Talented and painstaking San Francisco gingerbread artist Peter Williams creates ever more ambitious architectural wonders out of gingerbread every year, and this year's is no exception.

On Sunday, Williams revealed one of his grandest creations to date at an fundraising event at The Academy in the Castro: a gingerbread replica of Alamo Square's Painted Ladies, complete with partial interiors.

Williams, an interior designer by trade, began making gingerbread houses for the holidays 15 years ago, and has impressed friends and colleagues with increasingly complex structures ever since. These include a suspended-in-the-air recreation of the International Space Station, and last year's very elaborate recreation of the San Francisco Zoo, complete with animals and a carousel.

"It’s been quite a journey and I don’t plan on stopping yet!" Williams said of his longstanding gingerbread efforts.

He says he was originally inspired by a childhood memory of seeing one of the elaborate gingerbread castles that used to appear around Christmas in the lobby of the Westin St. Francis. And as he's gone on, he says, "Every year I challenge myself a little bit more."

He also landed on Food Network's Holiday Baking Championship: Gingerbread Showdown a couple years back.

But this year's five-house wonder includes edible trees, a vintage Volkswagen bus like the one that ferries tourists around the neighborhood, and interior rooms visible around the back.

This year's event benefited Lyric, the SF nonprofit that provides support programs, clothing, and more for LGBTQ+ youth.

This week: Where to find ladybugs in Oakland, Oakland’s “Old Survivor” redwood, Napa Valley holiday wine train, tea round-up, holiday architecture book sale, award-winning molé sauce, ancestral quilts, and Bruce Lee’s time on Bay Area streets.

A home’s layered past

SF Heritage is bringing together its annual Holiday Open House and big book sale at the Haas-Lilienthal House, where visitors can step into decorated parlors, sip something warm, and pose beside the family’s well-worn Christmas tree. Downstairs, the ballroom becomes a trove of architecture titles, city histories, and rare San Francisco directories — hundreds of books that reflect the house’s own layered past.

The event is free, with an accessible entrance in the north alleyway and easy transit access from Van Ness. Everything takes place December 7 from noon to 3 p.m., with an RSVP to help plan for the crowd. — SF Heritage

Seasonal traditions

From Filoli’s sunlit terraces to Noe Valley’s whimsical Lovejoy’s Tea Room, each space offering its own rhythm. At the Japanese Tea Garden, a green tea in Golden Gate Park carries decades of history, while Lovey’s Tea Shoppe offers classic service.

Big hotels like the Palace and Fairmont continue century-old traditions, pairing chandeliers and live music with refined sweets and sandwiches. Most venues require reservations for full service, with seasonal teas running through December and January. — 7x7

Rails of winter light

The Napa Valley Wine Train shifts into holiday mode this season, trading its usual slow roll through the vines for a parade of cocoa, carols, and window-glow scenery. Families can catch Santa at the station before choosing their own pace on board — from the cookie-and-hot-chocolate ride to a full three-course dinner under the glass of the Vista Dome.

Grownups get their own indulgence with the Peppermint Tea journey, a three-hour drift through the valley with sparkling wine and small bites. The holiday trips begin right after Thanksgiving and run through New Year’s Eve, capped with a “Midnight in Paris” celebration that sees the new year arrive early, at 3 pm local time. — Secret San Francisco, Journey with Lina

Steps of color

In the Excelsior, neighbors transformed a narrow, once-neglected stairway into the Kenny Alley Stairs, a connective path linking London Street to Mission Street. The 47-step passage now features a mosaic tile installation, murals, landscaping, new banisters, and subtle lighting that brighten the route while making it safer to traverse.

The project grew from a 2014 community initiative, led by the Excelsior Action Group and Friends of Kenny Alley, with funding from grants and donor contributions. The alley received the San Francisco Beautiful Neighborhood Beautification Award in 2017 and remains a public, maintained walkway. — Excelsior Action Group, The Broken Compass

Stitched memories

In Redwood City, mother-son duo Mik and May Gaspay are weaving loss and remembrance into fabric. Their quilted installation, Ancestral Home, reconstructs the family house in Enrile, Philippines, wiped out by a typhoon, layering personal history with broader reflections on home and displacement.

May, a longtime quilter and retired Stanford nurse, and Mik, a San Francisco-based artist, have been collaborating for five years, blending technique with story. Visitors can see the work at the Redwood City Art Kiosk through January 4. — Bay Area News Group

Mole and memory

Earlier this month, another mother-and-son duo, Delfina and Jose Villegas of Cocina Mamá Cholita, won top honors at this year’s Mole to Die For, celebrated for their rich Michoacán-style mole. Delfina learned to cook alongside her mother in Mexico, bringing decades of family tradition to the Mission District kitchen, while Jose honed his skills caring for his grandmother before opening the restaurant three years ago.

Their dishes are made entirely from scratch, each bite carrying the flavors of home and heritage. — Mission Local

Mirrors and echoes

Bruce Lee’s story begins in a San Francisco hospital but arcs across continents, war, and cinema screens. Jeff Chang’s new book, Water, Mirror, Echo, traces Lee from Chinatown to Hong Kong, through wartime scarcity and street-fighting youth, into the global icon whose philosophy still ripples today.

