Urban picnic #1: Visit the redwood trees next to the Transamerica Pyramid with a to-go weekday Lunchbox Special from Sugar Cafe ($10 for sandwich, salad, coffee and cookie, Sutter near Taylor). 

Cheap lunch, good walk, not-to-be-beaten hug of a giant redwood tree.

Sir Tom Stoppard

That’s SIR Tom Stoppard.  Well deserved, too.  Some would say he’s the greatest living playwright. Film buffs remember Stoppard’s verbal virtuosity from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.  Restaged this month by ACT following a successful production a few years ago, Arcadia is classic Stoppard.  So put on your thinking caps, because this is not theatre for dummies.

Although in general you’ll find the best theatre in San Francisco at the more intimate venues – San Francisco Playhouse, The Alcove, Actors Theatre of San Francisco, and The Cutting Ball Theater – a Stoppard play is best savored where the artistic director has an affinity for the author.  That would be San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater.

Click for the ACT production of Arcadia.

Read more about Tom Stoppard.

All you young creative types, grab an old Hippie for elbow adornment, because those folks were the original Weird.  Or was it the Beatniks?

Anyway, it’s a grand party in the streets for all of us San Franciscans with a loooooong history of nonconformity.

http://howweird.org/

Oh, and forget about driving in the Financial District until Monday morning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBTP6MP9OBI

Click here to see more free events:  http://bayareandw.org/free_events.php

The San Francisco Mime Troupe marries art with politics.

Got priorities for the San Francisco City Budget?  Expand the arts and youth programs?  Increase police protection but cut street cleaning?  Whatever.  We’re always hearing “follow the money” to get the real skinny on a situation; this is your chance to lead the money by speaking up in a series of SF neighborhood Town Hall meetings.

Click to read the plea from the San Francisco Ballet.

Schedule of Budget Town Halls with SF Supervisors:

Districts 2 & 3 with Supervisors Mark Farrell & David Chiu
Saturday, May 18, 2013 (10:00 – 11:30am)
Galileo High School, 1150 Francisco Street

Artistic Director Anne Nygren Doherty

Funny, touching, beautiful, sexy, original SF cabaret – can’t beat Show Me Yours Thursdays-Sundays through April 27th at the Alcove Theater near Union Square.  From first dates to forever mates, grab your honeys for a close encounter with Songs of Innocence and Experience, original music written by the New Musical Theater of San Francisco’s resident company of local lyricists and composers called the Pen & Piano.  The cabaret set-up and free wine get you loosening your work-week blues from the top of Come on In to the bottom of Show Me Yours.

What a difference a year can make!  Must be a new manager or at least new company policies at the Marriott that has taken the Happy out of this neighborhood Happy Hour.  There are so many fabulous businesses and entertainments in downtown San Francisco that I’ve never had to post about a real downer, but here’s how it went.

First, our server asked if we were from “the neighborhood here” rather than hotel guests.  A yes answer means that you must provide a credit card upfront, before they even bring your order.  No, cash at the end won’t work.  It’s because “neighbors all over the world skip on the bill,” the manager explained.  Seem unfriendly?  Yaaaahhh.

Plus, all the Happy Hour prices have gone up while the quality has gone down.  Wrong direction?  Yaaahhh.

The coffin nail was that after all that complaining to the manager about mistreatment of the hotel’s neighbors, they overcharged us.  No apology, either.  Too much?  Yaaahhh.

Soooo, my fellow San Franciscans, pick one of the other first-class Happy Hours in our fair city, but stay away from the Marriott!  We aren’t wanted there.

To see how the mighty have fallen, here’s this blogger’s review from 2012 – now null as all get out:

I’m just a happy girl making my way across San Francisco one happy hour at a time.  Mmmmm, cheap $15 dinner tonight:  $7 glass of perfectly chilled chardonnay plus $8 for a wild mushroom, brie and arugula pizza – picture an upscale salad on a thin crust.  Friday at 5:00, the Marriott lounge at Powell and Sutter is jumpin, but that didn’t stop spectacular service.  There’s even a place for you to plug in your laptop.  Yeah, there are tourists in the lounge, too, but they were playing poker of all things.  Not strip poker, though.  The people-watching out the big windows gets a high score.

http://www.sftheaterdistrict.org/?page_id=344

Mimosas

No one loves mimosas (especially the bottomless kind) more than San Franciscans, so it makes sense that our favorite brunch pastime was invented within the 7×7. And in case mimosas weren’t already badass enough, there are some who believe that they were invented by the king of horror Alfred Hitchcock, after a night of heavy drinking at classic, old school SF restaurant Jack’s (what became Jeanty at Jack’s in 2002). No word yet on who decided that you had to chug them until you puke every Sunday morning.

The United Nations

Okay, okay, so I don’t know where F.D.R. was when he first came up with the idea for a global peace-keeping body, but I do know that the United Nations was signed into existence in San Francisco in 1945. In my book, that means we can claim it, after all, there’s a reason it’s called United Nations Plaza.

Television 

Yup, you heard right, that beloved box that transmits GIRLS and Game of Thrones to your tiny living room was invented in SF. On September 7, 1927, the Image Dissector – the prototype camera developed by Philo Farnsworth – transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. Two years later, he sent the first image of a human, his wife, over the airwaves.

Popsicles 

The beloved frozen treat was invented by an 11-year-old San Franciscan named Frank Epperson. After accidentally leaving his fruit soda outside with a mixing straw in it, Epperson invented the hot weather treat and dubbed it the Epsicle. Epperson’s children gave the ice cream its modern day, the popsicle, by combining the words lollipop and icicle.

Slot Machines 

Las Vegas owes us so much. The first slot machine was invented right here in SF by Charles Fey at the end of the nineteenth century. The original gambling machine had five images: horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts, and a Liberty Bell. And just imagine the kind of real gold that could be won in the city at that time!

Chop Suey

No one is quite certain how this American dish got its start or its name. Some believe that a Chinese chef threw together the night’s leftovers in broth and served it to customers who had angered him only to be really surprised when the patrons loved it. Others say that chop suey came to be when a chef had to come up with a quick and easy way to appease a bunch of drunk miners. Either way, everyone’s pretty sure that it came to be right here in San Francisco.