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Help save Browser Books

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,…

Growing up at Browser Books

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’s big day out

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…

The end is near

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…

Zinc Details is calling it quits

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,…

‘Don’t you think I owe her?’

By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS “MOM!” the pianist says with some concern as he launches into their favorite song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and a photographer begins to click away. “You can’t cry on camera.” Though not usually with a photographer in tow, composer David Conte often drops by the Carlisle, the retirement community at 1450…

VIVA VIVANDE!

By CHRISTOPHER BRUNO “Smell this!” Carlo Middione said, as he thrust two handfuls of fresh, limp, uncooked spinach fettucine in my face. I was the newest hire in the spring of 1985 at his gastronomical time machine, Vivande Porte Via, which masqueraded as a restaurant on Fillmore Street. I inhaled deeply and was shocked at the…

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