News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By Thomas Reynolds Discussions between Clay Theater owner Balgobind Jaiswal and the San Francisco Film Society began last December after Landmark Theatres decided it could no longer afford to continue to operate the venerable theater, which has been showing films on Fillmore Street for 100 years. The lease had actually expired two years earlier. “The…
The owner of the Clay Theater has invited leaders of the San Francisco Film Society to meet on September 13 to resume discussions about the Film Society’s desire to lease the historic Fillmore art house. Graham Leggat, executive director of the society, said he is eager to proceed. “It’s certainly progress,” Leggat said. “It’s a…
What a difference a day makes. On Saturday, Michael Blythe, a manager at the Clay Theatre on Fillmore, was grappling with what to do after the Clay played its last picture show on Sunday. But by midday Sunday, he had a happier problem on his hands: how to phrase the good news on the marquee…
Fillmore’s jewel-box cinema, the Clay Theater, is closing at the end of the month after 100 years. The sad news came in a simple sign posted in the theater’s windows. The Clay was thought to have a more secure future than many neighborhood theaters because it was part of Landmark Theatres. Landmark gave no indication…
Renovation of Le Petit Trianon — long delayed — is now scheduled to begin this summer. The grand home at 3800 Washington Street has been empty for years and largely unattended, even since it was bought in 2007 for $22 million by tech mogul Halsey Minor, founder of CNet. “The state of Le Petit Trianon…
By Chris Barnett If you’re looking for a hideout to brainstorm the next Google, hammer out a multibillion dollar merger or tryst the night away, the Hotel Drisco on the hilltop corner at 2901 Pacific and Broderick might fit your bill. A bastion of secrecy since its opening more than a century ago, there…
By Chris Barnett Owners of the 58-room, 116-year-old Edwardian style Hotel Majestic at Sutter and Gough have filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy to keep creditors from checking in and padlocking its ornate, cut glass front doors. Under Chapter 11, the hotel and its Uptown Joe’s restaurant and Butterfly Bar remain open for business. There is…
By Tessa Williams It would be easy to pass by the purple Victorian at 1712 Fillmore without realizing its importance to Bay Area black history. Located just north of Post Street, the building’s modest presence belies its legacy, both as the former home of Jimbo’s Bop City — the legendary after-hours jazz club — and…
TAKE A LAST LOOK at the majestic pink temple glowing in the late afternoon sunlight at the corner of California and Webster. It is quickly being enveloped by scaffolding for a seismic retrofit that will strengthen the hundred-year-old home of Congregation Sherith Israel. And it will lose its distinctive salmon pink paint job and emerge next…
Among the work now under way at the Sherith Israel temple at California and Webster is the restoration of the stained glass windows. In the grand western window, “Moses Presenting the Ten Commandments to the Children of Israel,” Moses is depicted on the granite rocks at the gateway to Yosemite, with Half Dome and El Capitan…