News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
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…
BOOKS | Barbara Kate Repa “I was facing the stereotype that all women over 70 look like that picture on the See’s candy box,” laments San Francisco author Barbara Rose Brooker. That led Brooker to write The Viagra Diaries, a novel chronicling the life and times of Anny Applebaum, an older woman pursuing a writing career,…
BOOKS | Fran Moreland Johns One chilly afternoon not long ago I pulled on an anorak jacket and walked over to San Francisco’s Laurel Village to pick up some groceries. A young woman who appeared to be about 15 or 16 years old was standing on the sidewalk in front of the Starbucks on the…
BOOKS | Mark J. Mitchell I’ve lived and worked in the Fillmore since before it was new. Old-timers might remember me as the philosopher of beer behind the counter at Bi-Rite Liquors at California and Fillmore before it closed its doors. More recent arrivals might recall me as the Champagne advisor and single malt Scotch…
AUTHOR, SINGER, poet, orator, actress and civil rights activist Maya Angelou has had many jobs in her storied life — including, when she was growing up in the Fillmore, a stint as a calypso dancer at the Purple Onion in North Beach. Recently Angelou recalled her first job: as a San Francisco streetcar conductor. “I…