News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By BARBARA KATE REPA IT’S BEEN A YEAR since neighborhood resident John Gaul went looking for a friend and adopted a feisty feline from a cat rescue group, Give Me Shelter. But the dapper octogenarian still gets stopped on the bus, in the grocery store or pushing his walker down Fillmore and asked by friends…
FILLMORE ABROAD | Dan Max For 20 years I’ve been making regular trips to Turkey from my flat above Fillmore Street. During a month-long visit to Istanbul this summer, I experienced a perfect afternoon when I met up with Berk Kinalilar, the owner of the neighborhood’s Troya restaurant and a native Turk. Troya, at 2125…
WHEN THE OWNERS of Glaze — the new Seattle-style teriyaki grill on the corner of Fillmore and Pine — were planning their menu, they knew they wanted to keep things as fresh and local as possible. Much of their planning and interviewing had been done at Fraiche, the all-natural yogurt shop down the block, which…
By Barbara Kate Repa IT’S BEEN FOUR YEARS since James Moore retired from his post at the express line at Mollie Stone’s. He seems much the same as the day he left — the same ready smile, the same bass blurt of a laugh, even the same gallant manner. “Let me buy you a coffee,”…
BOOKS | Barbara Kate Repa “I was facing the stereotype that all women over 70 look like that picture on the See’s candy box,” laments San Francisco author Barbara Rose Brooker. That led Brooker to write The Viagra Diaries, a novel chronicling the life and times of Anny Applebaum, an older woman pursuing a writing career,…
BOOKS | Mark J. Mitchell I’ve lived and worked in the Fillmore since before it was new. Old-timers might remember me as the philosopher of beer behind the counter at Bi-Rite Liquors at California and Fillmore before it closed its doors. More recent arrivals might recall me as the Champagne advisor and single malt Scotch…
AUTHOR, SINGER, poet, orator, actress and civil rights activist Maya Angelou has had many jobs in her storied life — including, when she was growing up in the Fillmore, a stint as a calypso dancer at the Purple Onion in North Beach. Recently Angelou recalled her first job: as a San Francisco streetcar conductor. “I…
FILM | Barbara Kate Repa JIM TRACY, longtime running coach at the neighborhood’s University High School, never set out to be a film star. But when life conspired to deliver a record-setting team, a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s Disease and a community that rallied around it all, he could be no other. The result is…
NEW NEIGHBOR | Liz Fanlo Hair and makeup specialist Liz Fanlo lives near Fillmore and already knew she loved the neighborhood. So when she decided to open a beauty boutique, she persuaded a friend to rent her the tiniest storefront on the street at 2335 Fillmore. “Isn’t it cute?” she beams. “It’s tiny — 50…
IT’S AN ICON in the neighborhood, with its Gothic arches, soaring tower and flying buttresses. St. Dominic’s Catholic Church has stood proudly at the corner of Steiner and Bush Streets since 1928, when the stone sanctuary replaced an earlier brick building destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. For nearly two decades — an unusually long time…