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A Fillmore film premieres at the Clay
Posted on August 4, 2018 by editors
Set at sea, but born on Fillmore
Posted on August 1, 2018 by editors
BOOKS | ANNE GROSS
When I graduated from high school, my mother gave me a mermaid pendant on a silver chain, told me I’d always be a fish out of water, and sent me out into the world. I’d never been much of a swimmer, but somehow that made the totem even more apt.
Anne Gross
Continuing in that same stream, six years ago my husband and I decided to leave our large home in a remote Colorado mountain town and move into a miniscule apartment in a massive building in the Fillmore neighborhood. The move, although exciting for my husband, who was joining a flood of engineers entering the city, left me gasping for breath. I’d decided to leave my nursing career and start writing, but hadn’t anticipated how isolated that choice would leave me in a new city. For months, fear and insecurity circled like sharks, and were my only companions.
The new apartment quickly became oppressive as I pounded on my keyboard, so I took to pounding the sidewalk on and around Fillmore Street. I explored narrow Orben, Perine and Wilmot alleys with plot twists and quirky characters whirling in my brain. I became that annoying person in the back pew of St. Dom’s who came in from the fog just to eat candy bought at Mollie Stone’s. I watched the dogs wrestle in Alta Plaza, tongues lolling happily, while distant sailboats on the bay drifted between the mansions. My hope was to find the best library chair, the perfect cafe, the softest tuft of grass in the park where I could comfortably write. Instead I became Elkin’s flaneuse, aimlessly wandering.
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How a coffee shop saved my life
Posted on August 1, 2018 by editors
James DeKoven at Peet’s on Fillmore in 2007.
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 Santa Barbara to San Francisco.
At the time, it was more of an escape than any sort of plan for the future. For better or worse, I’ve never had many long-term goals. I just needed to get my head together. Once healthy, I could have clarity about the next step. But as I found out, sometimes destiny provides the relief. Who needs a personal coach, Jungian therapy, psychedelic journey, or self-help book when there’s Peet’s Coffee at Sacramento and Fillmore?
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My electric journey
Posted on August 1, 2018 by editors
By KATHY JOSEPH BALISTRERI
It all started during lunch at La Mediterranee last year. I had written the rough draft of a novel about the crazy, particular, sometimes heroic and sometimes downright despicable people who discovered electricity, but I was stumped on what to do next. Should I try to get a publisher? Start a blog? Hire an editor?
Luckily, I was having lunch with my friend Kim Nalley. Kim has been the headliner at the Fillmore Jazz Festival almost every year for the last 15 years, so she knows about entertaining. I was lucky enough to meet her through parenting. Our older kids went to the Sherith Israel’s preschool on California Street, and now our younger kids go there together.
Kim immediately knew what to do: “Kathy, you like to talk. Start a vlog, a video series.”
That started a quest to transform my ideas onto the screen, albeit a small one. Luckily, my book is composed of a series of vignettes about one remarkable person or idea, each leading to the next. So I learned how to edit video and started recording in my house on Washington Street. Kim helped me out by recording an original version of “Electricity” from a “Schoolhouse Rock” video for my theme song.
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A test of faith
Posted on August 1, 2018 by editors
Rev. Debra Low-Skinner is vicar of Christ Church Sei Ko Kai on Alta Plaza Park.
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS
“Our congregation reflects San Francisco,” says Senior Warden Gordon Park-Li of historic Christ Episcopal Church Sei Ko Kai, which graces the corner of Pierce and Clay Streets across from Alta Plaza Park’s grand staircase.
On any given Sunday, its small, warm sanctuary welcomes Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans and Americans of assorted other heritages. In a neighborhood where houses sell in the multiple millions, the stately Victorian home of Christ Church offers a unique link to the good and the bad of San Francisco’s past, as well as its constantly changing future.
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An unwitting witness to a crime
Posted on July 30, 2018 by editors
CRIME WATCH | DONNA GILLESPIE
I was walking to the Walgreens at Fillmore and Bush when I heard running footsteps behind me. It was 4:25 in the afternoon on the Fourth of July.
I turned to see a group of young people, perhaps 20 or more, bolting up the hill. As they surged past me, one knocked me aside and I fell against the building. No one paused, though one of the bunch glanced back at me with an almost apologetic look. Then the group tacked left in a flock and burst into Walgreens. I entered right behind them.
Inside, it seemed a scene from a movie. The kids were working the hair and dental products, toppling merchandise from the shelves into cloth bags, laughing and moving quickly down the aisle. The more expensive items were out of their reach, locked up behind clear plastic shields. The thieves seemed content to load up on the cheaper merchandise.
They ranged in age from about 10 to 25. The youngest boy in the bunch took the sentry’s position by the front door. He grinned at the employees behind the registers, picked through items a shopper had left behind in a returned basket, then tossed them back. Apparently they were not worth stealing.
Walgreens employees were taking it all in stride. Two were calmly filming the melee on their phones. After about three minutes, the youths swept out in a mass, leaving behind heaps of fallen merchandise in the aisle for store employees to pick up and put back on the shelves. A woman behind a register saw my incredulous look and said: “This happens all the time. The police will come, but not right away.”
