By Thomas Reynolds

For the first time in almost four decades, Mrs. Dewson’s Hats at 2050 Fillmore Street wasn’t open in the days leading up to Easter, which is typically prime time for hat buyers.

A few days later a sign went up in the window telling the news: After 37 years, Mrs. Dewson’s Hats was closing. And on Sunday afternoon, April 29, the last hats were sold, the final goodbyes said and the doors closed on a prime piece of Fillmore history.

“It’s a sad day,” said Glenn Mitchell, nephew of owner Ruth Garland Dewson. “We’ve been fighting it off for a while.” Mitchell has been overseeing the shop since his aunt checked herself into an assisted living facility two years ago.

“I’ve been crying ever since I heard,” Ruth Dewson said the next day, sitting in a wheelchair in the top-floor lounge at AgeSong, her new home in Hayes Valley. “I’ve had a good time on Fillmore Street and I don’t want to give it up. Why should I die when all these other assholes are still alive?”

Time and circumstances have taken their toll on Mrs. Dewson, who suffers from dementia, rheumatoid arthritis and other physical ailments. Dwindling finances are another problem.

A few days after Easter her nephew and her landlord, David Kaplan, came to visit and suggested she close the shop and sell the two years remaining on her lease. “He got her to see the value of it,” Mitchell said. “It’s a move of necessity.” Mrs. Dewson, still feisty, was reluctant. But she agreed to take her landlord’s advice. “He’s looking out for me,” she said. “He always has.”

She acts less kindly toward Mitchell, her sister’s son, who has had the difficult job of commuting regularly from Texas during the past two years to keep the hat shop running and look after the affairs of his Aunt Ruth.

The youngest of 10 children born in Paris, Texas, to Willie and Elgie Garland, she ran away from home when she was 14 to live with a sister in Los Angeles. She was there for many years, working for the telephone company.

Eventually she made her way up to San Francisco and decided to open a hat store on Fillmore Street.

“I came from a hat family,” she said. “My father wore hats every day of his life. It seemed like there was a need for a hat shop.”

It was a different neighborhood then. She was warned by the landlord when she proposed to open a hat shop: “Mr. Kaplan said, ‘You know you gotta carry a gun . . . this is the ghetto.’ ”

Mrs. Dewson, Mr. Kaplan and Fillmore Street all prospered. She became synonymous with the neighborhood. She invented herself as the Hat Lady and crowned herself the Mayor of Fillmore Street. She palled around with society figures and politicians, most especially former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, for whom she invented the Willie Brim.

“I didn’t have a fancy store — I didn’t need it,” she said. “It was just me. And I enjoyed it for 30-something years.”

Even as she became widely known in San Francisco, she stayed close to her family in Texas. She especially liked her sister Sally Mitchell’s son, Glenn, and brought him out to San Francisco for a couple of high school summers. To him would fall the responsibility of caring for her when she slowed down. It has not been an easy job.

“She’s always been strong and domineering,” he said with a sweet smile. “This store was built on moxie and the strength of a single lady.”

Mitchell, a software engineer, left his wife and kids back home in Dallas while he kept the hat shop afloat and, after several false starts, found an appropriate new home for Mrs. Dewson.

Now that the store has closed, she might move back to Texas. But she’s not ready yet.

“Can you imagine me moving to Dallas? Shit!” she said. “I wouldn’t go to Texas if I had one leg. It’s too small for me.”

But she might.

“I’m keeping my mind open,” she said. “I’ve had a good life, so I can’t complain.”

Mitchell vows to honor her legacy on Fillmore. He has already signed up for a prime spot at the Fillmore Jazz Festival in July, which Mrs. Dewson helped start. And business continues at mrsdewsonshats.com.

“She so wants her name to carry on,” he said, “and I do too.”

VIDEO: An interview with Ruth Dewson on one of her final days in her shop in August 2010.

The Turkish restaurant Troya opened in the space vacated by Citizen Cake.

Two new restaurants have opened in the neighborhood in recent weeks, and still more are in the works.

A Turkish restaurant, Troya, has taken over the prime space at 2125 Fillmore from Citizen Cake, which fell short of its great expectations and closed late last year — although star chef Elizabeth Falkner, now in New York, hasn’t forgotten the neighborhood. “Fillmore Street is magical and I will miss it the most,” she wrote in a recent note on her website. “I will be working on the Citizen Cake book over the next year, so look for it in 2013.”

