This week: Live music on the ferry, a “boujee” club for all ages, a hand-drawn map of Berkeley, wild radish, and a donkey reality show. Plus, Public Domain Day at the Internet Archive, the local legacy behind an ‘80s hit, and the Asian Art Museum explores rave culture.

Music on the water

Friday ferry rides picked up a new rhythm this month as SF Bay Ferry began hosting live performances on select routes through the month of January. The “Tides and Tunes” series brings local musicians, bands, and DJs onto the fleet’s larger vessels with room to host small performances.

The performances come at no extra cost beyond the regular ferry fare. The series runs at select times on Fridays, with artist Lolah returning for another set on January 23. — KPIX

The legacy of a hit

“Rumors” by Timex Social Club started as a song written by East Bay teens and went on to become one of 1986’s biggest hits, selling more than a million copies. The track still shows up in DJ sets and party playlists, even as most people know little about the group behind it.

In his book, How Do Rumors Get Started, founding member Marcus Thompson details how the band formed in Oakland, recorded the song on basic equipment, and quickly found national success. It also follows what came after, including industry disputes, broken agreements, and the breakup of the group in the years following the song’s rise. — SFGate

Cultural artifacts made public

Each January, a new batch of music, books, and films enters the public domain, and the Internet Archive marks the moment by opening the doors to creative reuse. This year includes works from 1930 like “Georgia on My Mind,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” The Maltese Falcon, and early Nancy Drew stories.

The Archive frames the public domain as a way to keep culture accessible, especially as copyright battles have narrowed access to its digital library. The celebration includes a daylong online event and an evening gathering at the Internet Archive (300 Funston Avenue, SF), centered on remixed films made from newly public works on January 21. — Mission Local

Paths on paper

Tattoo artist and illustrator Danielle Hopkins has drawn a hand-rendered map of the Berkeley Hills that traces stairways, rock parks, and winding streets with the elaborate detail of someone who walks them often. After she shared an early version on Nextdoor, neighbors began showing up at her door to buy copies.

She’s sold about 30 so far and given others away, including to neighbors who became friends through the process. The map grew out of her move from San Jose to Berkeley and her attachment to the hills, especially the Tamalpais Path, which she calls a brutal climb with a view worth the effort. — Berkeleyside

Pulse and light

At the Asian Art Museum, Rave into the Future: Art in Motion looks at dance culture through the work of West Asian artists shaped by diaspora, memory, and movement. The exhibition brings together multimedia installations, sculpture, and sound to explore how music and dance create spaces of connection, privacy, and release.

Highlights include Sahar Khoury’s commission with a working DJ deck, Yasmine Nasser Diaz’s bedroom-as-dance-floor installation, and Joe Namy’s copper-tiled floor that records every step taken on it. The show, which is curated by Naz Cuguoglu and features work by 10 artists based in the U.S. and Europe, remains on view at the Asian Art Museum through January 26. — The Chronicle

Candy-colored commons

In Walnut Creek, Ruby Lou’s is opening as a place where birthday parties, cocktail hour, and casual play all blur together. Built by longtime mixologist and set designer Megan Abraham Benshalom and named for her daughter, the space leans into bright color, built-in board games, claw machines, and furniture that looks pulled from a candy shop daydream.

The menu mirrors that split personality, with Wagyu hot dogs, short-rib nachos on housemade chips, and a full cocktail program alongside an ice cream bar and “yolo” sundaes for kids. It’s designed for families in the afternoon and adults after dark, without forcing either group to leave the room. Ruby Lou’s is open now for private events and plans to open to the public very soon. — Bay Area News Group

Salt on the buds

Out in the Baylands, invasive wild radish began flowering in late December, its pale purple and white petals standing out against the marsh. Unlike wild mustard, which blooms yellow, the radish can be identified by its four-petaled flowers and its edible parts from top to bottom.

