A prom inside San Quentin, vintage treasure maps, librarians turned rock stars, trans quilts and immersive theater, pupusas in the Tenderloin, and a family recipe cook-off — this week’s Field Notes rounds up joy, art, and memory from San Francisco and beyond.

Pupusas, family roots, and Salvadoran art in the Tenderloin

What began as a Mission street cart is now Estrellita’s Snacks — a brick-and-mortar tribute to one family’s journey. Founded by Estrella Gonzalez and her son Angel, the Tenderloin shop honors Gonzalez’s mother, who once sold yucca chips outside local bars and restaurants.

Their pupusas, plantains, and pan con pollo fill a gap in the neighborhood’s food scene, while Salvadoran folk art and family photos fill the walls. — Mission Local

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Just beans, and other winners

Food critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan eats at top restaurants — but the Tenderloin Family Housing Cooking Competition is her favorite meal of the year. Families at 201 Turk dish out glutinous rice cakes, chicken masala sliders, and a Yemeni bean dish that claimed first prize. “It’s just beans,” the cook insisted. Not to the judges. — Chronicle

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Librarians by day, kids’ music icons by morning

Berkeley’s Story Time Band is turning toddler storytime into a full-fledged musical movement. Led by children’s librarian Michael Kwende (aka “Mr. Michael”), the all-librarian band fuses read-alouds with reggae, hip-hop, and global folk traditions — complete with plush animals, puppets, and dancing flamingos. — Berkeleyside

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Trans stories sewn into every stitch

Quilts, audio, and trans care come together in “Transmissions Quilts,” a multimedia exhibit at Berkeley’s Central Library, which runs through June. Curated by Cordy Joan and spanning three floors, the show honors trans lives through hand-crafted quilts, recorded stories, and collaborative art—each piece a testament to affirmation, resilience, and community. — Berkeley Public Library

Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play extends run

The Tenderloin Museum’s sold-out immersive play, Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, has extended its run through October. Set inside a recreated late-night diner, the show tells the story of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot — a landmark moment of trans resistance. A 12-person cast brings the uprising to life with “breakfast for dinner” and a front-row seat to history. — Tenderloin Museum

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Inside Ruth Asawa’s home studio, a legacy of art and family lives on

Ruth Asawa raised six kids in a Noe Valley home where art, parenting, and community blurred together. Her grandson Henry Weverka walked DrawTogether’s Wendy MacNaughton through the SFMOMA retrospective, where a recreated living room shows how family dinners and wire sculptures shared the same table. — DrawTogether

Treasure hunting gets a digital upgrade

Krystyl Baldwin, a former tech worker turned vintage guru, has mapped out San Francisco’s under-the-radar retro scene with SF Vintage Maps—an interactive guide to 90 vintage shops across the city. From etched shower doors to rare Art Deco furniture, Baldwin’s passion for history and design is tangible in both her own North Beach showroom and this growing online resource.

Whether you’re seeking Gaultier gowns, mid-century cookware, or museum-worthy posters, the map connects vintage lovers to SF’s scattered gems — one QR code at a time. — 7x7

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San Quentin fathers reunite with daughters at first parenting prom

Back in April, a group of incarcerated men organized a powerful event at San Quentin: a prom where 17 fathers danced with their daughters — some reuniting for the first time in over a decade. With corsages, cake, and slow dances to Luther Vandross, it was a night of joy, healing, and new beginnings. — Local News Matters

Saving nature’s soundtrack, one hike at a time

Soundscape engineer Martin Sanchez treks into the Bay Area wilderness to record moments of pure quiet—birdsong, breezes, frogs—before they disappear. With mics hidden in forest crevices, he captures audio that's later used in meditation apps and films, building a library of the sounds that keep us grounded. — Bay Nature

Top image: 'Bodies of Water' by Lunilah Project

Previously: Field Notes: Bold Films, Pride Hikes, Show-Tune Karaoke, and Skateboarding Legends

Don't forget to check out Persephone's Bees, The Duke Spirit, The Tings Tings and Hot Tub, tonight at Rickshaw Stop. It's going to be an awesome night of music. The concert starts at 8pm and tickets are $15.

Take the jump for full concert listings...

535 San Francisco Unified School District teachers will receive layoff notices this morning due to state cuts in education funding. Today's pink slip handouts stem from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget '09, which will see San Francisco schools losing around $40 million. According to CBS 5, Mayor Newsom is doing what he can, even if it's a Band-Aid solution to a longterm problem.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has said he plans to ask the Board of Supervisors to allow the schools to tap into the city's rainy-day fund to help soften the financial blow, but officials admit that would only provide a "short-term solution."

CBS 5 goes on to say that "layoffs could ultimately total as many as a thousand." Yikes. The job terminations will go into effect once the school year ends.

Name

Perfect Machines

Sam Chase – Vocals/Guitar
Ben Corey – Guitar/Vox
Johnny Evil – Bass/Vox
Adam Gooseff – Drums/Vox

Introduce yourself in one sentence:
We are Perfect Machines, you’re welcome.

Age and Occupation
Old enough to know better, not old enough to care.

