News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
CULTURE BEAT | PAMELA FEINSILBER Maestro — and neighborhood resident — Nicola Luisotti opens the San Francisco Opera’s summer season this month, conducting eight performances of Verdi’s heart-wrenching Rigoletto. Italian to his core, Luisotti, who’s been music director of the opera company since 2009, is particularly renowned for conducting the works of his most famous…
Text & Photographs by BARBARA WYETH Every year in the late spring, we florists at Bloomers, over on Washington Street near Broderick, get to share in the time-honored, all-American ritual of prom. For 40 years, Bloomers has been providing flowers for families in the neighborhood and beyond. The mother who got her wedding flowers may call for…
BOOKS | MARK MITCHELL Walking down Fillmore Street, I often run into people who have lived here for a while, most of whom know me from my many years here. We’ll chat about the Giants and the weather and then they’ll ask, “How’s the writing going?” Anyone who has spent any time around me knows…
LEADERS OF St. Dominic’s Church are embarking on an ambitious building program that would demolish the 1929 school building on Pine Street and add five new buildings atop a 130-car parking garage. Three of the new buildings would house church administrative offices, a pre-school and a much larger parish hall. They would be built on…
“APPALACHIAN REQUIEM,” a new work for chorus and orchestra responding to the environmental consequences of strip mining in Appalachia, will have its world premiere on Sunday, May 7, at 3 p.m. It will be performed by the Calvary Presbyterian Church choir and orchestra at the church at 2515 Fillmore. Composer Michael Conley is also the music…
LONG BEFORE they met, Lewis Watts and Elizabeth Pepin Silva had something in common: Both had wandered into Red’s Shoe Shine Parlor at 1549 Fillmore to inquire about the extensive collection of vintage photographs of Fillmore’s jazz joints that lined his walls. And both had been kicked out. Before he could return to try again,…
LOTTIE CLAIBORNE studied dance as a teen in New York. While modeling, she was given the name “Lottie the Body” and quickly became known as an accomplished dancer, sharing the bill with well-known musicians and singers, including Carmen McRae, and entertainer Redd Foxx. In the early 1950s, she relocated to the Bay Area and became…
LOCALS | FRANCINE BREVETTI A customer walked in to the lighting shop on Divisadero with a vintage lamp from England shaped as a young boy flying. It had been crudely repaired. Each hand held a socket. The arms had been amputated to rewire the lamp, then glued back badly, with wiring pasted on the outside.…
By MARK J. MITCHELL The windows tell the tale at the corner of Sacramento and Divisadero these days: bright and beckoning, calling passersby into Maison Corbeaux, an Aladdin’s cave of wines, spirits and beers. The hanging sign still says London Market, but partners Kyle Nadeau and Evan Krow — the store’s name is a French…
CULTURE BEAT | PAMELA FEINSILBER When Ellen Rose Hummel left Greenville, South Carolina, for San Francisco and a home in Pacific Heights in 2007, she couldn’t know that less than five years later, she would be selected to join the San Francisco Ballet. As a member of the corps de ballet, she’s danced in everything…