👩‍❤‍👨 National Boyfriend Day 10/5/25

Hi Everyone!

This week wrapped up Transit Month, a month-long celebration of the Bay Area’s transit agencies, drivers, workers, and riders, which happens every September. In addition to transit-themed events (like the public transit art fair I went to last week), they also provide a tool to track the number of transit rides you took over the course of the month, as well as the distance you covered. I am proud to say that I rode public transit 44 times, covering a total of 552.1 miles, in September. For some context, that is more than the distance from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon. And out of the over 950 people who logged rides, I ranked 87th. Not too shabby if I say so myself!

Now, with the gloating out of the way, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…

We are really starting to get into the thick of things school-wise. Some big assignments are coming up, so I’ve had to start being more mindful about planning out when I do my work. Tangentially, in one of my supplemental intro classes, we talked about procrastination, and it was helpful to see that the other students and even the professor struggle with pushing off work until the last minute.

However, I do have one big update to share: I facilitated my first classroom discussion, and it went great! Multiple people came up to me afterwards to tell me that I did a great job. It feels good to know that I can be a teacher, and imposter syndrome has nothing on me! The discussion I led focused on surveillance tools, tactics, and overall surveillance culture in educational institutions. If you have any thoughts on this, I would love to discuss them with you.

Besides the facilitation, this week marked the 50th anniversary of the SFSU Cesar Chavez Student Center. The building, which was commissioned after the 1969 Student Strike, drew inspiration from the social and cultural movements of the Bay Area in the 1960s and 70s.

To celebrate, the Center threw a celebration, including a mariachi band and the opening of a museum of archival images and papers throughout the course of the building’s lifetime. I love that San Francisco State has so many unique things happening everyday. These events provide quite a bit of spontaneity to life if you choose to take part in it.

Now let’s move on to non-school things!

This Friday marks one of the biggest holidays of the whole year, in my opinion, and that is National Boyfriend Day! So I hope all the boyfriends out there had a wonderful day, and I hope all the partners out there treated their boyfriends right.

To start this momentous day, I went into the city for San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, held in Golden Gate Park. Running for its 25th year, this free musical extravaganza once started as a one-day event, and has since ballooned to a world-renowned three-day festival. Everyone brings blankets, some food and drinks, and chills out to some bluegrass and bluegrass-adjacent music.

I unfortunately had no time to chill out, as I could only be there for an hour. Instead, I was sprinting around the park, listening to a couple of songs at each stage, and then running to the next one. This is not my preferred way of going to this festival, and if I go next year, I want to spend a whole day here. That being said, I managed to listen to three bands: War and Treaty, Hannah Cohen, and my personal favorite, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Then I rushed back downtown, where I met up with Rylee for a nice dinner celebrating National Boyfriend Day at Burma Love, a sister restaurant of one of our favorite spots in the Bay, Burma Superstar. We ordered a nice bottle of wine (a cava because I love a good sparkling wine) and chowed down on sweet sesame chicken and pungent, savory shrimp garlic noodles. I literally do not understand how they pack so much flavor into the food. I really just want to go into the kitchen and look at the spice rack they have.

The last item on the agenda was an immersive haunted house located in the Old San Francisco Mint building called Terror Vault. This year’s theme was Hexed, and revolved around a secret coven of witches trying to reanimate the dead. I am not the biggest fan of scary things, but I got the tickets for free, and I realized it has been eons since I have done something Halloween-themed. Thank goodness I had my brave, strong girlfriend to hold my hand throughout the experience.

I don’t want to brag, but I only screamed out loud a couple of times. I even conquered my fears and fought against one of the witches. The haunted house itself didn’t end up being all too scary, and instead, it was quite campy and quirky, and I say that in the best way possible. We had a good time overall!

This weekend was also our favorite Oakland Street Festival, Oaktoberfest. We accidentally stumbled upon this festival the first year we moved here, and have been coming back every year since.

Oaktoberfest is a celebration of Oktoberfest, but done in a way that only Oakland could. The festival shuts down two blocks, brings in a ton of local breweries and vendors, and, in between traditional German bands and DJs, they have break-dancing tournaments. This year, we joked that I would join the break-dancing tournament, pulling out moves like the sprinkler and the shopping cart.

It is hands down the best Oktoberfest in the Bay Area. I know this is lofty praise, and I would love to be proven wrong, but I haven’t seen an Oktoberfest that compares so far.

I figured my previous ode to pumpkin spice wasn’t enough, so here is more pumpkin spice content in this newsletter. I am especially surprised by the pumpkin spice Dude Wipes. Should I do even more pumpkin spice-related content in this newsletter?