Le Labo has completely remade the storefront at 2238 Fillmore.

“FRESH PERFUME IS THE BEST,” proclaims Meg Christensen, manager of Le Labo, the scent emporium that opened during the holidays at 2238 Fillmore Street. The spare shop has no perfume in stock, but will mix one of its 12 fragrances on the spot while the customer waits.

Costs range from $58 for a 15-ml. portion — best for newcomers who want to try a scent on for size — to $700 for a 500-ml. grand size.

The most popular offering so far is Santal 33. The 33 signifies the number of ingredients that go into the mix, with the end result said to be conjure up the “sensual universality” of the Marlboro man — or rather the Marlboro person, given that all Le Labo scents are deemed to be unisex.

“Great fragrances don’t have a gender,” says Christensen, noting that some of the scents are also produced in lotions and long-lasting silicone-based balms.

The shop also carries a limited home collection of room sprays and candles. And a couple of scents of eco-friendly detergents are also offered, mostly for use on delicate handwashables. All products are vegan and, while synthetics are sometimes used, they are also derived from nature.

The founders of Le Labo — Frenchmen Fabrice Penot and Edouard Roschi — named their company of hand-mixed scents Le Labo, or “the lab,” as a rebellion against traditional perfumeries. They are striving to reinvent everything from the mode of manufacturing through the packaging that contains the final product.

“They’re not big on signage, branding or advertising,” explains Christensen. “There are no photos of beautiful people posing to sell the perfume. They want it to speak for itself.”

Indeed, beyond a small sign proclaiming “Perfume yourself responsibly,” there are few clues to what lies within in the gutted and refurnished storefront. The shop’s entrance has been reconfigured to open directly onto the street, eliminating the stairway. Unlike the former occupant, the gift shop Aumakua, which was stocked chock-a-block with jewelry, wall hangings, table ornaments, buddhas, toys, cards, statues and more — the new shop is spare. A few bottles are set on a few sparse shelves, with several eyedroppers and glass stir sticks nearby. Sinks, metal carts and a gleaming refrigerator are contained with the space refurbished with natural wood floors and walls made of brick and pressed tin. The centerpiece is a box called an olfactionary that holds small bottles of scents, numbered from 1 to 40.

“Most people have been drawn in by the store’s design,” Christensen says. “They walk around unsure at first. Then they start smelling and they fall in love.” Browsers and buyers are encouraged to spray the bottled offerings on paper wands, then sniff. She says the new neighbors are naturals.

“In San Francisco, people are more careful. They take the time to think about things,” she says. “People come in and spray, then walk around and really feel the scents. That would be our suggestion, but people do it here anyway.”

Christensen says Le Labo’s products are best used right away, rather than stored and saved. “Fresh perfume is the opposite of wine, which becomes more dynamic and more complex as it ages,” she says. “In perfume, the top notes or the lightest molecules start to falter with time. The oils start oxidizing with the alcohol.”

Unlike some other manufacturers, Le Labo cautions against wearing more than one scent at a time. “Our fragrances were designed by the best noses in the world,” says Christensen. “Layering is not recommended.”
Fillmore Street is the fifth boutique for Le Labo, which opened its flagship store in New York in 2006, followed by shops in Los Angeles, Tokyo and London. The line is also available at Barney’s.

Each of the cities with a Le Labo boutique has a scent exclusively offered there. L.A.’s Musc 25, for example, is described as “white, angelic, very musky and aldehyic.” San Francisco’s signature scent is not yet available. “Great scents are not on a schedule,” says Christensen.

Photograph of Gerri Nuval by Jim Resonable

Gerri Nuval was a pre-med student at San Francisco State, working part time at a little lingerie shop called Victoria’s Secret on Union Street, when she got sick and the doctors told her to slow down. She pushed through the pain and realized she had found what she really wanted to do: “to be around beauty and to make people feel beautiful,” she says.

She went back to SF State and got her B.A. in design, with a minor in business administration, all while working at Victoria’s Secret.

“I trained with Victoria’s Secret when they were still a small company,” Nuval says. “They had a small boutique shop on Union Street. Here is where the seed was planted. I knew that once they became corporate, they were going to miss out on specialized customer service. I knew then that I had to open my own store, my dream.”

So she learned merchandising, business administration and management and then took the next logical step: She opened My Boudoir Lingerie in June 1998 on Fillmore Street. In 2009 she moved back to Union Street, near where she had started.

“When I look at my store today, here on Union Street again, I see all the tears, the sweat and the hard work,” she says. “A sense of accomplishment is when a customer walks out of my shop, truly happy and confident about her beauty.”

Read more

Local cyclist Doug Rappaport is a big fan of Bespoke, a new neighborhood bike shop.

