News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
STREET TALK | CYNTHIA TRAINA In a neighborhood shy of co-working spaces, Koho is a welcome arrival. This nonprofit space for creatives, open from Monday to Thursday, offers budget-friendly desks and fiber-optic Wi-Fi in a laid-back Japantown storefront on the second floor of Japantown’s East Mall. Koho joins Canopy (above Peet’s Coffee on Fillmore) and…
By JASON OLAINE Artistic Director, Fillmore Jazz Festival It was on! Then it was off. And it’s back on again! The Fillmore Jazz Festival is here! And so on the Fourth of July weekend we “Lift Every Voice,” the theme of this year’s festival, to rejoice in its resurrection, and to unite as a community…
AN APPRECIATION | JASON OLAINE Kaz Kajimura’s passing marks the end of one of the most notable eras in all of jazz history, and not just Bay Area jazz history. When jazz clubs across the country were struggling in the ’70s and ’80s, Kaz and his partners Yoshie Akiba and Hiro Hori were growing a small Japanese restaurant…
NEIGHBORHOOD GROUPS from Pacific Heights, Cow Hollow and the Marina are joining forces to host a Town Hall discussion of upzoning plans that would allow taller and bigger buildings on local streets. It’s set for Tuesday, June 24, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Marina Theater at 2149 Chestnut Street. The idea of relaxing…
FINALLY BREAKING A long silence, the new owners of the historic Clay Theater will today unveil plans for its return as a single-screen theater in its familiar but updated home on Fillmore Street. When the renovation of the century-old theater is complete, it will include approximately 200 seats and host more than 500 film screenings…
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS Interest in beloved artist Ruth Asawa’s work has been rekindled in recent weeks by the retrospective of her work now on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Along with the exhibition comes a yearning for the gentle waters shut off more than a decade ago to flow again…
THE STREAK CONTINUES. Another corporate store has gotten its permit to open on Fillmore Street, despite the city’s “formula retail” ordinance intended to limit chain stores in city neighborhoods. No chain seeking to open on Fillmore has ever been denied a permit. Nordstrom’s new small-store concept, Nordstrom Local, will open in the empty storefront at…
A NEW BOOK for children celebrates neighborhood culinary icon Cecilia Chiang — who, as the subtitle says, “revolutionized Chinese food in America.” Her pioneering restaurant, The Mandarin, opened in 1961 in Ghirardelli Square. It “rejected the American cliches of thickly sauced stir-fries served in pseudo-exotic settings,” reported The New York Times on her 99th birthday.…
FIRST PERSON | THOMAS REYNOLDS Back in 2013, when the Thomas Reynolds Gallery was still in its original home at the corner of Fillmore and Pine Streets, I got a message on our still-newish Facebook page from an artist in Spain. He included his painting of our corner. “My name is Joan Longas and I’m…
YES, THAT’S HER. That’s the actress Julia Roberts you’ve been seeing around the neighborhood — wandering down Fillmore Street with her family, dining at Chouquet’s and Via Veneto, admiring the views in Alta Plaza Park. Roberts has a long association with San Francisco. Back in the 1990s, when she was dating fellow actor Benjamin Bratt,…