Berkeley-based author Ayelet Waldman is like the suffragettes and early feminists she came to admire while writing her new novel, A Perfect Hand (Knopf, 2026). A New York Times best-selling author, Waldman is clever, articulate and blessed...

This week's calendar picks feature 'The Dose: A Psychedelic Comedy Show,' Marcus Roberts Trio, Teen Suicide, Alasdair Fraser Band, 'Lalo Guerrero Legacy Festival,' Bay Area Fest, Hugel, Jackie Ryan Quintet, Chris Acker, and Aterciopelados.

Breakfast at my house really didn’t extend beyond bowls of cereal or, occasionally, toast and scrambled eggs. Sandwiches never made an appearance until lunch time. When I ate my first breakfast sandwich, it was a gray and...

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries psychologist Abraham Maslow coined the term peak “experiences”: surging upflows of heightened clarity, awe, vitality and love. He also identified another category, “plateau experiences.” These are gentler but more enduring states, characterized...

Above Andres Giraldo Florez’s Snail Bar, a cafe sits at the top of the stairs. Uniformity is not central to the design aesthetic. Formerly an apartment, the conversion from someone’s living room into a retail space remains...

The pandemic cannot take credit for elevating tufting to a fine art. OK, maybe it can a little bit. The centuries-old hand craft, believed to have originated in ancient Persia, involves punching yarn through a stretched backing fabric,...

Dr. Angela Wellman spent 20 years passing Black music from one pair of hands to the next. Now she’s stepping down, and her conservatory still rents in a city that zeroed out its general-fund arts grants. The video is...