Mark Your Calendar: A Weekend of Art, Music, Home Tours, and Antiquing

This weekend (October 5-7) is going to be such a whirlwind -- and we're going to have some very tough choices to make:

* On Friday afternoon and early evening, T-Bone Burnett (performing with friends like Neko Case) and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy will kick off San Francisco's free, three-day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park.

* Friday night, the Oakland Art Murmur holds its monthly "First Friday" art walk Uptown.

* Saturday's our big day at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (which, as the name implies, features a lot more than just bluegrass music). We're planning to catch some of our favorite alt-country, Americana, and just-plain-talented acts like Allison Moorer, the Whoreshoes, the Knitters, Nick Lowe, the Flatlanders (with Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock), Gillian Welch (above, at last year's fest), Los Lobos, and Steve Earle. (Again: Golden Gate Park. Free. Incredible music. Great people. Good food. Dog-friendly. What more inducement do you need?)

* Bright and early Sunday morning is, of course, the October installment of the Alameda Point Antiques & Collectibles Faire. We'll be there if we can manage to rouse ourselves after Saturday's events.

* After the Antiques Faire, check out the Shades of Green Home Tour, which highlights eight gorgeous homes and gardens that have been meticulously preserved and gently modernized in Oakland's lovely, historic Crocker Highlands neighborhood. A Green Design Expo features eco-friendly merchants, tradespeople, and other exhibitors. The event is a fundraiser for the public Crocker Highlands Elementary School. Tickets for the tour are $40 in advance, or $45 on the day; the Green Design Expo is free.

* Also Sunday in Oakland is the Rockridge Kitchen Tour, a charity fundraiser showcasing nine fabulously remodeled kitchens along Rockridge's leafy avenues. Tickets are $30 in advance, or $40 at the door.

* The Bluegrass Festival wraps up Sunday afternoon and evening with Jim Lauderdale, the Mekons, Doc Watson, Dave Alvin, and the always-luminous Emmylou Harris.

Whew!

Good Reads: "Green Envy"

There's a fascinating opinion piece on "green" design in this week's (normally not-very-noteworthy) San Francisco Chronicle Magazine.

In it, local author and architectural preservationist Jane Powell makes a well-reasoned argument that the current green-house movement is actually doing more environmental harm than good:

Gutting or demolishing small, existing structures to make way for new, supposedly eco-friendly features or larger buildings (even green ones) is wasteful and hypocritical, Powell says. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs contain toxic mercury and do little to lessen the environmental impact of energy production. Those new energy-efficient windows will need to be replaced every ten to 20 years, meaning that the both the original old-growth wood windows and their petroleum-based substitutes will wind up choking landfills.

Powell doesn't provide easy answers to the dilemma, but she does raise some tough questions.

Read the article here.

(Illustration by Craig Larotonda/Revelation Studios.)