Sometimes you have a bad day. It happens. There isn't much you can do about it. The alarm goes off and you think, Great, here we go.

Marc Maron isn’t famous, but he should be. The stand-up comedian and ex-Albuquerquean has appeared on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” three-dozen times and “The Late Show With David Letterman” four times, and he’s had two of his own half-hour specials on Comedy Central. He was one of the voices behind the now-defunct “Morning Sedition” radio show on Air America. Plus, he was the irate promoter in Almost Famous (an appropriate title for Maron) who orders his minions to “Lock the gates!” on the protagonists’ hurtling tour bus.

Stone Mountain Bead Gallery supplies artists, but the East Nob Hill store is also like a museum. Thousands of styles, shapes and colors fill plastic crates in space’s center, along the walls and inside display cases. Customers—established artists, collectors and kids making earrings for their mothers—are handed a tray for sorting as they shop.