A crane hoists roofing material to the temple’s historic dome.
ESPECIALLY SWEET MUSIC will rise up into the freshly repainted and retrofitted dome atop Congregation Sherith Israel’s historic home at California and Webster on June 9 at a special Shabbat service celebrating the end of a long-running renovation.
“We did it!” exclaimed David Newman, co-chair of the seismic retrofit campaign. “The Sherith Israel community has risen to the occasion.”
“We are in compliance with all of the city’s seismic requirements,” said former congregation board member Ellen Schumm, who has been involved with the project since its inception. “This building is so stable, it’s awesome.”
The $16 million project to strengthen the 1905 building — which survived the earthquake and fire the next year and served as a temporary courthouse during the rebuilding — was spurred by new standards established after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
The first phase of the project, completed in 2011, included an innovative engineering plan to reinforce the exterior walls of the sanctuary without affecting the elaborately painted interior walls. It also stripped away the salmon-colored paint that had been unwisely applied to the sandstone walls half a century earlier.
The second phase, just completed, involved reroofing, repainting and waterproofing the dome, removing the last vestiges of salmon paint and returning the dome to the color of the sandstone on the base. It also added solar panels on the roof and included work on nearly every other part of the building.
“Our beautiful sanctuary will be here — and be strong — for generations to come,” said senior rabbi Jessica Graf.
EARLIER: In a video from January 2011, the retrofit project was underway.
A PLAN TO CREATE a Japanese Zen rock garden at the foot of Cottage Row has been green-lighted by the Planning Department and is scheduled for a go-ahead vote on June 15.
The garden would honor the first generation of Japanese residents in San Francisco, the Issei, who established Japantown in its current location 110 years ago after the 1906 earthquake and fire.
The memorial was proposed last year by leaders and supporters of the nearby Japanese Cultural and Community Center, who enlisted renowned gardeners Shigeru Namba and Isao Ogura to create a garden on the Sutter Street side of Cottage Row that would honor the Issei generation.
“Cottage Row is the only place in Japantown they would recognize,” said Paul Osaki, director of the center, because the rest of the neighborhood was torn down and remade during redevelopment in the 1960s.
Osaki presented the proposal last year at a series of five sometimes raucous neighborhood meetings. Some neighbors disputed the Japanese heritage of Cottage Row and insisted that any memorial should honor everyone who had lived in the area.
A subsequent review of census records showed that Cottage Row was in fact occupied almost entirely by Japanese-Americans until they and the other residents of Japantown were interned during World War II.
After committee review on June 1, the Cottage Row proposal is slated to come before the city’s Recreation and Park Commission on June 15. The commission agenda describes the plan as “an in-kind grant valued at approximately $56,000.”
A staff report notes that the garden plan is supported by 100 nearby residents, 23 community organizations and 463 people who signed petitions, in addition to supervisors London Breed and Aaron Peskin. Ten nearby residents and one other person registered their opposition to the plan.
Fred Martin has worked at Browser Books on Fillmore for 36 of its 40 years.
“LOVE WAS IN THE AIR,” says Fred Martin of the days when he and Browser Books were both young.
And on many nights, it still is.
“This place is magic,” he says of the bookstore, where he has worked for 36 of its 40 years as it grew into a landmark on Fillmore Street. “People love this place. They get caught up in interesting conversations.”
And sometimes more. Many lasting connections have been made in Browser Books: couples on dates uncovering mutual interests, spouses returning to a favorite haunt, chance meetings that grow into romance.
The store is filled with love stories — from the stacks of Neruda that sell out on Valentine’s Day, to Romeo and Juliet on high school reading lists, and the middle-aged professional proudly unembarrassed to ask for Fifty Shades of Grey.
“It’s the most realistic portrait of the romantic idea of working in a bookstore I’ve ever had,” says Jordan Pearson, the newest of the Browser clerks. “It’s being a bartender without the liquor — and sometimes I wish I had a bouncer late at night.”
“I always feel like I’m the party host,” says Fred Martin. “I want the store to be a place where people can be at home and talk about anything. I love being part of that.”
Browser Books opened in 1976 a block north next door to the Clay Theatre.
