classes

It’s bigger than football, baseball and basketball combined. It’s the fastest growing outdoor activity in the U.S. fascinating over 51 million Americans. It is (drumroll) bird watching. Fortunately we live in an area that’s home to thousands of our fine feathered friends. The parks along the East Bay Shore and the refuge on Lake Merritt […]

Admit it, you’ve always had an itch to learn fire dancing, art welding or jewelry crafting. Anyone with a creative burn ought to check out the classes available at Oakland’s Crucible, a longtime center of pyrotechnic studies and performances. Classes are small with considerable instructor/student interaction and can be as short as a weekend or […]

Explaining Alice in Wonderland’s appetite for mushrooms to your grandkids is easy if you take them to Los Altos’ Hidden Villa. Their wondrous Mushroom Hike is: Sunday Nov. 8 & Saturday Nov. 21 10am – 1pm It’ s like an Easter egg hunt only instead of eggs it’s fungi. Designed for kids 10 and older […]

Not all art classes will end with you taking home a painting of a bowl of fruit. At the Cartoon Art Museum you could leave with your own original cartoon birthday cards or a comic strip, even an animated short subject. They have an amazing array of classes but in most of them you’ll be […]

How do you get a $250 necklace for $15? You make it yourself. It’s easy to create a pirate’s trove of jewelry on a geezer budget with beads. There are good bead stores around ( especially the granddaddy of them all- Yone in North Beach yonebeads.com) but most are small and the selection narrow. If […]