The San Francisco Treat

I can’t remember ever seeing an Anthropologie window or display that wasn’t cool. How fun is this display of the Golden Gate Bridge at the Market Street store in downtown San Francisco? I just wonder what they’re going to do with all Rice-a-Roni when it’s time to take it down…

Haight’s Candy Colored Houses

This past Sunday was the Haight Ashbury Street Fair in San Francisco and boy was it fun. The Haight is always fun, so imagine just how good it was with the addition of live music and street food! I was tormented by the smell of meat, meat and more meat grilling, sizzling and smoking everywhere. I haven’t eaten meat for 2 years but I nearly broke down. Luckily, I was saved by a basket of garlic fries. And a spinach knish. And 1/2 a slice of pizza. (Good thing we walked for 3 hours). After the good times, we got to stroll past some of my favorite houses in the area. A group of ornate, candy-colored Victorian beauties on the corner of Haight and Central…

Artsy Festivals in the Bay Area: June 4-5

There’s rain in the forecast this weekend for the bay area, but that won’t stop the artsy fun. If you’re in San Francisco, check out the Union Street Eco-Urban Festival. There will be live music, there will be arts and crafts and there will be green exhibits. So basically, there will be awesomeness. Saturday 6/4 & Sunday  6/5, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Union Street : Gough to Steiner, San Francisco.

If you’re on the other side of the bridge (yay!) don’t miss the Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival this weekend in Berkeley. I love how the name of this festival is like all the promotion it needs. Seriously, any festival with chocolate in the name is a winner. I’m sure the street art part will be really fantastic too. I think you should go even if you’re not in the East Bay! Saturday, 6/4, 10am-5pm, North Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley.

“Chocolate & Chalk Art” Art Nouveau Woman chalk art by Natasha Robinson, taken from anotherbullwinkelshow.com

Bikes in the Mission

There was so much visual goodness in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood during Sunday Streets that I couldn’t help but add another post about it. This one is about bikes. So many bikes! I know this post seems more relevant to fashion or industrial design, but one of the bikes is also a piano- that’s furniture related, eh? Besides, creativity, regardless of the type, can always cross over and inspire us in our own design field. What was so great about the bikes was that they were like moving art. Multimedia installations of recreation and eccentricity.

There was the fuchsia duo emitting bubbles to the crowd’s delight.

My sister-in-law, Lobna, poses with this piano tricycle dude.

The double decker bikes whose riders got on so effortlessly. How do they do it????

And last but not least, these two were powering a band’s performance on this bicycle-thingie. Wow! Respect.

Oh, and I don’t have a photo, but ‘Deep from San Francisco’s Flashdance was there with his sound system 3-wheeler “trikeasurus” blaring out tunes as he wove his way through the Sunday Streeters. Very cool.

SF’s Sunday Streets in the Mission

It’s May and festival season has officially started! Today we took my sister-in-law Lobna, who’s visiting from Cairo, to her (and our) first Sunday Streets- a free festival/street party extraordinaire taking place every 2nd Sunday in one of San Francisco’s fabulous neighborhoods. Today’s happened to be in the Mission, which I hear is one of the best ones, and although I haven’t been to any other Sunday Streets yet, I agree already! As we walked down Valencia we found this fantastic retro loveseat on the sidewalk.  It was on display in front of a furniture store, and was a great place to stop for a sec and people watch.

Another great thing about events in the Mission: murals and graffiti make a great backdrop for all the craziness going on!

But my favorite visual of the day had to be the little band entertaining the crowd from their 1st floor apartment window along 24th street. It was one of those groups of people and environments that is just so cool, it makes you feel so uncool. Yeah, I know, we’re all cool in our own special way, but you know what I mean! I wish I could have gotten better photos to do justice to their small, dark, art-filled studio/theater/bay window but the light was not in my favor (and I was using my camera phone- lame). Oh and they sounded great, too.

We had a terrific time enjoying everything SF, got about 3 hours of exercise walking the streets and Lobna got some great pics to take home.