News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By RANDALL ANN HOMAN The sign for the Elite Cafe, glowing again after a fire left it damaged and dark for months, is a beacon from a time when Fillmore Street was awash with neon signs announcing the street’s vibrant nightlife. Earlier this year, Jim Rizzo of Neon Works put up scaffolding and gave the…
Q & A | KIM NALLEY Jazz diva Kim Nalley and her band return as headliners at the Fillmore Jazz Festival again this year, appearing on Saturday, June 30, at 4:30 p.m. on the California Street stage. It all started for you on Fillmore Street, right? Yes. I was cleaning houses and I got a…
By JASON OLAINE Artistic Director, Fillmore Jazz Festival Throwback is a term usually used in a positive way to refer to a bygone era that conjured great memories, which is what this year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival means to conjure up — positive memories of a time when all seemed right with the world: the mid-1990s.…
Q & A | JASON OLAINE Jason Olaine returns to San Francisco to book the Fillmore Jazz Festival when he’s not booking Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. You’re throwing us back this year to the 1990s — where were you back then? Well, 1993 was really the beginning of what would be my…
Q & A | MICHAEL SCHWAB The poster for the 2018 Fillmore Jazz Festival is the fourth jazz image Michael Schwab has created for the Fillmore festival. All four now hang as banners on the street. Are you a jazz fan? Sure. I’m not an aficionado, but as a kid, back in southern Oklahoma, I…
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS The news was as mournful as the sound of taps in the distance. When word spread that widely beloved trumpeter-composer-teacher-bandleader Dave Len Scott was decamping from the Fillmore to be near his family in Arizona, there was no joy in jazzville. But it’s true. For the first time in many years,…
ONE OF New York’s top wine shops, Verve Wine, is opening a West Coast outpost at 2358 Fillmore today, bringing master sommelier Dustin Wilson back to San Francisco, where he and director of operations Eric Railsback collaborated at the late RN74 and Mason Pacific. Wilson went on to greater glory in New York at Eleven…
CULTURE BEAT | PAMELA FEINSILBER International opera singer David Cangelosi has been subletting an apartment in the neighborhood since April, when he began rehearsals with San Francisco Opera for Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle: four operas over three evenings and one afternoon each week for three weeks. Cangelosi, a tenor, sings in the first opera,…
FILLMORE BEAT | CHRIS BARNETT This just in: Noosh is the name of the new restaurant being created on the corner of Fillmore and Pine. The concept is a fresh take on casual fine dining at reasonable prices. The cuisine: Eastern Mediterranean inspired, California made. The name — soon to adorn the Victorian storefront at…
By ARASH MALEKZADEH A month ago, I was offered the opportunity to film the last days of Kelly Johnson’s life. I did not know him. I did not know how or why his death was predetermined. I was told to meet the next morning at Peet’s for coffee. Then I’d walk half a block with…