FIRST PERSON | Doug Rappaport

Offering handmade bicycles and promising precision maintenance services, Bespoke Cycles is now open at 2843 Clay Street, near Scott, the storefront previously occupied for many years by Tony Kitz Oriental Rugs. As a nearby neighbor and an avid cyclist, I’m excited — because in addition to selling custom bicycles and top-end equipment, Bespoke is quickly becoming a hub for local cycling with bicycle-related events and rides.

I met the three owners of the shop about a decade ago when they worked together at City Cycle at the corner of Steiner and Union. Back then, City Cycle was owned by Clay Mankin, a charismatic character who loved cycling and life. His shop was known as a great place to work and became a gathering point for local cyclists, especially on Saturdays for the weekly 9 a.m. ride.

We’d meet in front of City Cycle and, even though the shop didn’t officially open until 10, Clay would always be there just in case someone needed a quick fix — which was most often on the house. He rarely rode with us because someone had to mind the store, but his easy ability to get along with everyone went with us on the ride. We had as much fun talking as we did challenging each other up Mt. Tamalpais, and I’m fortunate to have made some lasting friendships from that group.

Sadly, while riding his bike from San Francisco to Santa Barbara in celebration of his 50th birthday in 2005, Clay suffered a fatal heart attack in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Clay’s “memorial and celebration” filled the Great American Music Hall. I was amazed by how many lives he touched and I left that evening reminded of the personal mantra Clay and I shared: Enjoy each and every day.

The weekly rides dwindled and came to an end after that. And ultimately, Clay’s influence on City Cycle faded and the core employees left as new management turned it into a more traditional bike shop. Not only did I sorely miss Clay and our talks about life, but I knew of no other bike shop that sold only products it believed in, had perfectionists as mechanics and employees such as Ari Bronsztein, who — like a mad scientist with a tape measure, plumb line and computer imaging — spent an hour adjusting my position and alleviated the knee pain that had plagued me for years.

Eventually rumor spread that Ari and two of Clay’s other former employees, Aaron Allen and Stefan Paszke, were contemplating opening their own shop to carry on where Clay left off. Fate first brought those two together in 1999, when Aaron broke his ankle during a mountain bike race and Stefan stopped to help.

None of the three friends had any retail experience, but with the help of a number of Clay’s former customers, who pitched in to help draft business plans, negotiate leases and secure funding, they got Bespoke Cycles up and running.

Bespoke — offering bicycles and accessories — is located at 2843 Clay Street.

The new neighbors have been supportive, too. “All we’ve received is warmth,” Aaron said recently, noting that many locals have stopped by to offer welcoming good wishes — and even homemade meals — since they made the move to Clay Street.

Bespoke continues to focus on custom and semi-custom bicycles and other top-end equipment and clothing. It also offers a host of bicycle-related services including routine maintenance and repairs, custom-made orthotics and computer-assisted bicycle fittings. Future plans include group rides, community cycling events and even yoga classes for bicyclists — all activities Clay Mankin would have been proud to support.

Doug Rappaport, a criminal defense lawyer in San Francisco, lives in the neighborhood.

A lucky group: from left, breast cancer survivors Joanna Horsfall, Sarah Morse, Eileen Long, Carrie Sherriff, Barrie Grenell, Leigh Blicher, Jean Hurley and Margo Perin.

FIRST PERSON | Margo Perin

A group of women gathered a few weeks ago for our annual get-together, this year at the home of Fillmore photographer Jean Hurley. We all love to eat and everybody brought something for the potluck, which was, as usual, plentiful and delicious.

As we sat around the exquisitely appointed table, we caught up with each other’s news. The first question, spoken directly or not, was whether anyone had a recurrence of breast cancer. Each of us breathed a sigh of relief: No.

The walls of our hostess’s home were hung with zen-like images of stones and shells in the sand on the beach she had photographed during and after her father’s death, now arranged to reflect a calm and peaceful environment, “like the calm after the storm of breast cancer,” she says.

Jean had just completed a master’s degree — her third — in liberal arts at Stanford. I — a writer and teacher at the county jail and the most anxious of the lot — had arrived first to bag the only guaranteed parking spot in front of Jean’s house. Sarah, an author and comic savant who keeps us laughing, was next, followed by Barrie and Carrie. Barrie, whose literary presence carries an aura reminiscent of the Bloomsbury era, is a grant writer with a veterans organization. Carrie, a real estate agent, is all strength and experience, with a no-flies-on-Frank nature that keeps people on their toes. Joanne is a delight — a healthcare professional and an affectionate Brit with a wry sense of humor.

Bringing up the rear were Leigh, rushing with her new haircut from the video business she and her husband own, and Eileen, who was giggling and breathless at leaving her two kids and her restaurant in the Haight.

Our group has been meeting for nearly 13 years. It includes every one of the original members who came together in the long winter of 1999 when we were randomly selected to attend a 12-week breast cancer trial run by UCSF and California Pacific Medical Center called the Breast Cancer Personal Support and Lifestyle Intervention Trial. It consisted of two programs comparing how group participation affects women’s experiences with breast cancer.

