THIS LAVISH oversized limited edition book brings together a collection of favorite photographs and stories from the pages of the New Fillmore. It tells the story of an ever-changing small town in the big city with a rich history and a strong sense of community.
Available exclusively at Browser Books on Fillmore, or order online.
THIS DOCUMENTARY — filmed entirely on Fillmore Street — tells the story of longtime Fillmore resident Kelly Johnson, who used a new California law to end his life on his own terms.
Anton Cura is bringing back the golden age of the neighborhood barbershop.
By Christine Lunde
WORKING ITS WAY into the local fabric, Attention to Detail Barber Gallery on Sutter Street may soon rival sports bars as the hippest place for men to fraternize. Flat screen TVs broadcasting sports and news, generous servings of beer and champagne — and, of course, stylish cuts and shaves — make the shop at 2180 Sutter a convenient congregating place for clients of all ages.
On one recent afternoon, owner Anton Cura saw his youngest client, a 3-year-old blonde boy, walk by. He waved. A group of women pushing strollers yelled into the shop for stylist Ken El-Armin and he dashed out to say hello. The clientele is mostly male, and on this particular day friends are waiting, browsing through magazines, watching television and joining the conversation. The space is sleek and open, yet intimate enough to encourage conversation.
Cura is bringing back the golden age of the neighborhood barbershop. But Attention to Detail, which opened last year, is the spruced-up post-dot-com version. It doesn’t look like a traditional barbershop because it’s not; it’s a hybrid between a place to get a haircut and a high-end salon. (more…)
A 1902 engraving of Calvary Presbyterian Church at the corner of Fillmore and Jackson.
LOCAL HISTORY | JOE BEYER
Thanksgiving Day marks the 110th anniversary that Calvary Presbyterian Church has stood proudly at the corner of Fillmore and Jackson Streets.
But it’s actually much older than that.
Founded in 1854, the church’s first home was located on Bush Street between Montgomery and Sansome. In 1859, as the city expanded, the church moved to a new building on Union Square, which stood where the St. Francis Hotel is located today.
By the turn of the century, the city’s continuing westward expansion led the congregation to conclude it was time to move again, all the way out to Fillmore Street. More than a million bricks from the Union Square structure — along with the pews, much of the woodwork and the metal balcony supports — were moved and used in the new sanctuary. The first service in the building was held on Thanksgiving Day on November 27, 1902.
The timing was fortuitous. In April 1906 the great earthquake and fire struck the city and the area around Union Square was destroyed. But the fire did not spread to this part of the city, and Fillmore Street became the new center of activity.
Calvary suffered no structural damage and after the earthquake hosted many community meetings and services for other religions whose homes were destroyed by the earthquake and fire. The basement of the church was a temporary courtroom for the superior court.
Calvary Presbyterian Church in 1868 on the corner of Geary and Powell.
ON A CHARMING block of Sutter Street that narrowly missed the wrecking ball of redevelopment 50 years ago, Sidney Hair Care sits among Victorian homes, small shops and the Macedonia Baptist Church.
Sidney, the professional name of Betty Jean Macklin, has cared for clients of all races and walks of life at this shop since 1988. Even before then, she was cutting, perming, relaxing and coloring hair in salons nearby, and gone by, including Jose La Crosby, Patrick’s Barber Shop, Darrnell’s and Ivory’s.
“I am part of a 60-year tradition in this very location as an African American owned and operated hair salon,” she says. “And there aren’t too many of us left in this town who can say that.” (more…)
A composite photograph shows the burial niches behind the main altar at St. Dominic’s.
FOR THE FIRST TIME since the 1930s, when San Francisco’s cemeteries were dug up and moved to Colma, Catholics will soon have a place to inter their loved ones in the neighborhood.
St. Dominic’s Church is creating a columbarium within its stately Gothic arches and flying buttresses. It will offer 320 niches behind the main altar, each big enough for the cremated remains of two parishioners. They are priced from $4,200 to $15,200, with the most costly located within the Friars Chapel. Others will be in the area around the altar known as the ambulatory.
“It doesn’t disturb the architectural integrity of the church,” said Father Xavier Lavagetto, who persuaded the archbishop of San Francisco to allow the columbarium after repeated requests from members of the church.
The Catholic church banned cremation until 1963. Now approximately half of local Catholics are cremated, but there has been no place in the city to inter their remains, as Catholic doctrine requires.
“A number of people in the parish have grandmother at home,” Father Xavier said. (more…)
Longtime local resident John Gaul and (below) his new feline friend.
By BARBARA KATE REPA
FOR MANY YEARS, John Gaul has been a fixture on Fillmore. Strolling and bussing through the neighborhood, he has been a dapper presence, doling out advice and good cheer along the way.
But just lately, his gait has slowed. He is getting about now with the help of a walker since he fell on the stairs a couple of months ago while giving one of his regular tours at the Haas-Lilienthal House on Franklin Street. And then he lost a dear and longtime live-in companion: a tabby cat named Felix. But his spirit remains strong, and he’s still up for a new challenge.