I asked her what would happen then. “They’ll say they can’t do anything,” she said.
Someone had called 911 the moment the young thieves had swarmed into the store. I hung around for about 15 minutes afterward, dazedly carrying out a haphazard mix of finishing my shopping and helping clean up. As the editor responsible for compiling the monthly Crime Watch report in the New Fillmore, I was slowly processing the fact that I had been swept up in one of my own crime reports.
No officers had yet arrived. Employees had left their tasks to clean up the mess. The line at the registers grew longer.
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That cat could write
Posted on July 30, 2018 by editors
She turned her newspaper articles into a book.
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, nor the SPCA, nor anybody else. So we took her home. Then she had 11 kittens — on 7/11, no less. This did not seem lucky, at least not for us, now with a dozen cats.
Although she was busy enough already, eating and nursing and grooming, again and again and again, we put her to work writing for the neighborhood newspaper. Her nametag — and byline — said simply Saralee. It turned out she was a talented writer with a gift for delicate phrasing and an eye for the wry detail.
“I’ve called this beautiful neighborhood home my entire life — more than two years now, although a proper lady never tells her age,” she began her first story.
These were not her first kittens. “A moment of ardor with an attentive tabby left me with eight kittens to tend — and me just a kitten myself,” she wrote. “No sooner had the kids left the nest than I was out the window again. A small partay with a cool gray long-haired tomcat and I soon found myself with nine little ones this time.”
A visit to the vet capped her prolific output at 28 kittens. Her stories in the New Fillmore made motherhood sound like a joy. “I have to say, this might be my most beautiful brood yet,” she wrote.
She told her story so well that all of her kittens found new homes — and, in the process, we became related by cat to many of our neighbors. Her kids would write on Mother’s Day and 7/11. It was a lucky day after all. Nearly everywhere we went — to a local restaurant, store, church or coffee shop — we’d get an update on Saralee’s kids.
She turned her stories into a book, available on Amazon. And she blossomed into a beautiful and classy Miss Lady, with a lipstick pink collar and heart-shaped nametag.
Saralee died on July 28 after a short illness. She will be missed by many in the neighborhood — and in the literary world.
— Thomas Reynolds
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CPMC scaling back local plans
Posted on July 28, 2018 by editors
The hospital finally relented to neighborhood pressure and relocated a generator at its entry.
CONTRARY TO EARLIER PLANS, California Pacific Medical Center now says it will scale back its operations in the neighborhood when a new state-of-the-art hospital opens next year on Van Ness Avenue.
Patients are expected to move into the new hospital in early March. The current hospital will then concentrate on ambulatory care for patients who do not require overnight hospitalization. That will bring a reduction from 2,100 to fewer than 500 employees at the existing hospital on Buchanan Street, administrators say, and an expected 30 percent reduction in the number of people who visit the current complex. There will be fewer doctors, too, and the emergency room will move to the new hospital.
Earlier plans had called for an expansion of facilities in the neighborhood, including a new building for ambulatory care on Sacramento Street, where the aging Stanford building now stands, and a new parking garage.
No more. “No new construction is planned,” said Ameet Nanda, a hospital administrator. “We’ve scaled back our plans.”
After the new Van Ness building opens, the hospital will close its facilities out on California Street, near Laurel Village. Some of those operations, including women’s health and breast cancer specialists, will move to 2333 Buchanan, along with some outpatient surgery. But the fourth, fifth and sixth floors of the current hospital will be left empty, administrators said.
Neighbors who attended a community hearing at the hospital on July 11 were skeptical that hospital administrators were telling the full story. “To think that three floors of prime property in this neighborhood are going to be left empty defies belief,” said one.
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The Brown Bag served up an eclectic mix
Posted on July 2, 2018 by editors
Treasures from the Brown Bag, the emporium and office supply store at 2000 Fillmore.
FLASHBACK | BARBARA WYETH
Every time I walk past the corner of Fillmore and Pine, I am transported back to the Brown Bag, the stationery store that was a mainstay on the northeast corner for many years.
Back in the day, I owned a small business in North Beach, but was struggling. I met Dawn, one of Brown Bag’s owners, when I was helping out on weekends at the nearby California Street Creamery. We had become friendly, and when I decided to quit my store, Dawn offered me a job at the Brown Bag.
I’d had ongoing connections with the Fillmore neighborhood since moving to San Francisco, so working at the Brown Bag seemed like a good fit. I loved its eclectic mix of practical supplies and wildly impractical baubles. It reminded me of the old-fashioned 5 & Dime in my Midwestern hometown. The place even included the smell of bacon wafting in from the Chestnut Cafe next door.
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Neon on Fillmore, then and now
Posted on July 1, 2018 by editors
Photograph of the refurbished Elite Cafe sign by Daniel Bahmani
By RANDALL ANN HOMAN
The sign for the Elite Cafe, glowing again after a fire left it damaged and dark for months, is a beacon from a time when Fillmore Street was awash with neon signs announcing the street’s vibrant nightlife.
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