News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
PETER LUONG has created a serene oasis for those who step into his just-opened door at 2120 Sutter Street, the new home of Song Tea & Ceramics. Soft music plays. Comfortable chairs are arranged on cozy rugs near bookcases and neat white canisters line shelves along one wall, with labeled drums of teas in rows…
Text and Photographs by Paul Dunn ASK NICK YOON, the chef and owner of Izakaya Hashibiro Kou, what separates his new restaurant at Fillmore and Geary from all the other Japanese and Korean food this culinary city offers. He hesitates — after all, his menu offers about 100 dishes — but not for long. “Our…
BOOKS | BARBARA KATE REPA The versatile and iconic singer Linda Ronstadt has mostly kept a low profile since moving back to San Francisco from her native Arizona about eight years ago. But all that changed recently with a huge media blitz touting her new book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir. Her appearances these days…
By Maria Marchetti IN THE DEPTHS of the real estate crisis in 2011, the defaulting owners who had spent millions restoring the Ellinwood mansion at 2799 Pacific were removed and the home was put on the market as bank owned. In the same family for more than a century after it was completed in 1894…
AS FILLMORE STREET continues to rapidly remake itself into a mecca for fashion labels from around the world, supplanting basic neighborhood services, legislation has been introduced at City Hall that would subject more businesses to the city’s limits on chain stores. Under the existing “formula retail” ordinance — enacted by the voters in 2008 to…
By BARBARA KATE REPA IT’S BEEN A YEAR since neighborhood resident John Gaul went looking for a friend and adopted a feisty feline from a cat rescue group, Give Me Shelter. But the dapper octogenarian still gets stopped on the bus, in the grocery store or pushing his walker down Fillmore and asked by friends…
FILLMORE ABROAD | Dan Max For 20 years I’ve been making regular trips to Turkey from my flat above Fillmore Street. During a month-long visit to Istanbul this summer, I experienced a perfect afternoon when I met up with Berk Kinalilar, the owner of the neighborhood’s Troya restaurant and a native Turk. Troya, at 2125…
WHEN THE OWNERS of Glaze — the new Seattle-style teriyaki grill on the corner of Fillmore and Pine — were planning their menu, they knew they wanted to keep things as fresh and local as possible. Much of their planning and interviewing had been done at Fraiche, the all-natural yogurt shop down the block, which…
By Barbara Kate Repa IT’S BEEN FOUR YEARS since James Moore retired from his post at the express line at Mollie Stone’s. He seems much the same as the day he left — the same ready smile, the same bass blurt of a laugh, even the same gallant manner. “Let me buy you a coffee,”…
Woody Allen’s new film, Blue Jasmine, opens today at the Clay Theater on Fillmore Street. It’s set mostly in San Francisco, and some scenes were filmed locally in Pacific Heights. Blue Jasmine “seems to me the best film Woody Allen has ever made,” says film critic David Thomson, a neighborhood resident, writing in The New…