In this week’s Fogcutter column, SFGATE reporters visit the opera, head to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and see a legendary DJ.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
Another San Francisco summer is over. The stormclouds have yet to roll in, but the omens are everywhere. China Beach, arguably the city’s most picturesque, is temporarily closed during the government shutdown. Meteorologists say La Niña is on its way. And Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the year’s last hacky sack-friendly gathering, has concluded.
Although the phrase “seasonal affective disorder” is about to return to San Franciscans’ vocabularies, the city is still lively as ever. To prove as much, we started Fogcutter, SFGATE’s weekly event column. Every Sunday, we report on San Francisco’s nightclubs, film screenings and food festivals. Our hope is to bottle up the city’s magic, one dispatch at a time.
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In this edition, we make a case for going to the opera, catch a Bay Area singer at Hardly Strictly and listen to the best DJ alive. Read on for more highlights.
The best DJ alive comes to San Francisco
Superlatives are a slippery slope, especially when it comes to highly subjective artforms like DJing. But then Theo Parrish comes along and puts every DJ you’ve ever seen to shame.
The 53-year-old Detroiter performed an open-to-close set in San Francisco at the Foundry, helming the decks solo for nearly 6 hours. The last time I saw him, at a shady Williamsburg warehouse circa 2014, he played from midnight to 8 a.m. These marathon sets aren’t unusual for him — he’s a singular musical powerhouse, containing dance music multitudes underneath a signature bucket hat.
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Parrish’s power lies in his ability to bend genres to his will, making rapid shifts between techno disco edits in ways you’d never expect would work. Part of the magic comes from his treatment of the DJ mixer as an actual instrument, wielding the EQs with such personality and verve that it’s as if Theo himself becomes a part of the music. The style is even more cohesive given that he’s playing so many of his own remixes, including a hypnotic 10-minute version of Made in U.S.A.’s “Never Gonna Let You Go”. Rumor has it he’ll be returning in the spring; don’t miss this master if you get the chance. — SFGATE senior culture editor Dan Gentile
A millennial’s praise for SF Opera
As a millennial, I’ve never considered going to the opera. Yet last week, I found myself smushed into the historical seats of the War Memorial Opera House, sipping a cocktail and watching the final performance of SF Opera’s “Rigoletto.”
Written in 1851, “Rigoletto” includes an ultimate operatic earworm, but also kidnapping, mistaken identities, magical curses, illicit love affairs and murder plots — all before intermission.
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Act II scene from Verdi’s “Rigoletto.”
Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
By its nature, opera is unashamedly analog — SF Opera uses no amplification, either for its performers or the more than 50 musicians in its orchestra. The stars of “Rigoletto” fill the opera house’s gilded space using only the power of the human voice.
Despite the ubiquity of digital tech, millennials and Gen Z have a thing for analog. We brought back the vinyl record and the film camera. Last week, I bought a cassette tape. Why shouldn’t we embrace analog performances, too?
I wondered why more young people don’t go to the opera, so I asked Reddit. Over 70 people responded. The most common reason was a belief that the opera must be wildly expensive. It’s not. SF Opera sells many seats for $29, and Bay Area residents can purchase one ticket per season for just $10. That’s less than a matcha latte in parts of SF.
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“Rigoletto” is done, but “Parsifal” and “The Monkey King” are coming up. Fellow young people: If you haven’t considered the opera before, perhaps now’s the time. — SFGATE freelance contributor Thomas Smith
The hometown headliner at Hardly Strictly
Every year, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass brings acts from near and far to Golden Gate Park. For Catskills-based musician Hannah Cohen, who grew up in the Bay Area before her modeling career took off, Friday night was more like a homecoming.
Hannah Cohen performs on the Arrow Stage at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on Oct. 3, 2025.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
Cohen concluded over two months of touring Friday (at least for now — she’s back on the road in November), and closed out Night 1 of Hardly Strictly at the festival’s Arrow Stage. Her 2019 album was a cult favorite among those in the know, and her March 2025 release featuring Clairo and Sufjan Stevens brought her a taste of mainstream success.
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“This is so cool,” Cohen said between songs. “Being a Bay Area girl, this is like a dream come true.”
