AT THE TOP of the Fillmore hill on a beautiful December day.
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Feinstein always made time for Convent girls
Posted on October 10, 2023 by editors
By CLAIRE FAHY
The New York Times
Dianne Feinstein was laid to rest last week with a funeral service on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, a fitting backdrop for a woman who was as much a symbol of the city as the Golden Gate Bridge is.
It certainly felt that way when I was growing up in San Francisco. I went to the same high school she did, the private all-girls Convent of the Sacred Heart.
Read more: “Saying goodbye to a San Francisco icon“
“Dianne Feinstein ’51 at Convent School“
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SF loses a piece of its history
Posted on August 23, 2023 by editors
JOHN GAUL, 97, a fixture on Fillmore Street and in San Francisco historical circles for decades, died on July 25, 2023, at his longtime home at John F. Kennedy Towers.
He leaves a considerable legacy of celebrating and perpetuating the history of the city he loved. He was a docent at three of San Francisco’s most historical places: the Palace of Fine Arts, the Haas-Lilienthal House and the Swedenborgian Church. He led tours and helped train docents for all three, and was also active in SF Heritage, the San Francisco Historical Society and the Victorian Alliance.
Always impeccably dressed and relentlessly positive, he helped spearhead the designation of the Swedenborgian Church on Lyon Street — birthplace of the Arts & Crafts Movement in the U.S. — as a National Historical Landmark. He remained active in the church, phoning in a poem or limerick or other “wise words” during services even after he was no longer able to attend. And he worked ahead: His recorded “rhythms,” as he called them, will continue to be heard during Sunday morning services through the end of the year.
John Melvin Gaul was born on November 9, 1925, the son of Carl Joseph Gaul and Olive Mae La Brash, and raised in Tacoma, Washington. His parents and a brother, Carl Gaul, preceded him in death.
He is survived by his cat, Apollo, who has been adopted into a new home. Late in life Gaul became a spokesman for Give Me Shelter, a pet adoption agency that helped him find companionship after others turned him away because of advancing age and limited finances. He also became a supporter and poster boy for Meals on Wheels, whose delivery trucks for a time sported his bowler-hatted visage.
A memorial service will be held at the San Francisco Swedenborgian Church at Lyon & Washington Streets at 2 p.m. on September 9, 2023.
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The murals at Jimbo’s
Posted on August 15, 2023 by editors
IT’S NOT EVERY DAY that a photo from the neighborhood is published in The New York Times. But today is that day. Alongside a review of Cosmic Scholar, a new biography of anthropologist/artist/filmmaker/mystic/music collector Harry Smith, is a photograph of Smith before one of the murals in the legendary Fillmore jazz club Jimbo’s Bop City.
Wikipedia confirmed: “The painter and filmmaker Harry Everett Smith painted the walls with abstract motifs and created a light show that ran to the music of Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk.” The entry added: “Admission was only $1, and musicians came in for free, but Jimbo Edwards always chose who he let in and who he did not: “We don’t allow no squares in Bop City. If you don’t understand what we doin’, then leave and don’t come back.”
MORE: The Art of Harry Smith at the Whitney
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Return of resale, with a twist
Posted on April 6, 2023 by editors
By CHRIS BARNETT
The space long occupied by Repeat Performance — the San Francisco Symphony resale shop at 2436 Fillmore — has sprung back to life as Warren Estate Sales, with novel pop-up offerings twice monthly in the back of the shop designed to keep the merchandise moving.
“It’s simply the best resale shop I have encountered,” says one nearby neighbor. “Lots of items and great variety — and the business plan is such that it will move items, so they will be renewing their inventory often.”
Owned and managed by Bangkok-born Bay Area consignment veteran May Warren, virtually every inch of the spacious 1,800-square-foot store is packed with antiques and unusual vintage furnishings, accessories, jewelry, paintings and clothing sourced mostly from nearby upmarket homes and apartments.
Warren, who sits behind a handsome desk just inside the front door, has added a new twist to her latest venture: regular pop-up estate sales. Every two weeks a store within a store pops up in the back filled with treasures that drop in price over a four day span. For the first two days, the price of an item is set. On the third day, it’s cut 30 percent. On the fourth day, it’s half-off the original price tag.
For decades, Fillmore Street was known for its many thrift shops. In addition to the symphony shop, the Junior League, hospital auxiliary and nearby schools had resale shops on Fillmore benefitting their programs.
“We get a lot of old world estate items from high-rise condos and apartments in the Bay Area,” Warren says, “and the pieces are constantly moving.” Warren is no solo act. She heads a small team of savvy staffers who scurry around the space wheeling and dealing.
Describing the inventory in the store front and back is practically impossible. Warren has created a “Chinese Room” out of a small niche and stocked it with items dating back to the 19th century. Dishes, glassware, large Asian screens, chairs and chandeliers are everywhere.
