News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
When in-your-face filmmaker Michael Moore walks in the door with his crew, the usual response is fear. But when he wheeled up to Fillmore’s Elite Cafe on a recent Thursday evening and alighted from a black SUV with dark-tinted windows, diners at the sidewalk tables stood and applauded. Moore had just come from the Clay…
Story and photograph by JEAN COLLIER HURLEY This is a story about kindness, determination, beauty — and an unusual bougainvillea plant. Over the years, the front yard of the little house at 1923 Webster Street had become a junkyard, its wooden fence a dilapidated eyesore. The kindly owner, who had raised her family there, was too…
By THOMAS REYNOLDS When the first Monday in October arrives and the United States Supreme Court takes the bench after its summer recess, all eyes will be on the newest justice, Sonia Sotomayor. But Lisa Middione, co-owner with chef Carlo Middione of Vivande on Fillmore Street, will be thinking instead of two justices from the…