Upcoming Events

Upcoming Events

Join a supportive and reflective parenting community book group facilitated by Aaron Neimark, MA, parent and Early Childhood Educator in San Francisco. This month, we will be reading Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy.

Order your copy HERE. Email Neimarka@sfusd.edu to sign up or for more information.

Aaron Neimark has been teaching young children for more than 20 years. He currently teaches Transitional Kindergarten at a public school in San Francisco and lives in the Outer Sunset with his wife and two children (7 and 1). He is interested in reflective teaching and parenting and appreciates the chance to build community with others, while working together to achieve a common goal.

About Good Inside: Parents have long been sold a model of childrearing that simply doesn’t work. From reward charts to time outs, many popular parenting approaches are based on shaping behavior, not raising humans. These techniques don’t build the skills kids need for life, or account for their complex emotional needs. Add to that parents’ complicated relationships with their own upbringings, and it’s easy to see why so many caretakers feel lost, burned out, and worried they’re failing their kids. In Good Inside, Dr. Becky shares her parenting philosophy, complete with actionable strategies, that will help parents move from uncertainty and self-blame to confidence and sturdy leadership.

Offering perspective-shifting parenting principles and troubleshooting for specific scenarios—including sibling rivalry, separation anxiety, tantrums, and more—Good Inside is a comprehensive resource for a generation of parents looking for a new way to raise their kids while still setting them up for a lifetime of self-regulation, confidence, and resilience.

Join author Nicole Haroutunian for a reading of her latest book Choose This Now, a novel-in-stories that takes on art, labor, romantic love, pregnancy, and parenthood—and the role of friendship in forging a life. Co-hosted by Recess Collective.

About Choose This Now: Inseparable friends Val-and-Tal are used to making their decisions together. But what happens when their choices become their own? Choose This Now, a novel-in-stories, illuminates the small moments that shape their lives across nearly twenty years. On Val’s 21st birthday—which falls on Halloween—a sudden act of violence interrupts a longed-for kiss. This unfinished moment haunts Val year after year until she materializes in a new town to confront her past. Tal, an aspiring painter, vacillates between dedicating herself to art and literally burning it all down. As they fall in and out of love, start and restart careers, and become mothers, Valerie and Taline struggle to define themselves, with and without each other. Choose This Now takes on art, labor, romantic love, pregnancy, and parenthood—and the role of friendship in forging a life.

Nicole Haroutunian is the author of Choose This Now (Noemi Press, forthcoming March 2024) and the short story collection, Speed Dreaming (Little a, 2015). Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Story, Tupelo Quarterly, the Bennington Review, Joyland, Post Road, Pigeon Pages, Tin House’s Open Bar, and elsewhere. As an editor of Underwater New York, she co-curated the literary work for a book by Elizabeth Albert entitled Silent Beaches, Untold Stories: New York City's Forgotten Waterfront (Damiani Editore 2016). With Apryl Lee, Nicole co-founded Halfway There, a reading series in Montclair, NJ. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.

Recess Collective builds inclusive community-centered spaces committed to supporting families from the time of pregnancy through the first four years by providing opportunities for perinatal education, play, creativity, support & connection.

Enjoy The Laundromat SF toasted bagels with schmear at this once-monthly pop-up. 

Poppy seed, sesame, everything and plain bagels are available toasted, with plain or scallion schmear.

9am until sold out.

About Palo Alto (order here): Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually and materially ambitious and demonstrably world-changing. Palo Alto is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system.

In PALO ALTO, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the "tragedy of the commons," racial genetics, and "broken windows" theory. The Internet and computers, too. It's a story about how a small American suburb became a powerful engine for economic growth and war, and how it came to lead the world into a surprisingly disastrous 21st century. PALO ALTO is an urgent and visionary history of the way we live now, one that ends with a clear-eyed, radical proposition for how we might begin to change course.

Malcolm Harris is a freelance writer and the author of Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials and Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of History. He was born in Santa Cruz, CA and graduated from the University of Maryland.

