Cashing in on the nearly $5 billion dance-music industry, Southern California-based EmazingLights is expanding with a new Milpitas store catering to the EDM fans who fill some of the Bay Area's largest venues. Simulating an EDM event, the store (which celebrated its grand opening last Friday) features blacked-out windows, a DJ station and a 2,000-square-foot hardwood dance floor. Its walls are decked with fur boots, brightly covered tutus, gloves and original T-shirts reading "Legalize Gloving." » Read More

A whimsical chalkboard sign outside the studio-gallery reads, "Voted number one place to hang out by the cemetery." Located across the street from the historic Santa Clara Mission Cemetery, Studio-Bongiorno is a new space to enjoy art in the South Bay. Owner Phil Bongiorno revels in his unusual site; he thinks the proximity of the graveyard provides a peaceful atmosphere. It's also a neat tie-in to his art, which is often inspired by tombstones and stone angels. » Read More

Years before Eric Victorino started the Limousines, he and friend Chad Hall talked about writing a poetry book together. This project never materialized, though Victorino would eventually release two books of poetry, Coma Therapy and Trading Sunshine for Shadows, through his and wife Sarah Collins' imprint, Orchard City Books and Noise. » Read More

Finding information online about composer/pianist Bruno Ruviaro isn't easy. That's because the only biographical information he likes to give to the media is a chronological list of the names of all the streets on which he has lived. The list includes 22 locations now, starting with streets in his native Sao Paulo, Brazil, and ending with his current home in San Francisco. » Read More

By sheer Coincidence, this week we received a press release announcing that downtown San Jose had been designated "one of America's top ArtPlaces for 2013." Even with the corporate carapace (ArtPlaces is "an initiative of national and regional foundations and major banks to accelerate creative place making across the United States"), the point is well taken. » Read More

Stanford's Cantor Arts Center may be best known for its extensive Rodin collection and, consequently, Romantic humanism, but its Modernist holdings are also considerable, and—with the acquisition of Dotty Attie's cross-disciplinary cultural commentary Sometimes a Traveler/There Lived in Egypt (1995)—Postmodernism has now invaded the Greco-Roman sanctum. » Read More

Upon entering and facing the first room of Rising Dragon: Contemporary Chinese Photography at the San Jose Museum of Art, a pleasantly puzzling combination of opposites confronts the viewer. Tradition hangs on the left wall, with modernity on the right. At the rear wall, Wang Jin's 9-foot-high To Marry a Mule features the artist holding a bouquet of flowers next to a mule decked out in lavish wedding attire. In real life, Wang's wife moved from Beijing to the United States. » Read More

A different kind of art crowd descended on San Jose's Seeing Things Gallery last Friday for the opening of "Concrete Thread," a skating-influenced showcase of works by artists, illustrators and photographers—and professional skaters. Unlike the visitors at most art shows, the patrons at Seeing Things donned hoodies and beanies; well-worn skateboards leaned against the walls, highlighting the casual and independent atmosphere of the gallery. » Read More

Three years ago, Nick Martinez walked past the on-air room of KSJS-FM (90.5), the student-run radio station at San Jose State University, and heard something strange. "What the hell is that?" he asked. "Oh, it's called dubstep," came the reply. Now, some have argued that dubstep doesn't deserve to be called music, much less played on the radio, since it can sound like a remixed car accident to some ears. But according to Martinez, the station manager at KSJS, this is just the point of noncommercial student radio. "Our role [in San Jose] is to open listeners' ears to new music and new talent," he told me. » Read More

To most people clay is meant to be shaped into functional items—bowls, cups, vases—but to the 12 artists featured in the de Saisset Museum's new exhibit, "Clay in the Bay," the medium is much more. For this show, clay, a material as old as the earth itself, is transformed into something new. Clay has direct ties to the Bay Area; it was here that functional clay stepped into the role of a contemporary art form. In the late 1950s and '60s, Peter Voulkos began to push the boundaries of working with clay. » Read More

ON THE NEW HBO show Enlightened, the tightly wound Amy Jellicoe, played by Laura Dern, tries so hard to stay positive. For her own good, she must stop. After a workplace meltdown, which culminates in Amy prying open an elevator door to shriek at her boss and onetime lover, she plateaus. » Read More

A young child born in 1929, the product of a strained marriage, is shuttled around Northern California. She knows no real stability until 1939, when her mother, finally divorced, moves to San Jose. The child attends Alum Rock Union School, excelling in art classes, then moves on to San Jose High School. Although, years later in an oral history, she remembers San Jose as an "cultural desert," the girl learns a great deal about art from a neighbor who is a commercial artist and from one of her teachers at San Jose High, who "was an absolute inspiration to me." » Read More

Jeff Speck's new book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, is a damning attack on suburban sprawl, obesity, car-culture America and the entire profession of traffic engineers, all of which he claims is interconnected. Fully acknowledging that cars are an important part of American life, Speck, who doesn't hate them, presents a logical rallying cry for a complex set of issues related to walkability. » Read More

