Through May 20

San Francisco International Arts Festival Various venues. (415) 399-9554,www.sfiaf.org. Check website for prices and times. Celebrate the arts, both local and international, at this multimedia extravaganza.

May 19

Asian Heritage Street Celebration Larkin and McAllister, SF. www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. Featuring a Muay Thai kickboxing ring, DJs, and the latest in Asian pop culture, as well as great festival food.Read more »

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MixcoatlRead more »

HERBWISE A few days after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi finally voiced her displeasure that federal agencies were making moves to curtail medical marijuana access, I was touring the hallway outside her offices in Washington DC.

"Access to medicinal marijuana for individuals who are ill or enduring difficult and painful therapies is both a medical and a states' rights issue," said Pelosi in a statement released on May 2.Read more »

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE On the occasion of leaving our gentle green bubble in the Bay, I often find myself in the position of explaining what it is I write about. Sometimes I am satisfied with focusing on my federally legal interests as the Guardian's culture editor. But other times I am compelled to stretch the limits of my extended family's imagination, which usually leads to some pretty interesting conversations.Read more »

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE As excited as I was for our Guardian Stoned Soul Picnic 420 party, not everyone in our office was convinced the afternoon at El Rio on Friday, April 20 would pass without incident.

"I'm a little bit worried about getting raided," said my publisher Bruce Brugmann, towering over my cubicle earlier that day.Read more »

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Last year when event producer Michael Gosney staged the first Deep Green Festival at Craneway Pavilion, he was mostly focused on raising awareness of hemp as an environmental and economic resource. But then the past 365 days happened — and with them, the attendant audits, raids, and federal persecution of marijuana dispensaries.Read more »

What would the ultimate DIY day look like? There's heaps of classes you can take in the Bay Area to make yourself more handy and sustainability-minded. Here's a hypothetical 24 hours using the skills you can cull from those courses — scroll to the end of the article for details on where you can take each class concerned.Read more »

San Francisco isn't an easy place to live for artists and others who choose to fill their souls at the expense of their bank accounts, particularly with the comparatively cheap and sunny East Bay so close. And with more of these creative types being lured eastward, Oakland and its surroundings are getting ever more hip and attractive — just as San Francisco is being gentrified by dot-com workaholics.Read more »

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world." So for the sake of expanded horizons, let's say thank you to professional translators, the diligent souls who dedicate their lives to the subtleties of language. When interpreters dissolve linguistic barriers, we are able to peer into the worlds articulated in literature of distant lands to understand them as our own.Read more »

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Say "cannabis," not "weed." Couch discussion in the language of medicine, not intoxication. There are a lot of rules when it comes to talking about marijuana — and the country's most beloved cannabis publication breaks most of them.Read more »