Drawing from diaries, letters, and rare documents, Chang frames Lee as both a fighter and a mirror for Asian American identity, showing how his life and work reflected broader currents of migration, resilience, and cultural creativity. The book illuminates the man behind the myths, from early kung fu battles to his enduring influence on film and community. — KQED

Last sentinel

Old Survivor is the last old-growth redwood left in the Oakland Hills, a reminder of the giants that once towered over the city. Its leaves capture fog and feed the roots below, a rare adaptation to a drier climate shaped by logging and Gold Rush development.

Many original trees never regrew, and some species were likely lost before they could be studied. Rings of younger redwoods now mark where the originals fell. Bay Nature’s feature explores both the history and the survival of this solitary tree. — Oakland Bio

Winter wings

Ladybugs are returning to Oakland’s hills, settling into the nooks and hollows of the Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve. Walkers along Pinehurst Trail can spot clusters of the tiny red beetles from November through February, their shells catching the low winter sun.

Stream Trail in Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park remains a classic viewing spot, but Huckleberry is drawing its own crowd of hikers and kids. The preserve is open daily from 5 am to 10 pm, letting visitors wander among the fog-dappled trees while the insects gather overhead. — Visit Oakland

Top Image: Friends of Kenny Alley

Previously: Field Notes: Levi’s Vault Exhibit, Coastal Tide Pools, and an Historic Haight-Ashbury Home

Photo: Zak Ferris

Yule want to see these photos of the SF fire station that won the 2024 SF Fire Department Holiday Decorating Contest, plus pictures and video of the other runner-up stations that decked the halls hard to bring joy to the world.

The 49 fire stations all across San Francisco have rebooted the old SF Fire Department Holiday Decorating Contest, which harks and heralds back to the late 1940s, when an old-time holiday decorations contest lit up San Francisco Fire Department stations all over town. The modern version of the contest is now in its fifth consecutive year since returning in 2020, and has been won in previous years by fire stations that had snow machines blowing fake snow, or even trucked in real snow from Lake Tahoe to win these increasingly competitive reindeer games.

So SFist went to see the finalists of this full-blown, four-alarm, holiday razzle-dazzle light spectacular, whose spirited displays will make your nights merry and bright.

And who did we run into? Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, who served as one of the judges for the SF Fire Department Holiday Decorating Contest, along with KTVU’s Sal Castaneda, and the SFFD and SFPD’s Los Bomberos de San Francisco. And just before 4 pm on Christmas Eve, we learned who won the top prize.

FIRST PLACE

Station 18 (1935 32nd Avenue)
The Chronicle reports that first prize went to the Outer Sunset’s Station 18, a meticulously decorated onslaught of red and green that can only be fully appreciated with all of its animated LED blinkies going at full blast.  

And Station 18 surely has the biggest “tree” of the bunch, which is impressive enough, but its multicolored animated snowfalls projected onto the station facade and sidewalk complete the winter wonderland scene.

SECOND PLACE

STATION 39 (1091 Portola Drive)
Go tell it on the Mount Davidson that Sherwood Forest’s Station 39 came in second place, after winning this contest in 2023 with its delightfully tacky holiday stylings. Their station offers quite an assortment of mixed nuts, with Frostys, Santas, trees, and the animated light spectacular seen below.

THIRD PLACE

STATION 7 (2300 Folsom Street)
Really tasteful work here at Station 7 between the Mission and SoMa earned this station third place in the 2024 contest. It’s not going to blow eight tiny reindeer out of the sky or anything, but there’s a certain classic quality to this warming holiday glow.

FOURTH PLACE

Station 40 (2155 18th Avenue)
There’s plenty to unpack at fourth-place winner Station 40 that cannot be captured in one photo. So let’s break this one down into sections.

Up on the housetop, Drosselmeier and his faithful Dalmatian buddy are ready to crack the nuts on any fires that should occur in the Inner Parkside neighborhood.

We’ve also got a big ol’ inflatable Santa in a fire truck, with a separate, seemingly less inflated Santa clinging for his life on a perch beneath. And that’s a light-up ladder in the lower left, so get your minds out of the gutter, people.

Station 40 also boasts a larger-than-life snow globe topped with a jumbo peppermint candy.

RUNNER-UP

STATION 35 (Pier 22½, The Embarcadero at Harrison Street)
Station 35 is “the world’s only floating fire station” (or at least that’s what SFFD says) right next to the Bay Bridge, and home to Fireboat 3, a.k.a. the Saint Francis. That vessel received quite the fa-la-la-la-facelift for the holiday decorating contest.

But that boat is just one part of Station 35’s freaking festive makeover. Holiday lights cover every window of the station, and a Christmas tree sits as the cherry on top of the station’s southern end.

On the northern end, projected holiday characters are dancing like sugarplums on the side of the building.

Station 35 kind of got jobbed in the 2022 contest, as the Saint Francis got called for a rescue during the judging, and was forced to remove its inflatable Grinch and leave the contest to go save lives.

The winning stations will split $4,000 worth of prize money, money that will be awarded to the charity of those stations' choice. First place winner Station 18 has announced they will donate their earnings to the People of Parkside Sunset Merchants Association and the City Surf Project, other winning stations have not yet made their announcements. Though previous years’ charities that were awarded the money have included La Casa de las Madres, the San Francisco Firefighters Cancer Prevention Foundation, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and (of course) the San Francisco Firefighters Toy Program.

