News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
By Chris Barnett YOSHI’S ON FILLMORE is already booked this summer with acts lined up before the ownership changed on July 1. But it almost went dark. Just a few weeks ago, the mood at Yoshi’s was deathly. Backstage, insiders could practically hear a New Orleans funeral band playing Just a Closer Walk With Thee,…
By JASON OLAINE Artistic Director, Fillmore Jazz Festival While 1992 might have been tagged the “Year of the Woman” in politics, this year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival might well be dubbed the same, as we raise our flags up and down the street to salute talented “Women in Jazz and Beyond.” Here in the Bay Area…
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | JASON OLAINE When artistic director Jason Olaine began planning this year’s lineup for the Fillmore Jazz Festival, he found himself booking so many women performers he had a theme. “There are so many great women jazz artists in the Bay Area,” he says, “and not just vocalists.” Olaine’s day job as director…
POSTER ARTIST | MICHAEL SCHWAB You’ve seen them all across San Francisco in recent weeks — striking posters featuring a wavy-haired female vocalist silhouetted against a fiery orange background. The image for this year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival poster and street banners was created by Marin artist Michael Schwab, one of the country’s leading graphic artists.…
By Chris Barnett THE RANCOROUS LEASE DISPUTE between Paolo Shoes and its landlord has been resolved out of court, and the custom Italian shoemaker won’t be taking a hike from the corner of Fillmore and Pine for at least two more years. The clash between the two San Francisco real estate dynasties was recently settled…
“LET A thousand flowers blossom,” Chairman Mao supposedly said. Kaiser Permanente has taken a similar approach with the block-long empty lot at Divisadero and Geary it fought — and paid dearly — to clear for a new medical building, now delayed. Just beginning to bear first fruit in the summer sun is a new orchard…
THE LONG FIGHT to keep Marcus Books in its historic home on Fillmore Street reached another milestone — and perhaps its conclusion — when the new owners of the building locked out the owners of the bookstore May 6. An eviction notice was posted by Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. In an open letter emailed to supporters,…
PLANS HAVE BEEN UNVEILED to demolish the Shell station at 2501 California Street and replace it with a new high-end convenience store called Loop. “Loop is the next evolution in service station retail,” said Nick Goyal, one of California’s largest operators of Shell service stations, who now controls the local station and more than 100…
FILLMORE STREET CONTINUES to remake itself into a mecca of high-end fashion labels from around the world, despite the city’s professed intent to limit chain stores in neighborhood shopping districts. Partly that is because the rules limiting “formula retail” — defined as companies with 11 or more stores — do not include stores outside the…
By Barbara Kate Repa THE ONCE SLEEPY 2100 block of Sutter Street, stretching from Steiner to Pierce, would seem an unlikely spot for an urban renaissance. But in recent years the area has quietly remade itself. Even as it lost a few longstanding businesses, it has attracted an eclectic assortment of independent shops — including…