Saturday, May 19th

Join us for an evening with Ysabeau Wilce, Marie Brennan & Erin Hoffman

Ysabeau Wilce is an award winning American author of young adult fantasy novels. Originally from Northern California, as an adult she has traveled the world, and has a graduate degree in military history and now lives in San Francisco. She maintains an unusual and interesting website that complements her books; delightfully different!

The first book in the series, Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog, received a starred review in Kirkus, was a VOYA Best Book of 2006, and was on the Tiptree Award Honor List for 2006.

Wilce was the winner of the 2008 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy for her second book, Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room). It was also on the James Tiptree, Jr. Award Honor list for 2008. Her third book, Flora’s Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Importance of Packing Light, is just released, having already garnered praise from Kirkus: “Though Califa and environs are every bit as wacky and flavorful as before, Flora herself is no longer so foolish a child. The result is both richer and less funny: Ridiculous mishaps have been replaced with sometimes-heartbreaking moments of personal growth (and an ancestral ghost octopus).”

Her short fiction includes “Metal More Attractive” (2004, F&SF); “The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror” (2004, Asimov’s); “The Lineaments of Gratified Desire” (2006, F&SF, 19th Annual Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror); “Quartermaster Returns” (2007, Eclipse One); and “Hand in Glove” (2011, Steampunk!). More to come, we hope!

Marie Brennan is an American fantasy author, and is the pseudonym of Bryn Neuenschwander. A former academic from Harvard, with a background in archaeology, anthropology, and folklore, which she now puts to rather cockeyed use in writing fantasy, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her website, Swan’s Tower, contains not only the usual information on Brennan, but also various and sundry essays, musings, rants, screeds, and bits of unsolicited advice.

Her works include the forthcoming A Natural History of Dragons (due from Tor, 2013); Doppelganger (2006)(reissued as Warrior, 2008); and Warrior and Witch (2006)(reissued as Witch in 2008). Her Onyx Court series includes the titles Midnight Never Come (2008); In Ashes Lie (2009); A Star Shall Fall (2010); and With Fate Conspire (2011). She has published numerous short fiction pieces in Talebones, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Electric Velocipede, On Spec, and in many other publications. Brennan’s honors include the Grand Prize, Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, 2003, for “Calling into Silence”, and being long-listed for the British Fantasy Award for In Ashes Lie (2010), and for Midnight Never Come (2009).

Erin Hoffman, author and video game designer, resides in Northern California, where she works as a Lead Game Designer at Loot Drop, a social game company founded by game industry super-veterans John Romero, Brenda Brathwaite, and Tom Hall. She is the author of the Chaos Knight series from Pyr books “If you like hard-hitting fantasy adventure with a lot of magic, this is your series.” (Piers Anthony). The first book in the series, Sword of Fire and Sea, is followed by Lance of Earth and Sky (April 2012), and will conclude with Shield of Sea and Space in 2013.

Her video game credits include DragonRealms, Shadowbane: The Lost Kingdom, GoPets: Vacation Island, Kung Fu Panda World, and FrontierVille. She writes for the award-winning online magazine The Escapist, and has seen her fiction and poetry in Asimov’s, Electric Velocipede, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more. In 2004 her blog on game industry working conditions, “EA-The Human Story,” was covered by the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and the LA Times, and is now referenced in numerous game history and corporate history studies. She also appeared in The Best Software Writing I, edited by Joel Spolsky.

Erin’s games have won multiple awards and have been played by millions of kids and adults worldwide. She blogs online at her website, on gaming, writing, and a bunch of other interesting subjects. She is multiethnic, with family names including Lee, Asakawa (yonsei), and Drake in addition to Hoffman.

6:00PM – doors and cash bar open
7:00PM – event starts
$5-$10 donation at the door benefits Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California – to date, we’ve helped raise over $30,000 for the kids in our community! Learn more here!

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor — entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

Don’t Drive — BART/MUNI Montgomery Street station is right at our front door, and parking in San Francisco sucks!!! Street parking ($3.50 per hour) is metered M-Sat., til 6PM; find a parking garage here.

Battle Royale (1990; NR, but not recommended for children under 16; Japanese, with English subtitles, 114mins.) is one of the most challenging and controversial films ever made… and is The Hunger Games, Lost, and Survivor mixed together, ramped up to a fever pitch. An instant classic in Japan upon release in 1990, it’s the story of how, in the future, as a way of keeping their youth in line, the Japanese government yearly captures a random class of ninth-grade students, drops them on an island, and it’s survival of the fittest…helps if you know how to use a cross-bow or semi-automatic rifle. Given three days to off your classmates and survive…how would you do? Battle Royale is based on the shockwave novel by Koushun Takami — we’ll be raffling off a copy at the movie night!

