Joan Rivers brings her stand-up comedy to Napa, SFGate

7x7 Magazine, October 2012, "The Hot 30"

SFMoMA Director, Neal Benezra: At age 10, Neal Benezra saw Clyfford Still’s abstract expressionist works in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was the moment, he says, that first “piqued his interest” in the career that would one day be a “dream come true"...read more.

SFPD SVU Investigator, Andrea Weyl: You’ve heard of dirty jobs. SFPD Officer Andrea Weyl is about to take on the most unpleasant, and one of the most important, jobs of all—taking down child pornographers...read more.

Khan Academy Founder, Salman Khan: What does it take to make Time’s list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World?” Three MIT degrees, a Harvard MBA, a past life as a hedge fund analyst, and a founder’s role in the world’s largest online school...read more.

SF Arts Commissioner, Dorka Keehn: “I want this city to become known for its public art,” says Dorka Keehn. And soon it will be, thanks to her. When the Bay Bridge springs to life in the glow of 25,000 LED lights in 2013, Keehn will be largely to thank...read more.

Rock Health Founder and CEO, Halle Tecco: “Our generation is excited not just about doing well but doing good,” says Halle Tecco, founder and CEO of the country’s first seed accelerator for health-related tech startups. Called Rock Health, Tecco’s firm furnishes fledgling innovators with gamut-running resources, including mentorship, legal guidance, and design advice. The idea: to reduce the startups’ susceptibility to early-stage risks and get their products to market. No wonder Tecco was named one of CNN’s Entrepreneurs Reinventing Healthcare in 2012.
...read more.

Cover Story for Huck Magazine, The Handmade Issue

Thomas Campbell doesn’t like to talk. Which is odd, considering he’s the master of his own language. As a filmmaker, photographer, surfer and artist, his handmade aesthetic defines everything he does. But beyond the sketches, stitches and 16mm stills, what’s T.moeski really trying to say? HUCK heads to Bonny Doon, Northern California, to take a peek around his whimsical world.

When I pull into Thomas Campbell’s secluded driveway in Bonny Doon, a minimally populated area nestled in the mountains above Santa Cruz, his greeting sets the tone for the day. I exit my car and crouch down to pet his Australian Shepard, Muddy, who bypasses all niceties to give my mouth a sloppy lick. “That’s the perfect way to greet her,” says Thomas. “She loves to make out. Want to see the highlight of the property?”

Thomas leads me towards the quaint cabin-style house that he shares with his filmmaker wife, Tiffany, whose influential Dear and Yonder (2009) raised the all-female surf movie to an artful place. A few steps away rises a majestic fairy-ring of redwood trees. In the middle is an artfully-designed wooden platform built by Jay Nelson, the artist behind the whimsical tree houses and colourful window displays of San Francisco’s Mollusk Surf Shop. We walk up the steps into the centre of the ring – or, as Thomas calls it, “the redwood cathedral” – and stare up at a gasp of blue sky framed by a sphere of hundred-foot trees.

It’s an idyllic setting – the one place he “most likes to hang out”. But as we head for the house, a powerful vibration emanates from a cherry blossom tree. “They’re psyched,” says Thomas of the thousands of bees buzzing above our heads, “it’s kind of scary.” He starts to talk me through his plans for a bee box and chicken coop, at which point his friend Roger Mihalko shows up to scan some film negatives. The Northern California skater, known for his barefooted misadventures, is typical of the creative creed of stylists who have gathered around Thomas over the years. “Feel free to check out the place while I get Roger set up,” says Thomas. “Try some well water or there’s juice in the fridge.”

I’m here today to try and make an artist who doesn’t particularly like to talk about his art, talk about his art. “I don’t really think about it” seems to be Thomas Campbell’s motto. “People are always trying to get me to explain everything,” says the forty-two-year-old, “but that kind of ruins it”...read more.

"K. Flay: College Rapper" Feature for Huck Magazine

HUCK catches up with the white, suburban, college-educated rapper who doesn't care about being an underdog in hip hop.

There’s an old joke in which a young man, visiting the Stanford campus, sees a professor and asks: ‘Where are the bathrooms at?’ The professor replies: ‘Here at Stanford, we do not end our sentences with a preposition.’ So the kid rephrases: ‘Fine. Where are the bathrooms at, asshole?’

Kristine Flaherty, aka K. Flay, is neither the academic nor the rule-breaker archetype. She’s a little bit of both. Standard demographic boxes would pigeonhole her as a twenty-six-year-old, white Stanford graduate (with degrees in both psychology and sociology). But she’s also a female rapper/producer from the Bay Area, who’s opened for Snoop Dogg and Ludacris...read more.

"Rolling with the King" Feature for POC Magazine

The Scraper Bike Movement is broadening horizon for Oakland’s disaffected youth, and it’s all thanks to one man’s multicoloured dream.

The fickle bank of fog that engulfs the Bay Area several times each day dissipates when you ride into East Oakland, California. The sun shines brightly above the city that takes the unfortunate bronze for the third highest crime rate in the United States. With fifty-two homicides since January alone, “a group of kids staying out of trouble and enjoying the sun” is a welcome sight to community members.

These are the words of Tyrone Stevenson Jr., aka Baby Champ, founder of Original Scraper Bikes – the project that has fuelled the scraper bike movement. Nicknamed after his late father, a town boxing champion, the twenty-one-year-old is known throughout Oakland as the undisputed Scraper Bike King. Borrowing the name from the local ‘scraper car’ phenomenon, where late model American cars are customised with extra large rims and flashy paint jobs, scraper bike frames are also refitted with oversized wheels. Then the customisation really begins; with the spokes covered in spray-painted foil tape, then decorated with recycled materials like soda cans, cookie boxes, candy wrappers, and chip bags, each scraper bike is truly a work of art. “You can create something out of nothing and reinvent it,” Champ says. “And make it feel good – make you feel good”...read more.