museums

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 […]

Here’s a cultural event in the Bay Area that nice and distasteful.Treat your grandkids to a garden of carnivores at the San Francisco Conservatory’s “Chomp 2”. Hundreds of meat-eating plants from around the world have been collected for this exhibition of flowering savagery, including the world’s largest Venus Flytrap. There’s no rush. It runs until […]

Here’s a cultural feast for $0. Walk freely into any gallery in the Bay Area. The most professional works fortunately are all within strolling distance in downtown SF and SOMA. 49 Geary has five floors of them including great photography at Fraenkel. Round the corner at 228 Grant Berggruen has been showing top international artists […]

This San Jose reincarnation theme park was created in the 1920’s by a cult based on ancient Egyptian spirituality and still retains its dusty Cecil B. deMille charms. The collection of  antiquities isn’t even close to  King Tut caliber but the grounds with their faux temples and tombs stirs young imaginations. Hourly planetarium shows.Seniors $7. […]