Writer/filmmaker Stephen Elliott stares his tumultuous past straight in the face and jumps in, head first, emerging time and again with material that burns like a red-hot iron. Readers don't find sugar-coated happily-ever-afters in his pages. Regardless, his fans are hooked. » Read More

"Remember—do not try anything you are about to see at home!" These words of warning are uttered at the beginning of every episode of "Mythbusters," the Emmy Award winning Discovery Channel show that features the sometimes wacky, but always scientifically grounded and highly entertaining experiments of hosts Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman, Tory Belleci, Kari Byron and Grant Imahara. » Read More

The Santa Clara University students and guests sitting around me looked confused. There were shuffles and muffled whispers. The newest Justin Bieber song played over and over in my head as I waited for pianist Alex Christie to begin. For 4 minutes and 33 seconds, the entire audience at Santa Clara University's music hall sat in silence, unsure of why they weren't hearing any noise from the man sitting at the piano. » Read More

"Race IS the most incendiary topic in our history, and the moment it comes out you cannot close the lid on that box." This line from David Mamet represents the idea behind his legal drama Race, the season opener at San Jose Stage that seeks to lay bare, though not to solve, the issue of black-white relations in America » Read More

Though critics have been heralding the novel's demise for ages, it seems that the current digital era might finally destroy this venerable tradition. Can this really be the end? The question is mulled over in the San Jose Repertory Theatre's new play, The Death of the Novel, but it's only one of many topics broached in this ambitious production starring Vincent Kartheiser, best known as Mad Men's Pete Campbell. » Read More

We lost Phil Tiger, 58, who died of cancer Aug 30. The news made me think of "Didn't He Ramble," a New Orleans song celebrating the here-comes-trouble life: And when he took his ladder out to go and paint the town/ They had to take their megaphones to call the rambler down. Tiger was a genius for stirring it up, but the talent for mischief shouldn't eclipse his art. That artistic talent is demonstrated in pictures on Tiger's Facebook shrine. » Read More

Although today's political discourse has descended to levels usually associated only with sump pumps, our forebears were hardly models of rhetorical rectitude either. Mitt Romney, who seems unduly sensitive for someone named after a piece of sporting equipment (now I'm doing it, too), might consider the brouhaha over his tax returns deeply unfair. » Read More

TheaterWorks' annual and ambitious New Works Festival is in full swing. The event features five plays-in-the-making at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto. Now in its 11th year, the festival allows playwrights and composers to present their works in developmental productions and staged readings, and then hear feedback from audience members. » Read More

When you go to see Chicago, you're probably going for classic show tunes like "All That Jazz," "Roxie" and "Razzle Dazzle," or maybe for the scantily clad performers. Either way, all these things abound in City Lights Theater's lively if surprisingly understated take on the Bob Fosse, Fred Ebb and John Kander’s musical. » Read More

For fans of Aaron Sorkin's punchy, ham-fisted moralizing, Sunday, June 24, was a return to church. The writer debuted his new HBO drama The Newsroom, a show about an idealistic newsman who wants to make an honest wife out of cable news. This was, however, a dull axe to grind, bookending a potentially clever parody with indulgent dialogue and wistful histrionics for an America that never was. » Read More

IN 1919, Santa Clara University's yearbook The Redwood, stated, 'The Engineers are planning, and when Engineers plan: results follow!' Indeed, from manning the first heavier-than-air flying machine to winning awards for their energy-efficient houses, Santa Clara University's engineers have contributing to technological advancement for a century. » Read More

What impulse drives people to create? And who chooses such an (often) unappreciated, solitary voyage in the first place? These are two of the central questions explored over a 12-year period by essayist and author Tom Bissell, whose new nonfiction collection, Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation, highlights a cross-section of writers, artists and filmmakers—from the relatively obscure to the relatively famous—all connected by their ability to produce something from nothing. » Read More

Every few years, something comes along to make H.P. Lovecraft cool again. In the '60s and '70s, it was rock and metal bands referencing his myths and monsters. In the '80s, it was Stuart Gordon's films Re-animator and From Beyond, based on minor Lovecraft stories that nonetheless had enough raw material in them to inspire two outrageous cult horror flicks. » Read More

Ask someone about their earliest memories, and chances are they will include the first time they rode a bike. Even if you haven't ridden a bike in years, it is more than likely that if you hopped back on, it would all come back to you in an instant. After all, as the saying goes, "It's just like riding a bike, you never forget.' Two new exhibits currently on display at the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University pay homage to this humble yet amazing contraption. » Read More

Two of the most telling moments in HBO's new series Girls come at the end of the first episode. After being denied further monetary assistance by her parents, 24-year old Hannah, played by show creator Lena Dunham, leaves their Manhattan hotel, pocketing a $20 tip left for the maid. (She later uses it to buy gourmet ice cream.) » Read More

Last year, things seemed to be going well for Eric Victorino. His group the Limousines, already a Bay Area favorite and a breakout alt-radio success, was invited to tour the United States and then Europe with the Sounds. He had two acclaimed books of poetry under his belt, and yet another outlet as an artist whose gritty, punk-rock-style drawings were in demand. » Read More