6:00PM – doors and cash bar open
7:00PM – event starts – Raffle for cool schwag, and as always, FREE POPCORN!

$5-$10 donation at the door — AND cash bar and tips — benefits Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California — to date, we’ve helped raise over $30,000 for the kids in our community! Learn more here!

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor — entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

Don’t Drive — BART/MUNI Montgomery Street station is right at our front door, and parking in San Francisco sucks!!! Street parking ($3.50 per hour) is metered M-Sat., til 6PM; find a parking garage here.

Saturday April 21st

Steven Boyett and Bruce McAllister

will be celebrating their work in the new Urban Fantasy Anthology, edited by Peter S. Beagle & Joe R. Lansdale for Tachyon Publications.

Each author will read a selection from their work, followed by a Q & A session with the audience, moderated by author Terry Bisson. Booksigning and schmoozing in the lounge follows. Books will be for sale, courtesy of our friends at Borderlands Books.

Steven Boyett also known as DJ Steve Boyett, is a writer and disc jockey based in Northern California. Boyett sold his first novel, Ariel, at the age of 21, and went on to publish The Architect of Sleep, The Gnole (with illustrator Alan Aldridge), Elegy Beach (sequel to Ariel), as well as numerous short stories and novellas. He has written Ren and Stimpy comics for Marvel and wrote the (uncredited) second draft of Toy Story 2. In the early 1990s his small-press imprint called Sneaker Press published chapbooks by poets Carrie Etter and the late Nancy Lambert.

Boyett had short work in the seminal splatterpunk anthologies Book of the Dead (ed. John Skipp and Craig Spector) and Silver Scream (ed. David J. Schow), and the foundational novella in the influential Borderland shared-world fantasy anthology (ed. Terri Windling). Boyett has taught fiction at UCLA Extension, Santa Monica Community College, and various workshops, including the annual La Jolla Writers Workshop. He posts and lectures frequently about New Media and the changing role of the writer in the digital age. An expanded reprint of Ariel was published by Ace Books in August 2009, followed by a sequel, Elegy Beach, in November 2009. A new novel, Mortality Bridge, was published in July 2011 from Subterranean Press, and won the 2011 Emperor Norton Award for best novel by a San Francisco Bay Area writer. Boyett also has a new novel in the Change series, Avalon Burning, due out in 2012.

Boyett is also an electronic dance music DJ known for his Podrunner podcast of dance music mixed at a constant BPM, intended for use on digital audio players such as the iPod during exercise. Podrunner has been one of the world’s most popular podcasts since its debut in February 2006, and has been an award-winning Top 10 Podcast (first in Music, then in Health & Fitness) on iTunes for seven years in a row. As a DJ Boyett has played clubs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas, as well as for several years at the annual Burning Man festival.

Bruce McAllister is a California-based writer, writing coach, book and screenplay consultant, workshop leader and “agent finder” for both new and established writers of non-fiction, fiction and screenplays.

His literary and genre fiction has appeared in national magazines, literary quarterlies, college textbooks and ‘year’s best’ anthologies. His second novel, Dream Baby, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship winner, was called a “stunning tour de force” by Publishers Weekly. His fiction has been translated widely and received national awards and notable mentions in the New York Times, and other U.S. newspapers, U.S. and foreign magazines and journals, and reference works. His poetry and experimental work has appeared in literary quarterlies and anthologies; he has co-edited magazines and anthologies; and his articles on popular science, writing craft and sports have appeared in publications like Life, International Wildlife, and The Writer.

At the University of Redlands in southern California, where he taught writing for twenty-four years, he helped establish and direct the Creative Writing Program, directed both the Professional Writing track of that program and its Communications Internship program, received various teaching and service awards, and was the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor of Literature and Writing from l990 to l995. The son of a career Navy officer and an anthropologist mother, he grew up in Washington, D.C., Florida, California and Italy; attended middle school and art school in Italy; received degrees in English and writing from Claremont Men’s College and the University of California at Irvine; has three wonderful children (Annie, Ben and Liz); and is married to choreographer Amelie Hunter. He lives in Orange, California.