We were selected for the program incorporating alternative and complementary techniques such as guided imagery, meditation, dance and yoga, while other applicants attended a more traditional support group. We all had the option of attending individual and group art therapy at UCSF’s Art for Recovery program founded and run by Cindy Perlis, which works with adults and children who experience cancer.

Art therapy was our group’s favorite and most meaningful activity. We created squares for a communal breast cancer quilt, drew and painted and made masks and plaster casts. With encouragement to express ourselves freely, we were able to talk and create art about things we couldn’t communicate to our nearest and dearest family and friends, let alone colleagues or strangers. In these sessions, we confronted our fear, our pain and our grief at what could have been our imminent death. And we discovered hope.

Sarah compares the first time we met to going on a blind date. “We didn’t know what to expect, but we fell in love,” she says. For 12 weeks, we met biweekly for two hours or more. We talked, laughed, cried and made plaster busts of our newly disfigured chests. All of us had been diagnosed with breast cancer only a few months earlier.

All these years later, none of us has had a recurrence. Jean says it’s most likely due to early diagnosis, good treatment and determination. Eileen puts it down to divine providence. Carrie stresses the mix of good allopathic and alternative medical treatment. And Barrie believes it’s a combination of diet and exercise and mood.

But Leigh speaks for the entire group when she says that much of it is due to plain good luck. “I’d like to think it’s because we take great care of ourselves or because we deserve it,” she says. “But honestly, I believe it is very much a matter of good fortune.”

Joanna adds: “I think we are a lucky group. If you believe that your immune system can be strengthened by dealing with stress — and I guess I do — then our program provided us with a process to deal with the deep-seated stress and grief associated with the disease and the losses it created.”

Sarah was typically irreverent: “While I’d love to think our good fortune is a result of our learning stress-relief and relaxation techniques, especially prancing around the room imagining we were horses, it’s most likely a combination of first-rate medical treatment, good genes, healthy lifestyles and a magnum of good luck,” she says, drawing laughs.

Several women who attended the trial program were not so lucky. In the follow-up support group, we watched in fear and grief as this frightening and painful disease took our “cancer sisters” from us. But we are the lucky ones. With our ever-increasing love and closeness, we continue to support one another — and celebrate our good fortune.

The new program for pregnant women 21 and under is a collaboration between the clinic and the UCSF School of Nursing, which previously offered these services at Mt. Zion Hospital.

“Pregnant teens need high quality, accessible prenatal services,” says Carlina Hansen, executive director of the clinic. “We are proud to partner with UCSF to offer these services and to help young women and families in our community.”

Working alongside UCSF faculty, nursing students will get intensive training in prenatal care, which will in turn increase their future employment opportunities. And the hope is that students and volunteers working in the project will be inspired to become health care professionals serving underserved communities.

While the clinic does not turn away women who need care, the new project focuses on teenage mothers, particularly African Americans in the Western Addition. Needs assessments conducted with area community leaders indicate access to health care resources and information in the area is poor and that teen pregnancy rates are higher than average. Citywide, African Americans have the highest teen birth rate of all demographic groups and an infant mortality rate 2.5 times higher than whites and Hispanics. A high percentage of the Western Addition teens also have low incomes.

EARLIER: “Health care for women by women“

Photograph of Beverly Weinkauf, proprietor of Toujours, by Susie Biehler

By Barbara Kate Repa

Owning her own lingerie shop was quite literally a dream for Beverly Weinkauf. “I actually had a dream about a candy store with large black and white diamonds on the floor,” she says, “and shelves of apothecary jars full of panties.”

Then, driving home from the airport one night, she saw a “for lease” sign at 2484 Sacramento. It had a hauntingly familiar black and white floor — and the former occupants had operated a vintage candy store. “That gave me the confidence to know that this was my time — and that was my space,” she says as she prepares to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Toujours, her elegant jewel box of a lingerie shop, on October 26.

“I’m ready to celebrate,” says Weinkauf.

But 25 years ago, she was teaching at an elementary school and working part time at a lingerie store in Marin County. “After two years in that store, I knew I could do it all — windows to merchandising,” she says. “Because I loved it all.”

Her parents, now deceased, were lukewarm about her business proposition at first. “They said: ‘We sent you to college to sell underwear?’ ” she recalls. But they came around when they realized how much she wanted to follow her dream, even putting up the $20,000 seed money, which was all it took to start a business back then. They had, perhaps unwittingly, nurtured what she calls her inner “compulsive intuitive shopper” from an early age. She recalls that when she was 16, her father insisted she go with him to Robertson’s department store in South Bend, Indiana, where they lived, to ask about getting a job. She was hired, and there and then began honing her appreciation of working with beautiful things.

