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.
A decade ago, the artist Ken Auster became enamored of some artistic cowboy boot sculptures. He didn’t buy them, but they stayed on his mind — ones that got away.
Then about a year ago, Auster was stunned to see what he thought were the same boot sculptures. “As I approached, I realized these were the real thing — real boots, as beautiful as the ones I’d seen before, but you could actually wear them,” he says.
The boots are handcrafted of intricately embroidered velvet in Uzbekistan, done in tribal designs indigenous to the region. No two pair are alike: some are bright florals on black, some muted and spare, some a classy tone on tone. Heels and toes vary, too — including cowboy boots and Cuban styles with heels, plus a flat version with gypsy heel and round toe.
Smitten all over again, Auster and his wife Paulette bought more than the boots. They became the collection’s first major distributor in the United States. In “The Art of the Boot,” they will offer them in San Francisco for the first time on July 3 and 4 at the Fillmore Jazz Festival.
“I just keep on sailing,” says Jeanne Lacy. “I won’t ever give it up.”
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS
Contemplating moving from her Cow Hollow home, Jeanne Lacy checked out retirement communities of all sorts — from medium range to posh — but couldn’t find a fit. Some apartments seemed great, but she was unsure about group dining, or turned off by long narrow hallways, or vexed by one thing or another that didn’t seem to work.
“I kept hoping I’d see one place that felt just right,” she says, “and it didn’t happen.” Then a friend brought Mary Moore Gaines, rector emeritus of St. James Episcopal Church and an activist in a variety of community causes, to a meeting of a small group to which Lacy belonged. Gaines talked about San Francisco Village, a community-based membership organization being developed as an alternative to retirement community living.
“I said, ‘That’s for me,’” Lacy recalls.
That was several years ago, when Gaines and a small group were launching plans for an aging-in-place organization patterned after the pioneering Beacon Hill Village in Boston. There was one other in California at the time, Avenidas in Palo Alto. If they could build such a support community in San Francisco, the group members reasoned, much of the city’s rapidly growing aging population could continue to live independently — exactly Jeanne Lacy’s goal.
San Francisco Village would offer services in health and wellness, daily living, social and volunteer activities. For Lacy, the arrangement beckoned.
“They were talking about a community,” she says. “When you reach the point where you can’t get around as easily, being part of a community — people you know and trust who will keep in touch, will be able to look in on you and make sure you’re okay — this will help those of us who want to stay in our own homes.”
“I’ve been a member of San Francisco Village since it started in January 2009,” she says. “The community hasn’t fully materialized, but we’re coming along.”
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Jeanne and her husband, Lyman, moved to San Francisco from Sacramento in 1980. They settled into an apartment in a four-unit building his family had built, then took it apart and rebuilt it. They’d lived in San Francisco for a year after they married, but raised their three daughters in Sacramento. Lacy says San Francisco felt like home. She has now lived in three of the four units in the building, and plans to stay put.
San Francisco Bay had been a weekend home away from home almost from the beginning of the Lacy family.
“Lyman had a friend who had a sailboat, and he got the bug, so we bought a boat,” she recalls. “But I was worried about three little girls and a golden retriever.”
Early on, her doubts faded. “The more I learned about sailing, the more I thought ‘This is pretty neat,’ ” Lacy says. “I joined a group of women who sailed, and my confidence built pretty quickly.”
The family spent every available weekend on the bay while the girls were growing up, and after the move to San Francisco, it became every available moment.
Lyman died in May 2001, following a succession of strokes that left him increasingly disabled and added “caregiver” to Jeanne’s list of roles. “I was glad that his brain was never affected,” she says. His mobility decidedly was, but she would tug him in and out of cars and wheelchairs and they kept on the go.
“People would say, ‘Oh, you’re so good to him,’ and I’d say, ‘Wrong! I’m doing this for me.’ I had to stay active,” Lacy says, adding that after her husband died, “It took me quite a while to become a whole and individual person.”
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Though she sees San Francisco Village as a work in progress, Lacy lists a variety of benefits it has already delivered: the “art of living” series hosted by Eva Auchincloss, a talk on brain fitness by SharpBrains CEO Alvaro Fernandez and a program on personal and community security hosted by Judy and Don Langley. Lacy hosted a series on finance, which was more sparsely attended than she had hoped, but part of the group’s learning curve.
“One of the things the Village is doing — which I’m helping with — is calling members once a month to find out what they are liking or not liking,” she says. The calls also serve as a way to check in on individual members. And that is what most appeals to Lacy. Her three daughters now live in Oregon, the California Sierra and Houston. She lives alone, and wants to keep living independently.
“When the time comes that I might need someone keeping check on me,” she says, “I think the Village will be able to fill that need.”
For more information about San Francisco Village, visit www.sfvillage.org.
A longtime member of the Seagals
Still an adventurous sailor at the age of 83, Jeanne Lacy is a longtime member of the Seagals, a group of about 20 women, some of whom learned to sail with their husbands, who now enjoy the camaraderie and relaxation of their weekly Wednesday sails together. “Men yell, which makes it hard to learn,” says Lacy. “But women are patient and are just as good at sea.”
Lacy and her love of sailing — and her involvement in San Francisco Village — are featured in a new book, Passages in Caregiving, by noted author Gail Sheehy. In her book, Sheehy profiles Lacy, including her bout with a rare streptococcus infection, which spurred her to join San Francisco Village as a way of maintaining a healthy and helpful connection to others in the community.
