spring flowers for you this weekend: the 12th year of its April spring wildflower train rides, which take passengers back to the early 1900s on an hour-long, 10-mile trip around the Montezuma Hills, a mere hour’s drive out of town. Read more »

Words, words, words permeate a couple of unconventional theater options this weekend

04.12.13 - 11:03 am | Robert Avila |

(0)

The scattered letters piled on the floor are alternately a lover, a tormentor, a terrible reminder, a set of mysterious directives, and a bed for restless dreaming for Ophelia — or rather, one of her three incarnations — as French company Carte Blanche presents its roaming, site-specific riff on Shakespeare’s sad heroine, with inspiration drawn from Arthur Rimbaud’s famous elegy.

But despite all those missives from a certain gloomy prince, the piece makes much use of silence too, as the audience mills around the Firehouse at Fort Mason Center, watching the agitated actions of three young heroines in various rooms before being led outside for a journey to other environs.

Read more »

Things that make you go hmmm: new movies!

04.12.13 - 10:23 am | Cheryl Eddy and Guardian Staff Writers |

(0)

Better order your popcorn with a side of open-mindedness this week, what with To the Wonder (meh) and Upstream Color (woo!) launching themselves at audiences. Less experimental types can settle for ensemble drama Disconnect or Scary Movie 5, the latest in the pop-culture parody series.

Read on for the rest of this week's new films, including the latest from Danny Boyle and Robert Redford, plus a perfectly-timed-to-maximize-on-the-start-of-baseball-season Jackie Robinson biopic.

Read more »

Film

Internet cats, in their own words: Colonel Meow

04.11.13 - 9:59 am | Caitlin Donohue |

(6)

I got -- and am continuing to get -- in quite a few conversations with loved ones and people I get stuck chatting with at parties, about favorite Internet cats. Such has been the all-consuming process that is this week's "Cat Pack" cover story. And shocked, I am shocked each time someone is ignorant of Colonel Meow's charms. The luxuriously eyebrowed black-and-gray Persian longhair from Washington State, and his owner Anne Marie Avey's megalomaniac prose have entered our cultural vernacular.

Read more »