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I'm very excited to announce The Bold Italic's first sponsored collaboration with San Francisco Symphony. This is coming up appropriately during Pride month—June 18, beginning at 7:30 p.m. at Davies—to celebrate our beloved and recently passed symphony music director, and queer icon Michael Tilson Thomas.
The symphony has offered our readers a 25 percent discount, and included with your purchase: I've also taken $500 from The Bold Italic cash for drinks afterward down the street at The Academy SF, at 2166 Market St. That'll be at around 9:15 p.m. To get the discount and packaged evening: Buy those symphony tickets here. The link itself should authorize the discount, but I believe also you can enter code BIB9.
If you want to sit with me, and please do, I'll be in the following section. It's on Orchestra level, on the righthand side of this map. I have not yet picked out a seat, but I highlighted one to show you it's $116. And again, this'll include the after party.
And for a lower lift, ~$78, some higher-up seats. I won't be in two places at once, but we'll see each other before and after. 😊
Loyal followers of the 2020s often know me from SF Ballet. But I was a symphony girlie first, and growing up, I came from an archetypal Jewish home where we either played violin or piano; and our parents encouraged us to make boatloads of respectable money as either a doctor or lawyer. At age 13, for my Bar Mitzvah, my grandfather gave me his heirloom violin made in 1733. Pictured, though, is a custom one my dad had commissioned while on a trip to Shanghai.
I actually met Michael Tilson Thomas, briefly, around that age. It had been very apparent to everyone around me I was gay, which led to a lot of bullying at school and pressure at home to, um, not be that. I joined Sacramento Youth Symphony as an escape, and we one day took a trip to watch SF Symphony rehearse. I did not know then that MTT was gay; knowing me, as a snotty, repressed teen, I would not have appreciated it properly then. But it means a lot to me now in retrospect.
I grew up in weird ways, in the 2010s becoming a Castro bunny, event producer, and—tangentially—a promoter for Mason Bates' Mercury Soul series. Post pandemic, I turned to ballgowns and started treating the SF Symphony like it was the Met Gala. At Davies, the denim crowd always looks at me with such amusement.
I have been so looking forward for an opportunity to partner closer with SF Symphony. And I would love to see you there. I know it's a weeknight! And if it's a little spendy for you, I'd like to offer to you that paying subscribers of The Bold Italic are welcome to attend the afterparty—sans Symphony—on me.
Event details:
Buy tickets here ← Use this link or code BIB9 for discount.
- San Francisco Symphony presents Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
- Thursday, June 18, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
- Davies Symphony Hall (Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall), 201 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco
- $~78 to $116 ticket price.
- After party ~9:15 p.m. at The Academy SF, 2166 Market St. Show your symphony ticket, or provide confirmation that you are a paid subscriber of The Bold Italic.
Saul Sugarman is editor-in-chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
The Bold Italic is a not-for-profit media organization, and we publish first-person perspectives about San Francisco and the Bay Area. We operate under a fiscal sponsorship of a 501(c)(3).
You can become a paid subscriber. Or donate. Or learn more about us.
Stories I've written about SF Symphony
I'm also writing a ton lately
It's been about 10 days since my last newsletter because I wanted to save my newsletter-opening mojo for this symphony promotion, which just finalized. But within that timeframe, I also provided the website quite a few stories, including:
The Ice Cream Map of San Francisco:
Where Famous People Eat in San Francisco. And if you missed this one, it's the closest I've had to "viral" in a long while, by modern SEO standards.
Where to Get Stoned in San Francisco. CAN I CONFESS SOMETHING?? I've never gotten high ever. Lol. But my BFF T. Von D. is a stoner, so I asked her, and I also asked a lot of people. Their answers were entertaining.
All the Ramen I Could Find in San Francisco. This one was also quite popular. SFGate lurked in my IG stories; I wondered, idly, if they had a little turf war feeling about the topic.
And a few others you can find on my author page.
Oh btw
I've also been making some nice updates to the site itself. Our events page is getting quite robust. I like the ability to select a category, then share that link as its own page. So for example, here's a ton of LGBTQ+ events for Pride month. (And I'll publish a guide shortly.) Or if festivals float your boat, there's currently 41 of those.
An updated about page also includes a sub-page with staff and frequent contributors.
Thanks, as always, for being here.
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