News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS If you’re interested in creating a bit of art to make your home the envy of the neighborhood, here’s how: Pick up a 6-by-6-foot piece of paper at Paper Tree, located at 1743 Buchanan in Japantown. Fold it carefully about a thousand times or so in precisely the proper manner and…
IT WAS A sunny Friday morning, February 24, and it looked as if the historic neon sign fronting the Elite Cafe would at last again be fully lit. Then suddenly a swarm of fire trucks was on the scene. There had been an electrical short and the sign caught fire, with flames leaping out of…
THE NEIGHBORHOOD LOST another of its corner groceries last year when the century-old London Market at Divisadero and Sacramento closed. This weekend it is being reborn as the sleek and modern Corbeaux’s London Market, a wine and spirits shop. It’s the brainchild of Kyle Nadeau — who worked at D&M Liquors on Fillmore Street for nearly a decade…
THE CLASSIC REVIVAL sandstone building at Sacramento and Webster that has housed the medical library for the nearby hospital since 1912 is headed for a new life in its second century. Its collections have been dispersed and the library’s small staff is relocating by the end of March to the nearby Gerbode Research Building at…
FOR SEVEN YEARS, people walked by the gallery at 1906 Fillmore, looked in to admire the artwork on the walls, but never found the jewel box of a space open. That was exactly the idea. Cassandria Blackmore, who first made her mark in the glass art scene in Seattle, transformed the storefront in 2010 into…
GOOD WORKS | FRANCINE BREVETTI When Luis Garcia was 13, he thought robbing people was normal. Now, at 22, after multiple incarcerations, he sees working an honest job for a decent living as normal. He turned his head around with the help of the Success Center, a nonprofit at 1449 Webster Street providing vocational and…
LANDMARKS | BRIDGET MALEY As the automobile increased in popularity and affordability in the 1920s, neighborhood parking garages and repair shops became the norm in San Francisco. Because private homes were commonly constructed without garages, a new type of building evolved to serve residents with parking needs. Neighborhood garages were often one- or two-story concrete…
By BRIDGET MALEY My predecessor in writing about neighborhood architecture for the New Fillmore, the respected architectural historian Anne Bloomfield, was an amazing researcher and a passionate advocate for maintaining the character of Pacific Heights and Presidio Heights. She died in December 1999, but her life’s work of helping preserve San Francisco’s past lives on.…
“LOVE WAS IN THE AIR,” says Fred Martin of the days when he and Browser Books were both young. And on many nights, it still is. “This place is magic,” he says of the bookstore, where he has worked for 36 of its 40 years as it grew into a landmark on Fillmore Street. “People…
By FRED MARTIN, KEN SAMUELS and ERIN MESSER of the Browser Books staff Browser Books, a neighborhood fixture since 1976, has no doubt sparked countless anonymous instances of romance. The store’s staff, however, has been especially susceptible to this phenomenon. Perhaps it’s because we spend so much time in the store — or perhaps it’s…