What is the dumbest thing in the world?
I am tempted to say nationalism, for the way in which it rallies people around a symbol they believe to be inextricably linked to their own identity but which belies a much darker reality and causes those who take it up to lose their independent mind and soul and give it over to the idea of a thing that, in and of itself, can only exist by oppressing the very people it purports to represent, creating monsters of us all, but I think you'll be expecting that. I'll go with Pop Tarts.

What is the dumbest thing about the Bay Area?
That it insists on calling itself the Bay Area, as if there are no other regions of the world centered around bays!

What was the most surprising thing you learned in working on this book?
Unlike what the people of Germany might say, it is remarkably hard to make light of unspeakable human suffering. Our greatest challenge was finding something to say about countries no one has ever heard of and which we are not even sure exist. I also really want to go to Iceland some day—it looks to be paradise on Earth.

What is the most fake seeming (yet real) news story you've come across?
"Bush Wins." That one got me twice.

Please create an Onion headline about SFist:
Online Alternative Magazine Has Perfect Obscure Band For You To Feign Enjoying This Weekend

We briefly introduced you to Maldroid earlier this week but this time we wanted to do a full introduction before the big day. Tickets are still available - you can get them here.

Full given name: Ryan Divine

Hometown: Oakland, Ca

Favorite venue to play in: Mezzanine. Hands down.

Favorite place to go in SF: SFMOMA, Cafe Greco for some cannoli, and the presidential suite at the Sir Francis Drake.

Take the jump to find out more...

Wednesday, we are welcoming Faun Fables home from their recent tour in Austria and Switzerland. They will be playing with Australian legend, Daevid Allen (which we here is Faun Fables' dream - Hooray for dreams coming true).

If you aren't into great Australian pop songs, then you can always check out the overplayed-yet-still-talented emo stars, Plain White T's and Fall Out Boy headed to the San Jose Events Center on Thursday night. Okay, okay, if you don't want to spend your Thursday night with 13 year-old girls then be sure to see Luce, a five-piece band from San Francisco. Word is, they will be featuring some new music on Thursday night.

The weekend offers several different favorites starting with Friday: Iron & Wine and Califone over in Oakland and Voxtrot (watch "Firecracker" here) and Division Day at Bimbo's. We will be partying it up with local bands: Cold Hot Crash (Live 105's 2006 Local Band Winner), Elephone, Built for Sea, and The Hundred Days. They will be featuring songs from their latest compliation, A Foggy Holiday. This seems to be the perfect way to start off the holiday season and support some great local bands.

Saturday night, we'll be at The Independent seeing our first show of L.A. based band, Great Northern (who are supporting Soulsavers.) Earlier this month, we sent a lucky winner to their show, but they are back and this time it's not to be missed.

More full listings this week take the jump...

This week, our picks are Travis who are playing with Maximo Park at the Fillmore tomorrow night. Friday night at the Fillmore, The Drones (listen to "Shark Fin Blues" here) are opening for Band of Horses, an indie-rock band based out of Seattle. Saturday night is where it gets good - Miggs (pictured above), based out of San Francisco, will be headlining at Cafe du Nord. Miggs have been singled out as "the next big thing outta the San Francisco Bay Area," it seems. You don't want to miss that show.

Full listings after the jump.

Wait, they can't even wear their famous shade of crimson? Pft. Whatever. If you have the skin tone to pull off such a bold color, we say go for it. (Because we sure can't, but so totally would if we could.)

Anyway, although these court orders have made rougher neighborhoods safer, like in LA, some critics say that such orders touch upon civil rights infringement, or merely act as an ineffective Band-Aid solution to a larger problem. Still, a wee bit of the Mission just got a little bit safer. For now.

Queer rights groups freaked out, threw a tizzy (understandably), and nixed their support for a workplace discrimination civil rights bill "after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., pulled transgender people from the legislation that would protect gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination." And since nothing says action like an angry missive or online petition, a letter signed by gay groups was sent to Congress yesterday demanding them to rebuff legislation excluding transgender folk, according to the NGLTF.

One argument is that there's a better chance of the bill getting passed if we locked up our trannies (like the controversial and sublime Miss Bambi Lake, pictured here) in the attic.

As the Chronicle also pointed out today, this raises the question of whether or not activism works better with such compromise while taking baby steps toward progress, or just going whole hog all-or-nothing. (Like the riping off a Band-Aid to ease the pain right-quick, we vote for the latter.)

And what does The Arcade Fire sound like?

Figure that the group's music is like some sort of 10-person raucously ad-hoc mix-up of Neutral Milk Hotel, Slipknot, Springsteen's E Street Band, and The Coen Bros' shrieking songs of broken/renewed faith beneath their landlord's window with accordians, guitars, violins, and so many drums in the slow-falling Montreal snow at an inappropriate hour.

Got that? No? Then click here to listen to their work.

When the band cut into their last song of the evening, the anthemic Wake Up and the whole of the crowd filled the inside of that tent with their voices, the closest thing we could think of was church – back when we thought it still worked. There was that time-worn familiar feeling: voices rising together in the faith that a better day is possible as long as we fight for it.

The Arcade Fire want the best for you and your community, and they're trying as hard as they can.

* Photo courtesy of the astute Flickr user cygnoir.