Cohen was joined onstage by a five-piece backing band, including her partner Sam Evian (“my love, my boo, my producer,” she called him). Those of us in the audience swayed, danced and sang along to Cohen’s dream-pop stylings, which blend her ethereal vocals with ever-funky basslines and swinging drums.
Among those in the audience was Cohen’s father, San Francisco jazz drummer Myron Cohen. “I just want to give my papa a shout-out. He’s still giggin’ at 81 years old in November,” she said with a laugh and an apology for revealing his age. Cohen closed with her song “Draggin’,” which she said was “inspired by the great Bay Area legend Sly.”
Overall, she delivered a commanding performance, but there were moments of slight technical difficulty. As she battled through feedback in the monitors, I thought about lines from her song “Dog Years”: “When was the last time you really let yourself go? When it’s too good, feels like a simulation, you know? The rug could get pulled out, the heartbreak could get loud, better to measure it in dog years.” — SFGATE freelance contributor Nicholas David
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“Tron: Ares” is the third film in the “Tron” trilogy.
©Disney
Unfortunately, ‘Tron: Ares’ sucks
I regret to report that despite the year’s most banging soundtrack and flashiest special effects, “Tron: Ares” is not a good movie.
The third film in the “Tron” trilogy plays off of two well-worn 2025 tropes: a maniacal CEO and sentient AI. Like the previous films, the plot revolves around “the grid,” with software programs Ares and Athena represented by human forms (Jared Leto and Jodie Turner-Smith). They do the bidding of tech executive Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), who aims to score a big military contract for 3D printed tanks and soldiers (embodied by off-grid versions of Ares and Athena). The catch is that after 29 minutes, the creations crumble to dust, at least until Dillinger can crack the “permanence code.” Meanwhile, video game company CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) is searching for the code herself. When she finds it, Dillinger sends Ares and Athena on their light cycles to use a big laser to send Eve to the grid where they can pull the code out of her brain.
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If that’s all a little confusing, well, it is — “Tron: Ares” director Joachim Ronning (“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”) would rather you not worry about things like plot and character development, and just enjoy the light cycle chases and Nine Inch Nails score. If you do see it, watch it on the biggest and best sounding screen you can find (which is to say, at Metreon). But if you’re looking to turn off your brain for two hours, you’d be better off streaming “The Naked Gun.” — SFGATE senior culture editor Dan Gentile
Meeting the pumpkin hordes at a historic mansion
Since its construction in 1917, Filoli estate in Woodside has dipped into the spotlight here and there with starring roles on TV shows (“Dynasty,” “Antiques Roadshow”) and a smaller part in the Biden presidency, when it hosted a historic 2023 meeting between him and Xi Jinping of China. This fall, it’s playing host again, but this time to hordes of pumpkins, accompanied by colored lights and spooky music.
Scenes from Filoli Nightfall.
Kendra Smith/SFGATE
I went to check out the house and its neighboring field and redwood forest, where the Halloween haunt is taking place. The vibe is trippily sweet, with small children in costume tumbling everywhere and lit up arches bulging with (foam) pumpkins. We especially enjoyed the pumpkin-headed zombies posed in the high grass, dressed out in thrift store finery — T-shirts with silly slogans and distressed flannels.
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There’s a whole display of neon, black-lit mushrooms that spin. Most of all, we loved the yards of lit jack-o’-lanterns (again, made of foam). There are bars at both ends of the haunted trail, where you can get a signature spiced sangria or spiked cider to sip on, and the kids can enjoy Guittard hot chocolate.
The house was last, and the spookiest best — next time I would hit it up first. The designers swapped out the mansion’s usual accessories for small details that made me shiver: ghoulish statues, a jar of glass eyeballs, a giant ouija board (to cover the man cave’s usual pool table). Don’t miss the creepy doll room. — Kendra Smith, SFGATE deputy managing editor
Filoli Nightfall runs through Nov. 10.
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On our radar:
Lorde is playing at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley next Sunday.
There will be a free night market at Fort Mason on Friday.
Jenny Odell, author of “How to Do Nothing,” and Cory Doctorow, who coined the term “ens—ttification,” will host a talk at Public Works next Monday, Oct. 20.
The Balboa Theatre is screening John Carpenter’s Bay Area-filmed cult classic “Village of the Damned” on Friday, hosted by SFGATE’s assistant local editor Amanda Bartlett.