News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO’S Fillmore District — known as the “Harlem of the West” in the 1940s and ’50s — was once a cathedral of jazz, its dozens of clubs inhabited by celestial beings such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker. The Fillmore’s heyday marked an important chapter not only in jazz history…
The Artists Inn, in one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, is ending an era as a center of warmth and hospitality for guests from around the globe.
STREET TALK | THOMAS REYNOLDS Almost a dozen Fillmore businesses have permanently closed, and more are likely to follow. “It’s a tumultuous time for Fillmore Street right now,” said Vas Kiniris, executive director of the Fillmore Merchants Association. “We’re seeing a huge retail fallout.” Kiniris listed numerous businesses that are permanently closed: Frye Boots, Samovar…
FILLMORE BEAT | CHRIS BARNETT Fillmore’s restaurants are morphing into sidewalk dining and drinking spots as they find a way forward, with the eateries on one key block — between Pine and California — showing different recipes for creating the al fresco experience. • At the corner of Pine and Fillmore, NOOSH has reinvented itself…
FOR THE FIRST TIME in decades, there will be no jazz on Fillmore Street this Fourth of July weekend. The annual Fillmore Jazz Festival has been canceled due to the coronavirus and the ban on large gatherings of people. “Sister! I just want to cry because there’s no festival this weekend,” said jazz vocalist Kim…
FIRST PERSON | BARBARA CORFF I don’t know exactly why the tree in front of Mollie Stone’s first caught my attention. Perhaps it was the tiny, palmate-shaped leaves sprouting at the base of the tree that seemed unusual. Having worked with naturalists in the Presidio developing tours for the National Park Service, I want to understand the…
FILLMORE’S ONLY remaining joint — the Boom Boom Room, hard by the Geary Street bridge — is closed and may not reopen without an infusion of fresh cash. “We are faced with permanent closure without emergency funding,” says owner Zander Andreas in a fundraising campaign seeking to raise $60,000. “The survival of our intimate and…
FILLMORE BEAT | CHRIS BARNETT In 1971, carpenter Mark Johnson moved into a Victorian flat at 2254 Bush Street, just off Fillmore, and stayed for 25 years. “It was not the most attractive place to live in the early ’70s,” he says. “But by the time I moved out, it had changed dramatically — and…
STREET TALK | THOMAS REYNOLDS A great joy of our neighborhood is the number of neighbors you run into walking up and down Fillmore Street. But not so much these days. Much of the street is boarded up — an overreaction, many feel, but then come reports of another break-in. One longs for the slightest…