Joshua Rotter

5 days ago | 48hills.org | Joshua Rotter

There’s a moment at every BLACKSTAR Symphony performance that feels like a portal opening. David Bowie‘s spectral voice is absent, but his presence hovers, stitched into every orchestrated phrase. When John Cameron Mitchell takes the stage alongside Donny McCaslin’s band—the very ensemble that recorded Blackstar—and a grand orchestra swells behind them, something shifts in the room. The concert isn’t just a tribute; it’s an invocation.

1 week ago | 48hills.org | Joshua Rotter

In a moment when anti-trans legislation and rising political hostility have reached a fever pitch, Fresh Meat Productions is answering back—not with fear, but with brilliance. The 2025 Fresh Meat Festival hits San Francisco’s Z Space (Thu/19-Sat/21) with a three-night lineup that’s equal parts resistance and revelry, celebration and ceremony.

2 weeks ago | 48hills.org | Joshua Rotter

San Francisco’s Frameline49, the world’s longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival, offers three standout local documentaries that center queer transformation through embodiment—WICKET, A Body to Live In, and Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency. This trio of films, all set in and around the Bay Area, confronts rupture and survival through breakdancing, body modification, and ritualized environmental grief.

2 weeks ago | 48hills.org | Joshua Rotter

Frameline returns to San Francisco this month with a rich lineup of features, shorts, documentaries, and episodics that is equally political and personal. Showcasing 150 films from 40 countries at nine venues across San Francisco and Oakland over 11 days (June 18–28), the world’s longest-running and most prestigious LGBTQ+ film festival offers a vibrant spectrum of queer storytelling.

3 weeks ago | 48hills.org | Joshua Rotter

The sixth studio album from Oakland-based duo Tune-Yards, Better Dreaming (out now via 4AD) serves as both a battlecry for focus in a chaotic world and a bold statement of creative freedom. When asked what “better dreaming” means to her, vocalist Merrill Garbus points to the influence of Black feminist thinkers Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Adrienne Maree Brown, and Autumn Brown, who’ve posited extensively about the necessity of imagining and writing our future, specifically with a Black feminist gaze.