Came here for a college basketball game and it was an experience. Definitely smaller than the NBA…read morearenas I've been to, but I had a good time still. They shoot fire from the top of the basketball nets (and you really can feel the heat!). I didn't get any concessions, but workers do walk around with items so you don't need to leave your seat. They're still quite pricey based on what I overheard, so don't think you'll get cheap snacks/drinks just because you're at a college game.

A more intimate D1 arena for competitive hoops. Good view from anywhere. Great Bears fans. Tarheel…read morefans traveled well. Awesome game atmosphere throughout with Cal taking out a top15 UNC. Good security and staff. Smooth entry and exit. Would come watch another game here for sure.

We really enjoyed visiting the Crockett Museum today. The host Dick was super-friendly. We enjoyed…read moreseeing the old telephone switchboard, a phone booth and old fire equipment. This place is like a combo museum/boutique. We wrote about it as part of our day trip to Crockett here: https://medium.com/@52BayAreaDayTrips/crockett-day-trip-sugartown-11c6b98fa48e

What a lovely little gem of a building that takes you back in time. 3-4 rooms filled with old town…read morememorabilia and historical sales and product from the sugar factory next door. It was free to get in, but gently asks for donations to help support. Lots one star from me as I would have really liked more description information on the different items. Otherwise you really are not sure what you are looking at :(

We went on a tour of the Palace Hotel by the SF Historical Society and it was great. Very informed…read moreand interesting. We knew a fair amount about the hotel but definitely learned more. A lot of SF history there. We also heard a lecture two weeks ago about the Ferry building that was excellent. I definitely recommend joining this group and visiting their museum and events. Informative and fun.

This is a great place to spend about an hour learning about the history of San Francisco. If you…read morehave friends or relatives visiting who like museums or learning about local history, this is the place to bring them. The museum was renovated about a year ago. Displays from the Wells Fargo museum, which is now closed, are now shown here. Many people don't know that during the Gold Rush, sailors left their ships so that they could prospect for gold. This left many abandoned vessels in the Bay, which became landfill for many areas of the city. There is a picture that shows the abandoned ships and a map of where many known ships are buried today. The docents are really nice, and do a great job of explaining this and other interesting historical information about the City and the Mint that was located at the building. Admission is free, and donations are encouraged. If you like learning about the City, this is a great place to visit.

The Peralta family were a Spanish land grant family who at one time owned the area from the San…read moreLeandro Creek north, to El Cerrito and from the hills West to the Bay. The Casa Peralta in San Leandro was built in 1901 and has been restored to its appearance from the 1920's. Highlights include the history of Luis Maria Peralta and his sons. Spanish tiles inside the fence related the story of Don Quixote. The Casa Peralta is a Museum that is open on Saturdays and Sundays free of charge.

Today was an absolute shit show at Casa Peralta hosted by the San Leandro Improvement Association…read more(SLIA) and the Community Impact LAB (CIL)! It was horribly, FUCKING HORRIBLY, managed, unorganized and uncontrolled! I do understand that having 5 years Marine Corps service means I have a particular set of standards and ideas of customs and courtesies and organization requirements..... but today was just FUCKING NUTS! First: there very seriously should have been a MAXIMUM CAPACITY limit and it should have been enforced! Instead of there being a good 1000 people squeezed into this tiny ass fucking church! I would have rather been told " I'm sorry we're at capacity" and turned away than to have been flooded with hundreds upon hundreds of people in a tiny ass court yard! Second: there should have been someone there AT THE DAMN GATE to ENFORCE the rule that "3 years and younger" at the first egg hunt! My daughter got kneed in the head and knocked down by a greedy Fucking PARENT who was telling his (very obviously looking) 6+ old son "Run run! Go over there I see more eggs! Hurry before more people come in!" To which I shoved him into a fucking tree! (I hope you read this post and contact me to apologize to my two year old daughter you piece of shit cause you darted off like a bitch!) Then I heard another mother saying "oh sorry sweetheart I thought this was for 3 and up! (When they made it very clear through the sound system and everyone was told to be quiet that we were lining up for 3 and under) and then said "we'll don't put your eggs back we'll just come back in a few minutes for your turn!" I also had a clearly looking 8+ old kid reach his grimy Fucking hands into my child's basket when her head was turned and tried to get her TWO EGGS (which were the only eggs she was able to get) to which he got a fucking palm to the face! I don't know where his fucking irresponsible parents were, but don't worry, I'll discipline your child for you! NO ONE enforced the 8-10 eggs ONLY rule so I saw children (OLDER THAN 3 MOSTLY) with 20 eggs and 10 candies and I saw some with 2 eggs and no candies. It was the fucking hunger games! Thirdly: why the fuck were there no representatives to watch the egg hunts to enforce the "one parent with one kid rule" because I had more problems with asshole adults then I did with little shit head kids! It was heavily over crowded with ADULTS! Seriously what the fuck! Fourth: there was NO set timing on the petting zoo! Some kids had 10 minutes (causing a line reaching towards the entrance gate) some kids got hurried out after only a minute or two. Some kids didn't even get to pet the animals because NO one was parenting their children and the poor lady there was just so overwhelmed with kids jumping in and out and parents letting it happen that anyone with any sense was just leaving. Those poor bunnies were breathing so hard I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't make it through to tomorrow from being over stimulated and overwhelmed. Kids were grabbing and picking up and putting down and pushing on them and just being horribly handled that I'm sure they'll have anxiety issues after today. It was just a gaggle fuck! The face painting? A joke! The ONLY thing this place had going for it, was it was beautiful. Any other day I'm sure I'd love to be here and enjoy it. The ONLY good part about today was my mother and father in law at least made this place bearable by helping me protect my two toddlers! But today?! I will NEVER bring my kids back for any event hosted by these organizations! I understand, it was a free event and I appreciate that. HOWEVER, I would now much rather pay for $10+ per person for an event that will at least be much better controlled and managed and organized, than to show up to a free event and fight to the death just for breathing room. We will be redoing Easter tomorrow in an Apartment complex courtyard just the family just to feel like Easter wasn't a waste today!