Related: Photos: Every Single SF Fire Station That’s Decked Out for the Holiday Decorations Competition [SFist]

Images: Joe Kukura, SFist

It's become a bona fide thing to host a holiday-themed pop-up or "experience" in your bar for the month of December, and that is happening once again at a bunch of spots around San Francisco and beyond.

Whether you feel the need to put on a Christmas light necklace and antlers and go a-wassailing with friends, or you're just a fan of a well crafted toddy, 'tis the season for garlands and kitsch and festive drinks to drown our election sorrows.

These six bars and pop-ups around town offer the most optimal holiday-themed libations and cheer for your money.

The 3rd Annual Causwells Holiday Experience
Over in the Marina, there are a couple of holiday-themed things going on (see Mistletoe, below), but the most interesting drinks in this year's holiday-themed array can probably be found at Causwells. Bar manager Elmer Mejicanos has gone wild with some original Xmas-season creations both here and at the newer, next-door, low-ABV sister spot Lilah — if you're looking to be less tipsy or start slow, don't miss the spiced Old Fashioned at Lilah, or one of the showy kakagori (shaved ice) drinks. In addition to the full menu of Causwells classic drinks and the stellar food menu, the holiday experience menu features two frozen cocktails — I recommend the Elvis Christmas, featuring whiskey, banana, peanut, oloroso sherry, and oat milk — and there's a great tarragon and cranberry-infused Mistletoe Negroni. Also recommended, both for the flavors and the 'gram, The Grinch, which features Cenote blanco tequila, Liquor 43, fig leaf, kiwi, and pandan, and a printed rice-paper image of the Grinch himself, seen above.
2346 Chestnut Street, open daily until 9 or 10 pm

Miracle @ PCH
Maybe the first bar in town to go all-in for Xmas was Pacific Cocktail Haven, which gave itself over to the Miracle pop-up in December 2017 and never looked back. Miracle is now an international phenomenon, with its own merch and a cocktail menu that is standardized across its 120+ locations (including more in the Bay Area), so if specific San Francisco quirk is what you're after, this may not be the place. If, however, you want a brandy drink in a barrel-shaped mug that says "Fa-La-La-La-La" on it that you can purchase and take home, this is your spot. Do note there's a $10 cover, and they take reservations for groups of 6 or more via Tock.
550 Sutter Street, Mon-Sat 3 pm to midnight through December

Mistletoe (multiple locations)
Another multi-location pop-up is happening in three spots around the city this year, and that is Mistletoe, which has taken over The Summer Place on Nob Hill, Wizards & Wands on Lombard, as well as a spot a couple doors up from Miracle at 580 Sutter Street. The space at Wizards & Wands is the largest, next-door to country bar Westwood, and the menu features an Espresso Martini variation, as well as a rum-spiked hot cocoa called the Apres Ski.
801 Bush Street, 580 Sutter Street, 2030 Lombard Street

Sippin' Santa @ Kona's Street Market
Sippin' Santa is the tropical-themed off-shoot of Miracle, and also now happens across dozens of locations around California and the country — including one up at the Flamingo resort in Santa Rosa. Kona's, which is co-owned by PCH founder Kevin Diedrich, gets covered in Christmas lights and other kitsch, and the menu, created by Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, leans heavily toward Tiki drinks, with a spiced White Russian variation called Holiday on Ice, and a Sugar Plum Mai Tai. Like at Miracle, there's a $10 cover.
32 3rd Street, Tues-Thurs 4pm to 10pm, Friday 4pm to 11pm, and Saturday 6pm to 11pm

Winter Wonderland at the Vault Garden
It's the third year of this holiday pop-up at the Vault Garden, with a menu of festive drinks served both cold and hot. This year's menu features a Cognac and rum milk punch of sorts, with persimmon, pineapple, allspice, citrus, and gingersnap-washed milk whey, called Beautiful Sight; and there's a warm drink with chocolate liqueur, Green chartreuse, cinnamon, brown sugar and oat milk, called Happy Tonight. This place has the added bonus of a full, all-day food menu, so you could make lunch or dinner of it, with a solid burger and some Dungeness crab dip.
555 California Street, Monday to Friday 11:30 am to 9 pm

Victorian Holidays @ Elixir
One of the OG cocktail spots in the Mission District, Elixir, serves up some unique holiday-time finds, including aged egg nog — which gets aged in glass for a year before coming out each December. You can also get the regular house nog mixed with the spirit of your choice, and there's a Hot Butt Rum, featuring Elixir's signature Hot Buttered Rum batter, which includes vanilla ice cream, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla and cardamom.
3200 16th Street at Guerrero; Mon & Tues 4pm - 10pm; Wed  4pm-12am; Thurs, & Fri 4pm-2am; Sat 12pm-2am; Sun 2pm-10pm

The pop-up event that turned part of Stockton Street near Union Square into a traffic-free, pedestrian-only zone in December during five years of Central Subway construction is coming back, and ten days of holiday fun and events kick off on Friday.

