News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS Almost from the moment they bought their graceful, four-level 1901 Victorian across from Alamo Square Park, Owen and Kris O’Donnell have opened it to outsiders. When their sons were growing up in the 1970s and ’80s there were nannies and au pairs from abroad. Later there were friends of friends who…
Glady Thacher started four nonprofits in her oversized living room, helping make the world a better place By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS Soon after her graduation from Smith College in the late 1940s, Glady Thacher took on the traditional roles of supportive wife and mother then mandatory for most women. But she quickly decided there was…
SHE WALKED the street incognito, just another neighbor, often bandannaed, with a shopping bag on her arm. But Lydia Ainsley was on a mission every time she walked down Fillmore Street. For more than two decades, she made it her business to remove the signs and posters taped to utility poles on Fillmore and discreetly…
GOOD WORKS | FRANCINE BREVETTI When Luis Garcia was 13, he thought robbing people was normal. Now, at 22, after multiple incarcerations, he sees working an honest job for a decent living as normal. He turned his head around with the help of the Success Center, a nonprofit at 1449 Webster Street providing vocational and…
FIRST PERSON | ERIN LEMOINE I’ve lived in this neighborhood for eight years, so I tend to make a lot of decisions when hanging out on Fillmore Street. Dino’s or the Elite for dinner? Yoga at International Orange or Mindful Body? Recently, while having coffee and surfing the web at Jane, I made a bigger…
GOOD WORKS | Barbara Kate Repa On a sunny afternoon in late March, Christine Coppola pulled up to the Compass Family Shelter on Polk Street and opened the trunk of her car to unload an unlikely stash: a collection of combs, brushes, blow dryers, towels and hair potions and products. Coppola has worked at Renaissance…
By Judy Goddess MANY AGREE THAT choir music can be a joyful noise. And choir members often find singing fulfilling and fun. But a new study recently launched locally aims to uncover whether singing in a choir can actually help older adults have longer and healthier lives. As part of the study, the 15-member Community…
CARLINA HANSEN — executive director of the Women’s Community Clinic at 1833 Fillmore — might seem an unlikely cheerleader for the onrushing changes in health care reform, which are ostensibly aimed at doing away with her clinic’s client base of uninsured and underinsured women. But rather than close its doors and declare its mission accomplished,…
DESIGN | NICK KINIRIS Three years ago, the concept of the Fillmore Stoop was born, with the intention of making the northern stretch of California Street near Fillmore more pedestrian friendly and softening the harsh visual of the busy four-lane highway. The idea was to create a public space where neighbors could meet, relax, take…
On March 11 — the one-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeast Japan last year — a commemorative community event called “Our Hearts to Japan” will be held at the Peace Plaza at Post and Buchanan Streets in Japantown. The event caps a year of local activities that have raised more than…