 Author Amy Novesky reads from her storybook If You Want to Ride a Horse, introducing young readers to the joys of owning, riding, and caring for horses.

About If You Want to Ride a Horse (order here): In lovely, lyrical fashion, If You Want to Ride a Horse introduces young readers to the joys of owning, riding, and caring for horses. It only starts with imagination—from there, the possibilities are endless.

Beginning with a daydream, our young rider goes from dreaming about a horse, choosing the ideal kind of horse, meeting the horse, cleaning the horse, tacking up in preparation to ride, soothing their horse through a hard moment, triumphantly getting on, and finally riding gloriously off down the beach.

Is it the best dream ever or a dream come true? It hardly matters: Gael Abary’s art makes even the most incredible fantasy feel possible, and award-winning author’s Amy Novesky’s unforgettable language is an ode to the power of dreams and self-belief to change any young child’s life. 

Amy Novesky is an author and book editor. Her award-winning picture books include IF YOU WANT TO RIDE A HORSE; GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE; CLOTH LULLABY, THE WOVEN LIFE OF LOUISE BOURGEOIS; ME, FRIDA; GEORGIA IN HAWAII; IMOGEN, THE MOTHER OF MODERNISM AND THREE BOYS; and MISTER AND LADY DAY. THE POET AND THE BEES, illustrated by Jessica Love, will follow in 2025 from Viking, and TO WANDER, thereafter. Amy is represented by Caryn Wiseman, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

Amy began making books at Chronicle Books in San Francisco. Thirty years and hundreds of books later, she has worked with authors, artists, agents, bookstores, toy companies, film studios, packagers and publishers, including ABRAMS; Cameron Kids/ Cameron + Company (LOVE IS books); Creative Editions (EGG; SEASHELL; CORAL); Disney Press; Ever After Studio; Harcourt; MoMa (ROOTS AND WINGS, co-written with artist Shahzia Sikander); National Geographic Kids; Paper Hat Press; Pink Moon Studio; Pixar; and Princeton Architectural Press. In 2016, Amy co-founded the Cameron Kids imprint for Cameron + Company with publisher Nina Gruener. Acquired by ABRAMS, New York, in 2020, Amy became Editorial Director of the award-winning imprint, and, later, Editor-at-Large. Currently, Amy is at-large.

Free

****PUBLICATION DAY IS JUNE 18TH, 2024. PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY HERE.

Bo Lu moved from bustling Taipei to suburban Kansas as a little girl. Before English words made sense, the world of picture books welcomed her in. It was in those pictures that she found comfort in her new beginning. As an author and illustrator, she hopes to create a safe space to explore big feelings through images and stories. Bo also finds comfort in slurping noodle soups, exploring the Bay Area Redwoods, and dancing with her girls around their dad at the dinner table. Bao’s Doll is her debut picture book.

Free

Batik And Baker is a pastry pop-up serving sweets and snacks inspired by Malaysian and Asian flavors. Batik & Baker was born from owner Audrey Tang’s craving for familiar flavors of her childhood in Penang, her love for California’s seasonal produce and fascination with new foods. Comfort and curiosity is what feeds Batik & Baker; it is a celebration of classic treats and an invitation to try something new and unexpected. All bakes are small-batch and scratchmade.

The menu will feature Seri Muka, a Malaysian dessert of sticky rice with butterfly pea flower, fresh pandan coconut custard (gluten-free, dairy-free), alongside other treats.

Audrey is a professionally-trained pastry person practicing a craft and a graduate of San Francisco Cooking School. She's had the good fortune to work with and learn from the amazing chefs & craftspeople at Craftsman And Wolves, Mister Jiu’s, Cotogna and Quince.

Batik And Baker was a craving for the familiar flavors that Audrey grew up with in Penang, Malaysia, and of weekends baking with her mom from photocopies of cake and tart recipes from British cookbooks.

Pronounced as bah-teak, batik is patterned cloth made using a wax-resist dyeing technique that originated from the island of Java, Indonesia. Audrey's maternal grandma — Poh Poh — was a Nyonya, of Peranakan descent, and always wore an ankle-length wraparound batik sarong. She is who Audrey takes inspiration from, for this space, for nourishment and for quiet strength. 

