News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
CULTURE BEAT | PAMELA FEINSILBER Andrew Dodd lives nowhere near the neighborhood, but he’s brought something special to it. Dodd created the Second Sunday Concert Series at the Swedenborgian Church, at Washington and Lyon Streets, offering live music in the stunning 1895 Arts & Crafts-style church. You live in Concord. How did you get involved…
A FAMILIAR FACE on Fillmore Street is missing. Zema Daniels has retired. For most of his 90 years, he was part of the Fillmore scene. In recent decades, Fillmore merchants hired him to help battle litter on the street. With his bucket and brooms, he was a familiar sight up and down Fillmore. He was…
FILM | ANDREA CHASE Italian-born neighborhood resident Pietro Pinto didn’t set out to make a film about boxers. After winning a place in the Jerusalem Film Workshop a few years back, he arrived in Israel for the first time in his life with less than two weeks to find a subject for his short film,…
By JASON OLAINE Artistic Director, Fillmore Jazz Festival What is the sound of jazz? And can jazz mean different things to different people, perhaps even different things to the same person? Since its birth in New Orleans near the end of the 19th century, jazz was a hybrid: a mixed-up, beautiful child of Africa, Europe,…
By BRIDGET MALEY Sometimes mistaken for an Episcopalian church, St. John’s Presbyterian, the eclectic Shingle Style landmark at the corner of Lake Street and Arguello Boulevard, does indeed have its architectural roots in the Episcopal building tradition. And it has a rich history. The story begins in March 1870, when a newly established Presbyterian assembly…
Sidewalk seating enlivens the neighborhood By SUSAN SWARD Up and down Fillmore, sidewalk spots keep springing up. Noosh, the new restaurant at Pine and Fillmore, has three four-tops outside with heat lamps at the ready. Blue Bottle Coffee finally has its outside tables back at Fillmore and Jackson. The Snug, at Clay and Fillmore, is…
LOCAL HISTORY | CHRISTOPHER POLLOCK Of the 220 public spaces the city’s Recreation and Park Department administers in San Francisco, Lafayette Park is unique: It has a privately owned six-story apartment building cut right into its municipal landscape on the side bordering Gough Street. In the city’s early days, several parks had issues over real…
FILM | JESSICA BERNSTEIN-WAX My mother’s friend Judith Skinner started a Tibetan Buddhist retreat in her Pacific Heights apartment in 1995. At the time, she thought it would last the traditional three years, three months and three days. Almost 24 years later, she remains on retreat, a Buddhist practice that involves solitude, meditation and introspection…
WHEN LA MEDITERRANEE founder Levon Der Bedrossian moved from Lebanon to California in 1967 to attend Chico State University, he lived in the neighboring town of Paradise, which was devastated by the recent Camp Fire. Then he moved to San Francisco and opened La Mediterranee on Fillmore Street on May 11, 1979, serving the Middle Eastern…
FIRST PERSON | LEDA MEREDITH When I landed at SFO in mid-April of last year, the first change to hit me was that my dad, Kelly Johnson, couldn’t pick me up at the airport. He wasn’t able to drive anymore. The reason for the visit to my hometown was that he had gone into hospice…