Your average Winter Arts Guide, that alt-weekly staple, is typically a bit grimmer than its Fall Arts counterpart, at least in places that actually have something which qualifies as a "winter." It'll be a recommendation of the grimmest exhibitions of lint-based sculpture, the longest performances of the loudest dirges in the darkest basements, the most bleakly Swedish of bleak Swedish films. But San Francisco is not so burdened; here the season is more pleasant. It's not San Diego or anything, it's not sunshine-as-pornography — but it is refreshing.
And so too are the artistic offerings, bursting with mid-season vitality. Why, there's Sketchfest and Skrillex and the best of McSweeney's Internet-only offerings in book form. There's Georgia O'Keefe and drag queens and a whole exhibition of vinyl. There's nudity, even, well-placed in the year to expose audiences to fleshly vistas unseen since that Indian summer day at Dolores Park. New York may be the City That Never Sleeps, but this is the City That Never Hibernates. So bundle up with your heaviest light jacket and brave the possibility that you might encounter nippiness in the pursuit of culture across the Bay Area tundra, you complete wiener.
Visual Arts: Georgia O'Keefe, the Vinyl Record, and Other Shows
Dance: Robots, Drag Ballet, and More Naked Flesh Than You've Seen Since Summer
Theater: The Stage Runs Hot This Winter
Books: The Internet Comes to the Page and Other Winter Reads
