The summer music festival might be long gone in many parts of the country, but it's still alive and kicking in the Bay Area (thanks to our lack of an actual summer.) To wit: Treasure Island Music Festival, the too-cool-for-school, slightly smaller sibling of Outside Lands, takes over a weekend in October. The lineup skews hip —Shabazz Palaces and Thee Oh Sees —but it has consistently gotten high marks for tight organization and a chance to get off the island of San Francisco for a few days. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, by contrast casts a wider net for acts —perhaps the widest net in the country, for a three day gathering. Where else can you see Emmylou Harris, Conor Oberst, Thurston Moore, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Robert Plant and Kurt Vile together?

And for free no less, thanks to the largesse of billionaire Warren Hellman, who is also the patron of The Bay Citizen. But while Golden Gate Park is a fine place to see music, Big Sur's Henry Miller Library is even more idyllic. Go check out Ryan Adams there during his October swing through California, in support of a new album. For a musician a bit closer to home, it's not too late to say that you say Meklit Hadero before she got famous, although, thanks to rave reviews of the Ethopian-born, Bay Area-dwelling chantuese on both coasts, the clock is ticking. She'll be at New Parish in Oakland on Sept. 29. And, finally, there's S.F.'s Girls. They'll be at Great American Music Hall for two nights in support of their new album, which just nabbed at 9.3 on Pitchfork. Not bad, ladies!

(For full music listings, go to Bay Citizen's Art and Entertainment Calendar.)

--Reyhan Harmanci

Fall is a season of change. As the leaves turn and those warm breezes become cold winds, so too do explosion-filled, synergistic blockbusters give way to heady, nuanced - dare we say intelligent? - cinematic fare. (And also horror movies, lots of horror movies.) Whether in festivals or theaters, at new venues or old,  there will be amazing films playing all over they Bay this season. For instance, the San Francisco Film Society has established a new, year-round home at New People, a beautifully-appointed, 143-seat venue in Japantown.

With upcoming series focusing on cinema from France, Taiwan, Italy, and Hong Kong, you can discover some amazing international film there this Fall. For classic fare from this country, turn to a series called "The Outsiders: New Hollywood Cinema in the Seventies,", running through the end of October. The Pacific Film Archive offers up a tremendous selection of classics and underseen gems from the last highwater mark of American filmmaking, including Elaine May's "Mickey and Nickey", the Bill Cosby/Robert Culp dectective fave "Hickey & Boggs", and a brand new print of Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show". And then, of course, there is one of the biggest Bay Area film events of the year: the Mill Valley Film Festival. The 34th annual MVFF returns for what's sure to be another season packed with international hits and high profile previews of award season favorites. For something a bit less formal, turn to Home Movie Day on Oct. 15 at the Oakland Museum of California. OMCA celebrates International Home Home Day in style, with screenings of submitted work and the premiere of home movie treasures from the collection of the African American Museum and Library at Oakland. And for something a bit more experimental, check out "Once It Started, It Could Not End," on  Nov. 18 at Artists Television Access. This night of exciting and innovative short film from the San Francisco Cinematheque features the hilarious paranoia of filmmaker Kelly Sears, who repurposes found images and footage to wonderfully devious effect. (Sears will also be in attendance.)

(For full film listings, go to Bay Citizen's Art and Entertainment Calendar.)

--Jon Korn

This fall, you could attend some of those crowded, over-the-top Bay Area food-and-drink bonanzas (see: Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival, Eat Real Festival, etc.), but we had you pegged for something a bit more highbrow, literary even. For instance, the Ferry Building is hosting its first-ever cookbook festival, where you can meet some local food purveyors-turned-authors, watch cooking demonstrations, and generally rejoice in the (pre-Kindle) tactile cookbook. At a series of events sponsored by the American Institute of Architects called Dining by Design, you can marvel at the stunning design sense of SF restaurants Local: Mission Eatery, Twenty Five Lusk, and Farina, while sampling some of their finest edibles.

The San Francisco Public Library is sponsoring one of its periodic lit-minglers, Imbibe, at the Richmond branch, with food and nosh from Anchor Steam Brewing and tunes from Little Creatures. On the coattails of Chez Panisse’s 40th anniversary hoopla, UC Berkeley is opening the doors to its Michael Pollan-taught class, Edible Education 101, with heavy-hitting co-instructors like Marion Nestle and Alice Waters. Finally, at an event sponsored by Omnivore Books on Food, French chef/charm machine Jacques Pépin and James Beard Award-winning PBS host Joanne Weir will sit down and dish on Pépin’s newest tome, which is named (what else?) "Essential Pepin."