“I’m going through what people my age go through — a seismic shift, a breakdown of the body,” says Gaul, who will turn 87 in November. “But I have to go on. And I wanted something that needed someone to take care of it.”
But Gaul’s attempts to adopt a new feline friend were unsuccessful at Animal Care and Control, the San Francisco SPCA and Pets Unlimited — all of which rejected him because of his age, or his aloneness, or his limited funds.
By most lights, the rejections are hard to imagine. Gaul, who lives at the John F. Kennedy Towers public housing complex on Sacramento Street, just off Fillmore, is a vibrant being — full of good conversation and astute observation.
As he gets about the city, he’s always dressed to the nines, nattily attired on a recent day in a red tie, blue striped shirt, vest with double watch chain and herringbone jacket, his white beard impeccably groomed.
And then there’s the voice — a deliberate, old-fashioned oratorical cadence inspired by the radio days of the 1940s and nourished by listening daily to the announcers on the local classical station. “I like the alto voices and the counter tenor,” he says. “Somewhere in between; that’s where I want to be.”
So he works at it, doing daily voice exercises to perfect his pitch and studied delivery inspired by the Dale Carnegie training he emulates. But with Felix gone, there was no one to listen. “I wake up in the morning and there’s no living thing around,” he says. “I miss having a cat to pet.”
After he was repeatedly rejected by the likeliest animal shelters, a friend found a hopeful lead: Give Me Shelter Cat Rescue, a nonprofit group dedicated to finding homes for adult and senior cats — those most often euthanized in shelters. Its founder, Lana Bajsel, listened to a few details about Gaul’s situation and immediately homed in on a few potential prospects for him. She agreed to bring them to Give Me Shelter’s adoption center at the Petco on Sloat Avenue so they could all suss out one another.
On the appointed Sunday afternoon, she arrived pushing a shopping cart laden with three carriers, accompanied by loud choruses of meows from within.
“It was a circus all the way over here,” she announced, beckoning Gaul inside to meet her charges.
First out of the carrier was Brenda. As Bajsel extolled the 4-year-old female cat’s virtues — she had already been spayed, vaccinated, microchipped and tested for various diseases — Brenda let out a powerful hiss and swatted at Gaul’s extended hand.
Next up was Gypsy, another tabby with a small bald spot who nuzzled Gaul at once; and Buddy, a larger black and white fluffy male with a special fondness for Fancy Feast. Those two might as well not have bothered making the trip.
“That’s the one that appeals to me,” declared Gaul, eyeing Brenda. “Those markings. And the size; I’m in a small unit in city housing.”
“Ah, you like the spitfires,” Bajsel said, nodding knowingly.
Before they parted ways, Gaul had loaded Brenda in her carrier onto his walker, ready to head for home.
“She’s a beautiful animal: a tabby — I’m partial to them — with topaz eyes and white boots,” he explains to a visitor a week later. “And something seemed noble about her from the very beginning — the yowling, the hissing, the scratching. When I saw her, I thought: ‘I wonder what she’s protecting and how I could appeal to that.’ And I also thought: ‘Maybe I can do this. I want that challenge,’ ” he says. “The others thought she wasn’t adoptable. But I see something there. I just do.”
Bajsel later gives some details about Brenda’s challenging past: She came in to Animal Care and Control as a stray and was put on the list for disposition — a polite term for “kill” — after scratching a volunteer.
But Bajsel doesn’t blame the cat.
“Volunteers at Animal Care and Control are not always cat savvy. I’ve seen them, talking away on their iPhones when they’re supposed to be observing and handling the animals,” she says. “But if anyone gets scratched or bitten, the animal is automatically disposed of.”
Once she was ensconced in her new home with Gaul, however, Brenda slowly began to get a little friendlier. She also got a new name: Ariadne.
“In Greek mythology, Ariadne was stranded on an island in the Aegean Sea and left alone until she was found by the god Dionysus,” Gaul says. “It’s the story of abandonment and rescue — just like this one. I’ll call her Ari for short. She’s the perfect cat for me.”
While Ariadne’s not talking, the feeling seems to be mutual. She’s taken to curling just below Gaul’s knees as he naps in the afternoon. And recently, she swatted playfully at a chain he was putting on his wrist.
“She watches everything I do,” says Gaul. “Old men get up at night — and she follows me.” Then, for Ariadne, it’s back to the basket filled with fabric at the back of a closet that she claimed early on as her personal respite.
In her most accommodating moments, Ariadne will walk back and forth just under Gaul’s hand so that he can stroke her from nose to tail. “I get a delightful sense of touch — and I need that,” he says. “And even her yowling appeals to my aural sense.”
She’s yowling less frequently now, though. “We get along,” says Gaul.
He credits past experiences for his current pluck. For a decade, he conducted tours of the Palace of Fine Arts, designed by the legendary architect Bernard Maybeck for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. It was there that he connected with Maybeck’s daughter-in-law, Jacomena. The two became so close they talked at 9 o’clock every morning until she died a few years ago at age 95. He recalls her final words in their last telephone conversation: “I’m like a small child standing on the edge of the world. I’m ready to step off now.”