Remember the astroturfed Winter Walk pop-ups at Union Square from back in the before times? The event actually did not end because of the pandemic, but over a year before the novel coronavirus upended our lives. The city bowed to pressure from Chinatown businesses and community leaders in 2019, and after Stockton Street reopened to traffic that year after five long years of a construction mess, there didn't seem to be the will to close the street again come December.

But the Union Square Alliance, with help from Amazon and the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development came together this year to bring us the "triumphant return" of Winter Walk, following the 2018 peak when the event saw 2.2 million people attend. And it seems to coincide with the city's multiple other efforts to revive downtown and Union Square amid multiple, as Breed says, "challenges."

The Alliance's press release about the event appears to have been partly written by ChatGPT — to wit: "this highly anticipated event pledges an enchanting fusion of contemporary arctic wonderland aesthetics, captivating performances, and festive offerings of food, drink, activities and shops." But "Arctic wonderland aesthetics" aside, it should be a good time for those heading to Union Square for ice skating and shopping.

(Oddly, that release also says the Winter Walk started in 2015, but SFist reported on the first one in 2014 and the talk once it ended about making this an annual tradition.)

Winter Walk runs from Friday, December 15 through Christmas Eve, Sunday, December 24, and this year it will occupy two blocks, from Post Street down to O'Farrell, and including Maiden Lane.

Hours are noon to 7 p.m. Monday to Wednesday, and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. from Thursday to Sunday.

There will be Off the Grid food trucks, beer and wine gardens, and live music and entertainment throughout the day, including bands, holiday music, and evening DJ sets by DJ Tangerine, DJ Mario, and DJ Trippy. And on the afternoon of Sunday the 17th, they'll be screening the 49ers game.

The Ornament Trail features larger-than-life Christmas ornament balls throughout Union Square, designed by local artists — many of which are already installed — and a map for finding them all.

This year's Winter Walk also includes an indoor holiday marketplace curated by Sunset Mercantile which will be open each day at 100 Stockton (a.k.a. the new building that replaced the former Macy's Men's Store). You can find stocking stuffers and more there from a "vibrant mix of vendors from nearby Chinatown and the Tenderloin district," as well as others.

The Alliance also promises a "new color palette" this year and "Instagrammable moments" throughout, with "a spectacle filled with glaciers, penguins, and polar bears (oh my) as you step into a wonderland designed to captivate audiences of all ages (kids from 1 to 92)."

The group is also actively soliciting sponsorship opportunities for the event.

It should be noted that, as during those endless Central Subway construction years, a bunch of Muni lines will have to be rerouted to accommodate the street closure, which already began on Monday. These include the T-Third Street Bus, 8-Bayshore, 8AX and 8BX-Bayshore Express, 15-Bayview Hunters Point Express, 30-Stockton, 45-Union/Stockton, and 91-3rd Street/19th Avenue Owl.

The street closure will be ongoing, as the event gets disassembled, through midnight on December 28.

The block parties and judging contests in the SF Fire Department holiday decoration contest are scheduled for Wednesday, and these five SF fire stations are decked out with gushers of yuletide razzle-dazzle that you won’t want to miss.

The last two holiday seasons have harked and heralded back to the late 1940s, as in that era, an old-time holiday decorations contest lit up San Francisco Fire Department stations all over town. The contest returned in 2020, and now the Chronicle has the latest on the 2022 SF Fire Department holiday decorations contest, as that paper notes that “The contest will be expanded in 2022, fire officials said, with stations encouraged to host block parties on Dec. 21, 2022, when the judging occurs, and prize money totaling $3,000 provided by the San Francisco Fire Credit Union going to the charity of the winning stations’ choosing.”

SFist went to every single SF Fire station for the 2021 holiday decorations contest, but we found that not every station is technically competing. Some just throw up a couple of wreaths and some lights and call it a (holi-) day. But some other stations are absolutely worth the trip for your holiday light-gazing, or a spot on your itinerary for Wednesday night’s official block parties, as these five SF Fire stations have decked out with the holliest, jolliest, full-blown, four-alarm light-up holiday decoration spectaculars.

Station 38  (2150 California Street)

Right near Lafayette Park, Station 38 contains so many multitudes of holiday cheer that one image cannot do its gingerbread justice. So let’s go to the detail pictures!

A life-size inflatable Grinch and a Santa climbing the tree cover the western flank of this station.

Is it fair game in this contest that all of this California Street’s block has trees has matching the station's holiday gaiety? We’ll leave that for the judges to decide, but this is certainly a joyous SF fire station at which to go a’ wassailing on a December evening.

STATION 39 (1091 Portola Drive)

It is absolutely mixed nuts up at Station 39 next to Mount Davidson, with an assortment of Frostys, Santas, trees, and an animated light spectacular.

And this year, they’ve added a firefighter to that holiday scene, and we’ll hope that blue stream is a hose fighting a fire.

There are animated displays as seen above, which our still photos could not properly capture.

And Station 39 really brings the blink on its garage door facade as well.

STATION 18 (1935 32nd Avenue)

Surely the biggest “tree” of the bunch is at the Sunset District’s Station 18, which is impressive enough, but its multicolored animated snowfall seen below completes the winter wonderland scene.

STATION 19 (390 Buckingham Way)

The sugar plums are dancing again at Station 19, right adjacent to the Stonestown Galleria, which once again busts a Nutcracker theme out, in decorations rumored to have been from a shopping mall display from Christmas past.

