News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
In the late 1980s, while driving down Geary Street in San Francisco, designer Tony Duquette discovered an abandoned and vandalized synagogue. He immediately purchased the building. After thoroughly remodeling and updating the structure [located on Geary near Fillmore where the post office now stands], Tony began creating a new exhibition named the Canticle of the…
By DONNA GILLESPIE Book lovers discouraged by the proliferation of chain stores and websites deserve a leisurely afternoon at Browser Books. It’s an old-fashioned bookstore that emanates warmth — wood paneling and music greet you as you enter, and there are lamp-lit nooks that beckon patrons to sit and read. Carefully chosen classics line the…
Celebrity food guru Alice Waters had been approached by a number of writers who wanted to tell the story of Chez Panisse. But they didn’t “get it,” and getting it was the whole idea behind Chez Panisse. So she approached Tom McNamee, whose work on food and natural history she admired, and asked if he…
When Volume 1, Number 1, of the New Fillmore appeared in May 1986, one of its features was ambitiously labeled Great Old Houses #1. It was just a picture and a paragraph about the Victorian at 2447 Washington Street written by Anne Bloomfield. “Untouched it is not,” she noted archly. For the next 14 years,…