The owners of Troya, Berk Kinalilar and Brigitte Cullen — who also operate the original Troya restaurant at Clement and Fifth Avenue — are now serving their signature Turkish cuisine in the new Fillmore spot. Their gentle renovation of the space has judiciously warmed the surroundings while retaining some details from the beloved former occupant Vivande, including the red brick wall on the north side of the room, now enlivened by a space-expanding strip of mirrors.

The menu includes meze, kebabs and a few larger plates, plus flatbreads ­— “the soul of Turkish cuisine,” according to the owners — prepared onsite by Turkish baker Behiye Golgeci.

Pa'ina brings Hawaiian food and music to 1865 Post Street.

Down the street, Pa’ina, which means “gathering” in Hawaiian, is now open in a re-imagined space at 1865 Post Street, serving up Asian fusion and Hawaiian cuisine. With a menu heavy on appetizers and small plates and a hearty listing of signature cocktails, the eatery caters to those snacking before and after films at the Sundance Kabuki cinemas next store. It also aims for the lounge crowd, with a center stage featuring live reggae and Hawaiian music.

Farther south in the jazz district, Mayor Ed Lee visited on April 23 to promise continuing city support for the district and announce the impending arrival of four more dining options.

Hapa Ramen, a food truck hailed for producing unique pork, chicken and vegetarian noodle bowls using locally sourced, organic ingredients, will make a permanent home at 1527 Fillmore at the end of May.

Also in May, Prime Dip will open at 1515 Fillmore, offering hot au jus dippings for sandwiches stuffed with prime rib, lobster, chicken and other offerings. Prime Dip opened its first location on Larkin Street in the Tenderloin last year.

Later in the year, the owners of the wildly popular State Bird Provisions at 1529 Fillmore are slated to open a second location called Progress a couple of doors south. And the owners of the casual eatery Fat Angel, at 1740 O’Farrell, have announced plans to open a second site, to be called City Grange, before year’s end.

Read more: “Pa’ina means party“

Defining a place: handpainted lettering on the facade of Roostertail at 1963 Sutter.

DESIGN | Chris Barnett

San Francisco graphic designer Christopher Simmons has a long list of powerhouse clients including Facebook, Microsoft, Wells Fargo Bank, Stanford, Kaiser Permanente and the Nature Conservancy. So why in an uncertain economy would he take a flyer on two Fillmore startups that sell Vietnamese sandwiches and rotisserie chickens?

For Simmons, owner of the design firm MINE, it was a matter of pride — and guilt.

“I got an e-mail from Denise Tran, who was planning to open Bun Mee, a small restaurant specializing in casual yet upscale Vietnamese street food, but I didn’t respond for six or seven days,” Simmons admits. When he did call, Tran told him she had decided to go with a New York City creative house.

Simmons, a soft-spoken 39-year-old who favors vintage tennis shoes and wears only scruffy duds made before 1970, says he “always wanted to do a restaurant.” He had a good feeling about Tran and her concept and offered to do a full-blown proposal anyway in two days.

Tran recalls it somewhat differently. “I had committed to the other firm, but Christopher called and persuaded me to reconsider. His pitch was so much stronger that I hired him instead.”

After five years in practice as a corporate attorney in Seattle, Tran wanted to escape the billable hours and do something enjoyable. Two years of on-the-road research convinced her that an informal eatery built around a gourmet version of the humble banh mi sandwich (pronounced “bun mee”), plus other traditional and modern Vietnamese dishes, mostly based on her mother’s home recipes, was her ticket out.

She was right. Bun Mee opened in April 2011 at 2015 Fillmore for lunch and dinner. A year later, lines of clamoring customers often spill down the sidewalk.

But before the success hit, Tran was dealing with two design consultancies to get a single seamless visual theme. Simmons’ laundry list of visual suggestions and clever touches, assembled in just two days, brought the concept to life.

For starters, Simmons and MINE staff designer Nathan Sharp went to the legendary Saigon Sandwiches in the Tenderloin to sample their first banh mi sandwich. It was a far cry from Tran’s Hanoi crispy catfish sandwich or the sloppy bun packed with ground beef infused with red curry, a spicy spin on the classic sloppy joe. Next, Simmons tackled a project that had long given Tran fits: a Bun Mee logo that would double as the restaurant’s exterior sign.

“I had actually been working on a logo with another local design firm and it took me three months to get up the courage to tell them their concept wasn’t going to work because I hated it so much,” recalls Tran. “I thought it was my fault because I had never worked with a design firm before and I’m a very, very picky person. It was like something was lost in translation and I was frustrated.”

Simmons started a new logo from scratch. The French influence in Vietnamese cuisine got him thinking that Bun Mee could have the soul of a simple early 20th century brasserie in a sleek 21st century setting.