The leaves, buds, and seed pods can all be eaten, carrying a mild, peppery bite, and sometimes a trace of salt from the coastal air. There’s even a small radish root at certain times of year, though most foragers prize the greens and buds. It grows alongside plants like sea asparagus in the San Francisco Baylands, where winter still yields plenty of plantlife. — The Bay Forager

From pasture to prime time

A Northern California donkey rescue has found a national audience through a reality series on ABC. Donkey King follows the day-to-day work at Oscar’s Place, a Mendocino County sanctuary that takes in donkeys from auctions, surrenders, and unsafe conditions, and either rehomes them or gives them a permanent home on the ranch.

The nonprofit has rescued more than 400 animals, and each episode centers on the care and recovery of one donkey, with staff balancing medical needs, transport, and trust-building. The show airs Saturday mornings on ABC, with episodes available to stream for free afterward at donkeyking.com. — The Press Democrat

Top image: Performance by TCS; activation of 'For Your Eyes Only' by Yasmine Nasser Diaz; Photo by Tracy Nguyen/Asian Art Museum

Previously: Field Notes: Fairy Rings, Waterfalls, SF Library Map, and New East Bay All-Ages Music Venue

Night of Ideas, a free, global “nocturnal arts and culture marathon,” which brings together leading scholars, activists, and artists for a night of performances and activities, will take place on April 5 in SF’s Civic Center, with a family program earlier in the afternoon.

This year’s Night of Ideas theme, “(Un)Common Ground,” dives into what unites communities—exploring real connections in a digital world, dialogue in a divided society, and ways to protect our planet in the face of extreme weather.

The event will include a wide array of discussions, performances, and interactive activities (see a PDF of the lineup here) including dance-along ballet, drag story hour, and a puppet show during the family program, and a BART fashion show, zine-making and screenwriting workshops, lip-syncing with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and a slew of panels and performances later in the evening.

The family program will be at the Main Library from 4–6pm, with food trucks starting at 5pm at the newly illuminated Fulton Plaza. The main portion of the event will be from 7pm until 1am throughout Civic Center, including the Main Library, Fulton Plaza, and the Asian Art Museum.

The event is free, but registration is encouraged.

Night of Ideas is organized by Villa Albertine San Francisco, KQED, the Asian Art Museum, and the San Francisco Public Library, with artistic curation by Circuit Network.

This past April, San Francisco Victoriana Inc., a company that restored period details in Victorian houses, experienced such a decline in business that its proprietors closed ahead of their planned retirement.

“People are buying Victorians and they are going super modern,” Scott Bowles, former manager of SF Victoriana, told MarketWatch. “They are ruining the city... We were in business for 40, 43 years, trying to save Victorians and keep them architecturally correct and provide the products here to restore them. Unfortunately, we are a casualty of the times.”

Echoing the sentiment is Christopher VerPlanck, principal of VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting in San Francisco. "It seems somehow cruel that many Victorians with intact interiors, that survived earthquakes, fires and hippies are having their stuffing ripped out so that the new owners can have a house that looks like a condo in [suburban] Foster City."

Those quotes all come from MarketWatch, whose pointed opinion piece laments the loss of Victorian architecture, particularly the modernized interiors of Victorian homes whose facades remain. Yet writer Therese Poletti concedes in her argument that, "Some of the most over-the-top designs and extraneous details were ridiculed in their own time." If Poletti considers popular opinion from one era in culture to have been wrong or too conservative, couldn't the same process repeat itself? Couldn't that be happening with her argument right now?

Leaving little room to consider the possibility, Poletti continues:

[T]hese days, in the current tech-fueled real estate boom, many of these lovely Victorians are nothing more than a facade, as if they were on a Hollywood set... It is now hard to find a Victorian home for sale that has not been gutted, its architectural details stripped and tossed. And owners or developers — looking to sell at a premium in the frenzied real estate market to 'techies with cash' — hope to appeal to the tastes (or lack thereof) of current buyers, by turning once-charming homes with detailed woodwork, built-ins and art glass, into clones of Apple’s minimalist retail stores.

