If you’re planning ahead—whether for the weekend, or for Christmas—mark Friday through Sunday (August 3-5) on your calendar for a visit to the American Craft Council’s annual exhibition at Fort Mason Center, featuring work from over 200 artists. With prices ranging from the tens- to the tens-of-thousands, the country’s largest juried craft show west of the Rockies is highlighted this year by two new exhibition categories sure to appeal to the Bay Area’s crafty cognoscenti:

• Foodieware features fully functional art for the kitchen and dining room. From cutlery to serving platters to woven table dressings, this is the intersection of beauty and utility. While it can be  nervewracking to select purely artistic craftwork to give to others, the practical dimension of the items on display in these booths makes them particularly gift worthy.

• Men’s Department focuses on one-of-a-kind handmade wearables and accessories for guys, including Santa Rosa leather artist Richard Davis’ museum-worthy murses.

Lesbian jewelry artists Lou Ann Townsend and Mary Filapek try to capture the cosmos in their work.

Members of the Bay Area’s overlapping scientific and GLBT communities will want to check out the bold sterling silver and polymer jewelry created by art- and life-partners Mary Filapek and Lou Ann Townsend, from North Carolina. The pair point to atomic and cellular structure as a major influence on their work, and the copy on their website suggests that they’ll be quite a hit with the local girl-geek crowd: “Two sodium atoms are walking along the street when one stops and says, ‘Oh my God, I think I’ve lost an electron.’ ‘Are you sure?’ asks the other sodium atom. ‘Yes,’ replies the first sodium atom, ‘I’m positive.’”

On Friday  from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.,  admission to the exhibition will be discounted to $5 (from $14), with live music and free sampling of Balvenie Single Malt Whiskey livening up the evening hours

PASSPORT magazine favorite Bryan Batt, of Mad Men and Jeffrey fame,  recently visited the ACCS’ East Coast show in Baltimore to find items for his  New Orleans design shop, Hazelnut.  Video after the jump

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A trumpeting bull elephant seal (Photo: Frank Balthis, California State Parks)

It’s that time of year when the B-52s’ “Love Shack” makes its annual comeback, delighting some and annoying many at barbecues throughout the Bay Area. While I’m certainly in the latter camp , I’ve also been having a much more positive, free-associative reaction to the tune this season.

Whenever I hear croaky vocalist Fred Schneider bellow “I got me a car, and its as big as a whale” my mind flashes on a visit I paid to Año Nuevo State Park—about 90 minutes south of the city, in San Mateo County—and I want to go back.

While gray whales can occasionally be spotted off the coast of this windswept peninsula during the spring, its the extraordinary elephant seals—many even bigger than a car—that you’re virtually guaranteed to spot lounging on the beach all year round. These are gigantic mofos, with males weighing up to 2.5 tons and measuring up to 16 feet long. During breeding season, from late December through March, 2000 or so of these behemoths crash the beach, and you can only hike the grounds on a ranger-guided tour.

In the summer months, though, when the ellies return to molt in huge raggedy patches, visitors can walk amongst them unchaperoned. Just pick up a permit at the park’s entrance and after hiking a few easy miles over undulating scrub and sand, you’ll find yourself in the land of the giants. The elephant seals are remarkably unthreatened by strolling bipeds. But bipeds like myself feel humbled in their presence, marveling at their cyclical journeys to and from the northern California shore.

We also think the sound of the seals is pretty much on par with the B-52s.

American Idiot, the blast-furnace of a musical built around the songs of Bay Area natives Green Day  and first produced at the Berkeley Rep in 2009 has circled back  from Broadway, landing at the Orpheum for the final run of its first North American tour (Now through July 8). The rock solid cast—including several veterans of the New York production—takes the stage with an exuberant ferocity that belies the fact that this is the last stop of a long haul that began in Toronto six months ago.