(For full food listings, go to Bay Citizen's Art and Entertainment Calendar.)

--Jesse Hirsch

These days, it's harder and harder to come up with reasons to leave your house/internet but live theater has an element of risk that can't be found elsewhere. At S.F. Fringe Festival, for instance, performances can run the gamut from amazing to awful and there's almost no way to say which will be which —you'll just have to go and see for yourself. But one consistently good theater is, sadly, closing its doors: Traveling Jewish Theater is kicking off their last season with "In the Maze of Our Own Lives," written by the theater's co-founder Corey Fischer, that deals with iconic ensemble innovators from the 1930s, the Group Theater.

At Z Space, there is a highly-anticipated performance from multi-media wizards Big Art Group. Titled "The People: San Francisco," it should appeal to many in this new media-rich area. Other must-sees include Kevin Spacey in town for "Richard III" and "A Weekend with Pablo Picasso," by Culture Clash writer-performer Herbert Siguenza at Center Repertory Company in Walnut Creek. Also, for a bit of more populist fare (no pun intended), there's always the Trolley Dances, taking place on Oct. 15-16, on MUNI lines K, M and L. KT Nelson of ODC is choreographing these very-site specific performances.

(For full performing art listings, go to Bay Citizen's Art and Entertainment Calendar.)

--Reyhan Harmanci

Who among us hasn't circled the annual Open Studios, taking place over five consecuative weekends in October, on an event calendar and then failed to go? Carpe diem! Over 800 artists' workspaces will be thrown open to the public, from every nook and corner of S.F. Also on the radar: Johansson Projects' trippy "Circlesaints," a drawing show from Mike Meyers and Yvette Molina that shows cosmic elements of microscopic plant life (from Molina) and planetary and architechural patterns (Meyers.) For magic of a more man-made kind, check out "Houdini: Art and Magic" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, what they are billing as the first major exhibition to look at his incredible life and influence. Over at SFMOMA this fall, 30 visual artists and eight poets will take on marriage equity in a show called "The Air We Breathe," the show's title taken from a Langston Hughes poem. Also in mid-October is the 17th Annual Day of the Dead exhibit, at the Oakland Museum of California, which will feature contributions from 14 artist and community groups, and will give special attention to the ofrendas, or homemade altars.

(For full visual art listings, go to Bay Citizen's Art and Entertainment Calendar.)

--Reyhan Harmanci

Tumbleweeds must blow through all the literary haunts across the country when Litquake comes to town, bringing with it an embarrassment of talent. This year's lineup of over 850 authors includes Chelsea Handler, James Ellroy, and Deepak Chopra. But even though Litquake is the most high-profile of the seasons wordy fetes, there are a wealth of other offering that, like the city's lit scene, are a pastiche of the venerable and the idiosyncratic. Nobel-prizewinner Toni Morrison's play "Desdemona" arrives in Berkeley this October for its U.S. premeire. Written as a response to legendary theater director Peter Seller's staging of “Othello”, the play gives voice to two of the play's characters: Othello's daughter Desdemona and her African nurse Barbary. Sellers signed on to direct the play, and it stars acclaimed Malian singer Rokia Traore.

If merely watching the inner-workings of a renowned authors mind unravel onstage won't satiate the Bay Area's lit crowd, they can watch as prolific author Joan Didion pontificates before an audience as part of the City Arts and Lectures series in November. Didion's latest book, “Blue Nights”, tackles the heady topics of death and aging. No stranger to serious subject matter, graphic novelist Craig Thompson tackled the themes of Christianity and child abuse in his sprawling fist book, “Blankets”. He appears at the Cartoon Art Museum in honor of the release of his latest book, “Habibi”, which takes on Islam and is already garnering high praise. And finally, one of this fall's events centers around a cherished literary pastime: swearing. Adam Mansbach created a viral sensation when he penned his bluntly titled children's book for adults “Go the F--- to Sleep”. He reads at Diesel Books in Oakland. Kids are probably best left the f--- at home.

(For full lit listings, go to Bay Citizen's Art and Entertainment Calendar.)

--Andy Wright