News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
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…
Hollywood is in the neighborhood and they’re going to church — the Swedenborgian Church at Washington and Lyon. It snowed on the little church this week — or appeared to — when Nicole Kidman was filming scenes for Hemingway & Gelhorn, a new HBO film directed by Philip Kaufman, who lives just over the hill.…
President Obama will be back in the neighborhood tonight for dinner. By mid-afternoon preparations were in full swing on the 3200 block of Jackson Street, where Obama will dine at tech exec Marc Benioff’s compound — which stretches the full block from Jackson to Pacific and fronts on the Presidio Wall — with about 60…
The children’s store Mudpie formally opened its doors today, bringing new life to the venerable old Fillamento space at 2185 Fillmore Street. EARLIER: “Kids taking over a key spot“
In what locals are taking as a hopeful sign — quite literally — the historic neon marquee at the Clay Theater is lighted once again. It has been dark and broken for months, a tangible nightly reminder of the theater’s uncertain future. Now that the lights are back on — and Catherine Deneuve is back…
San Francisco trumpeter Allen Smith, who died February 3 after a long illness, will be remembered and celebrated by many of the top jazz musicians in the Bay Area at a “Musician’s Tribute to Allen Smith.” It will be held at Yoshi’s at 1330 Fillmore on Sunday, April 10, from 2 to 4 p.m. There…