News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
MIA SIMMANS, manager of the Fillmore Farmers Market since last May, is a true believer — both in farmers markets and in the music that makes the Fillmore market unique. Her cred on both scores is impeccable: For the last seven years, she’s been both a vendor and musician at several of the farmers markets…
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…
CULTURE BEAT | FRAN MORELAND JOHNS The New Year was still a couple of weeks away when a unique celebration of birth, rebirth and family joy took place at Smuin Ballet’s annual Christmas Ballet at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Sebastian-Alexander Gottschalk, age one month, was in the audience when dancer Sharonjean Leeds, age…
THE LIGHTS ARE back on in the Yoshi’s complex at 1330 Fillmore. The nonprofit San Francisco Housing Development Corp. — which, it says, has been “building homes and hope since 1988” — is taking over the space, at least temporarily. The affordable housing group from the Bayview has applied for a permit from the city’s…
FIRST PERSON | DUSTIN WILSON For me, becoming a sommelier meant taking part in something much larger than myself. Working with a team of like-minded individuals on a restaurant crew for the greater goal of unforgettable hospitality really excited me. I was totally ready for the overall restaurant scene, challenging as it was at times.…
CULTURE BEAT | PAMELA FEINSILBER Being the San Francisco Symphony’s principal timpanist is just one of the things keeping Ed Stephan busy these days. He’s also head of the percussion department at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh; on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and at Northwestern University in Chicago; and timpanist of…
KQED TODAY OFFERS a preview of the New Fillmore documentary A Dance With Death, screening Wednesday night, August 15, at 7 p.m. at the Clay Theatre on Fillmore Street. It tells the story of longtime Fillmore resident Kelly Johnson’s decision — after a celebrated career as a dancer, musician and vaudeville performer — to end…
https://youtu.be/tsmcQImuJtA
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS The news was as mournful as the sound of taps in the distance. When word spread that widely beloved trumpeter-composer-teacher-bandleader Dave Len Scott was decamping from the Fillmore to be near his family in Arizona, there was no joy in jazzville. But it’s true. For the first time in many years,…
CULTURE BEAT | PAMELA FEINSILBER International opera singer David Cangelosi has been subletting an apartment in the neighborhood since April, when he began rehearsals with San Francisco Opera for Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle: four operas over three evenings and one afternoon each week for three weeks. Cangelosi, a tenor, sings in the first opera,…