When I was growing up south of Los Angeles, anything north of, say, Santa Barbara seemed like Alaska. Or, almost. Certainly up above San Francisco was mysterious and exotic. On first visits, way up around…
Posts published by “Steve Heilig”
The fabled City Lights bookstore in San Francisco is sixty years old this year. They're having a lot of celebratory events to mark the birthday. Even without the past decade's steady and precipitous decline in…
Rain? In late June? Sure California sorely needs it, but the forecast did make the honchos at the 20th annual Sierra Nevada World Music Festival a bit apprehensive. Early Sunday morning, while walking out by the high school and health center, it began drizzling as if things might get seriously wet, the dog looked at me like I was nuts for dragging him all the way out there from downtown, and I was reminded I had no rain gear nor umbrella. But it let up, to remain a light intermittent sprinkle that caused no real woes, and later a fast-talking wild-eyed woman wearing a sliced-up unstuffed stuffed lion on her head informed me she had “taken care of the rain thing” via some voodoo-type stuff she had “learned at Burning Man last year.” Whatever works.
The Boonville fairground's biggest annual event returns this weekend - the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, starting Friday evening and running through Sunday night. The festival draws attendees of all ages from around the country…
Mike Gray died recently at 77 years of age, with prominent obituaries in some publications due to his status as a successful movie screenwriter - his most famous screenplay being "The China Syndrome" in 1979.…
When The Artist Again Known As Prince first exploded into superstardom three decades ago, I had just moved to San Francisco and his music — “Purple Rain,” “Little Red Corvette,” “1999” and so forth, was…
On April 20th each year, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and Golden Gate Park are arguably our beleaguered planet's ground zero for what is loosely referred to "cannabis culture." Why that date? It's a long hazy…
Back in the murky pre-history of San Francisco's fabled Haight-Ashbury, even before the fabled “Summer of Love” in 1967, let alone the ever-evolving touristic version of it, were the Diggers. Not the “Digger Indians” or…