The New Fillmore

Rag & Bone will open in the prominent space at the corner of Fillmore and California.

AFTER PAYING $25,000 a month rent for seven months on a key corner location at Fillmore and California streets, the New York-based fashion retailer Rag & Bone finally on February 20 got the blessing of the city Planning Commission to open a store there.

Rag & Bone will occupy the two spaces that were home for decades to Royal Ground Coffee and the laundromat next door. It plans to offer both men’s and women’s clothing.

By a 4-3 vote, the commission decided that while Rag & Bone may technically qualify as a chain store in San Francisco, it nonetheless will be a good addition to the neighborhood.

The city’s formula retail ordinance defines a chain store as any company with 11 or more retail outlets in the U.S. Currently Rag & Bone has 12 stores and leases on four more locations.

Local residents and merchants lined up to testify that there are already too many chain stores on Fillmore and an overabundance of fashion boutiques. Others said Rag & Bone was unique and would be a good neighbor, especially given its vow to support a local school and set up a loan fund for independent businesses.

“I don’t think it rises to the level of some of the other formula retails we’ve seen,” said commissioner Rich Hillis, who voted for Rag & Bone.

“The street looks great right now,” said commissioner Rodney Fong, another Rag & Bone supporter. “It’s alive. There’s a good mix.”

Commissioner Hisashi Sugaya disagreed. “I used to live on Webster Street back in the ’80s,” he said. “It was really different then. It’s rapidly turning into an apparel and cosmetics and restaurant row.”

Rag & Bone has enlisted a local design firm to help build what it promises will be a special store worthy of its prominent location. It opens this summer.

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Song Tea and Ceramics is now open at 2120 Sutter Street.

PETER LUONG has created a serene oasis for those who step into his just-opened door at 2120 Sutter Street, the new home of Song Tea & Ceramics. Soft music plays. Comfortable chairs are arranged on cozy rugs near bookcases and neat white canisters line shelves along one wall, with labeled drums of teas in rows toward the back. Ceramic vases, pots and teaware are scattered strategically throughout the open space. Browsers and customers are offered water or tea while they wander about the shop.

“This is intended as a place to showcase a nice collection of tea and teaware,” says Luong, “a place where people can come in and feel comfortable to learn about different teas, to understand what’s special about them and to hear the story behind each one.”
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Elite Fine Jewelry is now open at 2480 Sacramento Street, near Fillmore.

NEW NEIGHBOR | ELITE FINE JEWELRY

A dream of a new jewelry store is now open in the neighborhood. But it began as a nightmare.

Jeweler Simon Khurin and his family lived only 80 miles from Chernobyl when the Russian nuclear reactor imploded in 1986, spewing radiation across the landscape and forcing the relocation of all who lived in the area.

“I thought after one year the radiation would be over and we could come back,” he says. But when it became clear it would be decades, at least, before he could go home again, he made the decision to move his wife, his child and his parents to the United States and start over.

They had friends in San Francisco, so they came here. Khurin had little money and spoke even less English, so he worked as a laborer as he sought ways to rebuild his career as a jeweler.

“It’s hard to start all over,” he says. “But little by little I started working for myself, repairing and manufacturing jewelry.”

He rented a small space on a desolate stretch of Fillmore Street in the mid-1990s, long before new life stirred in the jazz district, eventually moving up to a spot on Fillmore near Post, where he opened Elite Jewelry. It lasted a few years, but then his storefront and several others were consolidated to create an expansive new home for Goodwill. His talent and drive had become evident, however, and with a partner he had established a growing jewelry design and manufacturing business in San Carlos.

Still, he had fallen in love with the neighborhood, and he was determined to have his own jewelry store here.

“It was my dream — my crazy dream,” he says. “I understood I couldn’t afford it, but I wanted to own something.”

One day he saw a “for sale” sign on a pint-sized building on Sacramento Street, just around the corner from Fillmore.

“I thought, ‘Yes!’” and with a partner found a way to buy it, becoming the landlord of the Toujours lingerie shop and Soaps hair salon, plus a residential unit upstairs.

Finally, last year, he decided to take the plunge and open the jewelry store of his dreams.

“I was ready,” he says. And in early May, Elite Fine Jewelry opened its doors at 2480 Sacramento.

The custom showcases made of a forest of lacquered birds-eye maple gleam with gold and platinum and jewels of all kinds, cuts and colors.

“Diamonds, of course — and pearls,” Khurin says. “I love pearls.” He enthusiastically leads a visitor toward the window display. “Can you believe this? Gold pearls! I’m crazy about pearls.”

There’s a shimmering pair of emerald tear-drop earrings. “It’s one,” he says. “We just made one pair.” And yellow diamonds, and a matching antique yellow topaz brooch and pendant. Most unusual is a natural amber necklace, still rough and looking as if it was just separated from the earth.

Elite Fine Jewelry offers a full range of jewelry repair and design, plus watchmaking services and repairs.

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