6:00PM – doors and cash bar open
7:00PM – event starts
$5-$10 donation at the door benefits Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California – to date, we’ve helped raise over $30,000 for the kids in our community! Learn more here!

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor — entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

Don’t Drive — BART/MUNI Montgomery Street station is right at our front door, and parking in San Francisco sucks!!! Street parking ($3.50 per hour) is metered M-Sat., til 6PM; find a parking garage here.

Our April movie night will now be on

Wednesday April 11th

But will still feature:

George Melies – a selection of short films – 30 mins.
Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French illusionist and filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès, a prolific innovator in the use of special effects, accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted colour in his work. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the first “Cinemagician”. Two of his most well-known films are A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). Both stories involve strange, surreal voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy. Méliès was also an early pioneer of horror cinema, which can be traced back to his Le Manoir du diable (1896).

HUGO – PG-13 – 126 mins.
“Hugo is an orphan boy living in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. He learned to fix clocks and other gadgets from his father and uncle which he puts to use keeping the train station clocks running. The only thing that he has left that connects him to his dead father is an automaton that doesn’t work without a special key which Hugo needs to find to unlock the secret he believes it contains. On his adventures, he meets with a shopkeeper, George Melies, who works in the train station and his adventure-seeking goddaughter. Hugo finds that they have a surprising connection to his father and the automaton, and he discovers it unlocks some memories the old man has buried inside regarding his past.” Written by napierslogs/IMDB.com

Refreshments & candy for sale – benefiting Variety! Raffle for prizes!! FREE POPCORN 🙂

6:00PM – doors and cash bar open
7:00PM – event starts
$5-$10 donation at the door benefits Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California – to date, we’ve helped raise over $30,000 for the kids in our community! Learn more here!

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor — entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

Don’t Drive — BART/MUNI Montgomery Street station is right at our front door, and parking in San Francisco sucks!!! Street parking ($3.50 per hour) is metered M-Sat., til 6PM; find a parking garage here.

In conjunction with PM Press we are delighted to announce:

Saturday, March 31st

On The Ground
An Illustrated Anecdotal History of the Sixties Underground Press in the U.S.

With contributors
Trina Robbins
Billy X Jennings
Judy Gumbo Albert
Terry Bisson

In four short years (1965–1969), the underground press grew from five small newspapers in as many cities in the U.S. to over 500 newspapers — with millions of readers — all over the world. Circumventing and subverting the establishment media by utilizing their own news service, and freely sharing content amongst each other, at its height the underground press became the unifying institution for the counterculture of the 1960s.

A generation set out to change the world. The underground press was there documenting, participating in, and providing the resources that would guarantee the growth of this emergent youth culture. Combining bold visuals, innovative layouts, and eschewing any pretense toward objectivity, the newspapers were wildly diverse and wonderfully vibrant. On The Ground focuses on the anecdotal detail that brings the history alive. Composed of stories told by the people involved with the production and distribution of the newspapers — John Sinclair, Art Kunkin, Paul Krassner, Emory Douglas, John Wilcock, Bill Ayers, Spain Rodriguez, Trina Robbins, Al Goldstein, Harvey Wasserman, and more — and featuring over 50 full-color scans taken from a broad range of newspapers — Basta Ya, Berkeley Barb, Chicago Seed, Helix, It Ain’t Me Babe, Los Angeles Free Press, San Francisco Express Times, Screw, The Black Panther, The East Village Other, The Realist, and many more — the book provides a true window into the spirit of the times, giving the reader a feeling for the energy “on the ground.”

Contributors will read, chat, and give us insight into what drove them to be part of the counterculture; followed by Q&A from the audience moderated by author Terry Bisson. Booksigning in the lounge follows, with books for sale courtesy of Borderlands Books.

6:00PM – doors and cash bar open
7:00PM – event starts
$5-$10 donation at the door benefits Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California — to date, we’ve helped raise over $30,000 for the kids!

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor — entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

Don’t Drive — BART/MUNI Montgomery Street station is right at our front door, and parking in San Francisco sucks!!! Street parking ($3.50 per hour) is metered M-Sat., til 6PM; find a parking garage here.

It’s tomorrow! Wednesday, March 14th. Full details here.

And while you are making plans, you might also want to pencil in Thursday, April 12th when we’ll be showing a few George Melies short films and Hugo.

Indeed, ’tis St. Patrick’s Day — come hear two great authors read and converse! We’ll be serving Jameson’s Whiskey at the bar!

