museums

A very special gift for your grandkids (ages 6-17) is a private sleepover at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. It’s for you, too, as adult chaperones are required. Included are personal tours of the Swamp and the Aquarium, a Planetarium show, free parking, late night snacks, story time, breakfast and next day […]

Bundle up the grandkids and take them on one of the geezer’s holiday favorite jaunts – the glittering hourlong evening train ride in Niles Canyon. Every year the historic trains (part of the first Transcontinental Railway built in the 1860’s) are festooned with hundreds of colored lights – it’s more magical than anything concocted by […]

The dreams are mostly ancient Egyptian. The house is in, of all places, St. Francis Woods. The name is the Gregangelo Museum and it is way,way,way over the top. Every inch of its 22 theatrical rooms is covered with fantastic Pharoanic esoterica. This is also the home base of the equally far out Velocity Circus. Check […]

For the geezer who has everything, including a nostalgic fondness for Bay Area beats, how about a Hunter Thompson coozy to keep your beer cold? A Charlie Parker t-shirt? A Kerouac bumper sticker? The Beat Museum in North Beach has a trove of weightier stuff too including first editions and CDs. You can shop online of […]

Enjoy San Francisco culture tourists rarely see.  The venerable San Francisco Art Institute is a Spanish Colonial gem hanging off one of the city’s steepest streets. Perfumed by student acrylics, it’s a series of columned courtyards, one with a tiled fountain and in one of its  free galleries a Diego Rivera masterpiece you are likely […]

Interested in cultural activities but not museum mobs? In Geyeserville the voluptuous 100 acre Oliver Ranch is studded with works by Andy Goldsworthy, Richard Serra and Bruce Nauman among others. The hitch is that 2-hour tours will be held only from September 15 to November 1 and visitors must donate a minimum amount to a non-profit […]