Is the Gold Coast becoming a Tech Coast?

Posted on December 31, 2012 by editors

Apple design chief Jonathan Ive purchased 2808 Broadway, originally built for the Hellman family.

THE GOLD COAST, also known as Billionaire’s Row, is home to many of the most exclusive and expensive homes in San Francisco. Along the three blocks of outer Broadway, from Divisadero to the Lyon Street steps, rise magnificent properties that have traditionally been home to San Francisco’s old guard — wealthy, philanthrophic, multi-generational families. Heading into 2013, the Gold Coast is turning over to a new breed of young tech execs.

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One-of-a-kind dolls in a one-of-a-kind shop

Posted on December 5, 2012 by editors

STORY & PHOTOGRAPHS by Carina Woudenberg

He’s been a San Francisco resident for more than 30 years, but Jiro Nakamura still makes a yearly trek home to Japan to search for treasures for his shop on Fillmore Street.

The treasures include dolls — crafted hundreds of years earlier in many cases — and puppets, tea ceremony gear and kimonos fit for all occasions. They are offered at Narumi, a tiny shop at 1902 Fillmore that Nakamura named for a bakery his parents started in Japan.

He says he prefers antique Japanese dolls because they contain far more detail, especially in the hands and faces. “In old times, they had more time to make each piece,” Nakamura says.
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Once a corner store, now a beer emporium

Posted on December 3, 2012 by editors

At Ales Unlimited, 80 percent of the inventory is devoted to limited-production beer.

SPIRITS | Chris Barnett

Ales Unlimited, the neighborhood store on the corner of Webster and Jackson, stocks more than 900 beers and ales on its shelves and in its coolers. And owners Steve and Betty Smith don’t cater to the couch potato crowd or the party-throwers who buy six-packs of a mass-manufactured bland brand for backyard bacchanalia.

The couple would much rather sell a single 12-ounce bottle of Rigor Mortis ABT, inspired by beer made by Belgian Trappist monks and brewed only once a year. Steve will recommend that you slowly savor, not quaff, this barely bitter beer that is intensely malty with a complex sweetness of chocolate, caramel, red fruit and spice. The cost is $6.95 for a beer scoring 99 percent from ratebeer.com. His counsel is on the house.
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From Muybridge to Facebook

Posted on December 2, 2012 by editors

Q & A | Film critic David Thomson

By Mark Mitchell

David Thomson’s The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is considered a must-have reference by almost all serious movie buffs. But Thomson is more than just a film critic, more even than a film historian. His works include a biography of novelist Laurence Sterne, an account of the Scott Antarctic expedition and a brooding meditation on the state of Nevada, along with a few novels and some autobiographical works. In his ambitious Have You Seen…? Thomson presents his take on 1,000 films, pointing out the wonderful ones like a favorite uncle showing you something shiny.

Born in London in 1941, but a San Francisco resident for the last three decades, he still speaks with a soft English accent. Farrar, Straus and Giroux has just published Thomson’s 23rd book, The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies — a good time to catch up on his ruminations about life, film and the future.
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A gentlemen’s club

Posted on December 1, 2012 by editors

Anton Cura is bringing back the golden age of the neighborhood barbershop.

By Christine Lunde

WORKING ITS WAY into the local fabric, Attention to Detail Barber Gallery on Sutter Street may soon rival sports bars as the hippest place for men to fraternize. Flat screen TVs broadcasting sports and news, generous servings of beer and champagne — and, of course, stylish cuts and shaves — make the shop at 2180 Sutter a convenient congregating place for clients of all ages.

On one recent afternoon, owner Anton Cura saw his youngest client, a 3-year-old blonde boy, walk by. He waved. A group of women pushing strollers yelled into the shop for stylist Ken El-Armin and he dashed out to say hello. The clientele is mostly male, and on this particular day friends are waiting, browsing through magazines, watching television and joining the conversation. The space is sleek and open, yet intimate enough to encourage conversation.

Cura is bringing back the golden age of the neighborhood barbershop. But Attention to Detail, which opened last year, is the spruced-up post-dot-com version. It doesn’t look like a traditional barbershop because it’s not; it’s a hybrid between a place to get a haircut and a high-end salon.
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In Hungary, an ambassador from Pacific Heights

Posted on November 29, 2012 by editors

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis

By MARKOS KOUNALAKIS

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Many of my Saturdays used to start out with a saunter down Fillmore Street for an early morning cup of coffee while the rest of my family was still in bed.

Budapest is also a coffeehouse city, but more famed for the conversations and art that grew out of that culture than the coffee in the cups.

