This will just be a brief update (yes, not even key art), because this weekend has been incredibly busy. Why? Well, among other things...

We hosted our second annual literary white elephant. If you’re looking for a festive event to hold, I can highly recommend a book exchange — the constraint of picking a book helps people choose a gift, and you learn a lot about people from their choices. We asked everyone to bring a wrapped book (preferably fiction), with a brief description on the tag. Then, each person could either unwrap a new book or steal an existing book (though each book could only be stolen twice). There’s still some rough edges — as with any white elephant, somebody that unwrapped an undesirable gift is just stuck watching — but I like to think people had fun.

Then, I spent most of today wandering around Mission Creek. Local favorites Heath Ceramics and Dandelion Chocolate were both hosting craft fairs, not to mention the Fellow warehouse sale. I ended up picking up some mandarin-orange olive oil from Like Family and did a tasting of Heidrun Meadery’s champagne-style mead.

I’m sure every major metropolitan area has craft fairs, too, but somehow these craft fairs — and the fact that all of these companies are local — just feel so Bay Area — one of those difficult-to-describe reasons why those who love the Bay do.

Flow State continues to be one of the highest value-per-open newsletters out there, at least if you like ambient or ambient-adjacent electronic music. This week I’ve been bopping out to electro-jazz quintet SML, whose tracks are interesting enough to listen to on their own but also not obtrusive while working — the perfect definition of ambient, I’d say.