About The Chinese Groove (order here): Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province, dreams of bigger things. Eager to escape the shadow of his widowed father’s grief and buoyed by an exuberant heart and his cousin Deng’s tall tales about the United States, Shelley heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny. He’s confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome by the awesome powers of the “Chinese groove,” a belief in the unspoken bonds between countrymen that transcend time and borders.

Upon arrival, Shelley is dismayed to find that his “rich uncle” is in fact his unemployed second cousin once removed and that the grand guest room he’d envisioned is but a scratchy sofa. The indefinite stay he’d planned for? That has a firm two-week expiration date. Even worse, the loving family he hoped would embrace him is in shambles, shattered by a senseless tragedy that has cleaved the family in two. They want nothing to do with this youthful bounder who’s barged into their lives. Ever the optimist, Shelley concocts a plan to resuscitate his American dream by insinuating himself into the family. And, who knows, maybe he’ll even manage to bring them back together in the process.

Kathryn Ma is the author of the widely praised novel The Year She Left Us, which was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an NPR “Great Read” of the year. Her short story collection, All That Work and Still No Boys, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was named a San Francisco Chronicle “Notable Book” and a Los Angeles Times “Discoveries Book.” She is a recipient of the David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction and has twice been named a San Francisco Public Library Laureate. Her latest novel, The Chinese Groove, is a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an Amazon Editors’ Pick, a People magazine Best Book, a Washington Post Best Audiobook, and an Indie Next Pick. The Chinese Groove is the 2024 selection for One City One Book by the San Francisco Public Library and is longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize.

Karen Ver Trinidad of Bright Moments returns to Black Bird for a flower pop-up for Mother's Day, featuring both fresh and dried floral bouquets.

With the values of sustainability, creativity, and community, the Sunset District's very own Bright Moments delivers hand-tied bouquets throughout the Bay Area. Their work is always made with local-grown flowers. 

A filmmaker by trade, Karen Ver Trinidad has always had an affinity for ephemeral beauty. When she had downtime from her nine-to-five, she created bouquets from grocery store flowers as a way to slow down and stay present. Eventually, she started gifting bouquets to friends and family, and experiencing their reactions to her bouquets transformed her. She realized that her happiest memories occurred in the short span of a moment and always included another person. Since then, she has left the film/tv industry and made it her mission to discover, create, and share bright moments with others.

Join authors Lauren Markham and John Washington in conversation around Lauren's book A Map of Future Ruins, a blend of memoir, history, reporting, and essay that helps us see that the stories we tell about migration don’t just explain what happened. They are Oracles: they predict the future.

About A Map of Future Ruins (order here): When and how did migration become a crime? Why does ancient Greece remain so important to the West’s idea of itself? How does nostalgia fuel the exclusion and demonization of migrants today?

In 2021, Lauren Markham went to Greece, in search of her own Greek heritage and to cover the aftermath of a fire that burned down the largest refugee camp in Europe. Almost no one had wanted the camp—not activists, not the country’s growing neo-fascist movement, not even the government. But almost immediately, on scant evidence, six young Afghan refugees were arrested for the crime.
Markham soon saw that she was tracing a broader narrative, rooted not only in centuries of global history but also in myth. A mesmerizing, trailblazing synthesis of reporting, history, memoir, and essay, A Map of Future Ruins helps us see that the stories we tell about migration don’t just explain what happened. They are oracles: they predict the future.

Lauren Markham is the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life. A US American of Greek heritage, she has been working with migrants for two decades, and writing about migration and other social issues in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. She lives in Berkeley, CA.

About The Case for Open Borders (order here): Because of restrictive borders, human beings suffer and die. Closed borders force migrants seeking safety and dignity to journey across seas, trudge through deserts, and clamber over barbed wire. In the last five years alone, at least 60,000 people have died or gone missing while attempting to cross a border. As we deny, cast out, and crack down, we have stripped borders of their creative potential — as lines of contact, catalyst, and blend — turning our thresholds into barricades.

