7x7 Bay Area: People Will Talk 7x7 Bay Area

Ashes & Diamonds is disrupting Napa's rep for stodgy wineries with its modern architecture and rabble-rousing programming. It's thanks to proprietor Kashy Khaledi's penchant for nonconformity—an Iranian immigrant and die-hard fan of punk music, skateboarding, and baseball, Khaledi has brought a fresh winery experience to the valley, making Gen Xers and Millennials feel more comfortable with the culture of wine, a historically intimidating potable.

As the little black dress was once fashion's unmistakeable emblem for contemporary femininity, a little gray tee is now our symbol for modern feminism. You may have seen founder Meena Harris' "Phenomenal Woman" T-shirts on the likes of America Ferrera and Alicia Keys on Instagram; or perhaps you caught the signatures of #1600Men in support of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford in The New York Times—that was the work of Meena, too. What began as a simple project to celebrate Women's History Month has become a viable and ongoing political action campaign that's garnering attention from the national media as well as celebs. And it's no wonder, what with such excellent female political minds in Meena's family: Yes, she's that Harris, as in presidential hopeful Kamala Harris (her aunt) and as in Hillary Clinton campaign adviser Maya Harris (her mom). We sat down with the San Francisco–based entrepreneur (who's also a VP at Uber) to talk about this new age of feminism, the shortcomings of the tech industry, raising daughters, and how modern women can work with men to transcend the #MeToo era.

The '90s pop culture icon who rose to fame as an MTV news anchor thanks to her high-profile interviews with the likes of Tupac Shakur, Mariah Carey, and Hillary Clinton finds herself on the other side of the mic, talking with 7x7 about her second act—as a Berkeley-based photographer about to launch her first solo museum exhibition. The achievement, though, is a long time coming: For 15 years, she followed the lives of minor league draft picks for the Oakland As (a connection spurred by her husband, baseball superfan and Moneyball author Michael Lewis) for the series that would become Fantasy Life: Baseball and the American Dream, the images of which now hang in the private collections of museums including SFMOMA and LACMA. Her latest project, entitled Surface Tension, is on view at Wellesley College's Davis Museum through June 9, 2019. 

A recovering Apple employee and former owner of San Francisco's Aquarius Records, Windy Chien is now fully and unapologetically exploring her creativity as a full-time artist, transforming rope into mesmerizing art installations that both honor and elevate the utility of the material. It all started with a humble personal exercise in 2016: the now-iconic Year of Knots, in which she learned how to make a new knot each day. Many momentous accomplishments have surfaced in its wake: Chien recently exhibited at Art Basel Miami Beach and created a rope installation at National Geographic HQ in Washington, DC. Look for her forthcoming book, from Abrams, later this year.

Berkeley-born Blindspotting writer/actor Rafael Casal isn't the first movie star we've interviewed, but he is definitely the funniest, most insightful, and the easiest to talk to. The up-and-comer exists in that almost-famous limbo between being mostly unrecognizable on the street and being a legit paparazzi target—and let us tell you, Casal is lovably normal and Bay Area to the bone. We chat about his 2018 film (which got kudos from fellow Bay star Ali Wong!).

The Berkeley-based chef and cooking teacher to Michael Pollan chats about the October 2018 debut of 'Salt Fat Acid Heat,' based on her NYT bestselling book of the same name.