She credits her mother, a seamstress, for instilling in her a sense of well-being, for paying attention to how she looked when leaving the house — and for buying her a bra-slip in high school. “So this business is in my DNA,” Weinkauf says.

She also says she was beckoned by the location near Fillmore Street and the energy of the city that fills the air as she crosses the bridge driving in from Marin.

“I consider Fillmore to be the best neighborhood,” she says. “It doesn’t go out of its way to get a ‘big this’ or a ‘tacky that’ — and its not crawling with bars.” She adds: “A large number of our customers are right here. We do their special orders. We watch them change over the years. They’re like family.”

The neighborhood has also changed over the years since she opened her shop. Weinkauf recalls nostalgically when Peet’s was Sugar’s Broiler, the greasy spoon rarely open for business at the corner of Fillmore and Sacramento. Across the street, the Coffee Bean & Tea was the Hillcrest, the casual eatery that felt like a living room. A few doors south, Mudpie was still Fillamento, the street’s gift emporium, which sold everything from quirky salt and pepper shakers to high-end bedsheets.

The economy felt more hopeful back then, too, but Weinkauf says the current quavery climate has taught her valuable lessons in buying more frugally from the 40 or so vendors who help keep the tiny shop stocked with bras, panties, bustiers, garter belts, gloves, slips, robes, stockings scarves, gloves, jewelry and scents.

And her customers have remained loyal, even though the city is now home to 11 lingerie shops, compared to five when she first opened.
Toujours’ customers range in age from 16 to 84 — mostly women, with some men shopping for the women in their lives. Their shopping styles tend to differ, with women taking 30 to 45 minutes to make a purchase, and men getting the deed done in 5 to 10 — some requesting plain brown bags to discreetly hide their goods.

Weinkauf says the shop’s cozy space and locale — a couple of doors up Sacramento, a bit removed from Fillmore Street’s bustle — is also a boon in that way. “Being around the corner is good for something as intimate as what I sell,” she says.

In fact, there’s something quaint and quiet about the way she does business — maintaining a Toujours website since 1997, for example, although shoppers can’t purchase online. “People can call and order, but we urge them to come in,” she says. “We prefer customers who have shopped in our store before. When we know what lines they prefer, we call or e-blast those who like them.”

The lines she carries tend to be classic, French and romantic: Lou, Huit, Chantelle, Lise Charmel. But she also makes room for others including Pluto from Belgium and local designer Lisa Lagevin of Nightlife, who makes handpainted silk kimonos.

“We cover basics as well as the more playful items,” she says. “We have serious bras with serious details in sizes ranging from 32A to 38G.”

The collection is carefully curated. “We spend a lot of time on the texture and feel of merchandise,” she says. “We try on everything and test drive it before we buy.”

Her co-pilot in test driving is often Brooke Welch, a longtime sales associate. “She can start a sentence and I can finish it,” says Weinkauf. “We have similar visions for Toujours and its merchandise.”

Welch seconds that emotion, adding that she’s learned a lot about the lingerie industry by working elbow to elbow with Weinkauf on and off for about a decade.

Toujours owner Beverly Weinkauf and her colleague Brooke Welch.

“Bev has an understanding of quality goods and has honed her eye for that,” Welch says. “She knows what women want and what doesn’t work for them.”

But Welch says the biggest lesson she’s learned has nothing to do with lace or lingerie. “One of the things I love most about Toujours is that while we have many loyal male customers, by and large, it’s a women’s shop,” she says. “On any given day, four or five women will stop by just to say hi, or show off a new haircut, or let us know they love their new robe. That ‘town market atmosphere’ is unique — a community stop where people feel comfortable sharing their lives. And Bev has cultivated that.”

Weinkauf is also a stickler for a good fit, urging women to take the steps that most skip: being measured and trying on different sizes in different brands. She confesses she recently had dinner with a few women friends and noticed that one seemed a little droopy. “I took her into the bathroom and adjusted her bra straps,” she says. “She came out of there with a whole new attitude — looking like she was in her 20s again.”

The tagline for Toujours is “Begin a Love Affair.” Weinkauf was inspired to coin it because it sounds “come hither” and romantic. “Lingerie invites people to linger. Its energy is not rushed,” she says.

And neither is hers anymore. “By the time you get to middle age, you know what makes you peaceful,” she says. “I walk in the store and it’s an atmosphere of warmth, joy and pure peacefulness.”

Toujours, at 2484 Sacramento, is kicking off its week-long 25th anniversary celebration week on October 15 with champagne and a breast-shaped “boob cake.”

Photograph of Julian Guthrie on Fillmore Street by Chris Hardy

FIRST PERSON | Julian Guthrie

Having lived in San Francisco for nearly 20 years and worked as a reporter first for the Examiner and now for the Chronicle, I have come to see the different ways neighborhoods in the city are defined. For many, the center of a neighborhood is a coffee house, or a park, or a commercial strip to stroll. For me, it’s all those things.