It has been three years since we left San Francisco and moved to a country that only a generation ago was behind the Iron Curtain. As I look outside my office here, I see the Statue of Liberty — not the one in New York harbor, but the one atop Gellert Hill in Budapest, erected by the Soviets after World War II. From her office window, my wife looks toward a Soviet monument in the middle of Szabadsag ter — Freedom Square — a golden star topping the prominent stone memorial.

From our apartment in Pacific Heights, we looked out on the bay, the sailboats and the container ships crossing under the Golden Gate Bridge. President Obama marveled at the view during the couple of times he visited our home before assuming office. He later appointed my wife Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Hungary — a complex and demanding job that brought our family to beautiful Budapest.
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The 110th Thanksgiving

Posted on November 21, 2012 by editors

A 1902 engraving of Calvary Presbyterian Church at the corner of Fillmore and Jackson.

LOCAL HISTORY | JOE BEYER

Thanksgiving Day marks the 110th anniversary that Calvary Presbyterian Church has stood proudly at the corner of Fillmore and Jackson Streets.

But it’s actually much older than that.

Founded in 1854, the church’s first home was located on Bush Street between Montgomery and Sansome. In 1859, as the city expanded, the church moved to a new building on Union Square, which stood where the St. Francis Hotel is located today.

By the turn of the century, the city’s continuing westward expansion led the congregation to conclude it was time to move again, all the way out to Fillmore Street. More than a million bricks from the Union Square structure — along with the pews, much of the woodwork and the metal balcony supports — were moved and used in the new sanctuary. The first service in the building was held on Thanksgiving Day on November 27, 1902.

The timing was fortuitous. In April 1906 the great earthquake and fire struck the city and the area around Union Square was destroyed. But the fire did not spread to this part of the city, and Fillmore Street became the new center of activity.

Calvary suffered no structural damage and after the earthquake hosted many community meetings and services for other religions whose homes were destroyed by the earthquake and fire. The basement of the church was a temporary courtroom for the superior court.

Calvary Presbyterian Church in 1868 on the corner of Geary and Powell.

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The Fillmore is getting its groove back

Posted on November 2, 2012 by editors

Opening night at Yoshi's on November 27, 2007 | Photograph by Mina Pahlevan

ON ANY GIVEN NIGHT, Fillmore Street south of Geary is buzzing with street life. Stylish patrons make their way to 1300 on Fillmore for cocktails and dinner, or line up outside State Bird Provisions hoping for a coveted seat at what Bon Appetit magazine anointed as the best new restaurant in the country. Concertgoers head to the Fillmore Auditorium and Yoshi’s. Around the corner at Fat Angel and Social Study, a youthful clientele talks over drinks and snacks.

Five years after the opening of the cornerstone Fillmore Heritage Center in November 2007, lower Fillmore is finally getting its groove back.

“We’re bullish on the Fillmore,” says Jason Kirmse, one of the owners of the Fat Angel wine bar, who hopes to open another spot nearby.
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A one-man show no more

Posted on November 2, 2012 by editors

Photograph of Curbside Cafe owner Olivier Perrier by Daniel Bahmani

RUNNING A RESTAURANT — even an intimate space like Curbside Cafe at 2417 California Street, just off Fillmore — is a tall order.

And Olivier Perrier has been doing it all — from greeting and seating customers, detailing the daily specials and overseeing the kitchen — since he shifted gears two years ago from merely managing the place to owning it with his wife, Gwyneth.

“We serve breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week,” notes Perrier. “As a one-man show, it’s too much to do.”

Now he has help: Francisco Alas, an alumni of the French bistro South Park Cafe, has signed on as Curbside’s chef.

The two forged a friendship a dozen years ago while working at the restaurant Zaré in the Financial District before both moved on to spots focusing on French fare.
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A portal to another time

Posted on November 1, 2012 by editors

Photograph of the Piano Care Co. at 2011 Divisadero by Daniel Bahmani

By Marjorie Leet Ford

THE SHOP’S carved wooden front door — both rough-hewn and fancy — quietly announces a portal to another time, when the ancient art of piano building was still going strong, and the world was as full of pianos as it now is of cars. The piano was the heart of the family; there were so many that some cities passed laws against playing a piano near an open window. Then came the radio and the gramophone, providing instant music.

But the romance lingers. Having the word “piano” in a title still wins hearts. Witness Thad Carhart’s high-selling novel The Piano Shop on the Left Bank; Jane Campion’s popular film The Piano and The Pianist, which became an Oscar winner for its director, Roman Polanski.

Romance may be part of the pleasure in opening the front door and stepping into the Piano Care Co. at 2011 Divisadero Street, just a few steps north of California.
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