Poletti rests her case about the overall soullessness of San Francisco on this symbol. "The level of major destruction of serious craftsmanship and art work that is now becoming standard among property owners and house flippers is disheartening and tragic — yet another example of how San Francisco is losing its soul."

Poletti is not the first — nor will she be the last — to note the startling, drastic changes afoot in San Francisco. But she's remiss to ignore larger scale shifts in the culture that include aesthetics and architecture. When San Francisco loses longtime residents with strong cultural history here, or when a public heritage site crumbles, surely it's then that the city loses a piece of its soul. But must every period detail in private homes — details that are the legacy of an era that found them to be ostentatious in the first place — really be preserved in amber? If so, there are still a number of providers listed by SF Victoriana who are "happy to assist you with your future architectural and decorative needs."

Related: Peek Inside Albion Hall, A Mission Treasure You Can Never Afford

WIth a meme-ridden theme of "Harlem Shake" this year, the 35h Carnaval, one of the remaining remnants of the old Mission, still stands as the city's most bombastic annual parades, featuring music and cultural elements from Latin American and Caribbean traditions.

The party went down wonderfully on Harrison Street between 16th and 24th Streets over the weekend. Gorgeously so, in fact. Here are a handful of stunning, color-drenched images from Sunday's bash in the Mission.

Special thanks to Bhautik Joshi and Erik Wilson for their choice imagery.

While San Francisco is best known for its acclaimed food scene and unyielding political righteousness, it is also known to hold some pretty swank and artful events boasting worldwide talent. Highbrow enrichment, if you will. Thank god. And with that, we give you the top culture events in San Francisco.

FRAMELINE FILM FESTIVAL
Now in its 37th year, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival—better known as Frameline—is the longest-running and largest film festival in the world devoted to LGBT-focused programming. The festival coincides with Pride season in SF, and this year's festivities will run from June 20 to June 30—they're actually still accepting entries through February 15. Annual attendance clocks in around 55,000 people, and in recent years the fest has particularly been a showcase for queer cinema from countries where coming out remains a courageous act with life-and-death consequences.

NOISE POP FESTIVAL
Outside Lands and the Treasure Island Music Festival might be the big concert draws in the city, but after more than 20 years of bringing independent and alternative music to San Francisco, the NoisePop festival is still where our local scenesters turn for what's next. More intimate than most of SXSW Music and less chaotic than CMJ, NoisePop proper takes place every year at the end of February and beginning of March. For 2013, the festival overflows with S.F. Sketchfest tie-ins, live music at S.F. Beer Week and the return of Culture Club celebrating independent culture beyond the music scene.

SAN FRANCISCO BALLET
"Everything was beautiful at the ballet, hey," crooned A Chorus Line's Sheila—and indeed it is. Founded in 1933, the San Francisco Ballet Company stands as one of the most respected dance companies in the world (along with American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet), and is the first professional ballet company in the United States. The 2013 season, which kicks off this Thursday, will boats such stellar shows as Onegin, Borderlands, Criss-Cross, and Cinderella, just to name a few.

ETHNIC DANCE FESTIVAL
The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival (the month of June) began in 1978, and was the first multicultural, city-sponsored ethnic dance festival in America. It's the main annual production of the World Arts West organization, whose mission is to sustain the world's diverse dance traditions and provide the public with opportunities to learn more about these cultural traditions. They've played host to over 600 dance companies from over a hundred different genres including folk dance, social dance, traditional classical dance, sacred dance genres, and vernacular dance forms. It's a huge event that perhaps goes under the radar outside of the dance community, and each year concludes with a lavish benefit evening hosted by the Mayor at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Maria Bamford will appear at SF Sketchfest 2013. (Photo: Scott Beale)

SF SKETCHFEST
Although this year's Super Bowl (featuring the 49ers!) overlaps with SF Sketchfest, our clear eyes and full hearts are firmly looking forward to the latter. Each year the country's best and most esteemed comedic talent come to Baghdad by the Bay to perform or put on a show. We look forward to it every year, and this year is no exception. The 2013 roster includes such soiled-your-trousers-with-laughter talent as Maria Bamford, Jennifer Coolidge, Rachel Dratch, Janeane Garofalo, Maya Rudolph, Julie Klausner, Fred Willard, Drew Carey, Jenny Slate, Billy Eichner, Jon Hendren, Kristen Schaal, and Andy Richter. And more. So very much more.

