News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
WHEN SHE MOVED to the neighborhood six years ago, Kristen van Diggelen was an aspiring art student who had her sights set on a career as a painter. One day she wandered into Cottage Industry, the eclectic emporium at 2328 Fillmore, seeking inspiration. But she found far more. The building, with two street-level storefronts and…
SHE CAME TO California from Paris, Texas, and worked for the telephone company in Los Angeles for many years. But it was only when Ruth Garland Dewson moved north to San Francisco and opened a hat shop on Fillmore Street that she found her true home. She ran Mrs. Dewson’s Hats at 2050 Fillmore for…
PHOTOGRAPHY | Sheila McLaughlin I had a problem: I didn’t know where to borrow a cup of sugar. I’m an artist who has lived in the same flat in the neighborhood for 20 years, but I hardly knew any of my neighbors. Those who lived above had moved away. Same for those next door, across…
FIRST PERSON | RONALD HOBBS Aunt Beebee — Bertha — and I were no kin at all. She was “that nice old colored woman” who worked at the Donut Hole. Her niece, Bettye, called her Aunt Beebee. It caught on with us regulars. The joint must have served 500 cups of joe a day and…
BOOKS | BARBARA KATE REPA The versatile and iconic singer Linda Ronstadt has mostly kept a low profile since moving back to San Francisco from her native Arizona about eight years ago. But all that changed recently with a huge media blitz touting her new book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir. Her appearances these days…
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,…