Lifestyle & Home

Shopping locally in the East Bay provides a treasure trove of gift options. Below are a few ideas from shops in the Solano Avenue, Rockridge, Piedmont, Grand Avenue and Fourth Street shopping districts.

Let’s face it—working from home in the East Bay means we’re as likely to share our “office” with a cat, a kombucha SCOBY and the sound of someone’s leaf blower as with a co-worker.  Yet somewhere between our...

Long before they founded SOBU, the design-forward furniture and home décor store on College Avenue in Oakland’s Rockridge district, Laleh (née Zahedi) and Alessandro Latini met as teenagers at Redwood High School in Corte Madera—a pairing that,...

Fusing Irish tradition, an innovative spirit and the enthusiasm of its founder, the Margaret O’Leary brand has been loved throughout and beyond the Bay Area for more than 30 years. The label, established by Margaret O’Leary in...

The tagline for Standard & Strange, a specialty clothing shop located in West Berkeley’s Fourth Street neighborhood, is “Own Fewer, Better Things.” Owner Jeremy Smith lives by that philosophy, an ideal that harkens back to early industrial...

The time for a trip is at hand. But whether it’s a long weekend or a weeks-long cruise, the same issue arises: How to create a travel wardrobe that’s stylish, versatile, comfortable—and doesn’t require steamer trunks and...

Egyptian tomb paintings and archaeological evidence suggest that there were farmers markets more than 5,000 years ago. Agricultural communities throughout Northern Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia had farmers markets in the following centuries. The Boston Market...