News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
A PUBLIC APPEAL | CATIE DAMON We need the help of the neighborhood to ensure that people continue to make memories at Browser Books, as they have for decades. With the proliferation of online shopping and e-books, it has been challenging to keep Browser’s doors open. When the recession hit in 2008, we almost closed,…
FIRST PERSON | CATIE DAMON Browser Books, the literary landmark on Fillmore near the corner of Sacramento, was originally located one block north, beside the Clay Theatre, in a building that had also been a head shop and a recording studio for Carlos Santana’s first album, called simply Santana and released in 1969. How my…
MONTY HAS A SWAGGER. It’s a swagger of self-assuredness, a wiggle. It’s the wiggle-swagger that only a noble and confident West Highland Terrier can have. That was exactly the swagger he wiggled on his recent Big Day Out. Monty’s best friend, Alison Carlson, was having work done on their home in the neighborhood. Contractors were…
By ANTHONY TORRES Years ago, when I first came to San Francisco, a friend took me to see live jazz at Rasselas, located at that time on the corner of Divisadero and California. That night, Robert Stewart played some incredibly hard R&B-inflected jazz that was incendiary. In 1999, Rasselas moved to 1534 Fillmore Street, creating…
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS Along with the usual playground noise at Cobb Elementary School, at 2725 California Street near Scott, it’s possible to hear something else: the roar of Tiger pride. That’s because the students at Cobb, Tigers all, are justifiably proud. The vibrant brick red school, which underwent a $7 million modernization a few…
NEIGHBORHOOD ICON Kelly Johnson, a steady presence on the corner of Fillmore and Sacramento for many years, plans to die in early May. Wracked by terminal illness, he has invoked California’s new End of Life Option Act. After a final few weeks of celebrating with friends, he says May 7 will be his last day…
Kelly Johnson, who established the S.F. Dance Theater on Fillmore Street, remembers his onetime neighbor around the corner, coppersmith Armenac Hairenian.
By SUSAN SWARD On a Friday in April of 1972, Charlotte Maeck got a purple postcard in the mail at her Pacific Heights residence that she initially thought was a hosiery advertisement from the I. Magnin department store. On closer look, she saw it was a city announcement of a hearing the following Tuesday on…
ONE OF THE best-known and longest-operating businesses on Fillmore Street is shutting its doors at the end of April. Zinc Details, at 1633 Fillmore, will end its 28-year run and its space is expected to become an outpost of Orange Theory, a nationwide fitness club. “I’ve met amazing people through our store,” says Vasilios Kiniris,…
A SHOPKEEPER GOES SHOPPING — Notes from a buying trip from the proprietor of Fillmore Street’s 1906 and HiHo Silver, published in the April 2018 issue of The New Fillmore.