The area around Fillmore Street has long been my home. I jog the steps of Alta Plaza and spend countless hours at the playground with my son. We love the yogurt at Fraiche, the pastries at the Boulangerie and the Fillmore Bakeshop — and we adored its predecessor, Patisserie Delanghe. We’re regulars at Delfina and Dino’s and Florio and SPQR.

This neighborhood works, with its mix of young and old and in between, its families and dogs, its parks and shops. And while countless amazing stores and restaurants have come and gone (Fillamento, the Brown Bag and Bittersweet, to name a few), the relaxed character of the neighborhood remains the same. It’s what drew me here, and what keeps me here.

In recent years, I’ve learned of yet another way people define their neighborhoods: by a house of worship. My new book, The Grace of Everyday Saints — published August 18 — is about a group of people who found a strong sense of community through their spiritual home, St. Brigid, the muscular stone church at the corner of Broadway and Van Ness Avenue.

The parish, established in 1863, has always drawn people from Russian Hill, Nob Hill, the Marina and Pacific Heights. The Catholics of St. Brigid marked certain indelible moments of their lives there: baptisms, confirmations, confessions, weddings and funerals. They found comfort in the routine of sitting in those solid oak pews for Sunday Mass. Many told me they had moved into the neighborhood because of St. Brigid. Some had come from across the globe — from Mexico, Burma, the Philippines, Ireland, Italy — and settled into this corner of San Francisco, attaching themselves to the neighborhood because of the church.

St. Brigid Church at Broadway and Van Ness Avenue

Then, in late 1993, the San Francisco Archdiocese made an announcement that brought shock and sadness: St. Brigid, along with Sacred Heart on Fillmore and a dozen other Catholic churches across San Francisco, would close. There were fewer Catholics in the city. Fewer men were entering the priesthood. Buildings damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake needed costly repairs.

St. Brigid parishioners reacted with anger, grief and — ultimately — resistance. The Grace of Everyday Saints, which began as a series of stories I wrote for the Chronicle, is about their struggle. I’ve spent nearly six years with this band from St. Brigid, struck by their devotion to this place they called home.

I also fell for the people — some great San Franciscans who embody the best of the city. There’s Robert Bryan, an appellate attorney who lives with his wife, Nicole, near the church in Pacific Heights. Bryan was just becoming a Catholic, but vowed to fight for the church as tenaciously as he would for a client on death row. There’s Father Cyril O’Sullivan, a young anti-establishment priest from Ireland who had to decide whether to follow the will of his superiors or the wish of his people. And there’s Joe Dignan, a reluctant Catholic who found answers to his inner turmoil at the same time he became a leader of the St. Brigid pack.

There are many other great characters: Carmen Esteva, a Filipina who moved a half-block from St. Brigid so she could attend Mass daily, believing it was the only way to save her soul. There is a humble housepainter, David Hansell, who took it upon himself to care for the church for years after it was closed, repairing the doors, removing graffiti, plucking weeds from its surroundings, treating it as a comatose loved one who would eventually awake. There is Siu-Mei Wong, who converted to Catholicism from Buddhism and forged a family from strangers.

And there is an image that still haunts: a solitary candle burning on the front steps of St. Brigid that its parishioners managed to keep aflame for 10 years as they took the battle from their sunlit sanctuary all the way to the steps of the Vatican in Rome. While these parishioners without a parish didn’t get everything they set out for, they found faith, joy and family redefined — and won unimagined victories along the way.

The altar at St. Brigid Church, which served the neighborhood for more than a century.

By Barbara Kate Repa

Yoga.
Trance dancing.
Nurturing food from the earth.
Music by the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart.
A crowd of true believers at the Fillmore.

It sounds like the ’60s all over again. But this time, in a wholly wholesome good way, it’s a unique happening called Wanderlust coming to the historic Fillmore Auditorium on May 21.

The idea for the event came from a New York couple with California roots whose lives took some serendipitous turns. Jeff Krasno was already managing, producing and recording musicians when his wife Schuyler Grant decided to open a yoga studio.

“At the same time my music business was taking off, I also saw the growth of the yoga industry and became very close to its value and cultures,” Krasno says. “I thought perhaps we could marry the music with that progressive, social, environmental community to create a large-scale event.”

Grant’s yoga studio was a success, even though she says she was a reluctant yogi. “I grew up in Sebastopol,” she says. “My parents were of the old school yoga variety — really truer to more classical yoga practice than what we do these days, jumping around on our mats.” She adds: “A big component of their yoga involved belching, which I really hated. There was definitely some cleansing going on. I just didn’t want to have to hear it.”

But Grant became a devotee around age 20 when a friend encouraged her to take up yoga emphasizing movement to help overcome back pain from a childhood injury. It worked, she says, and transformed her views on pain and wellness — and yoga.

