Ali Wunderman
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2022 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year, bronze. Journalist, guidebook author for Belize + Iceland. Dog lover. San Franciscan.
Articles by Ali Wunderman
What Alaska and Hawaiian’s new premium investments mean for travelers
Summary San Francisco-based travel writer Ali Wunderman attended Alaska Air Group’s 2026 Investor Day events in Seattle on Sept. 29, getting an early look at Alaska’s plans to elevate the premium experience across the travel journey. New premium cabins, lounges, loyalty benefits and global growth underscore the next phase of Alaska Accelerate, as Alaska Air Group moves from integration to activation and builds a more global, premium and diversified airline.
The View from Room 200: Frank Jordan and the city that swings back
When a demonstration went sideways during his years as San Francisco police chief, Frank Jordan would be called before the Board of Supervisors to answer for it. Speakers lined up for hours: a broken arm, belongings seized, an assault by officers. Then, it was the chief’s turn. He didn’t raise his voice. He brought exhibits: police uniforms soaked in urine, a helmet with a face shield that had been split by a stick. He presented the facts as he saw them.
The View from Room 200: Art Agnos and the last vestige of progressive politics
Art Agnos stepped off a bus at 7th and Market streets in 1966. He had $500 in his pocket after a cross-country ride from Springfield, Mass. It was foggy. He had never been west of the Mississippi, and he’d assumed San Francisco would look something like San Diego. “I said, ‘Where the hell am I?’” he said in an interview with The Examiner. He figured it out fast.
Word on the Street: What is Vogue World, anyway?
If the Sphinx of Greek myth were to visit San Francisco today — or if one of the pair already guarding the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park finally spoke up — it might offer an inscrutable riddle. “What in the actual hell is Vogue World?” The event — which will next land in San Francisco in autumn 2027 after stops in New York, Paris, Milan and other cities — has never been clearly defined.
Beyond Napa: Three Escapes to California's Underrated Wine Country
Storrs Winery & Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains offers terroir-driven wines created through a combination of both organic and biodynamic farming practices. Napa and Sonoma will always have their devotees, but some of California’s most compelling wine stories are increasingly told elsewhere, in the regions the establishment has been slow to take seriously. As autumn turns the vineyards gold, three of them make the case for looking past the marquee names.
Project Open Hand Gala Toasts Nancy Pelosi
Project Open Hand had plenty to toast at its Hand to Hand Gala on September 18, aka National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day. More than 325 guests filled the San Francisco Design Center Galleria to mark a milestone four decades in the making: 30 million medically tailored meals served since San Francisco grandmother Ruth Brinker began cooking for neighbors with AIDS in 1985.
Word on the Street: A guide to Portola Music Festival for the middle-aged
I celebrated a birthday last week, propelling me another year closer to middle age. But if my sleep schedule has anything to say about it, I’m already there. Hence the need to plan ahead for this weekend’s Portola Music Festival, the dance-music party thrown at Pier 80 for a blissfully 21-and-over crowd (with respect to the youths, my last 18-and-over dance-music event at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium was chaotic: so much underage drinking resulting in underage puking in trashcans).
The View from Room 200: Dianne Feinstein and The City’s darkest hour
The mayor at the center of this conversation wasn’t in the room for it. Dianne Feinstein died in 2023, which means that to find out what she made of San Francisco — the city she inherited in blood in 1978 and handed off, remade, 10 years later — is to ask the people who spent their careers in her orbit. “This isn’t about what we thought about Dianne,” Jim Wunderman said, setting the terms. “This is about what Dianne thought about San Francisco.
The View from Room 200: Dianne Feinstein and The City’s darkest hour
The mayor at the center of this conversation wasn’t in the room for it. Dianne Feinstein died in 2023, which means that to find out what she made of San Francisco — the city she inherited in blood in 1978 and handed off, remade, 10 years later — is to ask the people who spent their careers in her orbit. “This isn’t about what we thought about Dianne,” Jim Wunderman said, setting the terms. “This is about what Dianne thought about San Francisco.
