A designer who’s just our type

Posted on July 4, 2012 by editors

POSTER ARTIST | Carly Lane Plaskett

She was a high school art teacher in London before moving to San Francisco four years ago to study new media at the Academy of Art. Carly Lane Plaskett flourished in the “digital meets old school design” program.

For a class in typography, she was challenged to design her own font. Since she lived near Fillmore Street, she decided to evoke the neighborhood’s jazz era. “I wanted something local to inspire me,” she says. “All through school I’d worked at Harry’s on Fillmore.” She studied mid-century typefaces, with their thin and thick letters, as she created her own Fillmore face.

Once she’d created the font, she had to demonstrate its use. Last year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival had just come and gone, so she imagined what the next poster might look like, and how the design would work on postcards and street banners.

“I’ve been to every Fillmore festival since I got here,” she says. “Fillmore is real — it still has a cultural element that’s gotten lost in the more commercial areas.”

She got an “A” on the project and graduated to a job at Sparkart, an agency in Oakland. And when she emailed a copy of her Fillmore Jazz Festival project to the festival’s organizers, they promptly suggested it be featured on the poster for this year’s festival.

“It’s really exciting to see my design all over,” she says. She was especially flattered when the poster was reproduced in chalk on the blackboard at Kiehl’s.

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The St. Dominic’s connection

Posted on June 3, 2012 by editors

MUSIC | James DeKoven

Considering that my favorite bands in high school were the likes of Black Sabbath, Mountain and Thin Lizzy, it made little sense that I was also buying Van Morrison records.

His songs didn’t include blistering guitar solos or prophesies of nuclear Armageddon. Yet as a music-obsessed teen, I recognized that he deserved investigation. First I tried Astral Weeks, then His Band and the Street Choir, then Saint Dominic’s Preview, which became my favorite of the bunch.

Years later, when I moved to San Francisco, I ended up living a few blocks from St. Dominic’s Church. And I began to wonder whether there was a connection between the album and the imposing Gothic church at Bush and Steiner Streets.
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Hemingway at the Swedenborgian

Posted on May 24, 2012 by editors

Film crew at the Swedenborgian Church, with Nicole Kidman in the doorway.

Legendary filmmaker Philip Kaufman — director of The Right Stuff, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and many others — has lived in Pacific Heights for years. His latest film premieres on May 28 at 9 p.m. when HBO broadcasts Hemingway & Gellhorn, starring Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen.

Hemingway & Gellhorn is a love story exploring the tempestuous relationship between writers Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, which was the inspiration for Hemingway’s classic novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Though the story takes place in nine different countries, the film was shot over 40 days entirely on location in San Francisco and the Bay Area, which stood in for Spain, Finland, Cuba, New York, Shanghai, Key West and Idaho.

Key scenes were filmed at the Swedenborgian Church at Washington and Lyon Streets, only a few blocks from Kaufman’s home.

“One scene takes place in a church in Finland that had been converted for wartime use,” says Kaufman. “We were looking for something — maybe not Finnish, but with that approximate feeling. And of course I’d been to weddings there.”

Incorporating archival black and white footage of Finnish soldiers, Kaufman recreates the scene with snow and icicles on the historic church. “Then the color comes back into it,” he says, “and we find Nicole writing letters to Hemingway — actually taken from the real letters.”

Another scene was shot in the wooden stairway of the church’s parish house, standing in for the small British hotel where Gellhorn and Hemingway had their final rendezvous. “It’s where they break up their relationship,” says Kaufman. “It’s their final scene together.”

During the filming, Kaufman walked home to Vallejo Street for lunch, then back to work at the church.

“We can make films here and use local people, yet create a film that could be made anywhere in the world,” Kaufman says. “It’s great. It’s just great working here.”

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Read more: Cannes celebrates Philip Kaufman

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Etta in the Fillmore

Posted on January 20, 2012 by editors

Photograph of Etta James by Anthony Montes de Oca

EXCERPT | By Etta James

Uncle Frank showed up in his car and whisked us up to San Francisco when I was 12. We dropped [my mother] Dorothy off in the Fillmore District, which looked like a hell-hole to me. L.A. was a vine-covered cottage compared to these slums. After the sunny skies of southern California, the Bay Area looked seedy and sad — the fog-covered sky, the bums on the street. Maybe it was my mood or just the neighborhood where Dorothy lived, but my first impression was grime and crime.

