Francesca Bay

Onstage , Brazilian jazz musician Claudia Villela is not just brave, she is well known for her willingness to go anywhere with her voice. Based in the Bay Area, Claudia lights up stages all over the country and abroad. We caught up with her at Kuumbwa Jazz in Santa Cruz and had the honor of toasting her brilliant talent with her very first dry martini. FrancescaBay: Claudia, the New York Times has described your voice as “Remarkable, beautiful, towering,” the Boston Globe has described you as “An extraordinary singer in any context,” Jazz Times has described you as, “A female Bobby McFerrin." Stylistically, your voice encompasses samba, bossa nova, jazz, scat and beyond. It is one of the most original voices in Brazilian Jazz. Where did you get this voice? CLAUDIA: My father gave me a pianola when I was one year old and my mother was always singing. My father played the harmonica, too. I went to piano lessons when I was five years old and I didn’t last long at al...

Wati Grossman The San Francisco Fashion Designer dishes on life, millennials, motherhood, and modern fashion In its heyday,  Wati Design  could be found in children’s boutiques around the globe. It was one of the few American brands that matched the stunning collections of European children’s clothing, with its rich pigments and beautiful silks and velvets trimmed with intricate embroidery. Mothers lamented that Wati did not design for them, that their girls would soon grow out of the lavish outfits, many of which have been passed along to siblings, cousins and friends. After ten years and her own children nearly grown, Wati has shuttered her children’s line and, much to our excitement, has launched a women’s capsule collection. Wati was brought up by intellectual Indonesian émigrés in Melbourne, Australia, where she and her identical twin sister Yanti attended law school before following their dreams. For Wati, that meant leaving behind the security of a law ca...

Mother's Day in San Francisco is just two weeks away. Do you have plans yet? If the weather holds this will be blessed picnic time in our incredible parks. My favorite place to picnic is Golden Gate Park and in particular on the lawn in front of the  Conservatory of Flowers . It is filled with new buds and butterflies. The nearby Botanical and Japanese Tea Gardens are awake from their rainy slumber. Why not visit all three after a picnic? Plan to skip around the Tea Garden and sip jasmine tea and enjoy kuzumochi. The rains are going to make this spring spectacular and the flowers are getting their bloom on now! Picnic in Golden Gate Park and  Butterfly Release with Mama For those who like to make picnics, no explanation needed. For those who don't, head over to  Tartine Bakery  for hot pressed sandwiches, salads and drinks to go. After your picnic take mom over to the Conservatory of Flowers to release butterflies. (Reservations needed, see the l...

San Francisco women are typically early adopters of online trends, the latest of which is collaborative consumption—they loan it, you borrow it, and return it no strings attached. The idea of a no-waste fashion philosophy speaks volumes to a city that is one of the greenest in the world. So when "Luxury on Loan" Pop-Up  Armarium  founders Alexandra Lind Rose and Trisha Gregory showed up last week with a stunning array of gowns, San Francisco took notice. The new de Gournay showroom on Sacramento Street was a fairy tale location for the high glamour event. This magical pop-up was the brainchild of Allison Speer who is San Francisco's fairy godmother of all things artistic and luxurious. If you judge a city by its offerings in the arts alone, you can thank Allison for helping to build and cultivate our world class museums, oh! and our world class shopping. During the pop-up many women had the opportunity to discover first hand how Alexandra and Trisha a...

The idea for a blog about women in San Francisco came from my days as a ghostwriter for Silicon Valley women executives. I wasn't entirely sure what the marketing guy was talking about when he said he needed a "ghostwriter for a woman." As a former newspaper editor and journalist, I had interviewed many women. There was the "Money Goddess" who rolled around naked on her bed in newly minted dollar bills hoping to attract the "Money God," and there was the young socialite living in a posh beach house who was determined to undermine herself at every turn by saying things such as, "And then my husband sold his company and we were no longer Mr. and Mrs. Schmoe!" Ghostwriting I soon learned was different. I got this general assignment: "We need sexy stories. Can you do it? The pay is $175 an hour." Me: "Yes I can." A very popular word at the time in marketing and public relations was "sexy." It did not have anyt...