A Word on the Street exclusive: Nick Bosa, Tony Gemignani team up for limited-edition The Boss pizza
The pizza Tony Gemignani and Nick Bosa made together starts in Chicago. Bosa, the star defensive end for the San Francisco 49ers, is a great-grandson of Tony Accardo — the Chicago Outfit boss who once served as Al Capone’s bodyguard and ran the city’s mob for decades. Gemignani — San Francisco’s own 13-time World Pizza Champion — leaned right into it. “I heard he loved fennel, and I said, ‘Let me run with something,’” he said.
A Field Guide to the Power Players of San Francisco
San Francisco is only seven by seven miles, yet it sustains an unusually dense ecosystem of power: tech founders and union bosses, chefs and prosecutors, developers and fundraisers, and the society photographers who document them all. Few places pack such varied influence into so little terrain, however hilly it may be. The trained observer identifies these individuals the way a birder does: not by size or plumage, but by call.
Word on the Street: The view from Room 200
San Franciscans love to argue about The City. We are fluent in our own crises — the rents, the empty storefronts downtown, the Great Highway is a park, and then it’s not, but maybe it is. Everything is so back, we have reached a golden age of prosperity. All of this is true and none of it. But we argue in the present tense, as if the San Francisco we’re fighting over was immaculately concepted without a past, conjured whole sometime around 2020. How did we get here?
Word on the Street: Train comes home to the Haight
Haight Street was in full-blown block-party mode on Thursday thanks to a free concert thrown by Train, which got its start in San Francisco over 30 years ago. The group's 12th album, "Mad Dog in the Fog," dropped Friday, and they came to town to celebrate. Train is in the middle of its Drops of Jupiter: 25 Years in the Atmosphere tour, marking a quarter-century since the debut of one of the songs that made the band famous, with Barenaked Ladies and Matt Nathanson along for the ride.
Word on the Street: What would Anthony Bourdain do?
Nursing a beer alongside a plate of Sicilian sashimi at 8 a.m. at Swan Oyster Depot after a night (or three) of heavy drinking is, in fact, what Anthony Bourdain would do. I know because that’s what he did every time he came to San Francisco.
Word on the Street: Vallejo's LaRussell brings his backyard ethos to Stern Grove closeout weekend
Over the weekend, Stern Grove wrapped its 89th free season with an amphitheater packed beyond the tree line for Public Enemy on Saturday (with Al Green on deck for Sunday). The man handling the opening slot was a Vallejo rapper who’s made a whole philosophy out of the same idea as the festival: Everyone should be able to join, and the Bay Area should be proud.
Stern Grove Makes a Blanket Statement
There’s a particular San Francisco alchemy that only Stern Grove Festival can pull off: convincing the City’s most over-scheduled citizens to spend a Sunday genuinely relaxing on a blanket. Down the switchback path into that eucalyptus-and-redwood hollow — where the fog has been kindly parting just long enough — this summer’s free-concert series drew its usual improbable congregation of toddlers, day-drinkers and civic royalty to the same steep patch of ensconced magic.
Word on the Street: Conan O’Brien’s Outside Lands was one for the books
The rest of the world can have “Where’s Waldo?” Here in San Francisco, we will take our “Where’s Conan O’Brien at Outside Lands?” This year I drew the lucky straw and spotted the 6-foot-4-inch comedian in the crowd grooving to Wet Leg at the Lands End stage on Friday around 4 p.m., making me the first journalist to confirm a Conan sighting as far as I’m aware — if my Instagram video’s hyperlocal virality is any indication.
Word on the Street: On Ellis partnering with Dirtybird for its last free block party
When John Konstin Jr., my friend and Hella Local podcast co-host, told me he wanted to throw a dance party in the street outside of his 117-year-old steakhouse John’s Grill, I wondered if perhaps he was delusional. Sure, the restaurant had a history of closing the street for its famous Election Day parties, along with anniversaries and other major to-dos, but he was proposing to build an entire bridge between San Francisco’s elegant history and its dynamic future.
Word on the Street: What to eat at Outside Lands 2026
On a random early-summer day in 2014, I found myself in Golden Gate Park among a loose crowd watching a relatively unknown plaid-skirt-clad Charli XCX perform at a free festival put on by none other than Chipotle. It was the restaurant chain’s Cultivate San Francisco: Food, Music and Ideas Festival, and it sprung up at a time when nothing was hotter than San Francisco.
