News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
Bella the swan — who returned last Sunday to lagoon at the recently restored Palace of Fine Arts after recovering from an injury to her foot — is moving to Petaluma, the city’s Rec and Park Department announced today. While Bella was away, her sister-in-law Blanche gave birth on Memorial Day to a baby swan…
A rt patrons Michael and Sarah Stein lived in the Fillmore, then primarily a Jewish neighborhood, before they joined his sister Gertrude and brother Leo in Paris in the early 1900s. So did Gertrude Stein’s longtime companion, Alice B. Toklas. The Stein family owned and operated some of San Francisco’s many cable car lines, which Michael…
For more than 40 years, the School of Dentistry of the University of the Pacific has called the neighborhood home, providing no-cost and low-cost dental care through its clinics and enlivening the area with more than 1,100 students, faculty and staff. But that may soon change. School officials have signed an agreement to leave their…
CRIME WATCH | Barbara Kate Repa Battling what appears to be an upsurge in prostitution, officers at Northern Station have stepped up enforcement efforts in recent months, making a growing number of arrests on Van Ness Avenue. In April, 88 people were arrested or cited on charges related to prostitution in the district — up…
DISPATCH | Elizabeth Moore Last year the New Fillmore reported on the reversal of the decision to close Stuart Hall High School in San Francisco in the July 2010 article, “Elite private school will live on.” Just short of a year later, there is another tremendous example of the same community coming together, this time to…
On Billionaires Row, the stretch of Broadway that runs along the top of Pacific Heights, Larry Ellison is suing his millionaire downhill neighbors Jane and Bernard von Bothmer over some runaway redwoods and an acacia that block Ellison’s views of the bay. According to the complaint, the dispute has been going on since 2008. The…
Parking meters on Fillmore Street and in Japantown no longer have a one-hour time limit. As part of the rollout of the city’s new high-tech parking program called SFpark, the shiny new silver meters along Fillmore were re-programmed on April 25 to have no time limits at all. Drivers may park as long as they…
By Barbara Kate Repa Yoga. Trance dancing. Nurturing food from the earth. Music by the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart. A crowd of true believers at the Fillmore. It sounds like the ’60s all over again. But this time, in a wholly wholesome good way, it’s a unique happening called Wanderlust coming to the historic Fillmore…
Travelers through the swank new terminal two at San Francisco International Airport will find friends from the neighborhood to bid them hail and farewell. Birds from Alta Plaza Park are part of an ingenious new piece of interactive musical art created by longtime neighborhood resident Walter Kitundu for a children’s play area. It’s intended for…
MUSIC | Anthony Torres I first heard Charles Unger play when I stepped into the Sheba Piano Lounge on the way home from Yoshi’s one night. As I walked in, I was immediately struck by the intonation of the tenor sax and the ease with which Unger and his band, The Experience, moved through Carlos…