“I still have yet to become a convert to the belching yoga, much to my parents’ chagrin,” Grant says. “But they’re the best examples of a lifelong yoga practice. They still do stretching, breathing and meditating — and don’t make it super-precious. They wouldn’t know it, but they’re a big inspiration to me.”

Krasno and Grant moved into an old brownstone in Tribeca just after 9/11, hoping to calm their nerves and find a place to allow his new business, Velour Music Group, to flourish. “Everyone was scrambling to do something positive then,” Grant recalls. “So I decided to start a side business, a yoga studio, in our new building. Ten years later, we’ve taken over three of the building’s four floors. Now we’re going for world domination,” she laughs.

Krasno and his business partner Sean Hoess now produce and coordinate the Wanderlust events. But the idea of creating a yoga and music event arrived as something of a thunderbolt. Krasno was reluctantly accompanying Grant on a yoga retreat — and he found that the participants were not the granola-eating airy-fairy types he feared they would be.

Grant remembers: “He kept saying, ‘These people are so cool. They’re like normal people — not like yoga people at all. They’re funny and cultured and interesting and fun-loving. It would be amazing to get these people together, add a music festival and blow it up 50 times the regular size.’ ”

The first Wanderlust event was held at Lake Tahoe in 2009. It combined music, yoga, organic food and nature.

“There’s a growing community of people who are interested in living what we call ‘the mindful life.’ They’re not hippies anymore, but mainstream,” says Krasno. “We also love to have fun and book great bands and DJs. There are fun underpinnings to a serious message.”

The success of the initial event primed the pump for additional festivals in 2010, including the first event at the Fillmore. San Francisco seemed like a perfect place to spread the word, says Krasno, who was friends and fraternity brothers with Bill Graham’s son in college. Krasno says he’d been to the Fillmore maybe 100 times and had formed a business relationship with Michael Bailey, who has been booking concerts at the Fillmore since 1988.

“One day I called up Michael and said, ‘What do you think about 250 people doing yoga on the floor of the Fillmore?’ ” Krasno says.

The idea was too perfect to resist. But there are challenges to the forum — not the least of which is the logistical difficulty of cramming hundreds of yoga mats into the Fillmore’s auditorium. To make that work, the yoga portion of the event is limited to 250 people. Once the mats are rolled up, there’s room for 800 or more to attend the music festival later that night.

Krasno says the biggest challenge at the first event at the Fillmore last year was the unknown. “The Fillmore never had an event like this. It’s a music venue, known for beer,” he says. “We were concerned folks would get drunk by osmosis.”

Fillmore management calmed those fears by bringing in an ecological clean-up crew and burning incense to help create the right atmosphere in the auditorium.

Another surprise was the novel scene outside. “I’ve been to the Fillmore so many times for rock shows,” says Krasno. “I’m used to seeing the long line that goes down Geary, with people smoking cigarettes, dressed in rock and roll clothes.”

But what he saw before last year’s Wanderlust was different: “Geary was crammed with 250 people dressed in yoga gear all lined up the same way,” he says. Those near the doors stood on a 40-foot yoga mat unfurled like a red carpet. Inside, it became a yoga rave. “Legendary yogi Shiva Rea did amazing things with movement, weaving in the music,” says Krasno. “And this year we’ve got a lot of great music planned. We reached out to Mickey Hart, who’s best known as the Grateful Dead drummer, but he’s also a spiritual guy and has been involved lately in a lot
of interesting world drumming projects.” Hart will play drums with a DJ and improvised music along with the yoga. Then, after the yoga ends, Krasno predicts: “People will rock it out and start dancing.”

Organic food will be served in the Fillmore’s poster room upstairs.

Photographs of the first event at the Fillmore in 2010 courtesy of the Wanderlust Festival.

This year, local resident Stephanie Snyder, a longtime teacher at YogaTree studios, will kick off the yoga practice. “The Fillmore is the place where legendary, legendary musicians have performed. The fact that they’re willing to welcome yoga into this venue is supercool,” Snyder says. “And for me personally, it’s ironic because I’ve spent a lot of time there doing things far less savory than yoga.”

Snyder is also jazzed by doing yoga to the beat of live music. “Music is uplifting in general. When it’s live, even more so,” she says. “And practicing with live music is like the difference between doing yoga to a DVD and in person. The musicians are sensitive to what’s happening in room and they can guide us. It becomes a co-effort, with a much higher energy.”

Grant led the yoga class at the Fillmore last year. She says she found it a bit strange at first to be leading a yoga class from a stage as opposed to her usual hands-on approach, but that quickly passed. “It’s a cool space, with cool pictures, and a place we knew we could put something on that had a good cross-over vibe,” she says. “And it worked. It just felt right.”

