Places
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Endbahnhof: Photographic Portraits of Berlin’s U-Bahn
A talk with Australian born Photographer Kate Seabrook about transit, typography, and the aesthetics of train stations.
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Halfway Great: A Short History of the BART System
You want to know about the BART system? Here is it in five minutes.
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Last Days of Berlin’s Abandoned Spreepark
Behind a chain-link fence on a corner of Planterwald in East Berlin, Spreepark is a sprawling tangle of dilapidated amusement rides.
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Evidence: Ai Weiwei in Berlin
Ai WeiWei’s largest show to date is currently on display in Berlin.
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Vice Mexico Video Roundup
To see Vice at their best, you’ve got to see the coverage of Mexico they’ve been doing recently.
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Top Ten Things to do in Oaxaca City
Best things to do in the city of Oaxaca, all within walking distance of Centro.
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Alejandro Santiago’s 2501 Migrantes
Oaxacan artist Alejandro Santiago, known for his massive 2501 Migrants project, passed away in July. Here’s some of his work.
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Tenderloin Poet: William Taylor Jr. [VIDEO]
A poet draws inspiration from the mean streets of the Tenderloin neighborhood he’s lived in for nearly a decade. Creosote Minidoc #1
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Subtexts in the Narco News
Making sense of this week’s narco news: Zetas capture could signal a shift in the drug war.
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The New Nerve Center
Orange County reacts to Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and its own history of trauma.
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Miguel’s Story
Miguel says he was imprisoned for several years in Mexico for a crime he didn’t commit.
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The Knife-Sharpener’s Song
Sounds of Oaxaca: the potato steamer’s whistle, the gas truck, and the knife sharpener’s song.
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Xochimilco
Since March I’ve lived in Xochimilco, Oaxaca – home to weavers, aqueducts, and stray dogs.
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The Gargoyles of Mexico City
Doomed as they are to be condemned as blight, they should be captured now in as much detail as possible, so that the Mexico City of the future will know the ruins of its past.
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Richmond Street Art
Richmond, like most of the Bay Area, reveals itself through its murals.
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Family, Ritual, Dream States: New Oaxacan Photography
The work of two Oaxacan photographers explores creative memory and shamanic practice, at the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo.
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San Francisco Stories
The current SF Bay Guardian is devoted to a slice of literary life in San Francisco, and filled with small, intimate personal essays – a rare thing in any kind of newspaper.
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Not Yet Lost: Golden West and the Craft of Sign Painting
Golden West Signs in Berkeley keeps a vanishing craft alive.
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Magic, Terror, and San Francisco
In “Season of the Witch,” Salon.com founder David Talbot takes us through the turmoil, activism and passion of modern San Francisco’s violent birth in the 60s and 70s.
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Outlaw Brass: Tuba Thieves and Trend Hype
The big bass horn now boasts L.A. street cred, and schools are keeping an eye on their band rooms.
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Streets of Oakland: Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Martin Luther King Jr Way has a stillness and a golden light all its own: from the corner stores and vacant lots to art studios and community gardens.
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Polk Gulch Graffiti
Big letters, the undead, skulls, and street signs: Polk Gulch graffiti.
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Does Anybody Know What It Was About?
Three people were shot a block from my Tenderloin apartment earlier this week. My neighbor said it was about drugs.
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From the Barbary Coast to the 21st Century
Larry Rothe, author of a new history of the San Francisco Symphony, talks about the City, the orchestra, music, and writing.
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It Hurts to Let You Go: Levi Pata at Kokoro Studio
Levi Pata’s solo debut at Kokoro Studio in San Francisco displays worldly inspiration along with elemental flow.
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Uncovering the Key Route
Erin Heath traces the urban rail history hidden under Oakland’s streets.
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The Occupation of Silver City
After two months of marked tolerance towards the Occupy Los Angeles camp, L.A. joined the trend of raids and evictions in major cities.
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Winter Lit Journals in San Francisco
The winter literary quarterlies are hitting bookshelves in San Francisco—Zyzzyva, 14 Hills, and McSweeney’s.
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The Barbarian Nurseries
Héctor Tobar’s new novel takes a sprawling view of Los Angeles, from the gated communities to the back alleys and side streets where the marginalized and the forgotten create their own vibrant community.
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The West Coast’s New Cultural Ambassador
Ice Cube has recently turned heads for appearing in a new role: as a cultural ambassador for the West Coast—his hometown of L.A., specifically.
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Death Valley
The first time I ever experienced Death Valley, it was the middle of summer, I’d just turned 21 and I was on a roadtrip across the West.
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Oakland, Occupied
What I saw last Wednesday was people gathered together, a bit raucous, pissed off but happy to be in each others presence, encouraged by a show of resistance.
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We Felt It: Litquake 2011
Like the 4.2 magnitude earthquake last week that jolted the Bay Area, Litquake 2011 came and went quickly this October, leaving us all with different impressions.
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The Scanners Project
The Scanners Project is a temporary bookstore meets art installation, a showcase of the tactile pleasures of physicality of books.
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Fante & Son
Dan Fante provides a refreshing and much-needed examination of his father, John Fante’s life, and the cloud of dirty glamor that surrounds it.
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San Francisco Debates… The Arts
To say this was a lively debate would be stretching it, but it was encouraging to see the candidates in agreement on the importance of the arts.
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The Scribe of Burning Man
Steven T. Jones (aka Scribe) takes a deep look into Burning Man’s history and inner workings in his book, The Tribes of Burning Man.
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Saints in the City of Angels
Dealing in candles, incense, herbs, and effigies, the botánica exists in that blurred region where rigid definitions of religion and culture no longer reign—like Los Angeles itself.
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Los Angeles Drives Itself
Driverless cars are closer than you think, and nowhere are they going to have a bigger impact than in Los Angeles.
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Voices From Venezuela
New book delivers ground-level perspectives on the Bolivarian Revolution—in candid, concise, and inspiring narratives.
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Finding Chinatown
A conversation with Bonnie Tsui, author of American Chinatown, on the changing dynamics of the urban neighborhoods she explored.
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Marble Canyon
Marble Canyon’s bright formations, cavernous canyons and sub canyons compose only part of the over 17 million acres that spans three states and encompasses the Navajo Nation.
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Art in Storefronts and Storefront Art
The second annual Art in Storefronts event merged with the unique textures and elements inherent to Mid Market: porn shops, neon signs, old businesses, grand buildings, active street corners and the artery of trains, taxis and buses.
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Rolling Thunder
Chief Thunder created a sprawling work of architectural folk art in Nevada about forty years ago. When I visit this place, I feel a reverent awe, as well as a strange sense of emptiness.
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Facebook and the Late Night Train
In the Bay Area, there’s an online clamor for late-night hours on BART, one that’s gained the attention of the media and BART leadership—but what will the results be?
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Bolinas Ridge
Bolinas Ridge, up above the bohemian coastal town, has panoramic views, open roads, and lots of cattle.
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Underground America: Voices of the Undocumented
From McSweeney’s Voice of Witness series, Underground America collects firsthand accounts from immigrants who have come in pursuit of a dream and found a complex, disturbing reality.
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Transplanted Altar
Ancient marble figures at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, where a giant altar transplanted from its original home in Turkey is now being called back.
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Urban Lions
Last year, a mountain lion was encountered, then killed, on the streets of Berkeley. Why was it there?
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The Year of the Metal Cat
A New Year’s celebration to ring in the Year of the Metal Cat in San Francisco’s Little Saigon neighborhood.