News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
FILM | ANDREA CHASE The 16th Annual Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, brought to you by the fine people at SFIndieFest, gathers a scintillating collection of the best of the genres of sci-fi, horror, fantasy and just plain odd films currently out there, along with the now traditional rescoring of a classic. The…
LOCAL HISTORY | BRIDGET MALEY A series of photographs taken during and just after the 1906 earthquake and fire reveals the sense of the fear and dread neighborhood residents must have felt at the time. The fire, which crossed to the west side of Van Ness Avenue between Sutter and Clay Streets, was halted by…
REAL ESTATE | NINA HATVANY There are many myths about the San Francisco real estate market — many of them not true. MYTH #1: Homes are still going for 10 to 15 percent above asking in bidding wars. The truth is, the competition for San Francisco condominiums and homes has drastically slowed down as inventory…
FILLMORE BEAT | CHRIS BARNETT Despite the fierce turnover among well-heeled retailers, is Fillmore Street still Mecca for merchants? Jon Levy, an exec with Leap — a New York-based firm that creates and launches traditional retail stores for web-based digital brands — is convinced of it. He just snapped up a second storefront on the…
A NEIGHBOR, out for a walk one night soon after Plants and Friends opened its new shop at 1906 Fillmore in early October, stopped to admire the greenery in the window. “It’s fun,” she said to another neighbor walking by. “It makes you smile.” And so it does. Who would think — in the age…
CHANDLER TANG is living her dream — curating and stocking what she describes as “very fun things” for Post Script, a new shop she’s just opened in a neighborhood she knows and loves. Tang describes her new endeavor at 2413 California Street, near Fillmore — most recently habited by the women’s clothing boutique De Novo…
By CHRIS BARNETT One of the neighborhood’s enduring architectural treasures has been resurrected and a mystery is solved — almost. The 107-year-old Beaux Arts four-story Health Sciences Library on the corner of Webster and Sacramento — which gave refuge to the smart and studious for decades, but has stood empty collecting cobwebs in recent years…
PACIFIC HEIGHTS HEALTH CLUB, with its lofty-sounding name and low-key vibe — where designer workout garb is not required — will close its doors for the last time on November 27, the day before Thanksgiving, at precisely 3 p.m. Amy Lang, who took ownership of the club 15 years ago and appointed herself chief motivating…
PRODUCE FROM Terry Farms, picked just the day before, made its final appearance at the Fillmore Farmers Market on November 2 after owner Albert Terry died earlier in the week. He was one of the original vendors when the market started in 2003 in the parking lot at Fillmore and Eddy, later to become the…
FILM | CLASSICS SHOT LOCALLY Atop the crest of the hill on Divisadero Street, looking north between Pacific and Broadway, a car slowly makes a U-turn, then stops on the opposite side of the street. Buster Keaton filmed almost exclusively on Hollywood lots, but traveled to San Francisco to get this one shot. The first…