San Francisco writer Michele Bigley spends most of her days exploring her favorite city with her two sons and husband. When not hunting for sand dollars, hiking through eucalyptus groves, or munching on Italian pastries, she writes articles, books, iPhone apps, and essays about her travels around the globe. Michele updated our Where to Stay chapter.
Marcia Gagliardi is a freelance food writer who publishes a cheeky weekly e-column about the local restaurant scene called “the tablehopper” (at tablehopper.com), chock-full of insider news and gossip, reviews, and culinary events. She is also the contributing food editor for 7x7, and is the author of The Tablehopper’s Guide to Dining and Drinking in San Francisco. You can follow her on Twitter @tablehopper. Marcia updated the Where to Eat chapter.
A veteran Fodor’s writer, Berkeley-based writer and editor Denise M. Leto roams the city out of sheer love for SF, peeking down overgrown alleyways and exploring tucked-away corners from the Tenderloin to the Richmond, often with her three home-schooled sons in tow. She updated all the neighborhood chapters and the Experience chapter in this edition. She also wrote our special features on cable cars, Chinatown, Golden Gate Park, and Alcatraz.
Fiona G. Parrott is a Californian native. She spent her childhood exploring the raw wilderness of Marin County and her later years exploring the culinary and musical delights of San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. At present she divides her adventure time between wilderness and cityscape, writing about the Bay Area’s cutting-edge hot spots. She’s been a veterinarian, actor, bartender, watermelon picker, latrine builder, and university lecturer, but writing for Fodor’s has been one of her most exciting jobs. For this edition, she updated the Sports and Outdoors and Marin, Berkeley, and Oakland chapters, as well as the Travel Smart and Shopping chapters. In recent years, Fiona also contributed to Fodor’s Scotland and Fodor’s Great Britain.
Jerry James Stone has been eating and drinking his way through San Francisco for the past four years where he focuses on the sustainable food and wine movement. In fact, one of his vegetarian recipes was just featured on the back of a wine bottle. Jerry updated the Nightlife and the Performing Arts chapters in this year’s guide.
Bay Area writer and editor Matt Villano, who updated the Wine Country chapter of this year’s guide, moved to Wine Country in 2007 and has been exploring the region ever since. In that time, Villano has written about the area (and loads of other destinations) for publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sunset, and Entrepreneur, to name a few. Without question, Villano’s favorite varietal is Cabernet Franc. He prefers to pair it with a bacon cheeseburger from Gott’s Roadside in St. Helena.
Bay Area writer Sura Wood lost her heart in San Francisco when she was eight, and she’s never stopped loving the city. An arts journalist for the last fifteen years, she’s written with gusto about San Francisco’s food, fashion, hotels, nightlife, art, and architecture for the Fodor’s website. She updated our Eye on Architecture feature for this year’s guide.