News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
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…
BOOKS | CAROL FIELD Now that the new edition of my book The Italian Baker has been published, I have been reliving the adventure of working with bakers all over Italy. It started in San Francisco in 1981 when Il Fornaio, then a bakery featuring Italian breads and sweets, opened at the corner of Steiner…
Gerri Nuval was a pre-med student at San Francisco State, working part time at a little lingerie shop called Victoria’s Secret on Union Street, when she got sick and the doctors told her to slow down. She pushed through the pain and realized she had found what she really wanted to do: “to be around…
The Fillmore’s own inimitable Mary Risley — longtime proprietor of Tante Marie’s Cooking School — offers a simpler way to prepare the traditional Thanksgiving dinner in this timely new video from the Fillmore’s own Jaded Palate Productions. UPDATE: “The insanity of going f*cking viral” by Faith Wheeler
On November 18, 1978 — 33 years ago today — 918 people from the Peoples Temple died in Jonestown. Most had followed Rev. Jim Jones to Guyana from the Fillmore. The Peoples Temple stood on Geary Boulevard just west of Fillmore Street where the post office is now located. In a new book of poems…
When they’re in San Francisco, Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis can often be spotted on Fillmore Street, near their home on the ninth floor of the 2500 Steiner Street tower. But these days they’re mostly in Budapest, where she’s the U.S. ambassador to Hungary. Among their visitors from the neighborhood: 2500 Steiner’s 12th floor resident,…