Warren says she resists latching onto cherished items for herself. “I can’t love everything in here,” she says. “Otherwise I’ll go broke.”
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Sweet recognition for a Japantown bakery
Posted on February 9, 2023 by editors
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS
When the nominations for this year’s James Beard Awards were announced in late January, there was a local surprise. Among the semifinalists for Outstanding Bakery: Yasukochi’s Sweet Stop, a small shop in the corner of a Japantown grocery store most noted for keeping alive one of the city’s most beloved creations, the Coffee Crunch Cake.
The results will be in soon: Finalists will be announced on March 29, and winners unveiled at a ceremony in Chicago on June 5.
For chef-owner Kenji Yick, being shortlisted for the Beard award — the Oscars of the food world — came as surprising, and heartwarming, post-pandemic news.
Yick, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute, is the grandson of Sweet Stop founders Moses and Hatsy Yasukochi, who married in 1964 and opened the Sweet Stop 10 years later. Moses learned to bake the Coffee Crunch Cake, made famous at Blum’s on Union Square, from an employee who’d worked there.
Yick grew up “in and out of the bakery” while visiting his grandparents. By the time he decided to pursue a career in the food world and finished his culinary training, his grandfather was having to withdraw from the long hours of baking. So Yick went to work helping his grandmother.
Hatsuye (Hatsy) Yasukochi, was known as the “smile of the bakery” and considered by many the beating heart of Japantown. There were few in the community she didn’t know and love, and the sentiment was mutual. She died in 2020, an early victim of Covid, after a bout with cancer. When Moses lost his wife, he moved to an assisted living community in San Mateo near his children and grandchildren.
Many feared the bakery might not survive. But the Yasukochis’ grandson vowed to keep it going, and he has — and now the family legacy he carries on has been singled out for national recognition.
“We shut down for three months early in the pandemic,” he says, “and reopened for four days a week rather than five.” His grandmother’s absence in the bakery and the neighborhood is still widely felt. “The hardest part is that there now are just the two of us”: Yick and longtime front corner employee Debbie Ishida. “How long have you been here, Debbie?” he asks. “I don’t remember,” she responds. “A very long time.”
The Sweet Stop is still humming along, much as it has since Yick’s grandparents founded it nearly 50 years ago. He says the pandemic made clear the faithfulness of the shop’s core customers, who never abandoned their taste for cakes, pies and pastries from the Sweet Stop. But now the cakes — including the famous Coffee Crunch Cake — are only baked to order. “And we had to discontinue the Danish,” Yick says, “largely because we were designating it to Kimochi, and they had to discontinue their free meals. But we hope to bring it back.”
Tucked away inside the Super Mira Market on the corner of Sutter and Buchanan, Yasuchoci’s Sweet Stop is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. But you might want to order ahead, especially if you want a Coffee Crunch Cake.
EARLIER:
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Joan Brown and the Fillmore scene
Posted on November 23, 2022 by editors
ART | JEROME TARSHIS
“JOAN BROWN,” a new exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, celebrates the colorful life and work of a deeply imaginative painter and independent spirit who got her start on Fillmore Street and went on to international acclaim. The expansive presentation of Brown’s work features 80 paintings and sculptures spanning the career of one of San Francisco’s most important artists.
Joan Brown’s involvement with the art scene along Fillmore Street began with exhibitions, while she was still an art student, first at the Six Gallery, at 3119 Fillmore, then at the Spatsa Gallery, on Filbert Street near Fillmore.
In 1958, Brown and her husband Bill Brown moved into the apartment building at 2322 Fillmore, where their next-door neighbors were the painters Wally Hedrick and Jay DeFeo. Famous as some of them are today, San Francisco artists of the 1950s had little hope of being exhibited by major galleries or museums. Bruce Conner once said that the art of that time was not made to last because nobody needed it to last. Brown herself has said, “It was important for that day, for that week, or for that moment.”
The seeming lack of any path to success encouraged a deliberate hostility to the art market and its institutions. Life at 2322 Fillmore was characterized by heavy drinking, resourceful parties and the view that making artwork was something like a meditative exercise, to be enjoyed in the present with little thought for the future.
Joan Brown had come a long way from her Catholic high school days. After a time, however, the hard partying became oppressive; quiet and privacy began to look good. In 1959, she separated from Bill Brown and moved to North Beach to live with the artist Manuel Neri, who became her second husband.
EARLIER: “Journal of a woman’s life — in paint“
Photograph of Joan Brown by Jerry Burchard
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Unthinkable: No Dino at Fillmore and California
Posted on September 20, 2022 by editors
By CHRIS BARNETT
After a 34-year run of flipping pizzas, uncorking wine and telling stories on the northwest corner of Fillmore and California, Dino Stavrakikis is selling the longtime pizza palace known for decades as Dino’s — now renamed after his son as Santino’s Wine Bar — to the owner of Ace Wasabi Sushi in the Marina.
