News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By CHRIS BARNETT On New Year’s Eve, when most wine and champagne purveyors were tallying up their holiday sales receipts, Vino at 2425 California Street closed its doors forever after a 20-year run — the victim of a potential $1,000 a month rent hike, shrinking profits and a retailing strategy that no longer works in the…
FOR YEARS, residents of the 1700 block of Broderick Street, between Bush and Pine, have struggled with an overabundance of love from fans of the beloved ’80s sit-com Full House, supposedly set at 1709 Broderick. When a sequel, Fuller House, was launched last year, the opening credits still showed the Italianate Victorian at 1709, and…
LOCALS | ANNE RUTH ISAACSON After a long walk back home from the Hardly Strictly Blue Grass Festival, I stopped at Fillmore and Sacramento for coffee. Outside on the corner there were no free tables, but a gentleman signaled that I could join him and his friend. That was the day I met Kelly Johnson. I…
ART | JEROME TARSHIS During the early and middle ’60s, when I was thinking about moving from New York to San Francisco, one of the inducements was that Bruce Conner lived here. My avant-garde film friends thought his first film, A Movie (1958), was an instant classic, followed by one success after another. The objects…
BOOKS | DAVID THOMSON In writing my new book, Television: A Biography, I revisited a lot of shows that were old favorites. Some stood the test of time; some did not. What follows is a list of 10 shows I’d like to have on a desert island — not my top 10, you must understand,…
LANDMARKS | BRIDGET MALEY The wonderfully designed corner house at 1900 Pierce Street was built in 1887 for John I. Sabin, an early investor and proponent of the telephone, under the direction of architect William F. Smith. Both architect and client appear to have shared a fascination with telephones. In 1877, Sabin founded the American…
FILM | ANDREA CHASE The last generation or two thinks of Hal Holbrook when it comes to one-man shows about Mark Twain. Not to take anything away from Holbrook’s dry wit and perfect timing when performing Twain’s words, but Val Kilmer with Citizen Twain makes a compelling argument to join him as another master interpreter…
THE ONRUSH OF new fashion and cosmetics brands and boutiques onto Fillmore Street in recent years has been astonishing — and beauty and body products are the indisputable trend of the moment. There is understandable confusion about why so many have located so near each other and what sets them apart. And those seeking something new…
By BARBARA KATE REPA Five years ago, when many saw the neighborhood becoming inhospitable to mom-and-pop businesses as ever more corporate chains moved in, Tricia and Ron Benitez turned a deaf ear to the naysayers and opened their one-of-a-kind clothing boutique at 1850 Fillmore Street. They stocked it with pieces for men and women by…
FIRST PERSON | FRAN MORELAND JOHNS It started out of frustration. A pastor at a mainline San Francisco church got tired of pulling together candlelight services after yet another black youth was killed. He wanted to do something positive to show support for the black friends he and many of his parishioners knew. So he…