Publications
New York Times
Wired Magazine
The Atavist
Afar
Mother Jones
Salon.com
San Francisco Chronicle/SF Gate
Women’s Health
San Francisco Magazine
Conde Nast Portfolio
New York Observer
New York Times
I.O.U., and U., and U.
Bruckheimery thriller in which I trust a stranger with $50, and all goes south.
New York Times Magazine: Bunch Muncherasi MD
A scribble on a slip of paper becomes a mystery.
You’d Have to Be Blind to Paint This
On visual art made by the visually impaired.
Heaven Is a Slow Houseboat to Nowhere
Adventure and misadventure on Northern California’s Delta.
36 Hours in Downtown LA
Los Angeles has changed.
Next Stop: Huntington Beach
A funky old surf town re-brands itself as Surf City USA.
To Your Left, a Better Way of Life?
On the bus with the co-housing tourists.
Bites: Oakland’s Lake Chalet
Every city needs a lake, and every lake needs a $22 million restaurant on its shores.
Bites: Outerlands in San Francisco
Cozy soup in the bone-chilling gloom.
Laugh and Be Merry — Tomorrow We’re Growing Up
One last river-shooting hurrah before the baby makes us hibernate.
36 Hours in San Francisco
A weekend in the Mission District.
New Breed of Hamptons Paint Slingers
To paraphrase Charlton Heston, some damn dirty apes come to the land of Pollock.
Bites: Camino restaurant
Peasant cooking, in Oakland.
36 Hours in Napa Valley
Weekend travel guide to the Northern California wine region.
Good Design, Happy Cats?
The Gehry-ization of the awful old cat tree.
Sipping From a Utopian Well in the Desert
Arcosanti, Arizona’s never-finished experimental city.
Prisoner 76759 Designs His Dream House
In solitary confinement for 34 years, Herman Wallace architects an alternate reality.
Hundertwasser in America
The radical, sometimes naked Austrian, at last in the United States.
Check In, Check Out: Malibu Beach Inn
David Geffen’s improvement on Billionaires’ Beach.
Check In, Check Out: The InterContinental SF
It’s ugly. But only from the outside.
Lombard Street Begins to Shine
On San Francisco’s dingy old strip of motels, in the Sunday Travel section.
Books in Brief: Dear Mr. President
A short review of Gabe Hudson’s story collection.
Wired Magazine
Rate This Article
Yelpification, ubiquitous appraisal and our culture of critique.
The Atavist
Blindsight
The tragic, miraculous and then unbelievable true story of Hollywood producer Simon Lewis.
Afar
Going Dutch
All you need is gezelligheid.
Spin the Globe: Reykjavik
A week in Iceland’s capital gets freaky.
Mother Jones
Black Ops Jungle
Outside Baltimore, the nation’s first public high school dedicated to homeland security.
Vanishing Act
The former Yugoslav republic made 18,000 people disappear in the blink of an eye. Now it wants the world to forget its experiment in ethnic cleansing.
SALON
The Chimp Who Thought He Was a Boy
Raised like a son by a New York family as part of a language experiment, Nim Chimpsky was shipped away when funds ran out.
Feminism and Intervention
Reconciling Sarajevo with Iraq: Toward a consistent feminist foreign policy. (Broadsheet blog entry)
Drafted into the Cult of War
On becoming the long battle.
Brilliant Careers: Lou Reed
A profile of the Velvet Underground founder.
Welcome to the Occupation
A Living Wage campaign shakes up Harvard.
New from Weber: Girls!
Barbecue’s co-opting of feminism.
Sex and This Boy Crying
A plea for the revision of sex talk.
Half a Life
A review of the V.S. Naipaul novel.
The Ultimate Weapon
A strange subset of the fathers’ rights movement insists the growing number of sex abuse allegations obscures a deeper truth.
San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com
The Mystery of the Daytime Idle
Why aren’t all these people working?
Bush’s Pool Boy
The former president’s biggest hater — and employee.
The story of Randy Robinson
In a straighter realm, a Bay Area wanderer is lost for good.
The Man with Nothing to Do
Michael Skrzypek’s strange encounter with the universal dream.
Pig Balls and Stuck Skunks
311’s window onto San Francisco’s secret heart.
Sourcing Our Useless Crap
Tracking down the human behind the wasteful Neosporin travel tote.
Pay Me More for this Column!
Learning to stop being a loser and start getting the big bucks.
The Fog of Work
What happened to Fremont mechanic Hamid Sayadi after 9/11?
The Man Behind Cary Tennis
Salon.com’s long-running advice columnist hit bottom so you don’t have to.
Flying Streetcars, Bloody Streets
San Francisco’s forgotten year.
Go Ahead, Try to Hate SARK
The life of an irritatingly likable international inspiration.
Quitters Sometimes Win
Jumping ship in order to clean them.
The Pros and Cons of PrisonStud.com
A twice-convicted felon makes a clean break from prison. Sort of.
In a Staged Universe
Home sellers invent a surreally perfect psychological space.
Women’s Health magazine
When Babies Run in Your Family
As the grandson of the Gerber Baby, I was expected to produce a mashed peas eater myself. I wasn’t convinced.
San Francisco Magazine
Welcome to Hollyhood
Introducing Scary Cow, San Francisco’s socialist meritocracy where awful and wonderful alien movies get made.
Conde Nast Portfolio
The Rain Maker
Ex-Google exec David Friedberg is applying Google-like technology to allow all types of businesses to hedge their exposure to the elements.
New York Observer
I Loved Your Book
The strange desire to please the talented.