Sights & Sounds is your weekly guide to the Bay Area arts scene. Stand-up comedian Dhaya Lakshminarayanan told KALW’s Ninna Gaensler-Debs about three great arts events happening around the Bay this week.
- Nihonmachi Street Fair in San Francisco on 8/5 and 8/6
- Flower Power at the Asian Art Museum open until 10/1
- San Francisco Ghost Hunt Wednesdays-Sundays at 7pm
The Nihonmachi Street Fair has been celebrating Asian-Pacific American and San Francisco culture through performance, tradition, art, music, and food for 44 years. There will be a wide range of events from a basketball tournament, dog parade, food fest, car show, and installation art. The festival is all day on August 5 and 6.
Lakshminarayanan: I live in the Japantown neighborhood and whenever anyone asks, they’re like, “Japantown, huh? I haven’t spent that much time there.” Well, this is your chance! You get to walk around, eat good food, there’s cool drumming and performances.
Flower Power at the Asian Art Museum is an exhibit that looks at the symbolism and meaning of six flowers that appear over and over again in Asian culture and art throughout history: the lotus, plum blossom, cherry blossom, chrysanthemum, tulip, and rose. The exhibit also demonstrates the timelessness of these flowers by including contemporary artists like Ayomi Yoshida, Takashi Murakami, and teamLab.
Lakshminarayanan: There's so much activity and love around it. It's a beautiful museum, and it's kind of a cool thing to have flowers in your life.
The San Francisco Ghost Hunt has been around since 1997, founded by Jim Fassbinder. In 2014 magician and performer Christian Cagigal took over the Ghost Hunt tours. In an evening you’ll explore Pacific Heights and learn about the neighborhood’s history and spooks in the San Francisco fog.
Lakshminarayanan: Christian puts his own take on it. I don't want to say too much about it, but there's a little bit of feminism, there's a little bit of introducing people of color ghosts. We usually think of ghosts as white, like Casper.