“It was a real artist hangout,” says Martin. He recalls a couple who met in the old store and got married under the avocado tree in the garden out back, near the fountain with a sculpture of brass instruments. Just recently they stopped by, back in town from Oregon, and talked about moving back.
In 1989 Browser gave up used books and moved south to its smaller current location.
“We’re not just a little library, like a lot of other places,” says Martin. “People have always been friendly and outspoken here.”
The Beat poet Latif Harris worked at the old Browser for a time and lived upstairs above the shop. He met his wife when she came browsing into the store one day. Fred Martin also met his spouse there. And so have others.
VIDEO: Grand opening of The Pacific condos at 2121 Webster on September 15.
REAL ESTATE | PATRICK BARBER
The period before Labor Day is typically a slow time for real estate. But this year was a lot busier, thanks to new condominium buildings that have been opening across San Francisco’s northern neighborhoods.
There were 32 condominium sales in Cow Hollow, Lower Pacific Heights, Pacific Heights and Presidio Heights between mid-August and mid-September — almost three times as many as the same period last year.
Three more units recently sold at the LuXe, a seven-story, 34-unit building at 1650 Broadway between Van Ness and Franklin. Two nearly 1,500-square-foot, three-bedroom condos in the building sold on the last day of August, one for $2.1 million and the other for $2.5 million. Also that day, a three-bedroom penthouse in the building fetched $5.1 million.
The Pacific, another new building located just steps from the heart of upper Fillmore at 2121 Webster Street, saw two big ticket sales recently, with two three-bedroom units selling for $6.2 million and $9 million. One of the penthouses in The Pacific has also closed, with a selling price of $11.5 million.
WHEN SHE’S NOT at her day job in a medical office near Fillmore, singer-songwriter Candace Roberts can often be found on the stage or in a cabaret.
Her recent music video, “Hello Ed Lee” — an adaptation of Adele’s mega-hit “Hello” — is a plaintive cry to the mayor of San Francisco about what she calls “a tale of two cities, and not the book, but reality.” Over images of street tents housing the homeless, she sings: “Oh this city is filthy rich, yet there’s crisis in the streets.”
PERHAPS YOU HAVE noticed something unexpected coming out of Browser Books lately — the smell of soup cooking, or shrimp scampi sauteeing, or fragrant onions softening in a skillet.
That’s an added benefit of the new cooking demonstrations Browser Books is now sponsoring each month. Randy Denham, a retired caterer who two years ago began working in the bookstore on weekends, is in charge, cooking in the store and serving up samples.
Singing has helped fundraiser Jerry Mapp battle Parkinson’s disease.
LOCALS | THOMAS REYNOLDS
For 25 years, Jerry Mapp raised money and cultivated donors to help build California Pacific Medical Center into the respected hospital it has become, with a state-of-the-art new home rising at Van Ness and Geary.
As president and chief executive of the CPMC Foundation, Mapp led a team that raised more than $300 million and helped build a portfolio of assets and endowments.
THE DOCENT PROGRAM at St. Dominic’s Church at Steiner and Bush is sponsoring “The Grand Tour: An Overview of Church Art & Architecture” on Saturday, August 22, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Docents will lead visitors on a tour of treasures in wood, stone and stained glass inside and outside the church. The event — a “drop in and stay for as little or as much as you like” tour — is free and open to the public. For more information, call 415-517-5572, or email ourlabs@mac.com.
The showplace club and restaurant that once housed Yoshi’s now sits empty.
IT HAS NOW cost more than $18 million in city funds to build the Fillmore Heritage Center and keep it afloat.
There is no new tenant in sight for the huge empty spaces formerly occupied by Yoshi’s jazz club and restaurant. The garage is losing $10,000 a month now that the building has few visitors. The Lush Life gallery also sits empty and has no potential new tenants. The restaurant 1300 on Fillmore continues to operate, but its future is in doubt.
These are some of the details that have finally begun to emerge about exactly what is happening with the project opened in 2007 to revitalize the stretch of Fillmore Street south of Geary once known as the Harlem of the West. Public hearings on July 13 and July 27 brought out scores of restive neighbors, and a thick “informational memorandum” laid out the sad financial facts, complete with spreadsheets, term sheets, notices of default and lease terminations attached.