Gaul credits the friendship with an awakening. “Jacomena was a coach of sorts,” he says. “Through her, I began to know what Bernard Maybeck was about. And that fits in with honoring certain ideas, no matter how hard they are. I walked into that world, and I couldn’t have been more lucky.”
The friendship fueled Gaul’s interest in the Swedenborgian Church at Lyon and Washington Streets, which Maybeck helped design. He was a driving force behind getting the Swedenborgian declared a National Historic Landmark in 2004.
His last docenting gig was at the Haas-Lilienthal House, which he refers to as “that stately Victorian home,” where he took the life-changing tumble down the stairs.
Still, he’s not letting the fall keep him down. “If you don’t take on life, you’ll be a victim,” he says. “I won’t be that. What else do I have to do? Sit and feel sorry for myself? I won’t do that, either.
“And when I look back, I think life is good,” says Gaul, who adds he takes no medications and never has. “When you get old, you begin to see that life is winding down. Is it sad? No — not if I decide it’s not.”
Gaul says he now treasures his relationships with others more closely, particularly younger people he can help puzzle through their problems. He finds them serendipitously: on the bus, at the laundromat, in the Safeway.
But there’s nothing quite like a cat.
“This limerick I wrote sums it all up,” he says. “I call it ‘Lonely Old Man.’ ”
There was an old man, all alone
Who remarked, “I’m beginning to groan.”
Give Me Shelter heard that
And provided a cat
Which did quiet that lonely man’s groan.
NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENT and fencing champion Alexander Massialas is realizing a dream — and continuing a family legacy — by competing in the summer Olympics in London.
His father and coach, Greg Massialas, also fenced in the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games and qualified for the 1980 games in Moscow, which the U.S. boycotted.
“It’s a really special bond we have, so having my dad here at the Olympic village is kind of incredible, because this is something he’s gone through himself as an athlete,” Alex said in an interview from London shortly before the games began. “Walking through the opening ceremonies, it’s going to be something I probably won’t even have words for.”
Two days later, there he was — right at the front when Team USA marched in during the opening ceremonies. (more…)
Imperial Spa at 1875 Geary shares a parking lot with KFC and a dry cleaners.
FIRST PERSON | Barbara Kate Repa
My friend Johanna and I honor a tradition of embarking on an adventure together to celebrate our birthdays, loosely based on Eleanor Roosevelt’s exhortation that doing scary things makes you stronger.
So when my big day neared this year, I urged an outing to the Imperial Spa at 1875 Geary. It’s an unlikely spot for a spa, next door to the post office, on the former site of the People’s Temple presided over by the Rev. Jim Jones, who infamously led more than 900 of his followers from the Fillmore to a mass suicide in Guyana. Now the site is a short strip mall where the smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken hangs heavy in the air.
Two other friends who know skin and muscle — one an aesthetician, the other a masseuse — had separately sung the praises of the spa. But since neither Johanna nor I had experienced a Korean massage and scrub, the proposed outing held some of the requisite fear factors. (more…)
Le Labo has completely remade the storefront at 2238 Fillmore.
“FRESH PERFUME IS THE BEST,” proclaims Meg Christensen, manager of Le Labo, the scent emporium that opened during the holidays at 2238 Fillmore Street. The spare shop has no perfume in stock, but will mix one of its 12 fragrances on the spot while the customer waits.
Costs range from $58 for a 15-ml. portion — best for newcomers who want to try a scent on for size — to $700 for a 500-ml. grand size.
The most popular offering so far is Santal 33. The 33 signifies the number of ingredients that go into the mix, with the end result said to be conjure up the “sensual universality” of the Marlboro man — or rather the Marlboro person, given that all Le Labo scents are deemed to be unisex.
“Great fragrances don’t have a gender,” says Christensen, noting that some of the scents are also produced in lotions and long-lasting silicone-based balms.
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 beauty and to make people feel beautiful,” she says.
She went back to SF State and got her B.A. in design, with a minor in business administration, all while working at Victoria’s Secret.
“I trained with Victoria’s Secret when they were still a small company,” Nuval says. “They had a small boutique shop on Union Street. Here is where the seed was planted. I knew that once they became corporate, they were going to miss out on specialized customer service. I knew then that I had to open my own store, my dream.”
So she learned merchandising, business administration and management and then took the next logical step: She opened My Boudoir Lingerie in June 1998 on Fillmore Street. In 2009 she moved back to Union Street, near where she had started.
“When I look at my store today, here on Union Street again, I see all the tears, the sweat and the hard work,” she says. “A sense of accomplishment is when a customer walks out of my shop, truly happy and confident about her beauty.”
Local cyclist Doug Rappaport is a big fan of Bespoke, a new neighborhood bike shop.
FIRST PERSON | Doug Rappaport
Offering handmade bicycles and promising precision maintenance services, Bespoke Cycles is now open at 2843 Clay Street, near Scott, the storefront previously occupied for many years by Tony Kitz Oriental Rugs. As a nearby neighbor and an avid cyclist, I’m excited — because in addition to selling custom bicycles and top-end equipment, Bespoke is quickly becoming a hub for local cycling with bicycle-related events and rides.