To make sure that message didn’t get lost, Simmons suggested handpainting the restaurant’s name over the front door in sizeable but not overwhelming red block capital letters with a thin white inline accent color. Underneath the name would be an equally simple description of what’s inside: a “Vietnamese sandwich eatery.”

As expected, Tran was tough to please. “It took three solid months of different versions — back and forth — to get the logo right,” says Simmons. “But I remember getting an e-mail from Denise on Christmas Eve telling me how happy she was, for the first time, that she had a visual of what Bun Mee was going to look like.”

The designer also felt that the artisanal handpainting of the signs helped reinforce the concept that all Bun Mee sandwiches — indeed, everything on the menu, from Mekong shrimp salads to Saigon peanut rice bowls — would be handmade. Even the menu was handpainted on pieces of wood and hung on the wall; each dish has its own small board. If the chefs add a new item or cancel an old one, the menu can be easily changed.

Other design details inside are refreshingly restrained. Photographs capturing swarms of Vietnamese street food hawkers populate the walls. And since there are likely as many Vespas in the Southeast Asian country as in Italy, Simmons used discreet ads for the ubiquitous motor scooter as wall art as well. A warming MINE touch: a slab of rusted corrugated metal that covers the surface underneath the cash register. Another eye-grabber is a suspended shelf filled with motor oil cans that have the red logo on the label and are filled with Bun Mee T-shirts. Proceeds from shirt sales go to charity.

Tran is currently looking for the next Bun Mee location and is sticking with the identity she’s already bought and paid for. “Any business owner who wants to save money by not spending it on branding or graphic design today is making a big mistake,” she says.

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The ideas Simmons and Sharp developed for Bun Mee have been effective advertising for the MINE design office.

“Restaurants are a hard industry to crack, but once you’re in, you’re in,” Simmons says. A case in point: Chefs Gerard Darian and his wife Tracy Green checked out Tran’s eat-in or take-out hotspot and hired mine to help Roostertail, described as their “new, hip, fast casual American rotisserie,” take flight in the neighborhood.

Darian had worked the stoves at Wolfgang Puck’s famed Spago in West Hollywood during the 80s, was sous chef at Puck’s Postrio here in San Francisco in the 90s — where he met Green, who was also working in the kitchen — and was later executive chef at Bix on Gold Alley in the design district. Then the couple owned a sandwich shop for 10 years, but became restless and wanted to try out a new culinary concept. Their choice: fresh rotisserie cooked chicken at moderate prices — $5.75 for a quarter of a chicken to $18.50 for a whole bird — along with a few other “lean protein” main dishes, “substantial sides” and hefty sandwiches.

It took them a year to find a prime, affordable location. They eventually landed the space at 1963 Sutter, just off Fillmore, the longtime location of Cafe Kati.

“We liked what was happening in the lower Fillmore, the 1,800-foot space had good bones and we decided to just go for it,” Darian says. With local architect, space planner and interior designer Stacy Jed, they also created a self-serve eatery, but theirs has twice the seating space of Bun Mee.

Roostertail also needed a distinctive logo that would be memorable and could double as an outside sign. Envisioning a lively array of customers of all ages, Simmons started with the universal symbol of romance — a plump heart pierced by an angel’s arrow — and morphed it into a big-breasted chicken speared by a rotisserie spit. “We were going for the classic Americana feel in the food,” says Darian. “We were a quick, casual order place with an upscale twist.”

Roostertail opened last December and has been packing in the crowds ever since. Jed, the architect and interior designer, went for nostalgia. Some of the walls have light gray wainscoting; others have iconic subway tiles. Big vats of lemonade and a bundt cake under glass, made according to Tracy Green’s mom’s recipe, gently harken back to simpler times. Simmons extended that theme with typography and handpainted signage.

Although the place bills itself as a “fast-casual” eatery, the look and feel encourage diners to relax, and 20 distinctive beers plus wine and root beer are offered to help them do just that. The open kitchen, with a collection of hanging pots and pans overhead, is further testimony that Roostertail is no kin to the colonel. With the exception of French fries, there’s nothing fried on the menu. And speaking of menus, Simmons outdid himself here: Every dish has its description on a magnetic tile for simple daily updating.

Roostertail has also added a new twist on food to go. Call ahead, pay with a credit card and a “takeout concierge” will dash out and hand off your meal, saving the hassle of finding a parking space.