The ownership changes hands today [Sept. 20]. New owner Ken Lowe has announced no decision on changing the popular storefront and is likely for now to keep the wine and pizza format and the longtime employees.
“When it’s time to go, it’s time,” says the affable Dino — it seems impossible to call him anything else — on why he is pulling the ripcord. “When I bought the place, Reagan was president. We’ve been though a couple of wars, viruses, a pandemic and many mayors. Fillmore — the street and the neighborhood — has changed, and not for the better.”
Dino’s corner housed a drug store before it became a pizzeria in the 1970s, initially owned by his Uncle Vito. Dino apprenticed in another pie shop at Polk and Broadway straight out of high school. “I knew I was an entrepreneur and I wanted to own my own place,” he recalls.
At 21, he moved a few doors away to Lord Jim’s — “the greatest fern bar ever” — and worked his way up to lead bartender. Dino was behind the plank the infamous night a squad of San Francisco cops raided the saloon on a tip it was dealing cocaine out of the back. It was a bad bust. The bar was packed with lawyers that night who were enjoying their after-work cocktails. They howled. Owner Spiro Tampourantzis, like Dino a Greek, sued the city with the help of Fillmore Street criminal defense attorney Eric Safire and prevailed.
In 1988, Uncle Vito — actually a distant cousin of Dino’s — ran out of dough, and Dino bought the pizzeria out of bankruptcy for $90,000. “I moved into an apartment upstairs,” he says, “changed the name to Dino’s and worked 15 hours a day to get the place back on its feet. Fortunately, I had the gift of gab. All the best Italian pizza parlors are owned by Greeks.” Actually, Stavrakikis is half Greek, half Italian.
From the start, Dino says he loved his landlord and still does, a sentiment rarely heard from retail tenants. “We’ve had the same one from the beginning— Russ Flynn from Meridian Co.,” he says. “They’ve really been super and kind, working with me all the way through Covid.”
Dino’s fledgling pizza shop was thrust into the spotlight in June 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev, then the charismatic president of the Soviet Union, made a 22-hour swing through San Francisco. Their motorcade was headed back to the Soviet consul’s residence at 2820 Broadway when a couple of dozen wellwishers on the corner of Fillmore and California caught the Soviet president’s eye. The procession stopped and Gorbachev leaped out of his Russian-made Zil limo and started shaking hands.
A stunned Dino said at the time that Gorbachev “was the most famous man I have ever met,” and he had met 49er great Ronnie Lott and California Gov. Jerry Brown. Since then, he met the late Secretary of State Madeline Albright, quarterback Joe Montana, actress Sharon Stone and others who dined on pizza and other dishes in his shop, many created by Dino’s late mom, Koula.
A lifelong bachelor who loves kids, Dino didn’t let his singlehood stop him from becoming a father. In 2011, he arranged with a surrogate what he considers his greatest triumph: a son he named Santino. Practically from birth, Santino became a household name in the Fillmore. The proud papa renamed his shop Dino and Santino’s. “He’s the love of my life,” beams dad.
After three remodels and a transformation into Santino’s Wine Bar, Dino decided he was ready to throttle back. He moved to Walnut Creek to be near his parents and to get Santino in a better school. He gave more operating responsibilities to his longtime lieutenants, Jesus and brother Emilio Ceidillos — both with Dino for 33 years — and Tony Santos, with him for 25 years. Dino continued his annual summer treks to Greece to visit his family, including former boss Spiro Tampourantzis, and soak up the sunshine and culture.
But he found himself wanting to spend more time with his son. So recently, he and Lowe, who Dino’s known for 30 years, huddled over glasses of wine and penciled out a deal. “I couldn’t have picked a better guy,” Dino says. “He’s bringing in an Italian chef, has his own ideas about making some changes.” Dino is tightlipped on this point, and Lowe has made no public announcements.
What’s next for Dino? “I have a gym at my house and I want to get in good shape,” he says. “I love to work. Unfortunately, I don’t have any hobbies. I just love the action. We’ll see what presents itself. But I’m going to miss my loyal customers.”
EARLIER: “Dino’s boy“
“When Gorbachev stopped by Dino’s“
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Stirring at the Grove
Posted on July 30, 2022 by editors
FILLMORE BEAT | CHRIS BARNETT
Slammed shut and lifeless for well over two years, the large space housing the once popular Grove cafe and hangout at 2016 Fillmore is stirring again, but the new venture’s backers stubbornly refuse to disclose anything about it. “I can’t say, I can’t say, I can’t say,” insisted a bearded guy in a hoodie, who appeared to be a general contractor and claimed he is not the owner. Nor would he name the person in charge. Boom, the door slammed shut again. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: The team behind the Snug will open Little Shucker next year at 2016 Fillmore, the former Grove space, three blocks away from the Snug, the Chronicle reports. Adrian Garcia, who previously cooked at San Francisco Michelin-starred restaurants Benu and Quince, is in charge of the menu.
