Way out in the San Pablo Bay is a small harbor that’s home to a restaurant and music venue whimsically called the Sailing Goat. To get here you drive and drive, first through a desolate stretch of abandoned buildings fenced… Continue Reading →
Very sad to read about the death of Dan Fontes, who created the iconic, ivy-grazing freeway giraffes (officially, the Giraphics) in Oakland. His mural series has brought whimsy to the concrete jungle under 580 since 1984! Long may they graze.
Last weekend I was on my way to the Marin Art & Garden Center to meet friends and even though I’d looked up venue photos and mapped it (more than once)…it didn’t click until I was nearly there that I’d… Continue Reading →
Around me, friends and colleagues are scrambling to reinvent careers in this cratered market. Because my brain turns everything into a pop culture reference, all I hear is a loop of Ross screaming ”PIVOT! PIVOT!”
According to family lore, Great (Great Great) Aunt Josie was the first woman elected to office in Ottawa County, Ohio. But the story of Josie can’t be told without the story of my grandmother, Helen, because we don’t know much… Continue Reading →
Sometimes I fool myself into believing I am resistant to the lifestyle inflation of social media and home renovation shows…unsurprisingly, it seems I’ve given myself too much credit. No matter how pragmatic I try to be, I keep bumping up… Continue Reading →
Bathrooms are an underrated place to have fun with decor! This one’s at my local coffee shop & cocktail hangout.
A friend once quipped that if she were writing a book, we’d be able to identify the villain because they didn’t like Jane Austen. That’s me, the villain! College was the first time I had the unsettling realization that most… Continue Reading →
One of oldest and best friends lives in Vegas and she often invites me to concerts, but as someone who lives under a rock I rarely know who’s on tour. So I gave her the specs: find me a show… Continue Reading →
Reflections are one of my favorite visuals — I love how they merge planes and bend reality. In this shot the bar is behind me, and the plant and casino floor are on the other side of the glass.
In the wilds of Reddit, I came across a hypothetical question: If you could go back to when you were 27, would you? They couldn’t have picked a more perfect age for this question — that was the year I… Continue Reading →
It’s a cozy fiction cliché to set the story in a quirky village where gossip travels faster than light and a small number of villagers miraculously pull off a full calendar of summer festivals and holiday extravaganzas as well as… Continue Reading →
The easiest way to see the inside of Oakland’s Fox Theater is to grab a concert or a drink there because tours are not regularly offered. So of course I jumped at the chance to get inside this beauty with… Continue Reading →
Out of nearly 200 books I read in 2025, these are ones that stick out in my mind. Some ran deep, helping me grieve or challenging me to think about life differently, and some were simply fun distractions in troubling… Continue Reading →