News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By Wanda M. Corn Alice Babette Toklas met Gertrude Stein in the fall of 1907. She had come to Paris from San Francisco with her next-door neighbor, Harriet Levy, and had enough money to last her a year, although she hoped an inheritance from her grandfather’s estate would allow her to stay longer. Little did…
ART | JEROME TARSHIS “The Steins Collect,” the excellent exhibition now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, focuses on Gertrude Stein for understandable reasons: She was one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century and, together with Alice B. Toklas, was also the dominant half of the most famous lesbian couple…
SALOONS | CHRIS BARNETT A t the Boom Boom Room, the divey-looking 78-year-old live music club on Fillmore at Geary, the best seat in the house is off limits to customers. The tufted red leather booth, with its perfect view of the band and dance floor, is permanently reserved for legendary blues guitarist John Lee Hooker,…
SALOONS | CHRIS BARNETT So did swashbuckling blues guitarist John Lee Hooker really own the Boom Boom Room as a side gig? If you believe the sign above the door, he did. And if you listen to the current owner, Alexander Andreas, he did. But don’t bet your booty on it. Fillmore jazz genealogists Elizabeth…
GOOD WORKS | Carol McLaughlin If anyone knows what it means to keep going in the face of adversity, it’s Olushade Unger. She grew up shuttling between her mother’s home in the Fillmore district and her father’s place in Hunters Point, where violence and gang activities were commonplace. Unger was in high school, planning on…
A neighborhood icon with historic roots experiencing a renaissance — that was the cause for celebration in mid-July at the Elite Cafe. It was a 30th anniversary party for the Elite, held more than 80 years after its well-preserved Art Deco home first opened in 1928 as the Lincoln Grill. But the rejuvenated Elite and…
WHILE 30 YEARS can be more than a lifetime in San Francisco’s ever-changing restaurant world, Fillmore’s venerable Elite Cafe on July 14 will celebrate three decades of serving up New Orleans cuisine in its historic Art Deco home. And that’s only its third incarnation. The woody, warm and welcoming spot at 2049 Fillmore is rich…
By Jesse Hamlin A sea of sun-drenched people flowed along Fillmore Street on Saturday, partaking of the musical and gustatory pleasures — not to mention the beer, wine and margaritas — served up by San Francisco’s biggest street bash. Blues and barbecued oysters. Fried catfish and Nigerian folk songs. Those were some of the sounds…
FIRST PERSON | Charlie Greene The corner of Jackson and Fillmore was the center of the universe when I was growing up at 2449 Jackson Street in the 1950s and 60s. You could get anywhere in the city on four Muni bus lines — the 22-Fillmore, 80-Leavenworth, 3-Jackson and 24-Divisadero — plus the Washington-Jackson cable…
RUTH DEWSON, the longtime proprietor of Mrs. Dewson’s Hats and the self-proclaimed Mayor of Fillmore Street, helped start the Fillmore Jazz Festival in 1984. She recalls approaching promoter Terry Pimsleur, who had started the Union Street Festival, about creating a similar street fair on upper Fillmore, where new businesses were opening and trying to improve…