After last night’s official opening, we spotted director/conceptualist Michael Mayer positively beaming at the back of the house, surely impressed at the stamina and professionalism of this remarkable troupe. You’d be hard-pressed to name another touring show with this degree of polish.

Scott J. Campbell plays Tunny (Photo: Doug Hamilton)

The show stitches all of the songs from the 2004 American Idiot album—along with numbers from Green Day’s subsequent 21st Century Breakdown record—in a loose, poetry slam of a storyline about a troika of teenage boys seeking to escape the miasma of contemporary suburbia in search of some inchoate ‘better life.’ Propulsive punk-pop songs like “I Don’t Care” and “Know Your Enemy” effectively convey the sneering, pissed-off angst of adolescence, while anthemic ballads including “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” alchemize sometimes self-dramatizing teen bathos into genuinely moving onstage moments.

The emotions and characters in American Idiotare as boldly and broadly drawn as graffiti tags: Musical vernacular aside, the show is much more akin to opera than to traditional musical theater: It invites its audience to get swept up in the music, to wallow and soar in grand percussive projections of their of their own emotions, rather than closely follow witty lyrics and clockwork plotting.

Arena rock spectacle at the intimate Orpheum
(Photo: Doug Hamilton)

American Idiot even has its own three tenors: Van Hughes as Johnny, who descends into heroin addiction; hunky Scott Campbell as Tunny, who joins the army out of aimlessness rather than patriotism; and Jake Epstein as Will, who stays behind in their hometown with his pregnant girlfriend. They’re remarkably focused actors, imbuing their loosely sketched roles with specific humanity and creating surprisingly individuated characters amidst the overall atmosphere of stomping ensemble spectacle.

A bell-clear sound system, an arsenal of well-deployed lighting and video effects, and Steven Hoggett’s frenetic full-bodied choreography help American Idiot concentrate and elevate the the pleasures of an arena rock show into something just as visceral, but much more rewarding in the intimate 2200-seat Orpheum.

Sit in the pit! A limited number of $25 Orchestra Pit Rush seats will go on sale two hours prior to each performance at the Orpheum Theatre Box Office only. These tickets are available to anyone and you must be present to purchase. Cash only with a limit of two tickets per person. Tickets will be sold on a first come, first serve basis.

Video clip after the jump

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You’re doubtless familiar with the Blue Man Group. Well, take a gander at White Man Group, better known as VocaPeople, the Israel-based singing ensemble now performing at the Marines’ Memorial Theater through June 17.

VocaPeople on tour in Spain

Their musical is tied together by a thin, rather extraneous plot line about alien visitors to earth (hence the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence cosmetics and bleached out wardrobe), but its really all about spotlighting the group’s remarkable vocal talents and ingenious song arrangements and mash-ups.  The show is performed entirely a cappella, but spans genres from classical, to funk, to metal (with a dollop of doo-wop, of course). If you’re looking for a lighthearted, utterly entertaining evening out over the week ahead, VocaPeople’s got the white stuff.

Check out cool Voca video after the jump Read more…

This Sunday, May 27, city is going all out to celebrate the official first day of  Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary year. There’s a full slate of waterfront festivities featuring bridge-related art and science exhibits; displays of antique cars and boats from 1937,  when the bridge was first opened; and an evening fireworks display to cap it all off.

The celebration is just getting under way though, with activities—including daily walking tours rich in details about the bridge’s history and engineering—spanning the summer. So if you decide to skip the crowds this weekend, there’s lots more ahead. One of our favorite upcoming tributes is…The Bridge on the Big Screen Film Series

The Golden Gate may never have won Hollywood’s golden statuette, but the bridge is featured in the films screening on Saturday nights at the Presidio (FREE ADMISSION):

• It Came from Beyond the Sea, May 26 – outdoors
• Howeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco,  June 2 – outdoors
• Superman: The Movie, June 9 – outdoors
• Vertigo, June 16
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, July 21
• A View to a Kill, August 18
• Monsters vs. Aliens, September 15

Alas, 2011′s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, with loads of intense action on the Golden Gate, the streets of San Francisco, Muir Woods, and even the Cable Cars isn’t included in the series.  Click here for an awesome clip.