I wound up in a couple of gangs — one in the Fillmore, where my mother lived, and one in the projects by Uncle Frank. We wore baggy jeans, just like today, with the legs dragging on the ground. A white shirt was also part of our uniform — an oversize man’s shirt worn tails-out to cover your ass. Then you had your white socks rolled all the way down below your ankles and beat-up tennis shoes. I let my hair grow long and put it in a ponytail. I thought I was bad. I guess I was the classic case of a kid who, lacking a real family, was looking for a family feeling in gangs.

I started bouncing from school to school. I’d been going to Girls High School in the Fillmore, but they threw me out of there. I was a wiseguy and a clown, always cutting up, never minding no one. So they put me in Continuation School, which is your last stop before they kick your ass out of the system altogether.
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Farewell to a big man with a tiny trumpet

Posted on January 4, 2012 by editors

Mike Pitrie made the Fillmore his home base.

JAZZ | Anthony Torres

Mike “Coffee Picasso” Pitre, a true original local jazz talent and music scene treasure, died of a heart attack on December 18, leaving friends and admirers stunned at the sudden departure of the Bohemian Knuckleboogie lead man. He was 44.

I can still vividly remember that first sighting of Coffee and Bohemian Knuckleboogie a couple of years ago at Sheba Piano Lounge on Fillmore — the sound offering a unique blend of New Orleans jazz, soul and blues. It was difficult not to notice Mike Pitre, a larger than life black man, blowing a tiny pocket trumpet with an electric guitar draped over his torso. He sang with a style and voice that was incredibly hip and uniquely his own.

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It’s the symphony’s centennial

Posted on December 8, 2011 by editors

NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENT Michael Tilson Thomas is one of the best things to happen to the San Francisco Symphony in its first 100 years. Join in this sing-along for the symphony’s centennial — today, December 8.

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From Yoshi’s to Lincoln Center

Posted on December 2, 2011 by editors

Photograph of Jason Olaine by Kathi O'Leary

JAZZ | Jason Olaine

It seems like only yesterday that I came back home to the Bay Area after 10 years in New York to become artistic director of Yoshi’s new jazz club on Fillmore. That was May 2009, and here it is soon to be 2012. Now I find myself about to leave Yoshi’s to return to New York to program Jazz at Lincoln Center.
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60 years of making music

Posted on October 22, 2011 by editors

Photograph of Alden Gilchrist and the Calvary Chancel Choir by Alvin Johnson

LOCALS | FRAN MORELAND JOHNS

Alden Gilchrist has been making music at at the corner of Fillmore and Jackson for the past 60 years — and on October 28 he will be honored with a special concert as the longtime music director of Calvary Presbyterian Church.

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Filipino jazz returns to Fillmore

Posted on October 6, 2011 by editors

The San Francisco Filipino American Jazz Festival returns to the Fillmore for its fourth annual concert on Sunday, October 9, at 6 p.m. at Yoshi’s. Like last year’s concert, also held at Yoshi’s, this is a homecoming of Filipino jazz artists to the Fillmore, which once had a large Filipino population. Filipinos began settling in the Fillmore in the 1920s, some as war brides of African American Buffalo Soldiers returning from the Philippine-American War. Filipino men also settled in the Fillmore, owning businesses and raising families.

During the time the Fillmore was known as the “Harlem of the West,” a number of Filipino American jazz artists performed regularly in the Fillmore, most notably Joseph “Flip” Nunez, who was one of the house pianists at the legendary Jimbo’s Bop City. A brick marker on Fillmore Street near Yoshi’s honors Nunez. Another brick marker honors Filipino jazz poet Al Robles, an activist who was part of a large Fillmore family. Sugar Pie DeSanto — the internationally known blues singer and songwriter — also grew up in the Fillmore on Buchanan Street in a large Afro-Filipino family.

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Film Society loses its leader

Posted on August 25, 2011 by editors

Graham Leggat (1960-2011)

Graham Leggat — the irrepressible Scottish impresario who led the San Francisco Film Society on to greater glory during the past six years — died tonight at his home after an 18-month battle with cancer.

Under Leggat, the Film Society made its annual San Francisco International Film Festival — the nation’s oldest — more important than ever and established its headquarters at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in Japantown. The Film Society’s offices are nearby in the Presidio.

In 2010 Leggat rallied community support to transform the endangered Clay Theater on Fillmore Street into its year-round home. When that effort lagged, he struck a deal with the New People complex on Post Street to stage a year-round film festival in its state-of-the-art cinema. The Film Society’s programming at New People cinema begins September 1.

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