Meet the JazzFest artistic director

Posted on July 5, 2013 by editors
Jason Olaine programs Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Fillmore Jazz Festival.

Jason Olaine programs Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Fillmore Jazz Festival.

Q & A | JASON OLAINE

Last year you left Yoshi’s on Fillmore to join Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. How’s the new gig going?

The job is great — challenging and rewarding. Maybe that’s why it’s great. We just wrapped our 25th anniversary season and it was a home run, so there is some satisfaction, and relief.

What’s your role?

I’m the director of programming and touring at Jazz at Lincoln Center, so I’m responsible for all the programming we generate. Our concert season runs from September through June in our two main halls — the 450-seat Allen Room and the 1,100-seat Rose Theatre, located in the Frederick P. Rose Hall at Columbus Circle in midtown Manhattan.

We also have an amazing jazz club — Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola — that is open seven nights a week, two shows a night, much like Yoshi’s, except we only have 125 seats. We have a similar club in the Middle East — in Doha, Qatar — that opened in October of 2012 and we will be opening a club in Shanghai in late 2016 or early 2017.

Our Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis tours approximately 12 weeks a year — they’re in Europe right now. We have tours slated from now through 2016, including trips to South America, Asia, Australia, the U.K. and here at home, plus we program a series in Mexico City. We’re putting a lot of musicians to work and spreading jazz to the masses.

What does it tell you about the state of jazz?

There are more people “consuming” jazz — buying tickets, attending free festivals like this one, downloading, streaming, sharing, buying, viewing on demand — than at any other time in history. Has the economy fully recovered here and abroad? Not by a long shot. So we feel that given how strong the jazz economy is now, the future looks even brighter. At Lincoln Center, we sold more tickets this year than any year before and had more than 100,000 people watching our live streams. And sales for next season are tracking 15 percent ahead of this year.

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JazzFest returns July 6 and 7

Posted on July 5, 2013 by editors

FJF2013

IT’S THAT TIME of year again — Fourth of July weekend — and the Fillmore Jazz Festival is back and will take over the street for the 29th year in a row.

With more than 100,000 people expected for the two-day street party, the Fillmore Jazz Festival means different things to different people. For artists, it’s an opportunity to present new material or play old favorites for hundreds or thousands of people. For many residents and festival goers, it’s a weekend to look forward to every year — a time to celebrate the best of the neighborhood’s past and present. There’s a positive, joyous vibe up and down Fillmore Street as live music flows from block to block.

This year’s lineup on the California and Sutter stages covers a lot of ground, stylistically and geographically. While both of this year’s Artists-in-Residence hail from the Bay Area, the rest of the lineup stretches from Vegas to Brooklyn to Israel and Ghana.

The Jazz Artist-in-Residence, Kim Nalley, is an acclaimed jazz and blues vocalist and a true San Francisco treasure who got her start on Fillmore and has become a fixture at the festival. She wows the crowds and stops traffic — sometimes literally — with her dynamic stage shows. An inspiring and dedicated educator as well, Nalley has a gift for storytelling — and swinging hard. She recently sold out all four shows at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York and returns at the end of July for a week of shows at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, presenting her tribute to Billie Holliday.

World music and jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist Peter Apfelbaum — this year’s World Music Artist-in-Residence, grew up in Berkeley, although he has been living in Brooklyn for a couple of decades. Apfelbaum makes his Fillmore Jazz Festival debut as a leader this year. But he’s been leading bands, including his groundbreaking, genre-defying Hieroglyphics Ensemble, since he was a highschooler back in the late ’70s. His music has always been fascinating — was it jazz, world music, groove or funk? For this world-class, Grammy-nominated composer and improviser, no label is required — or maybe even possible.

Both Artists-in-Residence perform both days, and present two completely different shows — a real treat if you’re a fan or just curious why they’re in the spotlight. They both deserve the attention — as do the other artists invited to perform. If music is an important part of your life and you like discovering new music — be it jazz or world or blues and beyond — then this year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival is for you.

Complete schedule of entertainment

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A race to the finish line

Posted on June 2, 2013 by editors
The 78-minute documentary debuts this month in San Francisco.

