News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
FIRST PERSON | CAROL FIELD Juicy News is moving down the hill to 2181 Union Street — the very place, longtime locals will remember, where Minerva’s Owl Bookshop was located for many years. Minerva’s Owl was actually created three blocks east at 1823 Union in 1964 from what was originally a coal yard. I founded the…
AFTER A SUCCESSFUL and rewarding career as a bookseller, he’d settled comfortably into retirement in his book-filled flat on Bush Street across from St. Dominic’s Church. Then disaster struck Richard Hilkert. He was walking home from a 78th birthday massage early on the afternoon of August 29, 2006, when a rampaging driver ran him over…
BOOKS | JOE PECORA Very soon after I moved to the historic and architecturally rich Alamo Square neighborhood in 1979, the untold stories of its vintage housing stock piqued my curiosity. When I could discover very little photographic or written material, I began my own research and eventually composed old house profiles for the Alamo…
THE LONG FIGHT to keep Marcus Books in its historic home on Fillmore Street reached another milestone — and perhaps its conclusion — when the new owners of the building locked out the owners of the bookstore May 6. An eviction notice was posted by Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. In an open letter emailed to supporters,…
BOOKS | BARBARA KATE REPA The versatile and iconic singer Linda Ronstadt has mostly kept a low profile since moving back to San Francisco from her native Arizona about eight years ago. But all that changed recently with a huge media blitz touting her new book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir. Her appearances these days…
BOOKS | Barbara Kate Repa “I was facing the stereotype that all women over 70 look like that picture on the See’s candy box,” laments San Francisco author Barbara Rose Brooker. That led Brooker to write The Viagra Diaries, a novel chronicling the life and times of Anny Applebaum, an older woman pursuing a writing career,…
BOOKS | Fran Moreland Johns One chilly afternoon not long ago I pulled on an anorak jacket and walked over to San Francisco’s Laurel Village to pick up some groceries. A young woman who appeared to be about 15 or 16 years old was standing on the sidewalk in front of the Starbucks on the…
BOOKS | Mark J. Mitchell I’ve lived and worked in the Fillmore since before it was new. Old-timers might remember me as the philosopher of beer behind the counter at Bi-Rite Liquors at California and Fillmore before it closed its doors. More recent arrivals might recall me as the Champagne advisor and single malt Scotch…
AUTHOR, SINGER, poet, orator, actress and civil rights activist Maya Angelou has had many jobs in her storied life — including, when she was growing up in the Fillmore, a stint as a calypso dancer at the Purple Onion in North Beach. Recently Angelou recalled her first job: as a San Francisco streetcar conductor. “I…
IT HAD BEEN WHISPERED on the street for weeks: The venerable New Chicago Barbershop had closed and another black Fillmore institution, Marcus Books, would soon be closing, too. Roots run deep for both the bookstore and its building. Before the historic lavender Victorian at 1715 Fillmore that houses Marcus Books was moved from its original…