While the iconic auditorium is not a traditional venue for yoga, it turned out to be a good fit. “The Fillmore is so emblematic of so many of the things that Wanderlust comes from: good soulful music and progressive culture,” says Grant. “The music that had gone on there had the same kind of cultural roots for the explosion of the counterculture that included yoga in the ’60s.”

More information and tickets

The Women's Community Clinic has moved to 1833 Fillmore.

By Barbara Kate Repa

“Amazing!” is the word clients use most frequently to describe their experiences at the Women’s Community Clinic, which is settling into a refurbished space at 1833 Fillmore. That’s followed by a sea of compliments rarely enthused by those experiencing gynecological exams: “compassionate,” “efficient,” “informative,” “respectful.”

In addition to rave reviews, what makes the clinic unusual is its focus on delivering medical care of high quality at no charge to women in need.

“We offer care for women by women — with an all female staff — to those in the community who are uninsured, underinsured or simply don’t feel safe or understood by many medical care providers,” says Carlina Hansen, the clinic’s executive director, who first came to the clinic as a volunteer in 1999.

“I adored the work the clinic did, but especially the focus on helping those with inadequate insurance,” says Hansen, who had witnessed her father’s battle to navigate the medical system without insurance during a serious illness.

The Women’s Community Clinic’s arrival in the neighborhood in mid-March also affords local residents the opportunity to volunteer — and allows a few of them to take on paid fellowships to test a career in health care.

Unlike other embattled clinics, which have cut back or closed, the Women’s Community Clinic has flourished. It recently added mental and behavioral health services — and soon will expand to offer prenatal care. When Hansen began working at the clinic a dozen years ago, there were two staff members and about 25 volunteers. Now those ranks have swelled to 26 staff members and 100 volunteers. Of those volunteers, 25 are medical practitioners; the others keep more than busy doing outreach, mailings, accounting and public relations. No willing hands and hearts are turned away.

The clinic’s volunteer model may save as much as $500,000 in yearly costs compared to a conventional medical clinic operating entirely with paid staff. Outreach efforts aimed to “meet women where they are” include a weekly Ladies’ Night in the Mission District in which trained volunteers dole out information on health and well being along with condoms, toothbrushes and clean hypodermic needles. The clinic also trains and sponsors Condom Ladies, who volunteer twice weekly to distribute information and safer sex materials on the streets and in single room occupancy hotels.

The newly refurbished clinic offers free medical care for women.

The Women’s Community Clinic is unique in the Bay Area in providing medical services by volunteers working as clinicians, client service coordinators, health educators and outreach managers. Volunteer positions — which come with targeted training and a taste of a career in health care — are coveted. More than 150 hopeful applicants recently put in their bids for 30 unpaid spots. Volunteers are asked to commit to a four-hour shift every week for six months.

“We would really love to have volunteers from the neighborhood,” says Hansen, who adds that the current need is for more doctors and nurse practitioners, who are asked to make a commitment of two four-hour shifts monthly.

“Volunteering here allows them to practice the way they want to practice, without having to rush through appointments in an allotted time,” says Hansen, who adds the arrangement is especially attractive for medical professionals who are mothers or who might be cutting back on their work hours but want to keep their skills fresh.

Dr. Rhoda Nussbaum, an OB/GYN who founded Women’s Health for Kaiser in Northern California, began volunteering at the Women’s Community Clinic a few years before she retired in 2007. “What attracted me at first is that it’s truly a service organization — providing a service to those who would not otherwise have access to medical care, and providing it to them free,” she says. “From my perspective, it’s a privilege to serve people. But when it’s done for no rewards, it’s sweeter.”

Another pull is the camaraderie. “Because it’s a volunteer clinic, it’s an organization of people who are there because they choose to be,” she says. “People are always smiling. It’s really a place of love.” And Nussbaum says the move to Fillmore has energized many who work there. “I’m excited about being on Fillmore,” she says. “And I think the clinic will be good for the neighborhood, because some of the good feelings and warm positive energy will just pour out into the street.”

The clinic originally opened at 2166 Hayes in July 1999, just five months after the Women’s Needs Center, an adjunct of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, closed its women-only services in the same spot due to a lack of funding. But resolute staff and volunteers went to work twisting arms of people they found in their Rolodexes and raised more than $100,000 from a local foundation, plus a city contract and individual donations — enough money needed to get the operation up and running.

Within six months, tragedy struck. Thieves broke in and made away with essential office equipment, clothes designated for clients — and, oddly, several limited edition prints of women and contraceptive devices. History repeated itself last December when burglars again broke into the Hayes Street office, making off with computers and other office equipment and jeopardizing the group’s year-end fundraising efforts.

“We’ve known for years we were outgrowing the space,” says Hansen. Leaks, floods and two burglaries provided added impetus to make the move. “Also, the new quarters on Fillmore offer clients a nicer and more welcoming environment.” It’s a return home of sorts for Hansen, who attended the Convent High School on Broadway years ago.