And get a gander of Grace Jones and Christopher Walken ogling the bridge, after the jump.

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In the hot seat at the Clift (Photo: P.J.Ohm)

Whenever I think about the Clift Hotel, I start humming “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” It’s the last link in a free associative chain triggered by the Clift’s memorably outlandish lobby decor. That 1984 tune, of course, is from Tears for Fears’ fey-tastic 1984 album Songs from the Big Chair.

My bouts of nostalgia notwithstanding, the Clift plays host to a series of musical events that are utterly au courant. The next two shows are coming up soon, and if you click on the links below, you can get on the guest lists, gratis.

• On Thursday, May 24, experimental trip-hopster Shlohmo ushers in the Memorial Day weekend. GUEST LIST 
• On Friday, June 2, Diego Garcia—brainy Brown graduate and former leader of Elefant—brings his dreamy, Beatlesque pop to town. This one’s a must catch. GUEST LIST

The free shows, in the hotel’s swank Velvet Room, will get underway around 10 p.m. (Doors at 9ish). But since you’renot spending anything for tickets, consider showing up early to kick off the night with luxe libations in the adjacent Redwood Room, one of the most indisputably alluring cocktail lounges in town. Most weeknights, the post-work crowd thins out around 7:30 and the handsome room maintains a comfortable level of volume and crush for a couple magic hours, the ideal time to tap the staff’s creativity and knowledge of locally sourced spirits.

One of the handsomest bars in town (Photo: Clift Hotel)

Crackerjack barman Anthony Kim recently joined me in lamenting the sparse supply of Hangar One’s bracing chipotle-infused vodka, but made up for it with the Redwood Room’s signature House of Pisco cocktail, which blends pisco (Peruvian eau de vie) with pineapple and clove gum syrup, and green chartreuse. A skinny helix of lemon peel straddling the glass provided a bitter aromatic counterbalance to the drink’s slight sweetness. Kim is a master pisco mixologist; his concoctions using the locally imported Encanto brand recently won him a trip to Peru for the annual grape harvest.

Pour yourself a drink and check out Diego Garcia on video after the jump

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John Russo gets a buzz on

It was a year ago this month that I took my father to spend a couple of special days together at the Carmel Valley Ranch, just a couple hours south of San Francisco. It was a ‘just the two of us’ getaway that was a long time coming:  in the more than 4 decades I’ve spun around on this planet, I’d never spent more than an hour or two of one-on-one time with Dad before. I wrote an essay about our experience that appeared in the April issue of PASSPORT magazine (I’ll add a link to this post when it becomes available online…but feel free to buy a copy at Books Inc. or another fine retailer!).

In any case, May is the start of bee season at the Ranch, one of the activities that makes a weekend getaway at this particular resort a little more special than the typical R&R experiences you can find at many spots throughout the Bay Area. John Russo—who runs Carmel Lavender, a nearby commercial flower farm—is  the Ranch’s beekeeper-in-sorta-residence. He tends to over 60,000 Italian honeybees on the resort property,and harvests their wares for guests’ delectation. More importantly, guests are invited to join Russo every Saturday and Tuesday for hands-on lessons on bees and beekeeping.

You’ll get to don one of those crazy white suits like they wore in The Swarm and handle (with thick gloves) vibrating trays thick with hundreds of live bees. You’ll also learn lots of fascinating stuff about how honey can work as an allergy treatment, how bees communicate via pheromone emission, and the history of apiculture in California. Russo is a big, brainy, Brown-educated bear of a guy who will keep you thoroughly engaged for an hour or so, and then keep you thinking about his lore and lessons for days to come.

Blue me!

