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San Francisco Review of Whatever

@sfreviewofwhatever

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Everyone is a critic ⚫️ Print only ⚫️ Issue Three is out ⚫️ Order or subscribe at the links below 🌝

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What a weekend @sfartbookfair !! Thanks to everyone who stopped by to get a barrette and an issue of @thethingquarterly The Quarterly Report. So nice to see all your lovely faces! We even got to slip away to North Beach to play tourists in the city we love and miss. Book fair haul last photo with some of my favorite publishers/humans. Hope to see you all again soon! 💕

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📖💗 We’re so happy thousands of you stopped by Slash during the SF Art Book Fair and spent time with our current exhibitions and @etalbooks, @sfreviewofwhatever, and @sagebru_ush in our library. ⁠
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Thank you to everyone who attended Melissa Broder’s (@RealMelissaBroder) reading and Q&A with @LaTurbo Avedon, and to Melissa for making the trip to SF! Her current Substack work is on view in “Virtual Crush” in our main gallery.⁠
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And thank you Angie Zheng 郑晴 (@angiezhengg) and all the folks who came to the opening of her exhibition, “印象/Impressions,” in /room/.⁠
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You can visit “Virtual Crush” and “印象/Impressions” at Slash through September 19.

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📚🌞🌊🌲⛰️🕷️📚🌀🍃

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I can’t thank our friendors and comrades and fellow travelers who found their way back to our little spot enough for an absolutely incredible time at our town-wide sale on Saturday- but I’ll keep trying! See you next year- and maybe next Sunday? And keep an eye out for our upcoming summer programming announcements! AND THANKS AGAIN

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Absolutely elated to officially announce the gotdamned all-star lineup of friendors we have slated to peddle their wares for Outsider Books’ 1st birthday at this year’s @portcosta_townwide sale!! Please join me in welcoming and thanking @batherslibrary @tripwire_journal @smingsmingbooks @sfreviewofwhatever @leftinthebay @krupskayabooks @oakland_abosol @spunk_editions @nakedneighborart & @babyghostcomics ! We’ll also be featuring incredible vegan cuisine from @veganchulaeats !! And special thanks to @mooniedrawz for the flyer art! Save the date and more soon!

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Rosalind Brown’s novel Practice was the best thing I read last year and I had the privilege of writing this review for issue 3 of the @sfreviewofwhatever. Thanks also to @elisabethnicula for thoughtful edits!

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“Founded in 2019, NYRA is a New York–based publication that publishes architecture criticism, though its reach extends far beyond that world.”

NYRA appears in good company in COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW’s story on the resurgence of little magazines. Thanks to Carolina Abbott Galvão for counting us among Elizabeth Hardwick’s offspring—we’ll take it!

"NYRA, unlike other design publications, aims to appeal to the literary crowd that older small magazines like N+1 and THE BAFFLER draw. The latest issue includes a piece by Kate Wagner, The NATION’S architecture critic, on the demolition of the East Wing of the White House; an appraisal of the Villa Charlotte Brontë, in the Bronx; and an essay about castle keepers. And it’s not the only new effort of its kind. Recent years have seen the rise of a number of niche publications covering topics ranging from business to fine art to cemeteries: the NEW YORK REVIEW OF FINANCE, the METROPOLITAN REVIEW, the WHITNEY REVIEW OF NEW WRITING, the GRAVEYARD REVIEW, the MANHATTAN ART REVIEW, the SAN FRANCISCO REVIEW OF WHATEVER. ...

The past few years have not been kind to critics. ...The NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, the model upon which many of the new magazines are based, also came about during a crisis of sorts. In 1963, the TIMES and the HERALD TRIBUNE were both on strike, as were their book review sections. Over dinner one night, Robert Lowell, Barbara Epstein, Jason Epstein, and Elizabeth Hardwick, all in their thirties and forties at the time, were bemoaning the lack of passion and character in those sections (Hardwick wrote a Harper’s essay to that effect, ‘The Decline of Book Reviewing,’ in 1959) when they decided to launch their own publication. ...

Like the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, the new outlets try to publish ‘the unusual, the difficult, the lengthy,’ as Hardwick put it in her HARPER’S essay. ‘Our longest issue so far was eighty thousand words,’ Samuel Medina, NYRA’s editor, said. ‘We probably put too much emphasis on word counts, and I doubt anyone in the world really cares. But for me it is a point of pride because it separates us from a typical design or architecture magazine or publication.’” (link for bio)

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@sfreviewofwhatever Issue 3 includes “The City Writes the Score” by Lian Ladia and a few of my photographs of a performance by @zekarias and @joelstjulien to close out Dave Wilson’s project exploring downtown SF. “This was the closing moment of Arrivals, Again, a monthlong constellation of events that had scattered itself across the city: rooftop maps, deep-listening sessions, scent activations, a record release, a dance class. Each installment offered a different mode of entering the city. This gathering, a saxophone and guitar duet with Zekarias Musele Thompson and Joel St. Julien, felt like the project’s final inhalation before dissolving back into San Francisco.”

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Stoked to have contributed a drawing in the newest issue of the @sfreviewofwhatever !!!

Congratulations to @elisabethnicula for putting together such a beautiful publication!

Go out and grab one today!

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Dark Entries label boss Josh Cheon and punk polymath Brontez Purnell are in conversation in the new issue of San Francisco Review of Whatever. We discuss growing up goth, San Francisco’s dance parties, archiving Patrick Cowley’s music, and maintaining the creative drive deep into their careers in a city that challenges this possibility.

Order a copy: sfrw.square.site

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2025 saw me looking back to 2015:

A @danspaceproject reunion for the Platform I curated a decade ago

The honor of trying to do justice to Carolyn Brown, my first NYT piece in a decade

A closing party for The Back Room @smallpresstraffic, wrapping my decade as a Bay Area arts editor that began with @openspace_sfmoma

Full of love and gratitude for the many artists & arts workers who made this work so deeply meaningful for me, and I hope for others

And also… who was this girl who did all these things? What would she think now….?

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Join us for a conversation between Javier Arbona-Homar and Elisabeth Nicula @elisabethnicula (artist and editor of the @sfreviewofwhatever), about particulates, waiting, and geology.

Javier Arbona-Homar’s new book unearths the hidden legacies of violence that have shaped the physical and cultural environment of the Bay Area. Explosivity looks at a series of local explosions — from nineteenth-century explosives manufacturing to Mythbusters’ notorious 2011 “cannonball” incident — to call attention to the scattered remnants of militarism and racialized capitalism embedded in the region’s geography.

Thanks to @officialkellypendergrast for organizing!

FREE

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