Fueled by the second tech boom, San Francisco’s skyline is currently undergoing rapid change. More than 20 construction cranes crowd the downtown horizon, and more are on their way. With the transformation of the Mid-Market area, anchored by Twitter’s new headquarters in the old Furniture Mart, a stroll through the city today can feel like a never-ending construction zone.

Over the last 25 years, Toronto-based designers David Powell and Fenwick Bonnell, the founding principals of Powell & Bonnell, have earned a reputation for getting into the minds of their clients. The team eschews trends and flash and instead designs residences that are uniquely tailored to specific personalities and spaces.

Simple, streamlined, and “just enough”—the economical aesthetics of Japanese retailer Muji and influential product designer Naoto Fukasawa pair perfectly. Since 2002, Fukasawa has been a product designer and advisory board member at Muji (the company's name is short for Mujirushi Ryohin, or “no-brand, quality goods”).

Once home to such notorious inmates as Al Capone and George "Machine Gun" Kelly, San Francisco Bay’s Alcatraz Island welcomed 11,166 visitors for the opening of "@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz." The Beijing-based artist and political activist created seven new site-specific pieces to be shown in the former federal penitentiary through April 26, 2015.

Top 10 outdoor activities and events in San Francisco: Explore San Francisco's outdoor spaces, parks and beaches and you'll be in a world of walks, public art and … street slides

When captured beautifully, people are relatable— they are you and me. The more local and specific a story is, the more universal it becomes. Cinema taps into that human connection more powerfully and more entertainingly than any other medium. So see films from other countries, and don’t think of them as foreign.

For decades, busloads of guitar-toting dreamers have disembarked in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, makers of all stripes are migrating to the creative capital, reinventing everything from moonshine to blue jeans. Jack White, with his Third Man Records studio and shop (above), is just one new voice in a changing Music City.

When the days get long, Copenhagen’s cobblestone streets blossom with bicycles, café tables, and jazz bands. Check out the lively music scene during the annual Copenhagen Jazz Festival. In between gigs, explore this compact capital on foot or bike, taking in the local shops and cultivating a deci...

Known as the “live music capital of the world,” Austin earns its title every spring during the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. At this year’s event, March 13 to 18 (with interactive and film segments starting on March 9), see a wide variety of performers—from unsigned soul singers to legendary bluegrass bands—play outdoor BBQ joints, small bars, and downtown street corners.

Just north of downtown Portland, Ore., a neighborhood of former warehouses opens up to reveal a culinary hot spot. Once home to bustling factories and rail yards, Portland’s newly hip neighborhood, the Pearl District, gained its nickname when the area’s art galleries opened in the mid-1980s. “All these crusty warehouses, they’re sort of like oysters on the outside,” says Heidi Burnette, co-owner of local Forktown Food Tours (forktownfoodtoursportland.com).

The community is the canvas for multimedia artist Keir Johnston. For Keir Johnston, the line between art and civic engagement isn’t just blurred — it’s often never there to begin with. As a founding member of Amber Art and Design, a Philadelphia collective devoted to art as social practice, Johnston collaborates with communities of color to tell stories that have been overlooked by mainstream media.

It’s become harder to both accumulate and cash in on frequent flier miles. it just takes some work. Here are some tips on maximizing your miles and dollars. Figuring out how to transform frequent flier miles into those elusive free tickets has long been a frustrating process. Travelers have had to sort through a tangle of blackout dates, limited availability, fuel surcharges, and increased fees for bookings.

Even among the happiest couples, conflicts can arise on long trips. (Who gets to decide where to eat? Why isn’t the hotel room nicer?) We asked 11 well-traveled pairs how they’ve managed to explore the world together and stay together. From 14-hour bus rides to missing plane tickets to getting caught without shelter in a hail and lightning storm, here’s how to navigate the occasional bumps in the road.

On the night of ZOZI Guru Dean Karnazes’ 30th birthday, he felt a powerful urge to run. So, at 11 p.m., after an evening of downing tequila shots with his buddies, he impulsively hit the road. Never mind that he hadn’t run in more than a decade, he was determined to complete a mile for every year of his life.

In 1997, ZOZI Guru Chris Lieto set a goal. The then 25-year-old wanted to be a Ironman triathlete, but he knew that turning pro wasn’t going to be enough for him. He wanted to be the best. “In most people’s eyes, I set a goal that was crazy lofty, totally unachievable, and ridiculous,” says Lieto.

It’s hard to remember sometimes, but tinder was once a way to start a flame, not find one. After you set up camp, build graduated woodpiles, ranging in size from tinder (dry, snappable twigs) to kindling (about a nickel wide) to actual logs. It takes two handfuls of tinder to make a campfire go right.