“It's a great thing for us to be in the festival this year,” says Portsha Jefferson, artistic director of Ethnic Dance Festival first timer, the Rara Tou Limen Haitian dance company. “There's so many misconceptions about Haiti and voudou -- this gives the world a better idea of what makes the Haitian people so strong.” Her company is not the only one that sees the festival as a unique way to shout out to the world. Read more »

Stuck in town for Memorial Day weekend? I hear ya bro. But there’s no reason not to take the three days of relative calm in the city to explore some of its newish, dusty corners. You can start with Viracocha, Valencia’s antique store-community space that provides a room where we can all get a little folksy with it. Read more »

“You're experiencing a dish crawl in a single room," chirped the beguiling CEO of Battledish, Tracy Lee. Lee's Interweb gig entails cataloguing SF dish-by-dish for the pleasure of adventurous food obsessed individuals, a Sisyphean task she says has her organizing the city's restaurants' specialties down to taste. To highlight this spirit of culinary safari, Battledish was taking part in and helping to organizing a dinner assembled by graffEats of some of the finest underground food purveyors in the Bay last night to create eight courses of delicately prepared plates, each paired with glasses of Phelps Creek, Oregon wines hitherto unreleased on the Californian market. Read more »

Hair standing up on the back of your neck when you watch the news these days? Perhaps a little shiver of doubt when it comes to how our world's being run? Trust no one, baby – Conspiracy Con 2010's coming to town, Sat/5-Sun/6. Buy your tickets now, before the government's drones read your thought patterns and freeze your computer.

A word of intro from the website from executive producer, Brian William Hall™ (thought you were going to steal his identity huh, you succubus! You thought wrong – that thing is trademarked!):Read more »

So you read about the upcoming National Beard and Mustache Championships in Bend, Oregon. But where the hell is your local fix for competitive bearding? Well fear not, my sweets -- beards are popping up in the budding Bay summer like chanterelles ‘neath the roots of California oaks and conifers (metaphor courtesy of David Arora).  We just couldn’t be happier about it. On Thu/27, Edinburgh Castle will be hosting its own charity showdown of the beard bedecked to benefit Smile Train, a group that helps kids with cleft palates. SFBG just received word of from event organizer Brian McGregor, who is a cultivator of a smashing Imperial ‘stache himself. Brian, tell us more! Read more »