News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
ARCHITECTURE | JOHN FIELD Although I’ve lived in Pacific Heights for many years and designed homes here, I never thought of myself as a Pacific Heights architect. When I was asked recently how many houses in the neighborhood I have designed, I had to stop and think. I’d never counted them. There must be 20…
Up the sidewalk to the imposing Victorian mansion at 2007 Franklin Street — the historic Haas-Lilienthal House — walks a group of senior travelers who call themselves road scholars. They are greeted by a gentleman in a vested suit and bowler hat, carrying a silver-headed cane, who welcomes them inside. It’s not John Gaul’s home,…
SALOONS | Chris Barnett Club Mari’s — home of perhaps the city’s only truly authentic Japanese karaoke bars — is so well hidden that most locals likely have never even heard of it, let alone sipped sake there or taken up the mike and belted out I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith…
President Obama will be back in the neighborhood for dinner tonight, after stopping in Chinatown to pick up take-out dim sum for lunch. He’s supping and posing with a few deep-pocketed supporters paying $38,500 each at the contemporary Gold Coast home of Oracle heiress Nicola Miner and author Robert Mailer Anderson. Entertainment will be provided…
While other San Francisco neighborhoods are resisting the new high-tech parking meters that now line Fillmore Street, they are generally finding favor with local residents and merchants, despite being difficult to use. And a new report suggests that the experimental SFpark program is having at least some of its intended effects. At the new meters…
[nggallery id=17] By Carina Woudenberg Continuing the influx of new businesses into the Fillmore Jazz District, The Social Study is now serving beverages, snacks and a cool vibe in the stylish brick-lined space at 1795 Geary, just off Fillmore. Along with creatively concocted drinks and locally roasted coffee, owner Harmony Fraga says she hopes to…
Troya, a Turkish restaurant on Clement Street, will open Troya Fillmore in the space at 2125 Fillmore recently vacated by Citizen Cake. The second location on Fillmore will be “more modern and hipper than the Richmond version,” Inside Scoop reports.
EXCERPT | By Etta James Uncle Frank showed up in his car and whisked us up to San Francisco when I was 12. We dropped [my mother] Dorothy off in the Fillmore District, which looked like a hell-hole to me. L.A. was a vine-covered cottage compared to these slums. After the sunny skies of southern…
SPIRITS | Chris Barnett Maurice Kanbar is sitting in the cluttered, comfortable living room of his Pacific Heights apartment clipping Safeway coupons. That seems rather odd for an 80-year-old entrepreneur, property investor and filmmaker-philanthropist who’s no doubt a billionaire plus. But then he also zips around town on a Vespa lookalike motor scooter because he…
FAVORITE SPOT | KEVIN BLUM Like many residents and the great Tony Bennett, I left my heart in San Francisco. But I think it’s fair to say I left my liver at Solstice lounge. I first discovered the restaurant and bar eight years ago when I moved to the neighborhood. Solstice had just opened at…