Doris Fisher: A Giant Among Giants
Doris Fisher was a visionary entrepreneur and patron of the arts. In a city of giants, Doris Fisher stood among the tallest. Born Doris Feigenbaum in 1931, she was a Stanford class of ’53 alum and a fixture in the fabric of San Francisco. She died peacefully at home on May 2, surrounded by family. She was 94. In 1969, Doris and her husband, Don Fisher, opened a little store on Ocean Avenue selling Levi’s and record albums. This small boutique grew into Gap Inc., and reshaped how America dresses.
Word on the Street: Today is the last day to nominate your San Franciscans of the Year
Last year, I had the honor of interviewing the 12 recipients of The Examiner’s second annual San Franciscans of the Year awards. I discovered that while all the awardees were singularly unique in their contributions to our community, they shared a devotion to San Francisco that has been integral in moving The City forward. Now, the San Franciscan of the Year award returns for 2026 — and once again, the ballot is in your hands.
Word on the Street: What’s the deal with dahlias?
The Dahlia Dell sits just below the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, and on the afternoon I visited it was 76 degrees and full of people enjoying a rare sunny July day. A man from the opera came through, and Dahlia Society of California member and volunteer Deborah Dietz asked him to sing to a dark-red bloom called a karma choc, a dazzling flower the color of molten chocolate. I asked her whether the flowers actually respond to that sort of thing — to people.
Word on the Street: Baghdad-by-the-Bot
Add to the list of things The City doesn’t need: op-eds written by a machine that has never flinched at the sound of someone saying “San Fran.” Your columnist, newly installed on the opinion desk at The Examiner, has been wading through the morning mail and discovering a curious thing — half of it was written by the same author.
Houston Meets Healdsburg at Christy Lynn’s Designer Luncheon
Move over, dinner and a show: Luncheon and a runway took center stage in July at Appellation Healdsburg, where Lisa Mirza Grotts and Lisa Palmer cochaired a luncheon celebrating Houston designer Christy Lynn Lee and her High Summer 2026 collection.
14th Annual VIP Pride Party Returns to San Francisco
San Francisco’s celebratory energy has been building all year, and Pride month delivered a true moment of joy: the return of the 14th Annual VIP Pride Party after a five-year hiatus. The event drew nearly 400 guests to The Holbrook House atrium on June 20 for a colorful evening benefiting the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation, primarily promoting their August 2 gala.
Travel to Iceland: How to have a responsible adventure in Reykjavík and beyond
Iceland has been a go-to destination for me for over a decade, so I was thrilled that Alaska Airlines launched a new seasonal nonstop service from Seattle to Reykjavík. It was a quick morning flight from my home airport of San Francisco to the Pacific Northwest, then only seven hours from wheels-up to the land of fire and ice. On my flight over, a flight attendant named Holly announced to the cabin that her sister was on board.
Word on the Street: Brooke Jenkins is rewriting what a DA’s office is for
There are only two places where California puts people on death row: San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in Marin County for men, and Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Many years ago, while visiting the former, I was told anecdotally that 95% of the women who end up in the latter are there because of men. When I repeated that statistic to District Attorney Brooke Jenkins during an interview about her new program, Project Restore, she didn’t flinch.
Word on the Street: Meet the Signal, San Francisco’s pro women’s volleyball team
After the Golden State Valkyries tipped off their inaugural WNBA season last year, a sell-out season with celebrity-packed courtside seats ensued, bringing an upswell of energy to women’s sports that it has always deserved but rarely received. The message to San Francisco and beyond was clear: Make room for female athleticism. Now, volleyball is ready to take the court — but before serving up its first season, The City’s new team needed a name. That’s where we came in.
Chase the 2026 solar eclipse with Alaska Airlines’ nonstop service to Iceland
Person using solar eclipse glasses to safely observe the sun during a celestial event, preventing eye damage outdoors One of the most anticipated travel moments of 2026 is on the horizon: the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse, when the moon will pass directly between Earth and the sun, briefly turning daylight into dusk and revealing the sun’s glowing corona.
