Timothy Karoff

5 days ago | sfgate.com | Timothy Karoff |Ida Mojadad |Kasia Pawlowska |Dan Gentile

To keep track of the Bay Area’s ups and downs, we started Fogcutter, SFGATE’s weekly column of happenings and events. Every week, SFGATE reporters put down their notepads, close their laptops and hit the streets to explore Bay Area parks, bakeries and concert halls. Our hope is to offer you a brief snapshot of local public life — a break from hard news and a reminder of the region’s liveliness and variety.

1 week ago | sfgate.com | Timothy Karoff

After nearly four decades, San Francisco’s storied rock and roll hotel is preparing to close its doors. The Phoenix Hotel, a Tenderloin motor lodge that counts the Red Hot Chili Peppers, David Bowie, Neil Young and Kurt Cobain as former guests, has opted not to renew its lease, managing partner Isabel Manchester told SFGATE. The hotel is set to close Jan. 1, 2026. Manchester said the decision to close the hotel was a financial one.

1 week ago | sfgate.com | Timothy Karoff

On Monday, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, the Vallejo-raised competitive eater, announced his return to Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, the world’s preeminent eating competition, one year after he was banned from the event for partnering with a vegan meat company. “While I have and continue to partner with a variety of companies, including some in the plant-based space, those relationships were never a conflict with my love for hot dogs,” Chestnut wrote in a social media post.

1 week ago | sacbee.com | Timothy Karoff

There is nowhere in San Francisco quite like Bissap Baobab. The Mission Street establishment is a one-of-one combo: part Senegalese restaurant, part nightclub that keeps bumping until 4 a.m. It's a spot that's drawn scores of fans, who gather to dance into the wee hours of the night. And apparently, those fans include Joan Baez and Lana Del Rey, too. In a Rolling Stone interview published Wednesday, Joan Baez, 84, mostly discussed social activism in the context of the second Trump administration.

1 week ago | sfgate.com | Timothy Karoff

And somehow, against this backdrop of anxiety, life goes on. On Thursday, a night market took over three blocks of Valencia Street, and crowds gathered to dance on stretches of road where an estimated 9,000 protesters had marched a few days earlier. On the other side of Twin Peaks in Cole Valley, the final night street market of the season went out with a bang as cover bands performed classic Bay Area ballads.