News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By Chris Barnett Owners of the 58-room, 116-year-old Edwardian style Hotel Majestic at Sutter and Gough have filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy to keep creditors from checking in and padlocking its ornate, cut glass front doors. Under Chapter 11, the hotel and its Uptown Joe’s restaurant and Butterfly Bar remain open for business. There is…
By Tessa Williams It would be easy to pass by the purple Victorian at 1712 Fillmore without realizing its importance to Bay Area black history. Located just north of Post Street, the building’s modest presence belies its legacy, both as the former home of Jimbo’s Bop City — the legendary after-hours jazz club — and…
TAKE A LAST LOOK at the majestic pink temple glowing in the late afternoon sunlight at the corner of California and Webster. It is quickly being enveloped by scaffolding for a seismic retrofit that will strengthen the hundred-year-old home of Congregation Sherith Israel. And it will lose its distinctive salmon pink paint job and emerge next…
AMONG THE WORK now under way at the Sherith Israel temple at California and Webster is the restoration of the stained glass windows. In the grand western window, “Moses Presenting the Ten Commandments to the Children of Israel,” Moses is depicted on the granite rocks at the gateway to Yosemite, with Half Dome and El…
RetroTV: The Brooklyn Circus SF ‘Rises Above The Tide’ from The Retrospective on Vimeo.
Its 53rd incarnation opens tonight at the Castro Theater, but most of the action at the SF International Film Festival — and the box office — is down the block at the Sundance Kabuki at Fillmore and Post. Schedule and full details.
SALOONS | Chris Barnett Theyyy’re baaaack . . . The two crystal and brass lamps circa 1938 vanished last summer, plunging the west end of the Elite Cafe’s bar into darkness. Regulars missed the elegant touch and the lumins; the faux candle replacements never cut it. Ace servers Abby, Jenna and Kate practically needed miner’s…
Longtime Fillmore resident and noted artist Bill Shields died Wednesday, April 14, just a week shy of his 85th birthday. Shields and his wife Denise in recent years have owned and operated the Artists Inn at 2231 Pine Street. The inn is housed in his former studio, which faces a sunny patio behind their home.…
William Stephens Shields Jr. April 23, 1925 – April 14, 2010 By WILL SHIELDS I’d like to thank everyone here for coming to pay our respects to Bill Shields, a wonderful friend, husband, father and grandfather. It’s always sad when someone we care so much about passes, but this was a man that by his…
F loral designer Kaori Imaizumi is preparing for a museum exhibition this month, as she has every spring since she opened her flower shop in the neighborhood in 2006. She’s participating once again in “Bouquets to Art,” the annual extravaganza in which floral arrangements interpret and comment upon works of art in the DeYoung Museum in…