Lisa Hampton

It's helped that they've opened for some of our old favorites, including Birds & Batteries and the Morning Benders, but indie-rockers Social Studies have now earned themselves a solid spot on our office playlist rotation. The band, comprised of Natalia Rogovin, Jason Kick, Tyler McCauley, and Mike Jirkovsky skillfully skirt the line between pop and the cerebral. Their music is catchy and smart.

We appreciate a feisty woman who is as sassy as she is stylish, and Oakland-based band Hottub serves it up threefold. Fronted by female emcees Coco Machete, Ambr33zy, and Lolipop, Hottub has pure brazen energy (in the form of body careening dance maneuvers) and the fashion bravado to match (Hello! leopard print neon spandex).

How she's going to push YBCA’s visual-arts programming to the next level.

When Betti-Sue Hertz says, “Being a curator isn’t just a job, it’s a lifestyle,” you’d better believe she means it. The newly appointed director of visual arts at YBCA (she takes up her position full-time this month) peruses art-history books in her spare time, sketches while chatting on the phone and laughs when asked whether she has any hobbies outside the art world. “Everything I do is somehow connected to art,” says the New York native.

A lifelong love blooms in an SF hospital.

Castro Valley residents Susan Bruss, 51, and Sherri Pontes, 54, have plenty of experience when it comes to matters of the heart. As the two women work in the cardiac-health-care field, it was only natural that their professions would lead them to find love. They met 20 years ago at St. Luke’s Hospital in San Francisco, where Pontes taught Bruss the ropes on her first day on the job. “Sherri was the first person I met at the hospital—she trained me all day and was warm and funny and made me feel very relaxed,” says Bruss about that first encounter.