Check these twin Drosselmeyer soldiers, lording over a gaggle of gifts and next to a regal green oversized holiday seat.

Two more soldiers are stationed at the east side, ensuring none of the King Rat’s rodents would dare set paw near this station.

BUREAU OF EQUIPMENT (2501 25th Street)

Last year’s grand prize winner was the Bureau of Equipment at 25th and Vermont Streets, in no small part because they had a snow machine as part of that station’s display.

Yes, it was snowing in San Francisco, as seen in the video above from that station’s display last year. The trouble is, there is no posted schedule for the snow machine, so it’s pretty hit-or-miss if the machine will be going during your visit. But an event permit posted at the site lists dates its dates as December 19-23 (the permit blocks off parking spaces, as apparently cars get snowed on), and certainly they’re likely to have that baby arctic-blasting for Wednesday night’s block party proceedings.

Update: They upped the ante this year at the BOE and trucked in 15 cubic yards of actual Sierra snow for a Wednesday "winter wonderland" party.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

We do not yet have the full list of which SF Fire stations are officially competing in the contest. But a few more other individual stations have announced they are competing, and photos of their joys to the world can be seen below.

Related: Photos: Every Single SF Fire Station That’s Decked Out for the Holiday Decorations Competition [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Hey! The world doesn't seem to be imploding on itself just yet, and it's the holidays! So grab your flask, strap on one of those beer hats, and go out in search of some distracting/numbing seasonal cheer.

There are ample opportunities this year for holiday magic in the form of twinkly light displays and such. Below are a few you may want to check out in lieu of tossing yourself into the Black Friday fray this weekend.

Winter Wonderland at Thrive City (Chase Center)

They've got a 90-foot tree getting installed at Thrive City, outside the Chase Center, with a lighting ceremony scheduled for Wednesday, November 30. At the ceremony, the SF Philharmonic will be on hand, and original member and founder of Journey, Neal Schon, will be performing as well. Then on the weekend of December 16, there's a Holiday Spectacular happening over three days, with fake snow falling, Santa, and other "seasonal treats."

The Tree Lighting at the Ritz-Carlton

Head up to Nob Hill on Tuesday, November 29, for the ceremonial lighting of the Ritz-Carlton's 40-foot Xmas tree. The public is invited, there will be music, and "Santa and a Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area child are scheduled to flip the switch."

HapPIER Holidays at PIER 39

They're embracing puns over at Pier 39 this year, with the slogan "Celebrate HapPIER Holidays at the PIER." There's a 60-foot-tall tree set up, and lights all around, and plenty of touristy shopping to do if all you need to buy for loved ones are sea lions stuffies and sweatshirts and mugs that have cable cars on them. Also, nightly around 5 p.m., there are Tree Lighting Magical Moments with lights "Synchronized to Holiday music, [and] the tree transforms into a kaleidoscope of swirling colors, adorned with thousands of specialty lights and ornaments.

The 2022 Snow Village at the Hyatt Regency

A 100-foot-long Snow Village holiday display is being installed in the atrium lobby of the recently renovated Hyatt Regency at the Embarcadero (not to be confused with the other, newly rebranded Hyatt Regency "Downtown SoMa" a few blocks away), featuring thousands of hand-made miniature houses, models of San Francisco buildings, and a model train. The Snow Village is being created by contractor and collector Glenn Leveque, the hotel tells us, and it "honors his late son Christopher who passed away from myocarditis at 22 years old." The display is partly a fundraiser for the Myocarditis Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to saving lives and finding a cure, and you can see it starting Monday, November 28, through New Year's Day.

Jingle All the Way on JFK - Plus 'Entwined'

The illuminated Entwined installation by artist Charles Gadeken returns to the Peacock Meadow in Golden Gate Park on December 1. And also that evening there's a tree-lighting ceremony at the big tree outside McLaren Lodge at 501 Stanyan Street, featuring live music, a snow play area, carnival rides, food trucks, a visit from Santa, and more.

Let's Glow SF 2022

Last but not least, projection-mapping light displays will illuminate a bunch of downtown SF buildings for 10 days as part of Let's Glow SF, which kicks off the evening of December 2. More info here.

Top image via Let's Glow SF/YouTube

Photo: Cheryl Guerrero/Hoodline

For the first time in 15 years, Kiki & Herb are on tour, and they are bringing the latest iteration of their holiday spectacular, "Do You Hear What We Hear?" to the Curran Theater for one night only, December 9.

For those unfamiliar, Kiki and Herb are the legendary cabaret characters created by Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman way back in the 1990s in San Francisco. They first performed off-Broadway in 1995, doing holiday shows and non-holiday shows that mixed dry banter, harrowing drama, bitter cabaret versions of Nirvana and Radiohead tunes, and a manic homage to the wizened old dames of an earlier era. And they quickly became fixtures in the New York scene, with the holiday shows becoming annual events through the early 2000s.

Bond's self-described "boozy chanteusy" Kiki, who is of indeterminate age, is the sort of singer who gets progressively drunker and louder before your eyes, and Herb is her long-suffering, occasionally supportive accompanist.

