News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
REAL ESTATE | Maria Marchetti We had an exceptional year for mansion sales in 2011, with 15 homes selling for more than $5 million. And we still have a handsome selection of high-end offerings available, including eight mansions listed over $10 million and nine more listed between $5 million and $10 million. Among them: The…
BARELY A YEAR after moving to Fillmore Street and then struggling through several changes in concept, Citizen Cake closed just before Christmas. “I can’t do it anymore,” chef-owner Elizabeth Falkner told Inside Scoop. “I just have to start over.” Falkner took over the hallowed brick-walled space occupied for nearly 30 years by Vivande and was…
NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENT Michael Tilson Thomas is one of the best things to happen to the San Francisco Symphony in its first 100 years. Join in this sing-along for the symphony’s centennial — today, December 8.
FIRST PERSON | JAMES DeKOVEN On a recent moonlit night in the neighborhood, darkness having descended much earlier than only a few weeks before, some friends were at my place sipping cocktails and examining life’s more contentious issues: individualism versus conformity, true love, the meaning of life. It was all rather intense. When I tried…
Luxury items from two favored members of the Pacific Heights social aristocracy will be offered at auction this week at Sotheby’s showrooms in New York. On December 8 and 9, property from the collection of Dodie Rosekrans will be auctioned, including furnishings and artwork from her home at 2840 Broadway designed by Willis Polk, one…
JAZZ | Jason Olaine It seems like only yesterday that I came back home to the Bay Area after 10 years in New York to become artistic director of Yoshi’s new jazz club on Fillmore. That was May 2009, and here it is soon to be 2012. Now I find myself about to leave Yoshi’s…
A relief fund established in Japantown to help victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan earlier this year has raised more than $4 million from 12,000 donors, including many local individuals and businesses. Already the funds have been used to build two shelters and three day care centers in northern Japan and to help…
There’s a welcoming new men’s and women’s boutique on the street, with clubby arrangements of chairs and sofas, record players loaded with vinyl LPs, spineworn books and old framed fashion spreads from Ladies’ Home Journal lining the exposed brick walls. For Ron and Tricia Benitez, the husband and wife couple who own and operate Asmbly…
With minimal fanfare, the barricades have come down and the French-accented fashion boutique Cotelac has opened its 100th retail store at 1930 Fillmore, longtime home of Fillmore Hardware. While the brand of separates and accessories has wide saturation worldwide, especially throughout France and Asia, this is only its fourth store in the U.S., with others…
Three development projects that promise major changes in the neighborhood are moving forward. Dental school: The University of the Pacific announced on November 22 it has completed its purchase of a new facility at 155 Fifth Street and will move from its longtime home at Webster and Sacramento by 2014. Its current building will be…