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EARLIER: “Scooter street food on Fillmore”

CRIME WATCH

“We wrapped up our one beer at Balboa and walked out to try and grab a cab,” restaurateur Matthew Meidinger tells Eater. “While standing there a woman (who I understand to have also just left Balboa) bent down to take off her black Louboutins and put on flip flops for the trip home. As she was doing this (in the middle of a very busy sidewalk) a man passing by accidentally kicked one of her shoes. Not down the street or anything, just bumped it with his own shoe. She started yelling at him and as he turned around to apologize with his hands already up in the air, this good sized man with her punched him!”

Read more

The Ellinwood House at 2799 Pacific Avenue — sitting prominently on the corner of Divisadero Street — is back on the market for an asking price of $12.5 million. The house underwent a $10 million renovation a decade ago, but was repossessed last year. Curbed reports on the multi-generational drama of the house, which was originally on the dividing line between San Francisco and the Presidio.

Read more

The first parklet in the neighborhood — in front of Delfina Pizzeria at 2410 California Street near Fillmore — is now accepting visitors. It’s a new public space that offers a spot to pause in the sunshine.

EARLIER: “Parklet sprouting on California Street“

The Tallman Hotel and the Blue Wing Saloon on Main Street in Upper Lake, California

GETAWAYS | Caroline Wampole

Longtime neighborhood resident Lynne Butcher was on a visit to Upper Lake in June 2003 when she saw a “for sale” sign on the historic Tallman Hotel. She had just sold her equipment leasing business and was looking for a new project.

“The ‘for sale’ sign had been there for 41 years,” she says.

But the Tallman’s days were numbered. The county had just red-tagged the 1880s building and it was slated for demolition. In fact, the local fire department wanted to use it as a training ground for a controlled burn.

“We must have been the 500th person in 40 years to look at the property,” says her husband, Bernie Butcher, laughing and shaking his head. “But if you wait long enough, the greater fool will arrive.”

Most people would not consider a plunge into the hotel and restaurant business a relaxing way to spend their retirement years. But then Lynne and Bernie Butcher have always had a sense of adventure.

Before they met, Bernie traveled with the Peace Corps and coached basketball in Uruguay. During the early years of their marriage they lived in Hong Kong and London before settling back in San Francisco in 1982, where they bought their home on Pierce Street, a few steps from Alta Plaza Park, just as the neighborhood was undergoing a revival.

They also built a country home on Clear Lake and spent the next 20 years vacationing there, 2 1/2 hours north of San Francisco.

Still, there is a vast difference between building a weekend home and operating a hotel. The original complex of land and buildings contained the hotel, a livery stable and a saloon designed to serve passengers traveling to Clear Lake and the hot springs resorts nearby. It later had incarnations as a guest house, nursing home and housing for transient agricultural workers. Then it sat vacant for decades before the Butchers bought it and set about restoring its historical roots as a hotel.

“My business friends in San Francisco thought I was crazy,” Lynne admits. “They said, ‘Why are you doing this? Here you are at a stage of your lives when you can travel and enjoy life. You can’t make any money owning a hotel.’ ”

Bernie reflects on their decision: “We were too old to get jobs,” he says. “But we needed to find something meaningful to do.”

The historic aspect of the hotel appealed to Lynne’s New England roots and to Bernie’s background as an American history teacher. Bernie also saw Lake County’s potential as an affordable spot for baby boomers to retire. And there was a growing wine industry in the area just north of Napa County. 

Neither could have predicted what a massive job it would be to restore the Tallman into a 17-room hotel with gardens, pool, spa and restaurant. Among other things, the main building needed a new foundation, and the adjacent restaurant — now operating as the Blue Wing Saloon and serving lunch, dinner, snacks and Sunday brunch — had to be rebuilt entirely. 

There were times when the project seemed doomed, especially when their energy contractor went bankrupt six weeks before the hotel’s opening. Looking back, the Butchers seem amazed they took on such a task.

“What hubris!” Bernie says. “Talk about babes in the wood.”

It was Candra Scott, a San Francisco interior designer specializing in renovating historic hotels, who helped keep them going while renovating the property, now registered as a Point of Historical Interest. Her approach of “decorating timelessly” suited the Butchers perfectly. Scott’s idea was to augment the Tallman’s Wild West saloon facade with a series of surrounding buildings that looked like they were built over time, not all at once. 

“Candra told us, ‘Don’t go western, don’t go Disneyland,’” remembers Lynne. “She’s the author of this place. Her faith and skills gave us confidence that we could turn the hotel into a real business. I couldn’t have imagined doing this without her vision.”

