News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
FIRST PERSON | JAMES DeKOVEN On a recent moonlit night in the neighborhood, darkness having descended much earlier than only a few weeks before, some friends were at my place sipping cocktails and examining life’s more contentious issues: individualism versus conformity, true love, the meaning of life. It was all rather intense. When I tried…
FIRST PERSON | Alicia Utter I stumbled into the Fillmore by accident six years ago, enticed by an ad for an apartment on Craigslist. Strolling out on the patio with the building manager, I looked down to see my dog’s tail touch his back as he ran around pots of jasmine. Looking up at the…
FIRST PERSON | Doug Rappaport Offering handmade bicycles and promising precision maintenance services, Bespoke Cycles is now open at 2843 Clay Street, near Scott, the storefront previously occupied for many years by Tony Kitz Oriental Rugs. As a nearby neighbor and an avid cyclist, I’m excited — because in addition to selling custom bicycles and…
FIRST PERSON | JULIAN GUTHRIE Having lived in San Francisco for nearly 20 years and worked as a reporter first for the Examiner and now for the Chronicle, I have come to see the different ways neighborhoods in the city are defined. For many, the center of a neighborhood is a coffee house, or a…
FIRST PERSON | Charlie Greene The corner of Jackson and Fillmore was the center of the universe when I was growing up at 2449 Jackson Street in the 1950s and 60s. You could get anywhere in the city on four Muni bus lines — the 22-Fillmore, 80-Leavenworth, 3-Jackson and 24-Divisadero — plus the Washington-Jackson cable…
FIRST PERSON | Ken Samuels The other day, while selling some books to a couple of young men, I realized I’d known them since they were little kids pleading with their mothers to buy them Berenstain Bears books. That sums up my decade and a half at Browser Books on Fillmore and Sacramento selling books…
FIRST PERSON | ANDRE BOLAFFI It was a Friday night in January 1990. We had been in our new home on Bush Street for five years. My wife Janice suggested we walk up Fillmore to the Clay Theatre to see a French film, Claudine-Claudel, about Rodin, his work and his mistress. We went to the…
FIRST PERSON | BUD JOHNS Consider me a sucker for commemorative plaques. One reason London is among my favorite cities is its many buildings with blue ceramic plaques noting the famous people who lived there. I find it impossible not to pause and read them. So it was inevitable I would stop my car when…
This note was posted at the 1-California bus stop at Sacramento and Buchanan, across the street from California Pacific Medical Center, on the day after Christmas. You were standing here, waiting for the bus, and so was I. I asked if you worked at the hospital, and you said: “No, I have cancer. I went…
FIRST PERSON | Gary Neatherlin Years ago I began experimenting with aquariums. I have several — freshwater and saltwater — in my apartment above Fillmore Street. So I was pleasantly surprised when a friend told me about an unusual aquarium display at a relatively new store, Aqua Forest Aquarium, located just down the street at…