Each author will read a selection from their work, followed by Q&A from the audience moderated by author Terry Bisson. Booksigning and schmoozing follows in the lounge, and books will be for sale, courtesy of Borderlands Books.

As a special treat, actors Lori Leigh Gieleghem & Gregory Tiede will be giving a dramatic reading of Mr. Lupoff’s short story, “12:03.”

6:00PM – doors and cash bar open
7:00PM – event starts

Suggested $5-$10 donation at the door benefits Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California. To date, we’ve helped raise over $27,000 for the kids in our community! Learn more here.

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor — entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

Don’t Drive — BART/MUNI Montgomery Street station is right at our front door, and parking in San Francisco sucks!!! Street parking ($3.50 per hour) is metered M-Sat., til 6PM; find a parking garage here.

Wednesday, March 14th

That’s right – we’re back for SF in SF’s 4th Annual Steampunk Film Festival – it’s getting to be a tradition! Come join us for three Steampunk offerings that will be a revelation to you – steeped in Steampunk you may be, but we’ll always show you something new!

Steam Trek – (12 mins.) from the UK, courtesy of Dennis Sisterson and the Ad Hoc Film Society – Steampunk meets Star Trek!

The Special Effects of Karel Zeman – (20 mins.) shows us the absolute wonderfulness of filmmaker Karel Zeman; not only shorts from other works but actual demonstrations of just how he does it. The clips used in The Special Effects of Karel Zeman (1980) are from his films made between 1947 & 1980. The short quarter-hour documentary begins with a very sophisticated piece of science fiction, with gorgeously designed space ships, & a cosmonaut walking on the surface of a blasted planet — toward a wind-up Victrola, a most curious filmic image. It’s the perfect introduction to our main feature:

The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (unrated, 83 mins.) A terrific treat for Steampunk fans — call it “the granddaddy of all Steampunk!!” It’s a rare Czechoslovakian film from 1958, (we’re showing the American release) filmed with both live action and animation, extraordinarily ahead of its time. Its style, dubbed “Mystimation,” faithfully recreates that of the Victorian line engravings (by Édouard Riou, Léon Benett, and others) featured in the original editions of Verne’s novels, composited with various forms of animation by Karel Zeman.

It pulls out all the stops — double exposures, painted animation, cut-out animation, stop-motion animation, puppets, miniatures, models, stylized matte-paintings, and who knows what else – with its live-action footage to create a seamless blend of startling, crisp, black-and-white material. It captures the feel of the earliest photographic equipment and the sense of wonder around the turn of the century. Famous critic Pauline Kael was called the film a “wonderful giddy science fantasy” that “sustains the Victorian tone, with its delight in the magic of science, that makes Verne seem so playfully archaic.” The American version of the film was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1962.

An amazingly fantastic film that we bet you’ve never seen — if you love Steampunk, believe me you won’t want to miss it!

This year, we’re delighted to be holding this Steampunk event as a fundraiser for the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, to benefit their collections budget. Help support Locus make their 40+ years of science fiction letters, photos and ephemera available to the public! Great fun for a great cause!

All bar and raffle proceeds benefit Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California. Steampunk Slings at the bar!

Come in costume!

Steampunk raffle to benefit Variety’s pediatric wheelchair mobility program! Steampunk music from local artist Unwoman.

Doors and cash bar open at 6:00PM
Film begins at 7:00PM

$5-$10 per person suggested donation at the door; no one turned away for lack of funds.

While there is no need to RSVP – seating is limited to 60; first come, first seated. Cash bar will be open for the reception hour before the films.

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor — entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

Don’t Drive — BART/MUNI Montgomery Street station is right at our front door, and parking in San Francisco sucks!!! Street parking ($3.50 per hour) is metered M-Sat., til 6PM; find a parking garage here.

Wednesday, February 15

SF in SF presents

Impossible Dreams
Harlan Elison – Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Impossible Dreams is a short film based on Tim Pratt’s Hugo Award-winning short story, “Impossible Dreams”.

Author appearance! Tim Pratt will be present to introduce the film himself!

Harlan Elison – Dreams With Sharp Teeth — (96mins.) an amazing documentary on speculative fiction writer and essayist Harlan Ellison.

The first film is about 20 mins. long; there will be no intermission between films.

Doors and cash bar open at 6:00PM
Film begins at 7:00PM

Refreshments and candy are sold at the bar — as always FREE POPCORN!!