CATCHING A SHOW AT SF OPERA
Founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola, it remains the second largest opera company in North America. Expert productions aside, just walking into the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House is a formidable and gorgeous cultural experience by itself.

Day of the Dead procession 2012. (Photo: clowntraps)

DAY OF THE DEAD (Día de los Muertos)
Though it has somewhat turned into yet another PBR-swilling party for privileged twentysomething Missionites, the annual Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) procession manages to retain some of the old Mission District charm.

SF INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
More "international" in terms of appeal than the number of films with subtitles, the SFIFF draws filmmakers and movie industry hotshots from all over the world. The roughly 175 screenings that take place over two weeks in April/May routinely sell out, thanks in part to the celebrity appearances that in recent years included Mike Mills and Ewan McGregor for the premiere of Beginners, Oakland-based songstress Merill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs providing a live score for Buster Keaton shorts, Yo La Tengo soundtracking The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, Rosemarie DeWitt attending for Your Sister's Sister and Harmony Korine premiering his Vice Media-produced The Fourth Dimension starring Val Kilmer. Even if you plan to skip the Director Q&A sessions, do yourself a favor and attend either the opening or closing night galas to rub elbows with folks you'll see at the Oscars in a year.

After Luis Cancel's disastrous tenure—which, among other things, included telecommuting from Brazil, reports of horrid behavior to underlings, and "questionable granting practices"—the city made a spot-on decision by hiring Tom DeCaigny as cultural affairs director of the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Among other notable talents, DeCaigny is the founder of Canopy Consulting, a group that assists "nonprofit arts groups, corporate grant-makers and government agencies." He also spent nine years as executive director of the Performing Arts Workshop, a "46-year-old theater group for low-income youth and families." While in charge of the latter, DeCaigny skyrocketed the group's annual budget from $529,000 to $1.4 million.

"What jumped out at me is how smart, eloquent, energetic and fearless he is," P.J. Johnston, president of the Arts Commission, told The Chronicle "after the commission voted unanimously to name DeCaigny as the city's new director of cultural affairs."

For his part? DeCaigny described himself as "honored and humbled" by the new appointment.

[Chronicle]

Not doing the Outside Lands thing this weekend? As it would happen, there's plenty of other stuff going on!

Sunday Streets and Tricycle Music Fest: Sunday Streets hits Civic Center and the Tenderloin on Sunday, featuring lots of live music, including the big kindie rock show, Tricycle Music Fest West on the library steps, Jazz band Melvin and the Mellotones at Boedekker Park, and Hyde Street Band at 631 O’Farrell. Also featuring a roller disco, kids' activities, cumbia dancing, and more.

Pistahan Parade and Festival: Yerba Buena Gardens plays host to the international Pistahan celebration of Filipino culture and cuisine all weekend, featuring lots of live entertainment, arts and crafts, dancing, an Adobo Cook-Off and Balut-Eating Contest, and much more. The Parade begins on Saturday morning at 11 a.m. and goes from the Embarcadero to Yerba Buena Gardens.

Nihonmachi Street Fair: The 38th Annual Nihonmachi Street Fair has everything you can ask for this weekend, featuring a pet corner, tasty food by local restaurants and food trucks, the proceeds of which benefit several local community organizations, family activities, and a whole slew of live entertainment.

Wil Campa y Su Orchestra at Stern Grove: Head over to Stern Grove for the second to last show of the season, featuring the big band sound of Cuban sensation Wil Campa y Su Orchestra, along with Brazilian singer Luisa Maita performs sultry modern samba sounds.

