News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By Louise Thompson Dumplings & Buns — a new shop that opened August 29 just off Fillmore at 2411 California Street — is on a mission to satisfy locals’ comfort food cravings with simple Asian fare. Focusing on savory and sweet dumplings and buns, it also offers dim sum, soups and salads, mostly to go.…
By Kellie Ell A once vibrant mural on the south side of the Boom Boom Room at Fillmore and Geary is now covered in gold, hot pink and white spray paint and other graffiti. Looming above, the next-door National Dollar store has painted its name and a parade of products it sells — soda, crackers,…
FIRST PERSON | JULIAN GUTHRIE Having lived in San Francisco for nearly 20 years and worked as a reporter first for the Examiner and now for the Chronicle, I have come to see the different ways neighborhoods in the city are defined. For many, the center of a neighborhood is a coffee house, or a…
Graham Leggat — the irrepressible Scottish impresario who led the San Francisco Film Society on to greater glory during the past six years — died tonight at his home after an 18-month battle with cancer. Under Leggat, the Film Society made its annual San Francisco International Film Festival — the nation’s oldest — more important…
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…