Samantha S. Campos

Long before they founded SOBU, the design-forward furniture and home décor store on College Avenue in Oakland’s Rockridge district, Laleh (née Zahedi) and Alessandro Latini met as teenagers at Redwood High School in Corte Madera—a pairing that, in hindsight, feels like a design collaboration waiting to happen. They didn’t know it then, but the shared sensibility that would one day define SOBU—warm, curious and built to last—was already taking shape.

Nora Murphy is on stage. Minutes earlier, Mariposa metal band JNX closes their set with Black Sabbath’s “Crazy Train.” Now, a sweaty but happy crowd leans in to hear who won this year’s contest. 

It’s late July at the second annual Battle of the Bands in downtown Napa’s SoFi District—three blocks of music, 21 bands, five stages, including the Uptown and Folklore. An estimated 4,000 people fill the streets, drinking wine, dancing and punting the occasional beach ball—or, during surf metal band...

Of all the midlife betrayals for women—ageist algorithms, hot flashes, chin hairs—perhaps the worst is the myth that we’re no longer fun. And that we don’t deserve a night out with friends.

Laura Baginski, 49, a former magazine editor in Chicago, feels middle-aged women just need to go out at a more reasonable hour.

“I was going to a lot of live shows after the pandemic,” she said. “It brought out this need to have this communal experience with music. I loved especially the smaller shows a...

When my partner and I started looking for our first home together, at the top of our must-have list was a yard for our 10-year-old Vizsla. Like most of his breed, “Mango” was athletic and sensitive—his favorite activities were running through Redwood Regional Park and curling up into a ball on the corner of our couch that got the most sunlight through the window. 

Fortunately, we found a home near his favorite trails with a backyard, where he got his own couch in the sun. It made us happy to...

It’s early afternoon, before the Ivy Room opens. Inside, it’s quiet, the calm before a storm of activity from the bar and band later that night. I take notice of all the music memorabilia. Co-owners Summer Jager and Lani Torres point out the artwork on the walls by our booth and above the bar.

“My dad gave me that painting of Bowie when I was 19,” Torres says, noting that it was painted in 1975, the year she was born. “That’s gone with me from Santa Cruz to New York, back to San Francisco, an...

In a previous life (aka, my 30s), I spent a lot of time in bars. Partly, because it was my job—first as bartender, then as nightlife columnist. It’s also where friends and I would go to flirt, commiserate or celebrate over a pint or a shot, often both. And because of the odd and unpredictable collection of people encountered if I ventured solo, bars were where I would delight in the sport of eavesdropping and/or talking to strangers. Then I called it research; now I call it “engaging with the co...

Sonoma County is perhaps best known for its wine. But it also has a deep history of cannabis cultivation. Generations of farmers, forced underground by prohibition, have nurtured and harvested cannabis gardens for decades. As California ushers in a new era of legalization, those master growers and their protected genetics may finally get the recognition they deserve: Like its wine, Sonoma produces some of the best cannabis on the market today.

Just over a year and a half ago, Jane Ingalls retired as an Earth Sciences Librarian at Stanford University. Now on a fixed income, Ingalls knew she wouldn’t be able to afford to continue living in the Bay Area. But she did have land in Mendocino County. And she had known Stephen Marshall for years.

Marshall owns and operates Little House on the Trailer, a Petaluma-based business that has designed and manufactured secondary units for the past nine years. Also known as accessory dwelling units, these homes range from 400 to 800 square feet, are fully customizable and delivered with utility hookups, generally within two months.