News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
NEIGHBORHOOD BUSINESSMAN Agonafer Shiferaw has filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging fraud and deceit at the Fillmore Heritage Center. It charges that Mayor London Breed, Supervisor Vallie Brown and other city officials violated laws and engaged in other wrongdoing that has cost roughly $100 million in failed public and private investments — and “contributed…
WE WILL MISS Justice William Newsom at Chouquet’s on Fillmore. He had two preferred tables that we’d set aside for him after he became a regular in recent years. We simply referred to him as “the judge.” When he came in, he’d lovingly hold the hand of whichever pretty French waitress was on duty and recite the…
CITY ATTORNEY Dennis Herrera filed suit this morning against developer Michael E. Johnson — who built the Fillmore Heritage Center — for more than $6.5 million the city claims Johnson owes for a loan that helped build the complex. “The years of excuses are over. Time’s up,” Herrera said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.…
By SUSAN SWARD On a Friday in April of 1972, Charlotte Maeck got a purple postcard in the mail at her Pacific Heights residence that she initially thought was a hosiery advertisement from the I. Magnin department store. On closer look, she saw it was a city announcement of a hearing the following Tuesday on…
IN THE two-and-a-half years since Yoshi’s walked away from the jazz club and restaurant it created in the much-heralded Fillmore Heritage Center, city leaders have met and talked extensively about what should take its place. Now they have punted. On November 3, City Hall abruptly announced that none of the five proposals that had been…
THE ON-AGAIN, off-again plan to create a memorial Zen garden at the foot of Cottage Row — once a Japanese enclave — is back on again. On October 19, the Recreation & Park Commission approved the garden, a memorial to the founders of Japantown. But approval on the commission’s consent calendar came only after another…
By JOHN KAYE I have walked the streets of Pacific Heights for years with my beloved dog, Bubba, and I have been noticing something getting worse: “No Stopping” signs are sprouting all over the streets, especially on Sacramento, Steiner and Fillmore.
By JAYA PADMANABHAN When 27-year-old Luis Quiroz heard the news that DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program — was being rescinded, it was as though something he’d worked for all his life had been stripped away. “I felt completely defeated,” he said. Quiroz was born in the Mexican state of Guerrero…
A PLAN TO build a Zen-style Japanese rock garden at the foot of Cottage Row has been derailed, at least for now. In June, a committee of the Recreation and Park Commission approved the garden, which would honor the Issei generation of Japanese-Americans who founded Japantown 110 years ago after the 1906 earthquake. But Bush…
FEDERAL THREATS to cut funding for health care — particularly family planning services for women — have already hit a target close to home. The Women’s Community Clinic, at 1833 Fillmore Street, recently lost a $250,000 federal grant it had depended on for years and is now facing the biggest budget shortfall in its 18-year…