Any local resident knows that San Francisco and the Bay Area offer a plethora of arts events, performing companies, and favored venues. Here are the best of winners and runners up voted by our readers.

Need a distraction from everything? Sure you do. Plays, concerts, art exhibits and nightlife abound, even in the slower summer weeks. And we've got info on next weekend's Up Your Alley Street Fair and related kinky events. Catch up in with Going Out.

Along with the usual ongoing arts and nightlife events, we've got some particularly unusual happenings for your midsummer enjoyment this week in Going Out.

Shed those post-Pride blues, and the ennui about July 4 (Thanks, democracy; you had a nice run) with uplifting arts and nightlife events in Going Out, each week online.

Hopefully you still have plenty of pride left for this month, since we've got plenty of super-gay events in arts and nightlife for you to enjoy. Check out all the events in Going Out.

The rainbow avalanche of arts and nightlife events continues, and you should dig in and enjoy the ride. Check out all the events in Going Out.

Just in time for June's rainbow celebrations, DC released "DC Pride 2024," a collection of slice-of-life stories featuring many of the LGBTQ characters the company has developed over the last several years.

Possibly best LGBTQ documentary, so far this year, is director and co-writer Sam Shadid's "Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes," about the iconic works by the gay fashion, dance and male nudes photographer.

Richard Caldwell (Dick) Brewer (1923-2014), may be one of the most interesting but uncelebrated gay artists in America. But SF gallery Lost Art Salon offers a trove of his paintings and drawings.

"God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin" is a delicious assemblage of interviews, essays and works of art by talented and learned intellectuals and artists.

Edited by critic/curator Michael Peppiatt, with a forward by novelist Colm Toibin, "Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words" arrives at a propitious moment. Bacon's paintings have set world record-breaking prices at auction.

The winners of La Asamblea's Pa'lante Artist Grant Program have been announced by Kimzin Creative. Also, two film festivals and a theater company announced calls for submission.

Nearly 100 people came out to the opening reception of "Out Museum: A Chinese Queer Museum" exhibit on April 12. The "Chinese queer museum prototype" by lesbian Chinese artist Xiangqi Chen opened at 41 Ross Alley art studio in the historic Chinatown.

The lavish new exhibit, "Japanese Prints in Transition," at the Legion of Honor, is as welcome as spring. The exhibit spans the earliest prints to works by artists competing with photography in the early 20th century, plus contemporary works.