For as long as I can remember, Japanese visitors have had a large presence in the Islands, on tour buses in Waikiki, dancing hula with the locals, paying respects at Pearl Harbor, and shopping in the many luxury retail stores that targeted them.But since the pandemic, the number of Japanese visitors has decreased significantly. In 2019, Hawaii saw more than 1.5 million visitors from Japan, but in 2021, it dropped to 24,232. Last year, Japanese arrivals rose to 572,979. The first quarter of 2024...
When it rains, it pours for Stanford men’s basketball. After just one year on the Farm, top recruit Andrej Stojaković announced he was entering the transfer portal, part of a mass exodus following the Cardinal’s disappointing 2023-24 season. On Saturday, Stanford fans got the worst possible news: Stojaković is taking his talents to Berkeley to join the upstart California Golden Bears. The No. 22 recruit of the 2023 class according to ESPN, Stojaković reportedly chose Cal over other top-flight...
On Wednesday, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, aka SFMOMA, threw a party — a big one. When the doors opened for general admission at 8 p.m., a line snaked into the Minna Street alley, reaching almost all the way to New Montgomery Street. The more than 2,700 guests, dressed in a mix of high-society SF fashion and experimental Met Gala-style gowns, came out in force for the museum’s biggest fundraiser of the year, which brought in $3.4 million. Tickets ranged from $95 for late-night access...
Coming off the heels of its long-awaited grand reopening, the Stud is going even bigger. Think “hundreds of billboards” big. On May 4, the historic queer bar is hosting a party called Whatever, and the organizers are bringing in star power to commemorate the occasion. The guest of honor is a household name, one whose face is seared into millions of minds in the Bay Area and beyond. We’re talking, of course, about Anh Phoong. Although she’s based in Sacramento, the personal injury lawyer is an...
The race to be first to report the San Francisco 49ers’ first-round draft pick left some people with egg on their faces. While it’s not exactly clear what started the domino effect, someone, somewhere, clearly got information Thursday that the Niners had decided to take Iowa cornerback Cooper DeJean with the 31st pick. Aggregators quickly seized on that information and disseminated it as fact. Except it wasn’t: The Niners selected Florida receiver Ricky Pearsall, much to the chagrin of many...
California Rep. Adam Schiff’s luggage was stolen from his car as it sat in a downtown San Francisco parking garage on Thursday, according to multiple news outlets. The theft, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, meant that the Democrat, and the likeliest candidate to become California’s next senator, spoke at swanky dinner party dressed in the only clothes he had: a navy long-sleeve shirt, an olive vest and a pair of gray pants (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but...
When the news emerged Thursday that someone had bought the Onion, the beloved satirical news outlet, details were sparse and strange. A message from G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller to staff, shared by Axios media reporter Sara Fischer, simply said that G/O had sold the Onion to a Chicago-based firm made up of “four digital media veterans” called Global Tetrahedron. If the name feels gag-worthy, it is: The satirical paper has used the name for years in parodies of ridiculous business practices. But...
Bay Area officials are asking the public to help identify a suspect connected to an alleged arson fire in Pacifica, the coastal community just a few miles south of San Francisco, according to a social media post Thursday. The Pacifica Police Department shared an image of the individual, who is described as an Asian man, age 20 to 30 years old, with long black hair worn in a ponytail. The suspect is wearing glasses in an image shared by the department. “The subject reportedly often wears a...
There’s subverting expectations, and then there’s what the San Francisco 49ers did with their first-round draft pick Thursday. In selecting — and perhaps overreaching for — a young, athletic receiver, the Niners somehow not only managed to put Brandon Aiyuk trade rumors to bed, but also kicked up a whole new storm of rumors surrounding their other star wideout who was once thought to be a certain part of the team’s future: Deebo Samuel. This wasn’t completely out of the blue, although that...
There is no plausible defense for the San Francisco 49ers’ selection of Florida wide receiver Ricky Pearsall at pick No. 31 in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft. Harsh? Yes. An overreaction? Most certainly not. Pearsall is a “reach” by any objective measure; you need to scour the internet to find any mock drafts that had Pearsall going in the first round, and the lead draft experts for ESPN and NFL Network had Pearsall as Day 2 picks on their big boards. We could argue all day about how much...
Several Bay Area schools were among the top California public high schools in a recent report, but Southern California schools dominated the top of the list. In U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of 1,652 California schools released this week, Riverside Stem Academy in Riverside, Whitney High School in Cerritos and Science Academy Stem Magnet in North Hollywood took the top three spots, followed by schools in Cypress, Carson and Wilmington. According to the ranking, Riverside Stem Academy has...
Sixty firefighters battled flames at an unoccupied four-story apartment building in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights neighborhood on Friday morning, officials said. The San Francisco Fire Department said the first report of the fire at Lyon and Clay streets came in at 4:26 a.m. “The fire was so large on their arrival, so they immediately struck a second alarm, which immediately brings a second round of firefighters to the scene,” Capt. Justin Schorr, a spokesperson for the department, told...