News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
FIRST PERSON | WILLIAM SAURO After living in the neighborhood for more than three decades, I’ve learned that San Francisco has a way of encouraging reinvention. People arrive here to start companies, launch careers or try entirely new lives. In my case, the reinvention came later than most: After years working as a newspaper reporter,…
PLANS WILL BE unveiled this month for the revival of the historic home of Fillmore Street’s Clay Theater. The project is on the agenda for the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission, which will review plans for the restoration of the historic elements of the theater protected by city ordinance. That includes the facade and its neon…
STREET TALK | CYNTHIA TRAINA If you blink on Fillmore Street, you might miss something. A new shop opens, another quietly disappears and neighbors begin speculating about what might come next — often long before the paint is dry. Here are some of the latest developments along Fillmore. HYOU ARE YOU: A new jewelry shop…
A GROUP OF neighborhood residents has launched an effort to revitalize the Bush and Broderick Mini Park — the only green space within the roughly 20 square blocks bounded by California and Geary and Presidio and Divisadero streets. The effort is being spearheaded by Eric Kingsbury, along with Hayden Anderson and Natalie Farren. Working with…
NEIGHBORHOOD HISTORY | FROM SF HERITAGE From 1921 to 1972, 2066 Pine Street was home to the Madame C. J. Walker Home for Girls and Women, a community service organization named in honor of one of the United States’ most successful African American businesswomen and philanthropists. The Walker club provided lodging and services to African…
STREET TALK | CYNTHIA TRAINA Since early January, sales at the neighborhood Goodwill store at Fillmore & Post have been climbing steadily — partly due to the economic uncertainty, partly to an operational change set in motion a year ago and launched this year. Bay Area Goodwill stores have reorganized with new merchandising strategies. “We’ve…
STREET TALK | CYNTHIA TRAINA If you’ve passed Mureta & Co. at 2418 Fillmore lately, you may have noticed jewelry hanging on the jade tree out front. It’s free for the taking. The “giving tree” began a few weeks ago when owner John Quillinan, who buys jewelry by the pound, started placing pieces he doesn’t sell onto the tree. No…
By THOMAS REYNOLDS Sometimes it pays to complain. And now there is hope that further destruction of a classic Victorian in the Webster Street Historic District — the city’s first — has been stopped and may even result in something better. The Italianate Victorian at 2229 Webster, like most of its neighbors, was built in…
REVIEW | FRAN MORELAND JOHNS “If two hours of Beethoven won’t lift your spirits,” said conductor Michael Conley, “then nothing will.” He was not wrong. At a Saturday evening concert — billed as “Beethoven!” — a full house at Calvary Presbyterian Church on Fillmore was treated to the Mass in C Major, plus the Fantasy…
STREET TALK | CYNTHIA TRAINA A new year has brought its familiar mix of closings, reopenings, price adjustments and quiet repositioning along Fillmore Street and nearby blocks — plus a turnover in ownership of some commercial properties. The building at 2232 Bush Street that’s now home to Mattina restaurant — created as the home of…