The pair went off to do their own stuff in the last decade, occasionally coming back together to revive Kiki & Herb in New York — but the last time they performed outside the city as these characters was 2007, and they last did a New Year's Eve show in San Francisco on December 31, 2005. Mx. Bond has been a regular performer at Joe's Pub at New York's Public Theater, and fans were heartened when they did a few dates of a holiday show in December 2021, nearly two years into a pandemic.

As the New York Times described their earlier holiday oeuvre, "In fright drag, with age makeup crisscrossing her face, Bond’s Kiki would stalk through the crowd like a bloodthirsty elf, savaging holiday carols and performing medleys that intermixed 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' with 'Suicide Is Painless.'" And as Mellman, an original member of the band The Julie Ruin, puts it, "It seemed like a gift to an audience that wouldn’t necessarily be going home for Christmas, wouldn’t necessarily have the best relationship with their family."

But now Kiki & Herb are back on the road this holiday season, kicking off a six-city tour in Boston and landing in San Francisco on Friday, December 9. They'll be performing on the grand Curran stage, during the between-shows hiatus at the theater following the recent closure of Harry Potter & the Cursed Child. Tickets go on sale Friday, October 21, at 10 a.m. at BroadwaySF.com.*

Mx. Bond got their start in the 90s drag scene in San Francisco, alongside the likes of Heklina, performing at clubs like Club Uranus at the EndUp. And there have been occasional solo, non-Kiki shows at Oasis, Feinstein's, and other SF venues in recent years, including a Pride show earlier this year.

As Bond told the Times last year, "I created the character of Kiki during the AIDS crisis. I was a young person in my 20s, a street activist. I felt like saying all the things I wanted to say as myself would sound too strident, too earnest. To have this boozed up old person who had done it all, seen it all, I could say anything as this character."

Bond added, "I brought elements of people I really knew into Kiki — very intimidating, very smart women who had just gotten a shit hand dealt, who somehow became these amazing creatures. So that was always there. Herb was based on this guy who worked in a piano bar that we performed at sometimes, this single guy who would drink tequila and had a picture of his cat on the piano."

Suffice it to say, IYKYK, and much like Taylor Mac's "Holiday Sauce" in 2018, this is sure to be the event of the holiday season.

Below, a couple of clips of Kiki & Herb preserved on YouTube, including Kiki's take on Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill," performed back in 2007.

*The original announcement had an on-sale date of October 18, but it has changed to October 21.

The San Francisco Police Department is very eager to inform that they will be out in force with DUI checkpoints and patrols for St. Patrick’s Day, because well-publicized checkpoints do indeed cut down on drunk driving.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Are you drinking yet? It’s fine if you are! We’ve been jobbed out of a proper St. Patrick’s Day the last two years (2020 was particularly awful), plus March Madness starts today, so day drinking and nighttime blacking out is totally acceptable today.

But please do not drive intoxicated, not just because of the danger you are posing to others, but also because as KRON-4 reports, SFPD will be out in force to arrest your ass for drunk driving.

They telegraph this announcement in advance every year (the enhanced patrols and checkpoints go from 7 p.m. until 3 a.m.), because they say they have data showing that announcing that they’re doing checkpoints actually does reduce drunk driving.

“Research shows that crashes involving an impaired driver can be reduced by up to 20 percent when well-publicized DUI checkpoints and proactive DUI patrols are conducted routinely,” SFPD says in their annual St. Patrick’s Day DUI press release.

“Officers will be looking for signs of alcohol and/or drug impairment. When possible, specially trained officers will be available to evaluate those suspected of drug-impaired driving.,” the release adds.

St. Patrick's Day is not the holiday with the most drunk driving, and it is actually not even in the top five. According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, that distinction belongs to Memorial Day, followed by Labor Day, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. But St. Patrick’s Day is still pretty bad, as KSWB reports that “In 2021, CHP officers arrested more than 200 drivers on St. Patrick’s Day with three deaths and 76 injuries reported from DUI-related incidents.”

So have your fun, but take Muni or a Lyft, people!

Related: Alleged Excelsior DUI Crash Injures Four, Demolishes Bus Shelter [SFist]

Image: SFPD via Twitter

A holiday party in Marin County ten days ago where all attendees were vaccinated led to an outbreak of at least 28 cases of COVID, and health officials believe the Omicron variant was to blame.

"When we decided to have the party, we consulted the Centers for Disease Control website," says restaurant owner Mike Koeppel, speaking to the Marin Independent Journal. "We listened to a speech made by Dr. Fauci, and at the time he was saying, if you’re vaccinated there is no reason why you can’t have holiday parties."

The December 11 party at Farm House Local was, ostensibly, a responsibly thrown affair, where all guests were required to be vaccinated, many were boosted, and the hosts encouraged everyone to administer at-home tests the day of the party to make sure they were COVID-negative. Windows and doors were kept open during the party to improve airflow. The event was hosted by Mike and Eliza Koeppel, who are in their 50s and live in Larkspur, and there were about 60 guests who were around the same age or in their 40s.

Now, around half of the guests in attendance have been infected with COVID, and the outbreak began with news of one guest being symptomatic and testing positive on December 13. So far, no one has become severely ill or required hospitalization, which points to the effectiveness of the vaccines at preventing severe infection.

Mike Koeppel says that he tested positive on December 16, and he tells the Marin IJ, "I’ve had very minor symptoms. I’ve been one of the lucky ones."

