Among the honorees at San Francisco Suicide Prevention’s Heroes of Nonprofit Luncheon on Feb. 9, was Eve Meyer, who is retiring after 30 years as executive director of the group. Meyer’s family story has to have had an impact on her professional story.Meyer’s father was a pediatrician, head of the public health department in Berlin. Meyer hadn’t been born when, persecuted as Jews in Germany, her grandmother, father, mother, sister and brother fled to Belgium.

Free speech comes with a price, even in the Bay Area Francisco Cantú, Monday, Feb. 19, 2018, in San Francisco, Calif. Cantú was a U.S. Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012. He's the author of "The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border." Francisco Cantú, Monday, Feb. 19, 2018, in San Francisco, Calif. Cantú was a U.S. Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012. He's the author of "The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border.

Like “Angels in America” itself, this oral history of Tony Kushner’s two-part, seven-hour theatrical masterwork contains multitudes. Isaac Butler and Dan Kois use interviews with close to 250 people, conducted in 2016-17, to assemble “The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America.” In addition to the playwright, actors, directors, designers, producers, scholars and Barney Frank weigh in.

No one can accuse Stacey Kent of jumping on the Nobel bandwagon.Long before British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, they’d forged a creatively charged collaboration resulting in some of her most ravishing material. Returning to the Fairmont Hotel’s Venetian Room for two shows on Saturday, Feb.

Patrons file out of the theatre after watching the premiere of Black Panther at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, Calif. Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018. Patrons file out of the theatre after watching the premiere of Black Panther at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, Calif. Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018. Bivett Brackett poses for a portrait during the premiere of Black Panther at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, Calif. Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018.

The Word for Word cast in “Lucia Berlin: Stories,” which may or may not adapt well to theater. The Word for Word cast in “Lucia Berlin: Stories,” which may or may not adapt well to theater. The trouble with a bungled line isn’t just the one ruined moment. It’s a breach of contract between artist and audience.

Two of my kids were over for dinner the other night and after their free meal was consumed we turned on the Winter Olympics. It seemed a good time to let them know I was very disappointed in how their lives turned out.“What did we do now?” asked my 27-year-old son as he watched a snowboarder do a ridiculous quadruple somersault while hurtling 50 feet above certain death.“It’s not what you did,” I replied. “It’s what you didn’t do.

Crista Luedtke opened El Barrio, a cocktail bar in Guerneville, in 2014 because she needed overflow space. Her nearby restaurant, the farm-to-table Boon Eat + Drink, was regularly generating an hour-long wait list, and customers had few options for biding their time.The bars on Guerneville’s Main Street, like McT’s Bullpen and the Rainbow Cattle Co. (check it out at www.queersteer.com), leaned heavily divey.

Steven Pinker’s new book is a meticulous defense of science and objective analysis, a rebuttal to the tribalism, knee-jerk partisanship and disinformation that taints our politics. “Enlightenment Now” not only tackles widely held misconceptions about major issues, but also quantifies the many ways in which cool-headed inquiry has improved the lives of billions.

Move over, mimosas. This week we’ll be washing down our eggs Benedict with a brewski. San Francisco Beer Week , which runs Friday, Feb. 9, through Feb. 18, is back, and with hundreds of events on tap there’s no end to the suds-fueled festivities. If there’s anything we love more than beer here in the Bay Area, it’s brunch, so naturally, Beer Week has got our day-drinking needs covered.