News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
FIRST PERSON | JAMES DeKOVEN On February 4, 2000, I arrived in the Fillmore under dire circumstances. Six months earlier, my fiancee had given the ring back — a devastating blow that occurred weeks after I gave up a well-paying job to write fulltime. Broken-hearted, half-mad and facing an uncertain financial picture, I fled from…
AFTER OUR FRIEND William died, we helped empty his house and put it on the market. His downstairs tenant was moving, and the pregnant cat that lived mostly under the house and on the street was left without a home. It turned out no one wanted a pregnant cat — not the nearby Pets Unlimited,…
By ARASH MALEKZADEH A month ago, I was offered the opportunity to film the last days of Kelly Johnson’s life. I did not know him. I did not know how or why his death was predetermined. I was told to meet the next morning at Peet’s for coffee. Then I’d walk half a block with…
A PUBLIC APPEAL | CATIE DAMON We need the help of the neighborhood to ensure that people continue to make memories at Browser Books, as they have for decades. With the proliferation of online shopping and e-books, it has been challenging to keep Browser’s doors open. When the recession hit in 2008, we almost closed,…
FIRST PERSON | CATIE DAMON Browser Books, the literary landmark on Fillmore near the corner of Sacramento, was originally located one block north, beside the Clay Theatre, in a building that had also been a head shop and a recording studio for Carlos Santana’s first album, called simply Santana and released in 1969. How my…
MONTY HAS A SWAGGER. It’s a swagger of self-assuredness, a wiggle. It’s the wiggle-swagger that only a noble and confident West Highland Terrier can have. That was exactly the swagger he wiggled on his recent Big Day Out. Monty’s best friend, Alison Carlson, was having work done on their home in the neighborhood. Contractors were…
NEIGHBORHOOD ICON Kelly Johnson, a steady presence on the corner of Fillmore and Sacramento for many years, plans to die in early May. Wracked by terminal illness, he has invoked California’s new End of Life Option Act. After a final few weeks of celebrating with friends, he says May 7 will be his last day…
Kelly Johnson, who established the S.F. Dance Theater on Fillmore Street, remembers his onetime neighbor around the corner, coppersmith Armenac Hairenian.
By SUSAN SWARD On a Friday in April of 1972, Charlotte Maeck got a purple postcard in the mail at her Pacific Heights residence that she initially thought was a hosiery advertisement from the I. Magnin department store. On closer look, she saw it was a city announcement of a hearing the following Tuesday on…
ONE OF THE best-known and longest-operating businesses on Fillmore Street is shutting its doors at the end of April. Zinc Details, at 1633 Fillmore, will end its 28-year run and its space is expected to become an outpost of Orange Theory, a nationwide fitness club. “I’ve met amazing people through our store,” says Vasilios Kiniris,…