"We feel terrible about what has happened," said Eliza Koeppel. "It’s just the worst nightmare."

County Health Officer Dr. Matt Willis says that Omicron was the likely culprit in this outbreak, due to the sheer number of those infected.

"Right now we know about half of the attendees of this event were infected," Willis tells the Marin IJ. "An attack rate of 50% is consistent with a very contagious virus. Delta has been highly contagious, but it hasn’t led to an attack rate of 50%."

Willis gave a countywide update Monday discussing how Omicron was likely to surge in the county in the coming days and weeks, and encouraging everyone whose original vaccinations were six or more months ago to go get a booster dose. Additionally, Willis says that the county will soon begin distributing 50,000 free at-home COVID tests to low-income families — and he's encouraging anyone attending an event to test themselves the day of the event.

Marin County has, during much of the pandemic, been the most thorough in its contact-tracing and in its public communications about outbreaks as they're detected. A classroom outbreak in May involving an unvaccinated teacher in Novato led to health officials drafting a paper about the incident that was then widely shared by the Centers for Disease Control.

A recent school outbreak in the county was found to have been caused by two infected children whose parents did not keep them out of school after one of them tested positive. Those parents are now facing possible criminal charges.

Previously: Marin County Parents Who Sent COVID-Positive Kid to School Could Face Criminal Charges

Photo: Andrew Kneckel

It's that time of year again, and you may as well get drunk. San Francisco usually does it up nicely during the holiday season, and this year things should be extra festive given how dismal last year was.

Union Square is already decked out in lights, the annual tree-lighting at the entrance to Golden Gate Park is happening tonight (Thursday), and there's plenty to look forward to even though the pandemic isn't over and there's a new variant worrying people, etc.

Starting a few years ago, the trend has been for bars to be taken over by kitschy, often over-the-top holiday cocktail pop-ups, just for the brief holiday season. The pandemic paused all that, but several of these pop-ups are back, and there are a couple of bars here that just have yuletide festivity written all over them on a normal day.

Miracle @ PCH
Miracle has become a bonafide international holiday enterprise, with seasonal pop-ups across the U.S., Canada, England, and more places. San Francisco's edition started at Pacific Cocktail Haven a couple years back, and it returns there this Friday starting at 5 p.m., and will be open nightly, 5 p.m. to midnight (Monday to Saturday only, not Sunday), through Christmas Eve. Expect good cocktail making to go with all the kitsch decor, and ugly sweaters are encouraged. (PCH, meanwhile, after being gutted by a fire in early 2021, will finally make it back open as itself sometime after the holidays.)
550 Sutter Street near Mason

Sippin' Santa @ Kona's Street Market
Partners Kevin Diedrich (of Pacific Cocktail Haven), Brian Means, and Andy Chun had been planning this international/tropical-inspired downtown bar long before the pandemic shut the world down, and they finally made it open in February just after their other bar, PCH, suffered a fire. For the holidays, they've got a pop-up happening from the tropical pop-up offshoot of Miracle (see above), and it's called Sippin' Santa. Covered in Christmas lights, it's been open since last week, and it's a great escape into a holiday fantasy — especially for those stuck back in the office in downtown SF. It's open Tuesday to Saturday, 5 p.m. to midnight, and there's a $10 cover.
32 3rd Street

Deck the Halls Bar
This little holiday pop-up bar returns this time around at 546 Broadway (better known as Hungry I's strip club) in North Beach, serving up some cozy holiday cheer. The drinks are all served in kitschy/goofy mugs and glassware — including a glass boot — and there's a shot called a Krampus that gets set on fire. See the menu here, and yes, they're game to host your private event.
546 Broadway

Top of the Mark
You can't not get into the holiday spirit by going to some of SF's hotel bars, especially up on Nob Hill. It's not clear if the Fairmont is doing it's usual 700-pound gingerbread house in the lobby, but you can always just hit the elevators across the street at the Mark Hopkins and head to SF's most famous penthouse bar. Take a date, order a Brandy Alexander and some snacks, and let the lights of SF and the Bay Lights on the bridge lull you into some type of holiday cheer.
999 California Street

Whitechapel
Only newly back open after going dark for the better part of the pandemic, this stylish gin joint designed like a London Tube station is the perfect balm for the holiday season — and the ever-changing menu, including great punches for groups, should be sure to bring you some special yuletide delights. There's also a new food menu that you can check out here. They're open Tues-Thu, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., and Fri-Sat 5 p.m. to midnight, but they will be closed from Dec. 23 to Dec. 25.
600 Polk Street

Now that over a half-million Americans have been lost to this pandemic — and the number could easily top 600,000 or higher before the year is out — there is a movement to establish a new national holiday to remember and mourn the COVID dead.

It makes sense to begin thinking about how the nation will collectively mourn once this pandemic is behind us, even though it may still be far from over. But even though more Americans have now been lost to COVID-19 than died in both World Wars and the Vietnam War combined, it may be that the country will be eager to move on after this is over — much like it was after the 1918/19 influenza pandemic, for which we have no specific day of remembrance.

