“Most recently, the bushy beard’s masculinity has been turned off and instead adorned with flower power. A wacky new trend sees hipsters weave foliage into their facial hair. It’s emerging across boho America. Yes, men in Brooklyn, Portland and San Francisco are adorning their faces with blossoms, seemingly for the sole purpose of artistic portraits that have been taking over the social media with the hashtag #flowerbeards. It started gaining popularity on the social platform of Tumblr, when a blogger began “Will It Beard” project, and has since blossomed elsewhere around the Internet”. – Linda Sharkey via The Independent. (Photo by designsquish/Tumblr)

Jenny Parks is a scientific illustrator that also happens to be a shameless nerd, with a penchant for drawing animals, dinosaurs, imaginary creatures… and occasionally, people as cats. Somehow, she found herself with a bit of internet fame with the illustration ‘Doctor Mew’, and has been baffled ever since. With a BFA in illustration from the California College of the Arts, and a graduate degree in Science Illustration from UC Santa Cruz, she now resides in San Francisco as a freelance illustrator, fulfilling her destiny to make a living drawing cute, fuzzy things.

In this photo taken October 16, 2012 and provided by Oracle Team USA, crew members of the capsized Oracle Team USA AC72 boat are rescued after being swept past the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The America's Cup champion syndicate is assessing the damage to its 72-foot catamaran, after it capsized and was swept by a strong current more than four miles past the Golden Gate Bridge before rescue boats could control it. (Photo by Guilain Grenier/Oracle Team USA/Associated Press)

Nine years ago, Tom Carter traveled from San Francisco to China, responding to a job posting that turned out to be a scam. He managed to find another job as a teacher, and saved enough money to embark on a 56,000 km trip through all of China's 33 provinces that lasted two years. Carrying a camera – just a a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot – Carter captured some amazing images of the widely varying landscape, people, and architecture across the nation. Photo: Buddhist pilgrim family from Sichuan. (Photo by Tom Carter via The Atlantic)

A demonstrator wears a mask during a protest inside the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Civic Center station on August 15, 2011 in San Francisco, California. The hacker group “Anonymous” staged a demonstration at a BART station this evening after BART officials turned off cell phne service in its stations last week during a disruptive protest following a fatal shooting of a man by BART police. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Inspired by high school architecture class where he was assigned to create simple paper models using cut paper manilla folders, San Francisco-based designer Luca Iaconi-Stewart went home to begin construction on an extremely ambitious project: a 1:60 scale reproduction of a Boeing 777 using some of the techniques he learned in class. That was in 2008, when Iaconi-Stewart was just a junior in high school.

Take a walk on the wild side around some of the most down right dangerous places in the world - and all without leaving your desk, courtesy of Google Street View. Since 2007, Google's amazing technology has given people the chance to visit the Eiffel Tower, peer out over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge or walk along a beach in the Bahamas. But as well as mapping the tourist-friendly hotspots, Google also ventured into places you really wouldn't want to find yourself. Here is a collection of some the most notorious areas captured by the infamous roaming camera cars from around the UK and the world.

It has taken 3,000 hours and 34 years to make – but the results are incredible. Artist Scott Weaver has created a huge but incredibly detailed model of San Francisco using 100,000 toothpicks. The work entitled Rolling Through the Bay also doubles as a marble run. Ping pong balls dropped on several ramps at the top of the model follow several “tours” through the city. They pass matchstick replicas of sights such as Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge and the city's trademark terraced houses on steep hills.