A couple of blocks north on the corner of Fillmore and Clay, Sam Fechheimer, a seasoned chef, is the new owner of Palmer’s, replacing Albert Ranier, who launched it in 2014. Sam was his opening chef, so he knows the bones of the building and its culinary history. He’s added a new brunch menu and is streamlining the daily menu with new dishes, including a serious Caesar salad, which replaces the faux Caesar made with kale. “We’re also reinvigorating our cocktail scene,” he says.
Meantime, the heart of the Post Pandemic Fillmore is coming back to life, with more action and somewhat fewer “for lease” signs on empty storefronts.
The biggest retail addition to the boulevard is the uber-hot Lululemon store at 2040 Fillmore, which took over the space vacated by Ralph Lauren. Lululemon, with its catchy name and logo, has created an eye-catching “pilot” store on Fillmore that houses a massive collection of women and men’s workout and sportswear. Vancouver-based with stores worldwide, Fillmore is SF’s fourth Lululemon. What makes it different? “We weave silver into all our fabrics and since bacteria doesn’t cling to silver, our clothes never smell,” says a candid Rebecca Jackson, assistant manager. Lululemon will also buy back its old clothes for store credit and recycle them.
Across the street, at 2033 Fillmore, a new lingerie store called Third Love has moved in. Caroline, a sales rep, claims it’s the first such shop to create half sizes in bras such as an A½, B½, C½ all the way up to H½ cup sizes. “We’re new to the industry and we design for all body types,” she says.
Naadam, at 2029 Fillmore — named after a Mongolian holiday — sells lounge and casual wear for women mostly made out of 100 percent cashmere sourced from sheep herders in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. “We have no middlemen,” says Meghan, a store sales rep. Popular are the cashmere hoodies and sweaters. Prices range from $100 to $300.
The August Gallery has moved into 2053 Fillmore where a clothing and CBD company had a long off-and-on run. It’s not an art gallery per se, but has a collection of items aimed at “making the home more beautiful,” says Cameron, the gallery coordinator for owners Lotta Coffey, an interior designer, and her husband Geoffrey, a landscape designer who also has an office in the space. Items? Plants, ceramics, accessories and furniture by local artists.
FOOD NOTES FROM OLD FAVORITES: John Castanon, the suave longtime manager of Florio, retired and went home to Texas in February. But he’s already been recalled for a six-week summer stint. • The former Elite Cafe, now The Tailor’s Son, has fresh additions to its cocktail list plus a 5 to 6:30 p.m. weekday happy hour — but only for patrons sitting at the bar. • A couple of doors away at 2043 Fillmore, at low-priced Apizza, store manager Pierre Luaga from Paris has added new pizzas, including pork carnitas and cacio e pepe — plus $7 wines and beer at $5 per can. • On the corner of California and Fillmore, the always affable TacoBar manager Antonio Solano has improved its online ordering and added new menu items and a parking zone for pickup and go. • On the corner of Fillmore and Pine, Noosh owner John Litz has added two popular cocktails to his repertoire of California-inspired Mediterranean cuisine. His personable general manager and operations director, Diana Ornelas, is also a talented mixologist. She created the Rosé and Rose Sangria.
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Artistic circles in the Fillmore
Posted on June 27, 2022 by editors
By GARY KAMIYA
San Francisco Chronicle
The most famous event in the history of avant-garde literary San Francisco was Allen Ginsberg’s reading of “Howl” at the Six Gallery at 3119 Fillmore Street on Oct. 7, 1955. That frenzied reading, the subsequent publication by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books of “Howl and Other Poems,” and the arrests and obscenity trial that followed launched Ginsberg’s career, put City Lights on the map and made the Beat movement nationally famous.
The site of the Six Gallery is one of San Francisco’s literary shrines. But few people realize that an unremarkable-appearing apartment building just eight blocks up the hill at 2322 Fillmore Street was the quasi-communal home of many of the city’s cutting-edge artists and writers from around 1950 to 1965.
The Painterland era came to an end on Nov. 9, 1965, when Jay DeFeo’s “The Rose” was removed by forklift from the building and shipped to the Pasadena Art Museum. One cutting-edge artistic circle faded away, but another one sprang up at almost exactly the same time and place. A few young people were living in an apartment on 2111 Pine Street, just a few blocks away from Painterland. They called themselves the Family Dog.
Read more: “Painterland: the forgotten apartments of San Francisco’s avant-garde“
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