To help with the holiday hullaballoo, the SFBG staff is revealing — at last! — its secret shopping secrets, to perhaps give you some gift inspiration. In this installment: Culture Editor Molly Freedenberg’s gift-giving delights. Previously, Amanda Witherell, Kimberly Chun, Dulcinea Gonzalez and Marke B. shared their faves.
Check out more suggestions in our ginormous 2008 Holiday Guide — and enter our contest to win $500 in gift certificates if you spend $100 locally. Wowza.
RAG: Curator Blakely Bass outside the Hayes Valley store
Residents Apparel Gallery (RAG)
When I was a kid, my uncle lived in Eugene, Oregon, a place known to be significantly more artsy, creative, and hip than my suburban hometown. Therefore we always got – and expected – appropriately cool, unique, can’t-get-‘em-at-the-mall gifts from him. Now that I live in SF, I feel it’s my duty to represent what my city has to offer the same way my uncle used to do for Eugene. RAG is one of my favorite places for this kind of shopping. The showcases unique and imaginative clothing and accessories made only by local designers. So from screen-printed T-shirts (for men and women) to whimsical caps, and from hand-crocheted gloves to hand-stitched skirts, I can always find something delightful, one-of-a-kind, and sooo San Francisco.
541 Octavia. (415) 621-7718, www.ragsf.com