“When we knew we were moving, we started talking with people in the community about the needs here — particularly the needs of young African American girls in the Western Addition,” Hansen says. “And we found the two things they needed most were access to health care and career opportunities.”

The new quarters, with three times the space of the Hayes location, will significantly increase access to the clinic, which now serves about 5,000 clients each year in about 450 visits per month. Most clients seek information on gynecological health, family planning and birth control, pregnancy testing and treatment of infections and menopause symptoms.

As for career opportunities, the clinic offers several paid two-year Western Addition Health Training fellowships in which participants learn basic office functions such as charting and scheduling, are intensively monitored by staff and then trained to do patient outreach and other clinical work.

“We hear a lot about the impact the Women’s Community Clinic has on career paths,” Hansen says, noting that 65 percent of the fellows move into health care jobs. “We provide medical services to our clients — but our volunteers are our clients, too.”

Staffers and volunteers will use the exam rooms in the clinic's new home.

The new digs on Fillmore afford double the number of exam rooms, several health education rooms in which clients meet with trained volunteers to discuss their concerns before they see a practitioner, plus a large conference room for training and group meetings. Administrative staff, who were crammed three to a small room that doubled as a kitchen, also have more space and privacy.

The site formerly housed another women’s clinic, the Bayspring Medical Group, which moved to 1199 Bush a few years ago. Before the Women’s Community Clinic could move in, it needed to remodel the space to bring it up to code. Hansen says the work took the lion’s share of the total $2 million budget. “And that wasn’t the sexy part of the renovation,” she says.

That came later, with the walls outfitted in shades of cream and grassy green — the paint donated by new neighbor Ralph Lauren. All fixtures and furniture are new or “gently used.” Fresh carpet was installed throughout and the waiting room is equipped with a kids’ play area and a computer workstation for clients. About $750,000 is still needed to complete the work on the new space, which will need to come from donations. Hansen says the clinic follows a strict dictate not to borrow money.

Hansen acknowledges that health care reforms may mean the Women’s Community Clinic will soon need to reassess, and has just secured a grant for that planning process. “Our focus may change if everyone’s insured. The irony is that our volume would likely increase because more women would have access to medical care,” she says. “We’ll need to make still more changes to stay relevant. But right now it’s a little like throwing a dart at a moving dartboard.”

She was 19 when they met in New York. He was a much-in-demand illustrator twice her age.

Denise Ackle and Bill Shields became good friends, but both went on to marry other people. After she moved to California and then back to New York, they met again. This time it was different. “When I re-met Bill, that was it,” she says. “It was like falling in love with a very dear friend.”

Thus began a 40-year marriage, a loving family and a lifetime of adventurous and artistic explorations, many of which took place a few steps from Fillmore Street.

One of his early projects required a trip from New York to San Francisco. As they looked out the window of their room at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, Bill asked, “How’d you like to live in San Francisco?” “I’d love to,” Denise replied, and they went home to New York, packed up their Volkswagen bus and their two little boys and moved across the country.

A few years later they were up at Tahoe for the summer. Bill met a French visitor one afternoon and came home to ask, “How’d you like to live in Paris?” “I’d love to,” Denise replied, and they packed up the boys and moved to France for two years.

“He was always game to go anywhere,” she says. “We didn’t have much money, but we lived very well. We had such a good life.”

She bought and remodeled Victorians, becoming one of the first to increase their allure by staging them with nice furnishings and Bill’s paintings. Later they opened the Artists Inn behind a white picket fence on Pine Street. His artistic career flourished.

“He was one of those lucky people who did what he loved all his life,” she says. “And he loved this neighborhood. He loved being able to walk down Fillmore Street.”

Bill died in April, a week before his 85th birthday. He was buried on October 26 in Arlington National Cemetery with the honors due a distinguished Navy pilot.

This month the honors come closer to home, in the neighborhood Bill and Denise Shields loved and lived in for most of the years they were married. “William Shields: An Exhibition of His Art,” including paintings, drawings and sculpture, is on view at Calvary Presbyterian Church at Fillmore and Jackson. In addition to the major abstract oil paintings and pastel landscapes of the French countryside, the exhibition also includes more personal mementoes from their life together — cards and notes and wooden assemblages he created for birthdays, anniversaries and holidays.

“Happy Birthday and oh my Lordy, you’re the most beautiful lady who ever turned 40,” says one, featuring a rapturous drawing of Denise’s red hair.

“Lovely Denise,” begins another. “How come you get bolder (just cause you’re more older?)”

A reception honoring the Shields will be held in Calvary’s lounge at 2515 Fillmore on Sunday, December 12, at 11:30 a.m. The exhibition continues through January 2.

EARLIER: Fillmore loses a familiar face

A drawing by Bill Shields of his wife Denise at a street market while they lived in Paris.