The Lindy on Sproul folks put on a free dance every Saturday afternoon (12 to 2ish) and three…read moreFriday nights a semester (9 to midnight). They have a decent portable outdoor sound system, and play a great variety of very danceable music. The crowd is mostly young (a lot of Berkeley students and recent graduates), and pretty friendly; people don't always ask newcomers to dance, but always cheerfully oblige when I do the asking. The only thing I don't like, though unavoidable for an outside dance, is dancing on the pavement, which makes pivots and spins hard for someone who is used to dancing on a wood floor. Overall, though, Lindy on Sproul is a lot of fun, and one of only a few good regular places to swing dance in the East Bay. And it's free! I kind of wish I'd gotten into dancing while I was a student and spent more time on that side of town, but I'm still hoping to make it part of my weekend routine...

Lindy on Sproul is a popular almost-weekly swing dance event in the heart of the Berkeley UC…read morecampus. The dance happens on Fridays and Saturdays. The Friday event is not weekly, consult the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/LindyonSproul/ for the dates. The Saturday event apparently happens "rain or shine". I have attended both, so this review consists of two parts. Attendance is free, so are the lessons. Review for the Saturday event: Dance lessons start at 11:45AM (not precisely) and go on until approximately 12:30PM. Typically (not always!) two lessons are held: one for absolute beginners, one for intermediate dancers (the latter assumes that the regular swingouts are not an issue for the participants). After 12:30PM, the dance party starts. The general dance ends at approximately 2:30PM. The logistics: dance area is asphalt: keep your good shoes at home and be easy on your and your partner's knees. The dance happens on the "Upper Sproul". The shaded area is minimal, so sunscreen is a must on sunny days. This is not the best time for parking in the downtown Berkeley; I try to use the Telegraph-Channing garage (about $6), but expect that better deals might be available. There is no water, so bring your own water bottle. The music came from a single speaker, sufficient for a small group. The crowd is small: about 15-30 dancers, with significant imbalance between leads and follows (I have seen imbalance going both ways, recently there were way too many leads). Coupled with a high socialization element (read: ladies chatting in the shade), this creates an issue for an outsider lead, like me; bringing your own partner is recommended. Most dancers are intermediate to quite advanced, few are absolute beginners. This being Berkeley, there were few female leads and male follows, so be sure to check the preference when inviting a new person for the first time. The fun: like the Lindy in the Park (Golden Gate), this is a very public event, as it happens in the middle of a thoroughfare of the Berkeley campus . Your moves are thus frequently immortalized by multiple people taping the dance on their cell phones. I have also invited the onlookers to dance (with a mixed success). Small size of the group provides an opportunity to dance with few truly outstanding follows. Overall: the four stars are an average between close to five stars for a regular hailing from UCB and at most three stars for an outsider. For the latter, the event is not worth attending if any significant driving time is involved. Review for the Friday event: Dance lessons start at 8PM, dance floor opens at 9PM, pretty much on time. Berkeley is known for endorsing all sorts of questionable things but waging a war on car transportation, so allow 15-20 minutes for parking: the Friday evening in Berkeley is exactly the wrong time for this activity. Note that some of the garages close early and are thus unsuitable. Your best bet is the Telegraph-Channing garage ($4 flat fee) if it is not full. Once parked in this garage, exit toward Durant street, and you will be less than two blocks from the event. The dancing happens outdoors in the Upper Sproul area, literally on the street pavement. The pavement of the dance area consists of somewhat smooth bricks interspersed with bands of stone that provide very good friction - and make the turns hard. I generally preferred to stay on the bricks, which made some of the more complex moves possible. Still, this surface is hard on your shoes - and even harder on your knees. Keep your good shoes at home and limit your pivots. DJ music sound is pretty good for an outdoor venue. On the night I visited three DJs provided a good variety of music. There are two lessons, one for absolute beginners (at the bottom of the stairs in the future dance area), and one for more advanced dancers (at the top of the stairs on an even more atrocious surface). Both lessons are going at a quite slow pace, so dress warm on the cold nights. The crowd of about 100 dancers consists primarily of Berkeley students with a fairly large proportion of the beginners yet included few truly great follows (and, presumably, leads). The ratio of leads and follows is about even; with some leads abstaining from many dances this makes for a slightly more follows actually willing to dance in the beginning. By the end of the dance the situation evens out. Note for the beginner follows: do not sit on the stone steps in a 60-degree night, as you can get quite cold: more than one follow was very obviously freezing by the time I invited them to dance. There is no water provided, so bring your own water bottle.

