News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
With minimal fanfare, the barricades have come down and the French-accented fashion boutique Cotelac has opened its 100th retail store at 1930 Fillmore, longtime home of Fillmore Hardware. While the brand of separates and accessories has wide saturation worldwide, especially throughout France and Asia, this is only its fourth store in the U.S., with others…
Three development projects that promise major changes in the neighborhood are moving forward. Dental school: The University of the Pacific announced on November 22 it has completed its purchase of a new facility at 155 Fifth Street and will move from its longtime home at Webster and Sacramento by 2014. Its current building will be…
BOOKS | CAROL FIELD Now that the new edition of my book The Italian Baker has been published, I have been reliving the adventure of working with bakers all over Italy. It started in San Francisco in 1981 when Il Fornaio, then a bakery featuring Italian breads and sweets, opened at the corner of Steiner…
Gerri Nuval was a pre-med student at San Francisco State, working part time at a little lingerie shop called Victoria’s Secret on Union Street, when she got sick and the doctors told her to slow down. She pushed through the pain and realized she had found what she really wanted to do: “to be around…
The Fillmore’s own inimitable Mary Risley — longtime proprietor of Tante Marie’s Cooking School — offers a simpler way to prepare the traditional Thanksgiving dinner in this timely new video from the Fillmore’s own Jaded Palate Productions. UPDATE: “The insanity of going f*cking viral” by Faith Wheeler
On November 18, 1978 — 33 years ago today — 918 people from the Peoples Temple died in Jonestown. Most had followed Rev. Jim Jones to Guyana from the Fillmore. The Peoples Temple stood on Geary Boulevard just west of Fillmore Street where the post office is now located. In a new book of poems…
When they’re in San Francisco, Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis can often be spotted on Fillmore Street, near their home on the ninth floor of the 2500 Steiner Street tower. But these days they’re mostly in Budapest, where she’s the U.S. ambassador to Hungary. Among their visitors from the neighborhood: 2500 Steiner’s 12th floor resident,…
REAL ESTATE | Maria Marchetti Recent single family home sales in Pacific Heights are highlighted by the sale of 2950 Broadway, the 11,000-square-foot mansion on one of the largest parcels on the Gold Coast formerly owned by swashbuckling attorney Melvin Belli. The vast north and south facing formal gardens create an elegant foreground to the…
FIRST PERSON | Alicia Utter I stumbled into the Fillmore by accident six years ago, enticed by an ad for an apartment on Craigslist. Strolling out on the patio with the building manager, I looked down to see my dog’s tail touch his back as he ran around pots of jasmine. Looking up at the…
Heidi Sabelhaus Myers presides over a small retail empire of three women’s fashion boutiques on Fillmore Street that began as an online venture. As she prepared to celebrate her 10th anniversary, she paused to reflect on Steve Jobs, believing in destiny and a decade of retail on Fillmore Street.