Suggested $5-$10 donation at the door benefits Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California!

No need to RSVP – seating is limited, and first come, first seated. Cash bar will be open for the reception hour before the films.

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor — entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

Don’t Drive — BART/MUNI Montgomery Street station is right at our front door, and parking in San Francisco sucks!!! Street parking ($3.50 per hour) is metered M-Sat., til 6PM; find a parking garage here.

Our February Reading takes place this coming Saturday (Feb. 11th) and features three much loved West Coast writers: K.W. Jeter, Jay Lake & Rudy Rucker. We are delighted to have them all together. Doors will open at 6:00pm, with the readings starting at 7:00pm. Q&A and signing will follow.

K. W. Jeter is an American science fiction and horror author known for his literary writing style, dark themes, and paranoid, unsympathetic characters. Jeter attended college at CSU Fullerton, where he became friends with James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers, and through them, Philip K. Dick. Jeter was actually the inspiration for the character named Kevin in Dick’s novel, Valis. Many of Jeter’s books focus on the subjective nature of reality in a way that is reminiscent of works by Dick.

Jeter wrote an early cyberpunk novel, Dr. Adder, which was enthusiastically recommended by Philip K. Dick. Jeter was also the first to coin the term “Steampunk,” in a letter to Locus magazine in April 1987, to describe the retro-technology, alternate-history works that he published along with Blaylock and Powers. His steampunk novels were Morlock Night and Infernal Devices. In addition, Jeter has written novels set in the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, and a number of authorized novel sequels to the 1982 film, Blade Runner, which in turn was adapted from Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. He currently lives in San Francisco with his wife, Geri; we are delighted beyond words to welcome him to SF in SF!

Jay Lake: Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is a science fiction and fantasy writer, born in Taiwan, and grew up there and in Nigeria. In 2003 he was a quarterly first place winner in the Writers of the Future contest. In 2004 he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction. He lives in Portland, Oregon and currently works as a product manager for a voice services company. Jay has appeared in numerous publications, including Postscripts, Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Strange Horizons, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Nemonymous, and the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. He is an editor for the Polyphony anthology series from Wheatland Press, and was also a contributor for the Internet Review of Science Fiction.

His created universes have garnered him a strong following, both as readers, and as followers of his blog, Jay Lake-Writer. His novels include the City Imperishable books, the Mainspring trilogy, Green, and Endurance. These and his singular short story collections, such as Greetings from Lake Wu and The River Knows Its Own, all mean that many people follow him around at conventions wearing Hawaiian shirts. Jay has also become an icon in another way by publishing his uncompromisingly honest experiences of living with, and surviving, cancer. A complete list of over 700 posts is available online here. We are delighted to welcome Jay back to SF in SF.

Rudy Rucker is a writer and a mathematician who worked for twenty years as a Silicon Valley computer science professor, and published a number of software packages. He is regarded as contemporary master of science fiction, twice receiving the Philip K. Dick Award. His thirty published books include both novels and nonfiction books on the fourth dimension, infinity, and the meaning of computation. A founder of the cyberpunk school of science-fiction, Rucker also writes SF in a realistic style known as “transrealism.” His 2006 Mathematicians in Love is an example of a transreal novel. His early cyberpunk 4-book series was republished in 2010 as The Ware Tetralogy. Rucker’s 2007 novel, Postsingular, and its sequel, Hylozoic, were both a return to the cyberpunk style.

Rucker’s autobiography, Nested Scrolls, was published in 2011, as was his novel of the afterlife, Jim and the Flims. In his spare time, he is also a talented artist, with several exhibitions to his credit, and also is the editor for the science fiction webzine Flurb. It comes as no surprise to learn he is the great-great-great-grandson of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel.

There is also a local flavor to our February movies. On Wednesday Feb. 15th we will be showing Impossible Dreams, based on the Hugo Award winning story by Tim Pratt. Tim will be present to introduce the film. The backup feature is Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth, a biographical documentary staring Harlan Ellison as himself. The supporting cast includes Robin Williams and Neil Gaiman. Doors will open at 6:00pm, with the films starting at 7:00pm.

Both events take place at The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor — entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street @ 2nd and Montgomery
San Francisco, CA 94104

Don’t Drive — BART/MUNI Montgomery Street station is right at our front door, and parking in San Francisco sucks!!! Street parking ($3.50 per hour) is metered M-Sat., til 6PM; find a parking garage here.