5/18/08 Update So a…read morefriend went to the Las Vegas Premier Tasting and says that one is even better than the one in San Francisco. All vendors can only bring one wine from their line, so everyone brought their best. There was also a nice spread of food, with an impressive line-up of vineyards. He also talked to a couple from New York who had gone to the TOTT in NYC and said that though the Vegas one was good, nothing beats the NY version. So if you can make it out there, that one seems to be the one to go to. Now back to the original review: Imagine covering a load of wineries from Napa, Sonoma and all over the world by simply navigating four floors of the War Memorial Opera House. THAT is exactly what the annual Toast of the Town event is all about. There are two tastings. The first consists of the reserve tasting which runs from 5 pm to 7 pm. The second round is the general tasting from 7 pm to 10 pm. My friends and I are wine freaks, so of course we splurged and plunked down $200 per ticket for the reserve tasting. That'll get you two extra hours of sheer bliss as vendors pour their best, followed by entry into the general tasting (included in the price of our ticket, but $100 on its own). I know what you're thinking...$200 is a lot to pay to sample wine. But we're talking reserves here; wineries often charge about $25 for reserves in the tasting rooms. Here you can sample select reserves from many producers. On top of that, you get an electronic wine buyers guide that's exclusive to the reserve ticket holder's goodie bag. And you'd think after four hours of tasting, we'd all be plastered. But throughout the event from 5 to 10 pm, there were plenty of restaurants offering tasty bites like TWO's foie gras or Ana Mandara's tuna tartare. Even Plumpjack was there with their seafood cones. To-Die-For! But eat early, because, as can be expected, the food runs out towards the last hour of the evening. One of the highlights for me was having the opportunity to try wines from other countries that I wouldn't normally have the chance to taste without buying the bottle. It was really interesting to experience how wines differ from one region of the world to another, and to learn about the varietals unique to each country. The vendors were all very friendly and carried on about their product as they would behind the bar at their respective wineries. And they definitely enjoyed watching the crowd get progressively happier as the night wore on. It's like one big party with a decidedly mature crowd...one filled with foodies and wine fanatics like us. But it was never overcrowded, which was nice, because I never felt like I had to fight a bunch of people to get a pour. As far as I could see, there wasn't much advertising done for the event and it still sold out. Identical events are held in New York and other major cities, and there's also a reserve tasting event being held in Las Vegas this year on May 3 at the Venetian. Tickets are available via the website at www.winespectator.com.

War Memorial Gym is a great venue to watch a college basketball game. There are no bad seats in the…read morehouse. Every seat has a great view of the court. Whether you are watching the Dons take on Gonzaga, St. Mary's, or another WCC opponent, you will have a great time. I have really enjoyed attending games in the past and am looking forward to attending games this up coming season. The students are getting into basketball again and the energy in the building is amazing! Concessions are getting better however the only negative is parking which can be difficult at times so I would recommend taking MUNI (31, 5, or 43) or getting there early.

This is a good venue to experience College basketball in San Francisco. Watching USF basketball…read morelive is an event that everyone should experience living or visiting San Francisco. It's a mix of students and alumni's. A good time.

Finally a Professional Soccer Team that can call San Francisco home!…read more The California Victory have been playing for just over a month and already have a loyal band of vocal fans following the team calling themselves the 1906 supporters. I'd recommend everyone come to Kezar and check out their local soccer club as it gains a foothold in the City. Also for discussion about the team check out Big Soccer's California Victory discussion board: http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=1254