One of those advocating for a new holiday is Kristin Urquiza of San Francisco. You may recall that Urquiza spoke passionately during the Democratic National Convention about losing her Trump-supporting, COVID-denying father to the pandemic at the age of 65. "His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump — and for that he paid with his life," Urquiza memorably said. She was later invited to be a guest of Joe Biden at his September 29 debate with Trump in Cleveland.

Since then, Urquiza co-founded the advocacy group Marked By COVID, and she appeared Monday night on the PBS Newshour to talk about the movement to establish COVID Memorial Day. The appearance coincided with around 100 grassroots events happening around the country on March 1 to mark the losses in the first year of the pandemic.

"A national day of remembrance, a COVID Memorial Day, is essential to be able to give people the time and space to mourn and grieve," Urquiza says. "Our overall response to the pandemic needs to be commensurate to the scale of the problem."

"Memorialization and recognition cannot wait any longer," the group writes on its website. "The call from the community is clear: We need ways to publicly grieve, heal, recognize, learn, and prevent this from ever happening again. This must happen immediately and as one united nation."

Urquiza says that the need to have this conversation now is urgent, because she is worried the country will move on too quickly, and without properly acknowledging the loss.

"We want to make sure that we commit to never forget, to also document in the history books the unvarnished truth of what happened and why, so that we can prevent this from ever happening again," Urquiza says.

America's existing Memorial Day took shape in the 1860s as multiple communities around the country staged springtime events to commemorate the losses of the Civil War. Also known as Decoration Day in some northern states at the time — a few southern states still celebrate their own Confederate Memorial Day — it fell on May 30 for many decades until Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act in 1968, establishing that Memorial Day would, starting in 1971, always be celebrated on the last Monday of May.

The day has come to be seen as a day to remember all of America's war dead, from all conflicts.

But given the enormity of the pandemic's death toll, having a separate day of remembrance could be something to consider.

Marked By COVID is pushing for this holiday to be recognized on the first Monday of March, annually.

If you'd like to join the movement, you can use this form to send a letter to President Biden pushing for the establishment of the holiday.

A holiday show that performing artist Taylor Mac first brought to the Curran in San Francisco two years ago, Holiday Sauce, is back in virtual form in a new pandemic edition that's perfect for cuddling up to with your hot toddy as you suffer this COVID Christmas.

Mac said he conceived the show in 2017 after saying to himself, "I’m going to use the holiday season to practice techniques for how to survive." (Mac says his preferred pronoun is "judy" but as he is a self-identified cis gay man, most critics have stuck with he/him.) And the live version at the Curran was, indeed, an exercise in how to subvert and reimagine the idea of a Christmas show, and Christmas music, for an LGBTQ and/or liberal-ally audience with a bawdy sense of humor. There was a recasting of "O Holy Night" involving some lewd hand gestures and emphasis on the word "divine." There was a story song, a Mac original, about visiting his various grandparents and step-grandparents' houses as a child and the horrors and degradation that those memories bring. And there was a lot of talk about one's chosen family, and one's chosen "grandparents," and one's chosen "mother Mary."

In Mac's case, it was his drag mother, Flawless Sabrina, who passed away in late 2017 not long before the world premiere of Holiday Sauce in New York. In the live show, a ten- or twelve-foot-high black-and-white portrait of Mother Flawless, as Mac calls her, was lowered down at the rear of the stage. And her spirit continues to animate the video version of the show that Mac presented first as a live stream on December 12, and is now watchable on demand with a $10 ticket (pay more if you can), through January 2.

The show opens with a monologue by Mac in some incredible, fruit-and-vegetable-themed makeup and an elaborate headpiece and dress by designer Machine Dazzle — who dazzled audiences with the 24+ outfits that Mac wore in the A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which was performed in San Francisco in Septemer 2017.

"We have been working really hard, all year long, and you need to figure out how to take care of yourself right now," Mac says, addressing the virtual audience, and telling them to take whatever time they need to "go to the kitchen and get your wine," or whatever.

Mac explains that for this intimate portion, in which he's just addressing the screen with no one else present, his only prompt to the designers was "Make it look like a public-access show on LSD." And between Machine Dazzle and makeup designer Anastasia Durasova, they succeeded in that.

The virtual show includes the aforementioned "O Holy Night," this time with multiple friends — including a non-binary Baby Jesus — helping perform the gestures via pre-recorded video. And there's Mac singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and Machine Dazzle returning as a Christmas Tree — a role he filled in the stage version as well.

There are also two noted guest stars delivering numbers, singer Steffanie Christi'an, and Detroit's Queen of the Blues Thornetta Davis.

As for the Mac original "Christmas with Grandma," it's done here through some great animation by artist Dana Lyn, using a live recording of Mac doing the song. (There's also now a Holiday Sauce album which can be purchased here.)

All told the show is a terrific balm for those stuck at home alone, or stuck quarantining in their parents' houses, and especially for members of the LGBTQ community who have spent much of their lives dreading Christmas for various reasons. This is Mac's gift: a new, secular Christmas tradition that was made just for you. And this time around, it's beamed right to your living or bedroom or den.

The show may not be quite as moving — and Taylor may not be quite so energized — without a live audience and without the immediacy of live theater. But, such is life these days, and as Taylor says in conclusion, "We'll see you live next year."

Taylor Mac's Holiday Sauce: Pandemic! can be viewed on demand through January 2. Buy a ticket here.