News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
PACIFIC HEIGHTS HEALTH CLUB has always been a harbinger of the times. The club, at 2356 Pine Street, just off Fillmore, opened in 1984 to men only. The entranceway was plastered with a 12-foot tickertape — a nod to owner Ken Lapan, who was also an attorney and stockbroker. Members were given free half-hour massages —…
SHE’D WORKED FOR THE RITZ in Paris and other international corporations, mostly designing hotels, but French designer Isabelle McGee wanted something different — something more intimate — when she set out to establish her interior design atelier in San Francisco. One day she was walking on Sutter Street, just a block from Fillmore, when she struck…
JAMES PROVENCE, the longtime rector of St. Thomas Anglican Church at 2725 Sacramento Street — who advanced to become archbishop of his entire breakaway province in 2007 — has resigned following allegations of sexual misconduct with a former parishioner of St. Thomas. In a July 20 letter to the church’s governing body, Provence wrote that…
THE DOCENT PROGRAM at St. Dominic’s Church at Steiner and Bush is sponsoring “The Grand Tour: An Overview of Church Art & Architecture” on Saturday, August 22, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Docents will lead visitors on a tour of treasures in wood, stone and stained glass inside and outside the church. The event…
By JULIA IRWIN “I taught my very first dance class half a block away, at the Japanese Community Center, when I was still in college,” says Corinne Nagata, owner of Nagata Dance, a second-floor studio in Japantown with a bird’s eye view of the Peace Plaza pagoda. “And my grandfather had a frame shop about five…
SHASHI BATRA, founder of the new natural beauty emporium Credo, was up a ladder taking a hands-on approach a couple of days before his first store finally opened on June 4. But he seemed happy to climb down for a few minutes to explain why he decided to locate his first shop at 2136 Fillmore.…
Photographs, Text and Video by ERIKA KOCOURKOVA-TETUR Half a century has passed since the neighborhood had at least one barbershop on each side of every block. Back when churches were the places people gathered on Sundays, barbershops served that function the rest of the week. People went there not just for a haircut, but also…
BODY & SOUL | BARBARA KATE REPA Those who doubt that juice cleanses work haven’t met Teresa Piro, owner of Can Can Cleanse, who recently opened an outpost at 2864 California Street. She practices what she preaches. When discussing two of her passions, nutrition and cleansing, listeners begin to feel and believe the exclamation points…
AFTER A DOZEN YEARS upstairs at 2044 Fillmore, with its oversized windows overlooking the heart of the neighborhood’s retail row, International Orange is demonstrating its flexibility by shaking up its yoga and retail offerings. As of November 15, group yoga classes will be eliminated and instruction will only be given one-on-one or semi-privately to two…
JUST AFTER MIDDAY an email message went out: Alden Gilchrist, the widely beloved music director who served Fillmore’s Calvary Presbyterian Church for more than 60 years, had died the night before, on September 1, Labor Day, at age 83. A few hours later, as dark descended, several dozen of Gilchrist’s friends and admirers instinctively gathered at…