Sheehy writes:
“Sailing her 36-foot sloop on the bay was the one pleasure she allowed herself, weekly, during the 10-year stretch as the sole caregiver for her husband through a series of his strokes. Her beautiful face is crinkled like the water on a gusty day. ‘When my husband died, I just kept on sailing,’ she says, bringing her fist down on the steering wheel. ‘I won’t ever give it up.’
“Jeanne is tall and regal, with a slight bend. ‘I used to be very erect,’ she tells me. ‘I rode horses and played tennis for years, and those are hard on your spine. Mine has been compressing.’ The only other sign of aging she noticed in her seventies was a pleasant surprise. When her hair tuned white, her eyes turned bluer. They are riveting.”
Photograph of Neja's Nellie Muganda by Rose Hodges
Neighbors in search of Fillmore Street’s famed make-up artist to the stars Nellie Muganda needn’t look far. She’s followed her muse — and a more favorable lease — down the hill to 2118 Union Street. (more…)
The lingerie shop My Boudoir blazed the trail from Fillmore to Union Street last November. The boutique, which debuted at 2029 Fillmore in 1998, is a family operation run by mother Geraldine Nuval-Weibull and daughter Delilah Nuval.
Inside its tiny new space at 2285 Union — which is half the size of the Fillmore location — the two have recreated the intimate setting of their former shop, even relocating the wall-sized harem mural by Teresa Moore, which adds to the exotic feel of the place.
Nuval says the space easily accommodates their small but exclusive offering of upscale lingerie that changes with the seasons. And they get good spillover foot traffic from Rose’s Cafe, the popular Union Street eatery across the street. She also noted that the rents “are significantly lower” at either end of the main Union Street shopping hub, where their boutique sits.
“But I really miss Fillmore Street — there was so much going on there,” she says. “And I can’t believe what a big difference there is in what the clients buy. On Fillmore, shoppers liked well-made pieces in rich textures and fabrics. But here on Union Street, they’re like: ‘What’s cute?’ ”
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 Capitan in the distance, rather than in Sinai. For this modern Moses, California is the Promised Land.
Neighborhood physician Dr. Eduardo P. Dolhun is with a team of doctors in Haiti treating earthquake victims. Here is a portion of his first dispatch from the front:
“Within a matter of minutes we were presented with a wide assortment of severe illnesses, all of them traumatic and now nearly six days old.
“The first patient was a 78-year-old woman who had gotten her hand crushed by a fallen concrete slab in her kitchen. She was preparing dinner for her children and grandchildren. She was calm and patient, as we slowly removed the gauze that had not been changed for five days. The dried blood and puss had fused the dressing in a patchy assortment of wet and dry areas, with bubbles percolating up from the wet areas, indicating anaerobic bacterial (bacteria that cause gangrene) infection. One is able to diagnose this type of infection with the nose: It has a distinctive and unforgettable odor.
“As we methodically unwrapped and gently cut away the bandage, we had time to get to know her and also to prepare her for the probability that she would likely lose the entire hand, adding to the loss of her five fingers.”
“There’s a very special energy here,” says Kathy Nelsen, longtime director of the Kabuki Springs & Spa, explaining why the cultural fixture has endured for nearly 40 years. “The communal baths are really what differentiates us. We have some of the only ones in California and the U.S.”
Nelsen, who has carefully nurtured the Kabuki’s distinctively spiritual environment for the last decade, says another thing that sets the Kabuki apart is a deep respect for the body. She describes a recent women’s night to make her point. (more…)
For the last six years, I have been working at Toujours, the petite lingerie
shop on Sacramento Street just around the corner from Fillmore. I’ve been a salesclerk and bra-fitter, but also a therapist and a shoulder to cry on.
Perhaps the best perk of working in a classy little neighborhood lingerie shop is the opportunity to meet lots of people who have loving, lasting romances — not just relationships, not just marriages, but actual romances — the kind we all long for and dream about, the blushing, giggling, toe-curling, hot, satisfying relationships that last.
In my first year in the shop, I met a man who was shopping for his wife. He had a smile on his face as he handed me a simple cotton gown and fleecy robe and said, “Wrap it up.”
“What’s the occasion?” I asked. He answered, “We’ve been married for 25 years, and our anniversary is coming up.”
Archbishop James Provence celebrating Christmas mass at St. Thomas Church.
By THOMAS REYNOLDS
That distinguished looking gentleman with the silver hair and the purple vestment you see walking around the neighborhood got still more distinguished last month: He was enthroned as the new archbishop of the Anglican Province of Christ the King, which includes most of the traditional Anglicans in the western United States.
Among those in the pews to witness his elevation was the gang from the bar at Florio on Fillmore Street. The Most Rev. James Eugene Provence often has dinner at the bar with the regulars.
“I’ve had some serious theological discussions there,” he says. “People will sit there and, after a couple of pops, they’ll ask a question.”
The archbishop has been in the neighborhood for nearly nine years as the parish priest of St. Thomas Anglican Church, which is housed at 2725 Sacramento Street in a perfectlly proportioned small chapel that would be at home in an Italian hill town. He came to St. Thomas after serving at several other California congregations, most recently at St. Stephens on Oakville Grade in Napa Valley, a rather more rustic setting than Pacific Heights.
“Here we’ve got flush toilets,” he chuckles. “There we had an outhouse.”