Brilliant and provocative, The Case for Open Borders deflates the mythology of national security through border lockdowns by revisiting their historical origins; it counters the conspiracies of immigration’s economic consequences; it urgently considers the challenges of climate change beyond the boundaries of narrow national identities. 

This book grounds its argument in the experiences and thinking of those on the frontlines of the crisis, spanning the world to do so. In each chapter, through detailed reporting, journalist and translator John Washington profiles a character impacted by borders. He adds to those portraits provocative analyses of the economics and ethics of bordering, concluding that if we are to seek justice or sustainability we must fight for open borders.

John Washington is a staff writer at Arizona Luminaria, a community-focused media outlet where he writes about the border, climate change, democracy, and more. He has written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Intercept, and other outlets. His first book, The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexico Border and Beyond, was published in 2020 by Verso Books. Washington is also a translator of books by Anabel Hernandez, Sandra Rodriquez Nieto, and others. His most recent translations include The Hollywood Kid by Óscar Martínez and Juan Martínez, and Blood Barrios by Alberto Arce, which won a PEN Translates Award. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Doors at 6:30pm | Free

Sesame Tiny Bakery returns to Black Bird for another cake pop-up in the garden.

Sesame Tiny Bakery is a pocket sized bakery at 2533 Seventh Street in Berkeley offering a rotating selection of unique treats and cakes showcasing delicious seasonal fruit and using all organic ingredients.

The Outer Sunset’s beloved storyteller will be sharing tales from around the world.

Olive Hackett-Shaughnessy is a storyteller, writer, workshop leader and curriculum consultant in San Francisco, where she has been an artist-in-residence in public and private schools since 1986. She has brought the joy and magic of storytelling to countless children and grown-ups over the past three decades, preserving and transmitting this ancient yet relevant art form through transformative and engaging live performances and high-quality recordings.

Free

Yuliya Patsay is a Soviet-born, SF-raised, teller of stories- most of which are at least half true. She lives in the Richmond’s 'Little Russia' with enough mishpuha close by to keep her wildly entertained! This is her first book, though hopefully not her last.

About Until the Last Pickle: A Memoir in 18 Recipes: Born to a Jewish mother and Ukrainian father during the final years of the Soviet Union, Yuliya Patsay grew up believing bread lines were a fun way to spend an afternoon, drafts caused pneumonia, and that Lenin was everyone's benevolent grandpa.

After trading pickled herring and Soviet winters for San Francisco fog and year-round produce (the real American dream!) she found herself occupying two parallel universes: the first grounded in her Soviet roots and the second in her burgeoning 'Amerikanskiye' beliefs.

Irreverent, nostalgic and vulnerable, Until the Last Pickle, is a memoir replete with remembrances, anecdotes, and exactly 18 recipes. It's an exploration of identity and belonging - at once, deeply personal and broadly relatable - told through the lens of one family's "totally average" immigration journey.

Yuliya Patsay is a storyteller, voice actor, author and professional speaker for events, webinars, and workshops specializing in topics of creativity, entrepreneurship, and the art of storytelling.

Free

Puppets, songs and stories for children.

Free

An evening of knitting and community, sharing tips and tricks.

No formal instruction will be offered. Bring your own supplies.

Free

***PUBLICATION DAY IS MARCH 26, 2024. PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY HERE.

Reading and signing for A Great Country, Gowda’s new novel exploring themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream.

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple.

For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member’s perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?

For readers of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, A Great Country explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream.

Shilpi Somaya Gowda was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Her forthcoming novel A Great Country explores the ties and fractures of a close-knit Indian-American family in the aftermath of a violent encounter with the police. Her previous novels, Secret Daughter, The Golden Son, and The Shape of Family,  became international bestsellers, selling over two million copies worldwide, in over 30 languages. She holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain scholar. She lives in California with her husband and children.

Doors at 6:30pm | Free