The Bay Area has provided the Butchers with a steady stream of creative talent to import to Upper Lake, alongside local offerings. The hotel’s calendar boasts an ambitious and eclectic range of cultural and culinary events, including a popular monthly Winemaker Dinner, regular concerts and a blues festival in August and early September. There are also literary adventures, such as this month’s writer’s retreat for 10 published and aspiring writers wishing to hone their memoirs, essays or fiction.

San Francisco is now the Butchers’ weekend destination, with the weekend redefined as Tuesday, Wednesday and sometimes Thursday. But Lynne says the neighborhood around Fillmore Street still feels like home. They still vote, take Pilates classes and get their hair cut in the city.  They do their grocery shopping at Mollie Stone’s and Lynne still buys her clothes at Mio on Fillmore.

“People don’t say ‘Hi Bernie’ as much as they do in Upper Lake,” Bernie says. “Like any big city, it’s less personal. But we still feel very connected to the neighborhood.”

There are a few drawbacks to their double life. Bernie jokes that it would be nice to have a helicopter to make the 200-mile commute. And Lynne says that sometimes it’s hard to keep track of two households. “I’ll have two bags of sugar in one place, and none in the other,” she says. But otherwise, they say, they are enriched by their divided existence.

Bernie sees the Tallman project as something that will last beyond them, and something that is already making a contribution to the local community in Upper Lake and keeping a sense of history alive.

Read more: Tallman Hotel

For a few days each week, a limited number of people can now share dinner and a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most beloved spots in the neighborhood.

For the fixed price of $20, Boulangerie Bay Bread at 2325 Pine Street has begun offering a traditional French table d’hote. The evening’s entree is served with roasted potatoes or vegetables, a salad, bread still warm from the oven and a slice of fruit tart. Diners are encouraged to bring their own wine; there’s no corkage fee.

Ever-genial counterman Rudy Guglielmo welcomes guests into the space between the display cases and the ovens, which is transformed into a cozy dining area with wood plank tables preset with French dining essentials: ample pots of butter, cornichons, mustard and sea salt. French President Nicolas Sarkozy looks on approvingly from a framed portrait on the wall. Diners are treated to the sights, sounds and smells of the bakery’s inner workings, with heaps of fresh-baked macarons bustled in to restock for the morning rush.

On a rainy Saturday night, the warmth of the ovens was especially inviting. The featured entree was braised beef short ribs, served in generous portions. Entrees for other nights include roast chicken, lamb confit and roast pork loin.

Seating is limited to 20, first come first served, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday.

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ORNITHOLOGY | Monte Travis

From my ninth floor office near Lafayette Park, I’ve been watching a pair of red-tailed hawks engage in aerial courtship flights since early this year.

In late March I saw the hawks carrying sticks to a large nest high in a eucalyptus tree in the park, undertaking a little remodeling. A few days later, I observed one of the hawks poking its head above the rim of the nest. This suggested at least one egg and probably more had been laid in the nest. If all goes well, we should have chicks in about a month.

As I was photographing the female hawk on the nest, I was alerted by the screams of about 20 red-masked parakeets — the famous parrots of Telegraph Hill — who suddenly bolted into the air from the treetops directly overhead. I looked up, and there came the male redtail swooping in from the west. When the male arrived at the nest, the female, who is larger, rose up, and for a short time both stood on the nest (above). Then the female took off and the male settled in for his shift.  

Redtails are monogamous and generally mate for life. But later that same day, I witnessed a mystery: three adult birds on the nest (below). For 45 minutes, all three alternately flew to and from the nest. A menage a trois, perhaps? Or maybe redtails, like certain other species, sometimes employ one of their young from the prior year as a helper. This will bear watching in the coming days.

It’s a domestic ornithological mystery. But it seems appropriate for San Francisco: an alternative avian family.

A service under the pagoda in Japantown commemorated the anniversary of the earthquake.

On March 11 — the one-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeast Japan last year — a commemorative community event called “Our Hearts to Japan” will be held at the Peace Plaza at Post and Buchanan Streets in Japantown.

The event caps a year of local activities that have raised more than $4 million to aid the victims of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that followed. More than 20,000 people were killed and thousands more were left injured and homeless.

“The event is a way to memorialize those who have died and to honor the survivors, many of whom still need our help in rebuilding their lives,” said Dianne Fukami, president of the board of directors of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California. “When I was in Tohoku last month, I witnessed the spirit and determination of the people, but I also realized how huge their losses are and how great the need continues to be.”

An extensive program of events will be held in Japantown on March 11. “Our Hearts to Japan” will begin at 2 p.m., and those attending will observe a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m. — precisely the time the disaster struck Japan.