The 78-minute documentary debuts this month in San Francisco.

FILM | Barbara Kate Repa

JIM TRACY, longtime running coach at the neighborhood’s University High School, never set out to be a film star. But when life conspired to deliver a record-setting team, a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s Disease and a community that rallied around it all, he could be no other.

The result is Running for Jim, which screens this month at the San Francisco Independent Documentary Film Festival.

One race in particular provided the dramatic high point of the film. The University High School girls’ cross country team, having recently learned their beloved coach had been diagnosed with the fatal disease, was set to compete in the 2010 state championship, a 3.1-mile race run on a cold damp day in Fresno. Team captain Holland Reynolds gathered the team for the usual rallying cheer: “Go Big Red! Go Devils!” Then they added, more like a prayer, “Let’s do it for Jim.”

The race was a nail-biter from the start. One of the team’s top runners, Jennie Callan, fell at the 100-yard mark and slipped to last place, then rallied to finish 16th in the roster of 169 runners. Other team members also ran their hearts out. Adrian Kerester, who had never run in a state final meet, placed 25th. Lizzie Teerlink beat her personal best time. Bridget Blum led for more than half the race, finishing third.

But Holland Reynolds, the team’s fastest runner, slowed around the 2.5 mile mark, then hit the wall. Three yards from the finish line, dazed and dehydrated, she collapsed and fell to the ground. A race official hovered over her, explaining she either had to complete the race without help or withdraw. An agonizing 20 seconds of film shows Reynolds crawling over the finish line before being swept away to a waiting ambulance.

Her explanation: “Of course I was going to finish. I just knew I needed to do it for Jim because we needed to win state for Jim.”

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City tightens chain store limits

Posted on May 31, 2013 by editors
One of Athleta's first stores opened on Fillmore in 2011. Now there are 41.

One of Athleta’s first stores opened on Fillmore. Now there are 41.

SIGNALING IT WILL be harder for chain stores to open on Fillmore Street in the future, the city’s Board of Appeals on May 15 revoked the building permit secured by German-based clothing company Oska for the space at 2130 Fillmore, where it had intended to open a new boutique.

Now that Oska has been adjudged a chain store subject to the city’s formula retail ordinance, it cannot open without going through a conditional use hearing to determine whether it is appropriate in a neighborhood already home to many chain stores and women’s clothing shops.

The formula retail ordinance requires conditional use approval before companies with 11 or more retail establishments in the U.S. can open in many San Francisco neighborhoods, including upper Fillmore Street.

The board found that Oska has nine stores currently operating in the U.S., as well as leases for two additional stores — in Healdsburg and in Evanston, Illinois — bringing its total to 11 retail establishments within the meaning of the law.

“Savvy chain store operators are intentionally opening locations in the district prior to exceeding the 11-store cap in order to avoid application of the formula retail controls,” the board stated in its written preliminary findings issued a week after the hearing. “The existing concentration of formula retail uses is having a negative impact on the character of the neighborhood.”

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Fillmore’s new micro-boutique

Posted on May 31, 2013 by editors
Liz Fanlo's beauty boutique now occupies the tiniest storefront on Fillmore.

Liz Fanlo’s beauty boutique now occupies the tiniest storefront on Fillmore.

NEW NEIGHBOR | Liz Fanlo

Hair and makeup specialist Liz Fanlo lives near Fillmore and already knew she loved the neighborhood. So when she decided to open a beauty boutique, she persuaded a friend to rent her the tiniest storefront on the street at 2335 Fillmore.

“Isn’t it cute?” she beams. “It’s tiny — 50 square feet, maybe less. But beauty products are small. That’s the advantage.”

It’s a one-seater, but then most of her work is done on location at weddings or events. She wanted a storefront to offer her preferred beauty products and tools and also to teach others her notable skills.

Her first window display features a new kind of hair extensions that don’t harm the hair. “People love ’em,” she says. She’ll change the display every month to feature “my favorite beauty product I’m currently obsessing over.”

“The other shops on the street are ones I want to be associated with,” she says. “It’s not too high-end. It’s a nice mix.”