Big Gay 10K: Good luck to those taking part in the Big Gay 10K, which benefits San Francisco AIDS Foundation and those who aren't signed up but want to participate should head over to Fort Mason between 8 and 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning to sign up.

Learn all there is to know about sake and tea at the Asian Art Museum tomorrow Thursday night, which kicks of their bi-monthly Matcha series. Kirsten Shilakes, art history lecturer, will lead a tasting and multi-media presentation on the history of the culinary arts, and Miwa Wang, sake sommelier and manager of True Sake, will discuss the nuanced tastes and bouquets of sake. There will also be a Japanese tea ceremony showcasing matcha, a powdered green tea, in which attendees will whisk their own matcha and learn about warrior culture.

Attendees are also invited to stroll the galleries, including Lords of the Samurai, a new special exhibition ranging from fierce armor to delicate tea wares, revealing a softer, unknown side to these legendary warriors. Music will be provided by Mezuki.

The sixth person to email sfistevents@gmail.com will win a pair of tickets to tomorrow Thursday night's event. Send us your full name, and include Matcha in the subject line.

CONTEST CLOSED. Congratulations, V.Q.!

5-9 p.m. // Asian Art Museum (200 Larkin St) // $10

As always, funcheapSF has an exhaustive list of great stuff to do this weekend. For those who feel like staying in or getting out of town, there are street festivals and such all over the place. We've hand-picked just a few.

ALL WEEKEND

Union Street Eco-Urban Festival: The festival showcases 150 arts & crafts booths, 25 gourmet food booths, two stages of live entertainment and bistro style cafes. In keeping with the eco theme, the east entrance of the festival (beginning at Gough) will feature arts and crafts created with recycled and sustainable materials and eco-friendly exhibits. 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. // Union Street (Gough to Steiner).

35th Annual Sunnyvale Art and Wine Festival: Featuring five hundred of the country's finest artists and craftspeople, a variety of wines from the Bay Area's finest wine makers, a sampling of some of our local microbreweries, and great food. Live entertainment on stage both days and activities for the kids. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Murphy Street, Downtown Sunnyvale

Andanza Spanish Arts co-founders, internationally acclaimed choreographer Danica Sena, and world-renowned tenor Claudio Santomé lead this one-of-a-kind program featuring special guests: choreographer Norberto Martinez and Grupo Folklorico Atlatonin, choreographer Alicia Adame, a cast of ten dancers, vocalist Rosa de Huelva of Seville, pianist Alison Lovejoy and guitarist Alfredo Caceres.

Andanza Spanish Arts is a company of professional singers, dancers and musicians dedicated to promoting and presenting the elegant, colorful and widely varied repertoire of Spain, and is the only one of its kind in California.

Details after the jump.

The decision, however, did not come without much in the way of mayhem. Four protesters were arrested, one of them for allegedly bitch-slapping a pig cop, another for busting out a knife (which he said was needed as Code Pink draped him a pink banner and he doesn't look good in a pink) and two skateboarders. Jodie Evans, a cofounder of Code Pink and a yoga studio owner, says they'd like to put the measure on a ballot anyways, so, there. Hey, maybe they can combine that with the Peace Center and Berkeley will shoot off holographic images into the air, something we're sure, many in Berkeley would get off on, especially if it was done to Floyd. Anyways, you can read a live blog of the protest here, including details of dueling radios consisting of one side blasting the National Anthem and the other Culture Club’s "The War Song." No, we’re just joking, they blasted Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and, wait for it-- Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," Jesus, aren't there any songs they can play that isn't over 40 years old? There's gotta be at least five Rage Against the Machine songs they could have played and they friggin' rock. Or, hell, Black Sabbath's "War Pigs." Come on everybody: "Generals gathered in their masses/Just like witches at black masses/Evil minds that plot destruction/Sorcerers of deaths construction."

Image credit goes to artist Guy Buffet.