After a long awards season, the Oscars are upon us at last (Sunday, February 26, 2017 at 5:30pm). Even if you're not into this year's batch of movies, let's be real: you will be watching. So the question is where. Whether you're a TV orphan or simply like company, you're in luck -- 'cause the Bay Area is serving up a bunch of Oscar parties where you can be starstruck for 20 minutes and then complain about how boring everything is for the next three hours and 40 minutes.
If you like dressing up and being surrounded by books:
Head over to Novella, which is worth visiting just for the gorgeous display of books. The bar in SoMA is encouraging people to dress up as their favorite character from this year's nominated movies. A few suggestions from me to you: the dry-erase board from Arrival, one of the fences from Hidden Fences, or a canvas bag with a dollar sign on it to represent the money used to make Hollywood forget that Mel Gibson is a terrible person. Just make sure to thank me for the idea when you win "Best Costume."
If you hate commercials and Hollywood in general:
Head over to the Roxie in the Mission for Up the Oscars Benefit Bash, which is replacing the commercials you would normally ignore in favor of "curiously captivating shorts, twisted music videos, intriguingly perplexing film clips, & generally hilarious cinematic detritus." You're going to really appreciate those artistic respites when you're entering the third hour of the telecast and the CEO of the Academy comes out to give a corporate speech.
