Every spring, myself and a handful of other professionals with careers across art and multi-media volunteer our time to mentor students at Washington High School’s Multimedia Art Academy in Fremont. As part of this program, mentor’s introduce themselves and talk about what they are working on with a group of

My name is Alex Mak, I’m the managing editor and co-owner of BrokeAssStuart.com. You may recognize my byline as I’ve personally written over 1,000 articles for BAS, and I’ve edited and published 3 times that many by independent writers from our community. What many of you already know about independent media,

San Francisco Beer Week is a magical time of year when the finest brewers in the West descend on the Bay Area with everything from casks of kolsch to ponies of pale ale, bottles of barley wine, drams of dunkels, pints of porter, handles of hazies, growlers of gose, and

The world would be a much more empathetic planet if people were able to put themselves into the shoes of others. More specifically, if people put themselves into the ugly, non-slip shoes of their server, maybe customers would be a bit more understanding when their well-done strip steak takes a

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Oakland-based writer Jenny Odell had taunted me from bookstore shelves for years.  I was drawn to the title because I was drawn to the premise: To do nothing.  It was attractive, but almost cruel in its simplicity.  Nothing? How could I

If you’re hankering for a cookie fix, look no further than Troop 6000’s Girl Scout cookies.  Troop 6000 is a Girl Scout program designed to serve houseless girls in the New York City Shelter System. The troop meets weekly in shelters across the city, led by community volunteers and women

I’ve written a lot of articles about San Francisco, but I’ve never written anything with the knowledge that I was going to be a resident of the City. It always felt too ambitious, too unrealistic and most of all… too expensive. But things changed, and I’ve signed a lease for an

I know for a lot of Bay Area natives, even the mere mention of Bitcoin, Etherium or Blockchains makes you want to roll your eyes. I understand. Tech bros in the Bay Area are insufferable. I am now working in tech, specifically in digital assets, so allow me to be