The women break into song. They start off slow, with a dubiously tonal “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” but hit their stride with “Ain’t Gonna Study War No More.” After a few verses, it turns into a call-and-response with the crowd. “Sing with us!” calls Paula, a commanding brunette with a “No Drones” shirt. The colorfully striped banner the women hold reads “RAGING GRANNIES” in large black lettering.

Previously: Every New England novel ever. 1. The Produce In This Los Angeles Supermarket, While Fresh, Seems Waxy And False To Me In A Way That Serves As A Moral Indictment Of This Entire City 2. A Farmer And A Forty-Niner Vie For Hilda's Hand (Hilda Is A Metaphor For The Future Of California) 3. Death At The Mission 4. 400 Pages About Irrigation…

From left to right: Nicole Cliffe, Baby Cliffe, Self, Sister of Self Laura Ortberg Turner (colloquially known as The Moose, for reasons that have been lost to time). Pictured in background: a great deal of Klondike bars, as this selfie was taken at the frozen novelties aisle at Target.

We're giving The Bartender a week off (s/he has all those glasses to wash) and taking over Cocktail Hour to let you know that the very first Official Toast Meetup will be taking place in and around San Francisco on the evening of November 4th.

An impressive group of female artists were drawn to Carmel, Pacific Grove, and Monterey around the turn of the last century. M. Evelyn McCormick (1862-1948) was a major talent and a leader among them. These painters came primarily because of the striking beauty of the area, but the local welcoming attitude toward women had a lot to do with it as well. The Spanish culture, still strong in California, allowed women to own property, helping…

So California passed a lovely little law this week that lets transgender students in public schools choose which bathroom and locker rooms they use, as well as whether they'd rather play girls' or boys' sports. Tremendous! Anything to make gym class pleasanter, anything to make transgender kids' days at school a tiny bit less of a total fucking bummer. But, as always, some folks are deeply worried about bathroom access: "The answer is not…

Mollie “The Lost Chicken” Wisner was one of the most well-known musical performers in Gold Rush-era San Francisco, but she only knew one song. In 1849, nearly forty thousand fortune-seeking men flooded the streets of San Francisco, up from 1,000 the year before. Given the transitory, perilous nature of boomtowns, women were scarce; some historians estimate a 50:1 male-to-female ratio at the time. The lonely miners, sailors, trappers, and pioneers who frequented the nine-block-long red-light…