This year’s focus is on the culture of the East Bay, with a special curation from Oakland’s community-centered pt.2 Gallery. In the gallery’s sprawling exhibit, curator Brock Brake will present works by fine arts studio Magnolia Editions, the Mission School’s Alicia McCarthy and Squeak Carnwath, as well as emerging Oakland-based artists, such as Yameng Lee Thorp and Soleé Darrell.

“There’s something special in the water,” Brake said of the East Bay’s art scene.

Brake said he grew up in Marysville, Ohio, “in a trailer park.” As a teenager, he was introduced to the Bay Area through skateboarding spreads and videos in Thrasher magazine.

“A lot of people come here to grow and find themselves a little bit more,” Brake said. “Oakland’s a really unique space and it fosters a lot of individuals who have a meaningful way of expressing themselves.”

East Bay artists were featured alongside standouts from San Francisco, including Jessica Silverman, who runs a renowned gallery in Chinatown. Her booth, titled “Beloved Community,” highlights primarily Bay Area artists, including Woody De Othello, Chelsea Ryoko Wong and others.

“If you decide to be here, it’s because you love it,” Silverman said. “When artists stay here, that kind of commitment to the city is felt, and reverberates through the community.”

At the center of the “Beloved Community” booth, a surrealist rendering of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” bouquet — along with a symbolic, six-eyed silver moth — captivated Erin Zhao, a Mission Bay resident.

“I feel so much mystery,” Zhao said, admiring the painting by Mission School artist Claire Rojas, who lived and practiced in the Bay Area for many years.

Silverman credited recent investment in San Francisco’s art scene to Mayor Daniel Lurie, who she described as an arts patron and collector.

One of the goals Buster Posey had when he took over as president of baseball operations for the San Francisco Giants was to infuse some power into the lineup.

If the team was going to compete, they needed to be able to score runs on a more consistent basis.

Looking to make a splash in his first offseason running the front office, Posey went right to the top of the market.

The Giants signed shortstop Willy Adames to a historic seven-year, $182 million deal. It was the biggest contract in franchise history, as the former Milwaukee Brewers star checked several boxes for the team.

Shortstop was identified as the biggest need, and he is one of the most productive offensive players at his position in the game.

Lacking impact performers, there was pressure on Adames to help elevate the offense to another level alongside star third baseman Matt Chapman.

However, in the early going, he has fallen woefully short of expectations.

Adames has a .195/.267/.286 slash line with only one home run and four doubles. He has yet to have the kind of impact the team was hoping he would, and there are some concerns with his early performance.

“Sure, his exit velocity and hard-hit rate are actually up relative to 2024. But he’s also lost 2.5 mph off his average bat speed, which makes it less than a coincidence that he has yet to tap into his primary strength of pulling the ball in the air,” wrote Zachary D. Rymer of Bleacher Report.

If he can continue making hard contact, the numbers will eventually regress to the mean in a positive manner. The swing speed is concerning, but slow starts like this have become common for him.

When keeping that in mind, there shouldn’t be too much concern with his slow start.

He is getting used to a new team and is likely pressing a little bit trying to live up to the massive contract that he signed.

His .685 career OPS in April is the lowest of any month in his career. His .553 OPS out of the gate is certainly alarming, but if this carries into May and June, it would be appropriate to be concerned.

What San Francisco and their fan base should be worried about is his defensive shortcomings.

From 2019-2023, Adames was a legitimate difference maker in the field.

He’s never been Gold Glove-caliber, but his performance fell off a cliff in 2024 with -16 Defensive Runs Saved.

His start at the plate has been slow, but he has been even worse in the field to start 2025 with him already having a -5 DRS figure.

His lack of impact defensively is what the Giants should be concerned about.

With Chapman locked in long-term at third base, they need Adames to figure things out with the glove if he’s going to provide the top tier left side of the infield that San Francisco thought they were getting with this addition.

Today is Friday, April 18, the 108th day of 2025. There are 257 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On April 18, 1906, the deadliest earthquake in U.S. history struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires across the city. More than 3,000 people are believed to have been killed by the quake, which was estimated to have reached as high as 8.3 magnitude on the Richter scale.

Also on this date:

In 1775, Paul Revere began his famous ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Massachusetts, warning colonists that British Regular troops were approaching.

In 1942, in the first World War II attack on the Japanese mainland, 16 U.S. Army Air Force B-25 bombers conducted an air raid, led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle, over Tokyo and several other Japanese cities.

In 1955, physicist Albert Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey, at age 76.

In 1978, the Senate approved the Panama Canal Treaty, providing for the complete turnover of control of the waterway to Panama on the last day of 1999.

In 1983, 63 people, including 17 Americans, were killed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, by a suicide bomber driving a van laden with explosives.

In 2015, a ship carrying migrants from Africa sank in the Mediterranean off Libya. As many as 700 people are believed to have drowned.

In 2016, “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop stage biography of America’s first treasury secretary, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

In 2019, the final report from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation was made public. It outlined Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election but “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

In 2023, Fox and Dominion Voting Systems reached a $787.5 million settlement in the voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit, averting a trial in a case that exposed how the top-rated network promoted falsehoods regarding the 2020 presidential election.

Today’s Birthdays:

• Actor Hayley Mills is 79.
• Actor James Woods is 78.
• Actor Rick Moranis is 72.
• Actor Eric Roberts is 69.
• Journalist-author Susan Faludi is 66.
• Actor Jane Leeves is 64.
• Ventriloquist-comedian Jeff Dunham is 63.
• Talk show host Conan O’Brien is 62.
• Actor Eric McCormack is 62.
• Actor Maria Bello is 58.
• Football Hall of Famer Willie Roaf is 55.
• Actor David Tennant is 54.
• Filmmaker Eli Roth is 53.
• Football Hall of Famer Derrick Brooks is 52.
• Filmmaker Edgar Wright is 51.
• Actor Melissa Joan Hart is 49.
• Reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian is 46.
• Former MLB All-Star Miguel Cabrera is 42.
• Actor America Ferrera is 41.
• Actor Vanessa Kirby is 37.
• Actor Alia Shawkat is 36.