“What the answer is, I don’t know,” said Board of Supervisors President London Breed, who represents the area and presided over the public meetings. “Nothing is finalized. It’s in the hands of the city.”
Breed shot down rumors the space might be converted into a Whole Foods grocery, insisting it would be reborn as an arts-related operation.
The city took over the 50,000-square-foot ground floor commercial spaces on June 5 from developer Michael Johnson, who spearheaded the project. Johnson had taken over the club and restaurant on July 1, 2014, after Yoshi’s San Francisco declared bankruptcy. He rebranded it The Addition on November 1, the same time he stopped making his loan payments to the city. He shut down the club on January 14 of this year.
Since then, it has sat empty. Johnson now owes the city $18.054 million, documents show.
Johnson distributed a “fact sheet” at the July 27 meeting that said he “has secured three potential new tenants,” but been unable to negotiate a deal with the city.
“No new tenant has been selected,” said Joaquin Torres of the mayor’s office at the July 27 meeting. He said the city was developing a request for proposals and would hold another public meeting in September to present its plan.
Many local residents called for the city to give the building to the neighborhood as redress for historic racial injustices. But Breed said that is unlikely and that the commercial space and garage will be sold for fair market value.
“The next establishment here needs to be a financially viable project,” she said.
UPDATE: Near the end of the July 27 meeting, developer Michael Johnson took the microphone to offer his view of the events that led from the creation of the Fillmore Heritage Center to the eventual closing of Yoshi’s — and then to the spectacularly quick demise of The Addition.
Johnson noted that he was primarily a housing developer when he was asked to become involved by local residents who wanted an African-American in charge. He said only two developers — he and a team led by basketball great Magic Johnson — were willing to take on the project.
“No one else was interested,” he said. “There were no other developers that don’t look like me that were interested in coming into this community.”
In hindsight, he said, it was a mistake for him to get involved in entertainment and restaurants.
“It was a bad decision to go down that road,” he said.
After Yoshi’s San Francisco declared bankruptcy, Johnson decided to run the club and restaurant himself.
“I made another mistake,” he said. “We decided we’re going to try to resurrect it and create The Addition.”
He added: “We found out that operating that 28,000-square-foot facility was very difficult. We went six months. We couldn’t make it work. We had to close.”
Johnson said the only way to make the Yoshi’s space work is if the city “takes a different approach to the financial structure of this building” to keep it from being “loaded down with debt payments.”
I tell anyone who will listen that the best cocktails in the city can be narrowed down to a list of five: the Kona cocktail at Smugglers Cove, the Dolores Park Swizzle at Beretta, Bar Agricole’s Singapore Sling (not on the menu, so you have to ask for it), the authentic Mai Tai at the Kona Club near the actual tombstone of Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron — and, sitting at the very top of the list, the inimitable Peony cocktail at our very own Dosa at Fillmore and Post.
Dosa’s signature Spice Route cocktail list is the most innovative in the city. South Indian cuisine historically must have been innocent of cocktails, which makes creating a list of this caliber much more challenging. Dosa carefully and consciously chose to focus on India’s colonial ties with gin, while so many bartenders and mixologists turn from this otherwise sleepy spirit and look the other way.
I remember one afternoon expressing to the bartender my then-genuine ignorance of gin. He gave me a crash course on its history, lining up thimble-like tastes of gin through the ages — starting with examples of Holland’s “jenever” (sometimes “genever,” both a reference to the dominant flavor of juniper) prevalent in 16th century Holland; followed by Old Tom gin, popular in the 18th century; on to Plymouth and London Dry gins, which many of us have had without quite knowing it. It was a valuable yet dizzying education.
THIS LAVISH oversized limited edition book brings together a collection of favorite photographs and stories from the pages of the New Fillmore. It tells the story of an ever-changing small town in the big city with a rich history and a strong sense of community.
Available exclusively at Browser Books on Fillmore, or order online.
THIS DOCUMENTARY — filmed entirely on Fillmore Street — tells the story of longtime Fillmore resident Kelly Johnson, who used a new California law to end his life on his own terms.