Full disclosure:  This week’s San Francisco Agenda is being remotely blogged from one of the world’s other great coastal metropolises, Rio de Janeiro. As I wrapped up business at home last week, I wanted to prepare myself for the boys from Ipanema. While a Brazilian waxing was definitely not in the cards, I asked the cheerful crew at Castro Nail Salon go to town on my toes. I’m gonna look sandalicious on the beach with these blue chrome cuticles, no?

Even when I have no big holiday on the horizon, a session at the Castro Nail Salon makes for a great mini-getaway—or a vacation within your vacation if you’re in SF as a tourist. If you can finagle a midday break during the work week, CNS offers a terrific special: manicure and pedicure for $29. And this is no rush job—you get a good hour in the vibrating massage chair, sipping on a complimentary glass of white wine (or iced green tea, but what the heck, midday drinking can be as therapeutic as blowing off work to get one’s nails done). On Sundays, mimosas flow freely.

Last Thursday afternoon, I had my nails Smurfified amidst a gaggle of sexy servers from A16, a shmancy Italian eatery in the Marina District—they were having a polish party to celebrate one of their birthdays. They gossiped about a French model named Florian who was dating one of their roommates and was alleged to have what is referred to in Paris  as un grand bite. The young lady in the chair next to me massaged my shoulder in empathy after my left foot went into paroxysms of cramping while stuck in the toaster-oveny contraption where my digits were drying.

I set out into the evening with nothing but new flip-flops on my mind. I still had another day of work ahead, but it felt as if my vacation was already underway. At the Toe-pa, Toe-pa-cabana…

Master Distiller Arne Hillesland brews up a new reason to say "L'chaim!" (Photos: Distillery No. 209)

In the first month that we’ve been online, at least one unplanned theme has begun to emerge here at the SF Agenda: Oddball pairings. First, we saw the meeting of beefcake and pulled pork at Sneaky’s; then, we took a class in matching teas with cheeses; and now we’re confronted with the question of just what cocktail one might choose to accompany the oversized, undersalted quenelle  of ground carp and onions affectionately (or unaffectionately) known as gefilte fish. It’s a pressing question as tonight and tomorrow night are the first and second seders—the symbolism-laden family feasts that begin the Jewish community’s annual week-long celebration of Passover, high season for gefilte fish eating.

The herbaceous, saline bite of a Dirty Martini seems just right. The salt of the olive juice reintroduces some briny depth to what is often little more than a bland, room temperature fish burger; and typical gin botanicals —including lemon peel and cucumber—are classic partners of the piscine.

Kosher for Passover vodka

Well, at Distillery No. 209, that inventive den of contemporary booze-craft hidden away on a pier behind AT&T Park, they’ve actually concocted a Semitic gin and a facacta vodka.

Having a silver spoon in your mouth in San Francisco doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wealthy these days. More likely, its a sign that you’re sampling the riches of the City by The Bay’s artisanal ice cream boom. This metropolis of free-range, sustainable, organic, locavoraciousness has lately been sharpening its sweet tooth and dishing up new spins on an old-fashioned American favorite. Lines are not uncommon at a handful of boutique creameries; and they move slowly because everyone wants multiple samples from a cone-ucopia of newfangled flavors. The samples are, almost needless to say, unfailingly served up in silver—well, metal—spoons, because no self-respecting San Franciscan entrepreneur would dare be so environmentally uncool as to plow through hundreds of disposable plastic or wooden spoons a day.

The city has a venerable history of frozen weirdness: The grandaddy of it all is Mitchell’s, founded  57 years ago. In a nod to the city’s Asian-American palates Mitchell’s scoops up a flamboyant fruit salad of  flavors. How about a dip of lychee? Jackfruit? Durian? Or Ube? (That’s purple yam to you).

Over the past few years, hipster-centric new scooperies have asserted themselves as potential heirs to Mitchell’s crown…

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Check out the making of Bi-Rite Creamery’s Salted Caramel ice cream in a video, courtesy of CHOW, after the jump

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