News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
FILM | Ruthe Stein Jack Bair — a co-founder and director of the Mostly British Film Festival, which opens at the restored Vogue Theatre at 3290 Sacramento Street on January 17 — leads two lives, at least. His day job is as senior vice president and general counsel of the San Francisco Giants, a team…
Q & A | Film critic David Thomson By Mark Mitchell David Thomson’s The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is considered a must-have reference by almost all serious movie buffs. But Thomson is more than just a film critic, more even than a film historian. His works include a biography of novelist Laurence Sterne, an…
By Marjorie Leet Ford THE SHOP’S carved wooden front door — both rough-hewn and fancy — quietly announces a portal to another time, when the ancient art of piano building was still going strong, and the world was as full of pianos as it now is of cars. The piano was the heart of the…
WOODY ALLEN started shooting his new film in the neighborhood yesterday along the Gold Coast homes on outer Broadway. The crew was filming next door to the Gettys at the Willenborg residence at 2898 Broadway, a location also used in other films. The as-yet-unnamed film is said to be a romantic comedy about a woman…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.