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From Russia with a love of jewelry

Posted on May 31, 2013 by editors
Elite Fine Jewelry is now open at 2480 Sacramento Street, near Fillmore.

Elite Fine Jewelry is now open at 2480 Sacramento Street, near Fillmore.

NEW NEIGHBOR | ELITE FINE JEWELRY

A dream of a new jewelry store is now open in the neighborhood. But it began as a nightmare.

Jeweler Simon Khurin and his family lived only 80 miles from Chernobyl when the Russian nuclear reactor imploded in 1986, spewing radiation across the landscape and forcing the relocation of all who lived in the area.

“I thought after one year the radiation would be over and we could come back,” he says. But when it became clear it would be decades, at least, before he could go home again, he made the decision to move his wife, his child and his parents to the United States and start over.

They had friends in San Francisco, so they came here. Khurin had little money and spoke even less English, so he worked as a laborer as he sought ways to rebuild his career as a jeweler.

“It’s hard to start all over,” he says. “But little by little I started working for myself, repairing and manufacturing jewelry.”

He rented a small space on a desolate stretch of Fillmore Street in the mid-1990s, long before new life stirred in the jazz district, eventually moving up to a spot on Fillmore near Post, where he opened Elite Jewelry. It lasted a few years, but then his storefront and several others were consolidated to create an expansive new home for Goodwill. His talent and drive had become evident, however, and with a partner he had established a growing jewelry design and manufacturing business in San Carlos.

Still, he had fallen in love with the neighborhood, and he was determined to have his own jewelry store here.

“It was my dream — my crazy dream,” he says. “I understood I couldn’t afford it, but I wanted to own something.”

One day he saw a “for sale” sign on a pint-sized building on Sacramento Street, just around the corner from Fillmore.

“I thought, ‘Yes!’” and with a partner found a way to buy it, becoming the landlord of the Toujours lingerie shop and Soaps hair salon, plus a residential unit upstairs.

Finally, last year, he decided to take the plunge and open the jewelry store of his dreams.

“I was ready,” he says. And in early May, Elite Fine Jewelry opened its doors at 2480 Sacramento.

The custom showcases made of a forest of lacquered birds-eye maple gleam with gold and platinum and jewels of all kinds, cuts and colors.

“Diamonds, of course — and pearls,” Khurin says. “I love pearls.” He enthusiastically leads a visitor toward the window display. “Can you believe this? Gold pearls! I’m crazy about pearls.”

There’s a shimmering pair of emerald tear-drop earrings. “It’s one,” he says. “We just made one pair.” And yellow diamonds, and a matching antique yellow topaz brooch and pendant. Most unusual is a natural amber necklace, still rough and looking as if it was just separated from the earth.

Elite Fine Jewelry offers a full range of jewelry repair and design, plus watchmaking services and repairs.

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A Dominican departs

Posted on May 30, 2013 by editors
Photograph of Father Xavier Lavagetto by Kathi O'Leary

Photograph of Father Xavier Lavagetto by Kathi O’Leary

IT’S AN ICON in the neighborhood, with its Gothic arches, soaring tower and flying buttresses. St. Dominic’s Catholic Church has stood proudly at the corner of Steiner and Bush Streets since 1928, when the stone sanctuary replaced an earlier brick building destroyed by the 1906 earthquake.

For nearly two decades — an unusually long time by Dominican standards — Father Xavier Lavagetto has been a part of the parish, the last 13 years as pastor. But his service will come to an end the first week of July when the church — and the neighborhood — bid farewell to the man with the familiar easy smile dressed in flowing white robes with sandals sticking out the bottom.

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Fillmore’s Reggie Pettus: no more

Posted on May 30, 2013 by editors
Photograph of Reggie Pettus in 2009 by Kathryn Amnott

Photograph of Reggie Pettus (center) in 2009 by Kathryn Amnott

AN APPRECIATION | Elizabeth Pepin Silva

IN MAY 2013 the Fillmore lost a special man with the passing of Reggie Pettus, 73, longtime proprietor of the New Chicago Barbershop and unofficial archivist of the area.

Reggie moved to the Fillmore District from his home in Mobile, Alabama, in 1958 to attend City College of San Francisco. He began working in the New Chicago Barbershop in 1968, eventually taking over the business from his uncle.