Word on the Street: One city, one day and 136 ways to fall back in love with The City
It happened at Stern Grove, naturally. I was ensconced in the ivy shaking it to Major Lazer as they turned a Sunday afternoon into a rave, when a friend leaned over between beats and asked, “So what are you doing for One City Day?” I didn’t have an answer, which felt like showing up to Beach Blanket Babylon without a hat. But that’s the thing about San Francisco — our best ideas still travel by word of mouth.
Word on the Street: It’s officially cool to like San Francisco again
Don’t look now, but it’s cool to like San Francisco again. You can tell because the people who make these determinations have begun arriving to inform us. Anna Wintour’s bob was spotted sweeping down the City Hall steps last Thursday — sunglasses on, naturally, as our typical summer fog appears to be on vacation — and by nightfall she was being feted in Presidio Heights alongside the Currys, a Getty and enough social wattage to keep Illuminate’s “7x7” light installation running.
Word on the Street: What the Pope's encyclical on AI means for the city building it
On the morning of May 25, Pope Leo XIV released “Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” his sweeping first encyclical. By 5 a.m., Dr. Mark Shiffman, a professor of philosophy at Saint Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park and the founding director of the Institute for Philosophy, Technology, and Politics, was already awake and reading it. In San Francisco, he wasn’t alone.
Where to stay for the perfect Latin America getaway
Latin America is the kind of place that turns a trip into a lifelong obsession. The first time I visited another country was when the siren song of the rainforest brought me to Costa Rica, and since then, I have returned to this part of the world countless times. Alaska Airlines flies to four of the region’s most captivating destinations — Mexico, Costa Rica, Belize and Guatemala — and with Alaska Vacations, planning a visit has never been simpler.
‘I Like Me’: Colin Hanks talks about new John Candy doc and Giants baseball
Sacramento-born actor and documentarian Colin Hanks was at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco last week to screen “I Like Me,” his new star-studded documentary about John Candy, which is streaming on Amazon. We talked about Candy’s humanity, the legacy of Tower Records, and the indignity of being a Giants fan in Los Angeles. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Why did you build the film around John Candy’s famous line, “I Like Me”?
Rosé All Day in Huntington Park
Every year, the Nob Hill Association welcomes summer with its annual Rosé in the Park celebration in Huntington Park. This year’s event drew some 350 guests for an afternoon of neighborhood revelry. White picket fences surrounded a sumptuous array of Nob Hill’s finest food and a selection of rosé. The Huntington Hotel shrank down their signature chicken pot pies into single bites, while Osso Steakhouse Executive Chef Josh Saenz manned the grill with lamb skewers and beef yakitori.
Word on the Street: Pride and prejudice on display in the city of love
When my brother texted me Wednesday about nosebleed tickets for Sunday’s Giants game, I was excited. There’s no bad seat in the stadium, and there’s no number of games the Giants could lose that would make me stop being a fan. What they could do to weaken my lifelong loyalty, however, is exactly what they did between the text and the tickets: Pride Night. No, not the celebration of course, which has become a wonderful and routine occurrence across all the professional Bay Area sports teams.
Word on the Street: How San Francisco's counterculture built the boom that priced it out
In 1992, an 18-year-old UC Berkeley freshman named Brian Behlendorf had a problem: He loved rave music, but he was too young to get into the good parties. So the computer-science major built a mailing list — and one of the first websites in existence — to track down the parties he could attend. Behlendorf went on to lead development of the Apache web server — the software that powered much of the internet for two decades — and to serve as Burning Man’s first webmaster.
Word on the Street: Newly single, same city
A few weeks after my marriage ended, I found a perfect green parrot feather at Ina Coolbrith Park in Russian Hill. I was walking my dogs up to the bench at the Poet’s Corner, where we often sit and look north over the bay. At dusk, we share the spot with San Francisco’s improbable wild parrots, many of which overnight in the trees in and around the park. In my many visits there, I’ve never found a feather, so I took it as a sign from The City, a reward for my effort.
Word on the Street: Election-night parties prove politics cures the loneliness epidemic
“I hope you enjoy the returns,” my dad texted me as Election Day turned into Election Night. “Where are you camped out?” It was a great question without a simple answer. I had been invited to 10 Election Night parties and was aware of numerous more. Planning had begun days earlier with a flurry of group texts asking which ones I’d be attending and, crucially, when. Timing is everything when the night revolves around the 8:45 p.m. vote-count drop.
