Tag Archives: san francisco

Shooting Sports

BART Lets Glow! 2026 Anime Festival

https://youtu.be/JTgp0jYdIeg

In 2025, BART introduced the Let’s Glow! BART Anime Festival and attracted more than triple the expected 1000 attendees. This year, the free anime festival expanded to accommodate even more anime fans. I traveled to the Warm Springs/South Fremont Station to check it out.

This year, the fest doubled in size. Booths and exhibits took up both sides of the BART station. The Itasha car expo in the Southern Pick-Up lot, the Artist Alley in the North side lot. In between, there was a stage for performers and cosplay contests, and a Food Truck row.

Itasha cars are vehicles themed and often wrapped with graphics depicting characters from popular anime and manga, and now VTubers. The Artist Alley was double the size and packed with shoppers picking up fan-made anime art, plushies, and merch. The longest line was for the Railgoods booth selling official BART merch featuring its Anime mascots: Baylee, Nimbus, Jasmine, and Mira

BART has anime mascots? Along with the Vatican (yes, the Vatican) the San Francisco BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT system wanted to reach out “the youth.” Appealing to Asian-weeb subculture of Anime by bolting on a BART logo onto it. Did it work? Overall BART ridership is down 56% since 2016 but the Lets Glow! Festival has doubled in attendance since last year. So yay, I guess?

Shooting Sports

Last Days of Summer, Ocean Beach

https://youtu.be/dwc1MB4_Nkc

Ocean Beach is like like a local secret. This three-and-a-half mile stretch of Pacific shoreline just past the western edge of Golden Gate Park and The Great Highway. Hundreds of yards of soft sand extend from the parking lot to the ocean. Above the sea wall, a multiple walking paths run for about mile between the Cliff House ending in sand dunes.

This beach attracts local in San Francisco and experienced surfers from around the world. The water looks inviting until you remember it’s usually 52–57°F year-round and the currents have a long, documented habit of sweeping people out, so be careful when walking near the water if you’re visiting.

Before the neighborhoods of the Richmond and Sunset filled in, this was a vast dune wilderness. Steam trains and later streetcars brought city people out to the edge for fresh air and amusement. The Cliff House has stood in various forms since 1863, watching over Seal Rocks. Adolph Sutro’s enormous glass-roofed baths once filled a cove just north of here; the ruins still sit there, atmospheric and photogenic. Playland at the Beach—roller coasters, fun houses, the original It’s-It ice cream sandwich—ran until 1972. At very low tides you can still spot the weathered ribs of the ship King Philip, wrecked in 1878 near Ortega Street. Between 1850 and 1926 roughly twenty vessels came to grief along this stretch.

Today the beach is quieter, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The amusement parks are gone, the dunes partially restored, and the place is chill.

Enjoy 10 minutes of zen that I filmed at one of the last days of Summer 2026.

Travel

The Etruscans exhibit: Legion of Honor SF

I visited “The Etruscans” exhibit at the Legion of Honor art museum in San Francisco. This is the most comprehensive U.S. exhibition on Etruscan culture in decades, featuring over 150 rare artifacts like bronze sculptures, gold jewelry, and the longest-surviving Etruscan linen text.

The Legion of Honor is one of San Francisco’s oldest art museums, located atop a hill overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, next to the Presidio.

Travel

Tommy’s Joynt San Francisco

Near City Hall, Tommy’s Joynt is an easily overlooked San Francisco landmark that doesn’t show up on most people’s radar. Opened in 1947, Tommy’s is the oldest Hofbrau in California.

Hofbrau’s offer beer and German-American comfort food. Large portions at reasonable prices (for San Francisco, that’s anything not insanely overpriced). Tommy’s is famous for its pastrami, turkey, corned and roast beef, made freshly in-house. 

In addition to honest comfort food, Tommy’s offers a wall full of local and imported beers at its bar. In warm summer days, Tommy’s opens its rooftop biergarten. Opened by local singer and radio D.J Tommy Harris, Tommy’s served late-night grub to musicians finishing their gigs at local clubs and stages.

In 2020, rumors spread that Tommy’s was closed for good. Despite reopening after the citywide COVID shutdowns, viral social media posts still circulated that Tommy’s was closing or that the property would be sold to developers. I spoke to one of Tommy’s owners at the bar, and he completely dispelled the rumors.

Shooting Sports, Travel

Lets Glow BART Anime Festival

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is the subway system that runs through San Francisco, Oakland, and now to San Jose. They recently adopted an anime mascot character called Baylee and her three associates. On September 6, 2025 BART hosted its first Anime and arts festival, named “Lets Glow” at their Warm Springs station near Freemont, CA.

The event was free to attend. I drove in and utlized the ample free parking. I arrived before the official start time of 4:00pm, there were already over 300 attendees and more arriving via the regular BART trains to the station.

They distrubeted event passports that could get stamped at various sections of the event. There was an Itasha row with fun anime and video game graphics modified cars. There were huge crowds around the Artist Alley where local aftists sold their art and merch. There was exceptionally long line to buy BART Anime themed merch.

Lets Glow had probably 10 times more folks than the BART organizers anticipated. It was a fun taste for anime lovers but not much to do and see. Future events would do better to have a headline guest or guests like voice-over artists or J-POP bands.

Travel

SF Great Highway Last Drive

My last drive on the Great Highway before they permanently closed it in March 2025. In 2024, a slim majority of San Francisco voters, approved Proposition K, closing the Great Highway to convert it into a public walkway and park. The majority of local neighbors voted against the closure.