News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By JASON OLAINE Summer of Love Revisited. That’s the theme of this year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival on July 1 and 2, in honor of the 50th anniversary of that impactful, inspired time in 1967 — its epicenter in San Francisco, with the Fillmore being ground zero. Seminal albums were released by Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Jimi…
CULTURE BEAT | PAM FEINSILBER For 35 years, Jean Halvorsen has traveled between her home in the neighborhood and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Back when the museum was in the Civic Center, above the Herbst Theater, she volunteered as a docent. In 2000, once the museum was ensconced in its own building…
LOCALS | FRANCINE BREVETTI There was no place to put “1,000 Monks.” Artist Andrea Speer Hibbard was frustrated when trying to find a store or a gallery to exhibit the giclee prints of her drawing. Until she walked into Poetica Art & Antiques on Sacramento Street. There she found the proprietor, the expansive Traci Teraoka,…
ESPECIALLY SWEET MUSIC will rise up into the freshly repainted and retrofitted dome atop Congregation Sherith Israel’s historic home at California and Webster on June 9 at a special Shabbat service celebrating the end of a long-running renovation. “We did it!” exclaimed David Newman, co-chair of the seismic retrofit campaign. “The Sherith Israel community has risen…
CLASSICS | FRAN MORELAND JOHNS Ask any true San Franciscan with a serious sweet tooth what tops the list of local culinary delights and the answer you’ll likely hear: Coffee Crunch Cake. For more than three decades, customers have found this delicacy at Yasukochi’s Sweet Stop, tucked away inside Super Mira Market at 1790 Sutter…
LOCALS | BARBARA KATE REPA Longtime locals Suzanne and George Burwasser practice the fine and gentle art of neighborliness. Together for more than half a century, most of that time only a few doors from Fillmore Street, they have made it a priority to shop local and get to know the people who live and…
A PLAN TO CREATE a Japanese Zen rock garden at the foot of Cottage Row has been green-lighted by the Planning Department and is scheduled for a go-ahead vote on June 15. The garden would honor the first generation of Japanese residents in San Francisco, the Issei, who established Japantown in its current location 110 years…
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…