Word on the Street: Millennial nostalgia takes center stage at BottleRock
Other generations can hate on millennials all they want: it was our time to shine at BottleRock in Napa this past weekend. The sold out three-day music and food festival welcomed 45,000 attendees each day to watch performances from acts including Natasha Bedingfield, the Foo Fighters, Ludacris, Bush, and of course, the Backstreet Boys.
The fifth floor of the Academy of Art University Automobile Museum was standing room only on the evening of May 7, when the City’s fashion faithful turned out for the AAU School of Fashion’s spring runway show. Over 1,000 guests arrived to find handheld fans at every seat, welcome relief in a room that warmed fast as San Francisco’s best-dressed filled the space.
Bush’s Gavin Rossdale dives deep before BottleRock
While getting coffee on any given day, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale might collect five devastating stories before he sits down. Fans stop him constantly, he said in a recent interview, and what they tell him is never small. There was a fireman who heard "breathe in, breathe out" in his head as he ran into a burning building to rescue someone, and a cancer survivor Rossdale climbed off stage mid-set to hug. He’s approached by people mid-breakdown, mid-grief, mid-survival.
Why Belize in the off-season is the best-kept secret in the Caribbean
By Ali Wunderman for Alaska Airlines There’s a version of Belize that most travelers never see simply because they’ve been told to wait. Wait for the so-called “dry season.” Wait for peak travel windows. But if you wait, you might miss something special: Belize stripped of its crowds, softened by afternoon rain showers, and even more alive with festivals and cultural events.
Why Belize in the off-season is the best-kept secret in the Caribbean
There’s a version of Belize that most travelers never see simply because they’ve been told to wait. Wait for the so-called “dry season.” Wait for peak travel windows. But if you wait, you might miss something special: Belize stripped of its crowds, softened by afternoon rain showers, and even more alive with festivals and cultural events.
Word on the Street: Meet your new opinion editor
San Francisco has opinions the way it has fog: in great abundance, often arriving at inopportune moments and occasionally obscuring the view of everything else. Irreverent notions about The City got my career started when I was a young pup lampooning long restaurant lines during the tech boom of the 2010s. Now, they’ve brought me full circle as your new opinion editor at The Examiner.
Bring Change to Mind Boosts Teens’ Mental Health
The legacy of Robin Williams is felt worldwide, but nowhere was his singular gift for making people laugh felt more intimately than in San Francisco, where he grew up, worked and raised his family.
Word on the Street: Golden State of the debate
If politics were a sport, then candidate debates would be San Francisco’s playoffs. I know this because last year when I took a vacation, I spent a decent chunk of it watching the Warriors play in the actual NBA playoffs. And this week, during my final night on a much-needed trip, I skipped out on a fancy dinner with friends to observe seven top contenders for governor of California debate live from San Francisco via my laptop screen.
Word on the Street: How to explain Bay to Breakers to people outside SF
At first glance, Bay to Breakers looks like your average footrace. Runners wake up early and don numbered bibs, set their Strava apps to “go,” down some electrolyte gel and set off to achieve personal records. But the closer you look, the more unorthodox it becomes. Most of the participants are wearing costumes — with and without bibs. A lot of them appear to be tied together in a centipede formation, some are running the wrong direction dressed as salmon, and are those marathoners ... drunk?
Word on the Street: How to explain Bay to Breakers to people outside SF
At first glance, Bay to Breakers looks like your average footrace. Runners wake up early and don numbered bibs, set their Strava apps to “go,” down some electrolyte gel and set off to achieve personal records. But the closer you look, the more unorthodox it becomes. Most of the participants are wearing costumes — with and without bibs. A lot of them appear to be tied together in a centipede formation, some are running the wrong direction dressed as salmon, and are those marathoners ... drunk?
Tipping Point Community raises $40 million to ready Bay Area workers for AI economy
A landmark $25 million anchor gift from John and Sue Sobrato of the development firm Sobrato Organization leads a major new initiative to ensure the Bay Area’s low-income residents aren’t left behind as artificial intelligence reshapes employment opportunities across the region.
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