The barbershop and many other businesses and residents were adversely affected by the redevelopment of the neighborhood. Like many others, Reggie was given a certificate from the Redevelopment Agency to relocate his shop back to the neighborhood once the rebuilding was over. But unlike most businesses and their African American clientele displaced by redevelopment, the New Chicago Barbershop never went away. The bulldozers stopped just a few doors south, and Reggie and his barbershop remained a fixture at 1551 Fillmore until it finally closed earlier this year — just a few weeks before he died.

In many ways, there would have been no revival of the “Harlem of the West” era, as Fillmore was once known, without Reggie. His collection of historical photographs and memorabilia, much of which he rescued on its way to a dumpster across the street from his shop, sparked an interest in many people to learn more about the area’s past. His photographs and memorabilia formed the basis for Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era, the book Lewis Watts and I published in 2006. His collection also became the backbone of KQED’s Emmy Award winning documentary, The Fillmore, in which Reggie appeared and offered up some of the more memorable quotes.

“They used to call it the Fillmore,” Reggie says in the documentary. “I call it the No More. Redevelopment just came in and wiped it all out.” He added: “We don’t have too much color down here — not my color, anyway.”

His prophetic words concluded the film. “It won’t come back,” Reggie said. “The flavor is gone. Fillmore, no more.”

BAY GUARDIAN: “I’ve always been a barber”
KQED: “Fillmore, no more”

Photograph of Reggie Pettus by Lewis Watts

Photograph of Reggie Pettus by Lewis Watts

HISTORIC FILLMORE PHOTOGRAPHS? “IN MY BACK ROOM”

FIRST PERSON | Lewis Watts

By 1990 I was a photographer, and I began looking at the Fillmore as a part of my general interest in a visual examination of history and contemporary experience in African American communities.

Walking through the neighborhood, I also came across Red’s shoe shine parlor across from the Fillmore Auditorium. I went in and inquired about photographing the gallery on the walls that represented many who had lived and performed in the Fillmore. The owner of the shop, Elgin “Red” Powell, said that he was busy but that I might come back another time to talk about it.

A few months passed, and when I returned, Red’s shop was empty, and there was no trace of the pictures. No one in the neighborhood seemed to know what happened to Red and the photos in his shop. I was afraid that this valuable collection of history was lost. I continued to ask after its whereabouts for years.

In 1996 I was doing research for a report on the cultural past of the Fillmore, and I again asked around the neighborhood about Red and his photographs. When I went into the New Chicago Barbershop, across the street from Red’s parlor, and asked one of the barbers, Reggie Pettus, I was thrilled by his response: “They’re in my back room.”

Reggie filled in the blanks about what had happened. Red Powell had a stroke not long after we met in the early 1990s, lost his lease, and died soon afterward. When the parlor closed, everything was taken from the walls and was about to be tossed into a dumpster by the landlord. Reggie rescued the photographs and memorabilia and had kept the materials ever since.

VIDEO: Reggie Pettus was the star of the public television documentary, The Fillmore.

Filed under: Landmarks, Locals, Neighborhood History | 1 Comment »

Board of Appeals says Oska is a chain

Posted on May 15, 2013 by editors

AT ITS REGULAR monthly meeting tonight, the Board of Appeals ruled that Oska, the German clothing line, is a chain store and must comply with the city’s formula retail ordinance before it can proceed with plans to open at 2130 Fillmore Street, formerly the home of Jet Mail.

EARLIER: Oska stirs chain store fight on Fillmore

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In one building, the city’s history

Posted on May 13, 2013 by editors
Once home to Bop City, today 1712 Fillmore is occupied by Marcus Books.

Once home to Bop City, today 1712 Fillmore is occupied by Marcus Books.

By Gary Kamiya
San Francisco Chronicle

FEW PEOPLE who pass the violet-painted house at 1712 Fillmore Street give it a second look. It’s another Victorian in a city full of them.

But this building is different. Perhaps no other structure in San Francisco has such an extraordinary story. If its walls could talk, they would relate virtually the entire history of the city.

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