News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
A FRENCHMAN’S American dream — to open his own bakery and live above the shop, build a group of local cafes serving authentic French pastries and eventually sell it all for millions to a mega-corporation — took an abrupt twist June 16 when Starbucks announced it was shuttering its 23 La Boulange eateries in the Bay…
By CHRIS BARNETT The biggest neighborhood bank heist in decades has left many customers feeling shortchanged. Three automatic teller machines outside the Wells Fargo Bank at Fillmore and California recently vanished, depriving customers of the convenience of withdrawing cash and doing limited banking when the branch was closed. Now Wells Fargo customers or anyone with…
SHASHI BATRA, founder of the new natural beauty emporium Credo, was up a ladder taking a hands-on approach a couple of days before his first store finally opened on June 4. But he seemed happy to climb down for a few minutes to explain why he decided to locate his first shop at 2136 Fillmore.…
HE WAS THERE from the beginning. When the Fillmore Farmers Market was created in 2003 in the parking lot that later became home to Yoshi’s and the Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center, Tom Nichol was there, helping the farmers set up their stands and encouraging the neighbors to get to know the people who grew their…
NOW WHO WILL WE ASK how to cook a pot roast? The neighborhood’s reigning maven of meat — Mollie Stone’s butcher Lorain Arruabarrena — retired June 1. For more than three decades, she served up meat and fish and advice on what to do with it, the lone female behind the counter in an almost…
ART | JUDY GODDESS Solange Mallett, the owner of African Plural Art, is passionate — about African art; her newly opened gallery at 1305 Fillmore; the neighborhood; the visitors who come to look, learn and sometimes purchase; and the tribes supported by the purchases. “You have to be passionate about what you’re doing and passionate…
LOCAL HISTORY | PEGGY ZEIGLER As San Francisco celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the dome of the Palace of Fine Arts is decked out in new paint and the Ferry Building is illuminated as it was in 1915. Re-creations of the expo grounds flash in the windows of the California Historical…
LANDMARKS | BRIDGET MALEY Some buildings stop you in your tracks. That’s what happened to me the first time I walked by 1729 Vallejo, between Franklin and Gough Streets. Often referred to as Digby’s Castle, the complex of buildings evokes something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Built into the hill, with a stone retaining wall…
CONSTRUCTION has been underway for weeks, and at the end of April a new red awning and a sign for Smitten Ice Cream went up proclaiming: right here super soon. The neighborhood’s new gourmet ice cream shop will soon be scooping up made-to-order frozen treats at 2404 California Street, formerly the longtime home of Copy.net.…
OWNERS OF THE Shell station at 2501 California Street were sent back to the drawing board by the Planning Commission on April 30 and told to return in a month with revised plans — ideally plans that would keep the garage they hoped to eliminate. The owners, a company called AU Energy that owns more than…