Zack Ruskin July 14, 2021Updated: July 14, 2021, 7:07 pm
Longtime San Francisco musician John Vanderslice relocated to Los Angeles during the pandemic. Photo: Andrea DeSouto
It’s hard to imagine San Francisco without John Vanderslice.
A stalwart of the local indie music scene for decades, Vanderslice surprised many by deciding to move to Los Angeles at the start of the pandemic. By extension, his geographic transition also brought the hard call to close the long-running Mission location of Tiny Telephone Studios.
Though a loss for San Francisco, Vanderslice told The Chronicle that he isn’t taking the closure (the Oakland location remains in operation) too hard.
Zack Ruskin June 27, 2021Updated: June 27, 2021, 12:13 pm
Sacramento’s Alexandra Huynh, 18, the 2021 National Youth Poet Laureate, will attend Stanford in the fall. Photo: Jennifer Vargas Esquivel
Alexandra Huynh has a big fall season ahead of her.
In a matter of weeks, the 18-year-old will be moving from her hometown of Sacramento to begin her freshman year at Stanford University. One reason Huynh is excited for college to start is the normalcy promised by a return to indoor classrooms and the chance to be face-to-face with her peers again.
Recently selected from a pool of four regional finalists, Huynh will serve a one-year term in which she will tour the country visiting with students and hosting poetry workshops. It’s a lot to ask of a college freshman, but Huynh said she’s ready for the challenge.
Published May 19, 2021 at 3:00 AM PDT
Netflix
/ Director Stanley Nelson: ‘In the beginning of the film we have a cop on the beat, swinging a nice stick in a blue uniform, and by the end we have cops with body armor and carrying assault rifles, looking like something out of Star Wars.’
On this edition of Your Call, we rebroadcast our conversation with award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson about his new Netflix documentary,
Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy. Nelson looks back on how the crack epidemic of the early 1980s decimated Black and Brown communities.
The epidemic fueled racial and economic inequality, hyper-aggressive policing, mass incarceration, and government corruption at the highest levels. Nelson says we need to expose the truth about the past in order to change policies.
A longtime critic parses myths in new essay collection on California films sfchronicle.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sfchronicle.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Zack Ruskin April 24, 2021Updated: April 24, 2021, 11:10 am
Green Day’s Mike Dirnt during a culinary demonstration at BottleRock Napa Valley in 2017. Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle 2017
Mike Dirnt likes to start his morning by picking out an album and brewing a fresh pot of coffee.
“My wife actually throws the record on,” he clarifies, “and then we make our coffee and it just starts everything in the right direction.”
Dirnt’s desire to start the day with some fresh tunes is no big revelation to anyone familiar with the longtime bassist for Oakland’s renowned pop-punk outfit Green Day. The value the five-time Grammy winner places on coffee, however, may take some fans by surprise.