News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
AT 9 this morning, Vivande opened its doors to the public for the first time in three weeks. At 11, an auctioneer began selling the furnishings and equipment. Most of the two dozen people milling around seemed to be dealers in used restaurant supplies, although there were a few neighbors, too. Back in the kitchen…
Neighborhood physician Dr. Eduardo P. Dolhun is with a team of doctors in Haiti treating earthquake victims. Here is a portion of his first dispatch from the front: “Within a matter of minutes we were presented with a wide assortment of severe illnesses, all of them traumatic and now nearly six days old. “The first…
A local gallery is presenting “Theophilus Brown: Nudes,” spotlighting one of the pioneers of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, which helped change the course of art history in the 1950s. Brown, now 90, moved to the neighborhood in 2001. He still works daily in his nearby studio and recently joined a new drawing group. “I…
FIRST PERSON | ANDRE BOLAFFI It was a Friday night in January 1990. We had been in our new home on Bush Street for five years. My wife Janice suggested we walk up Fillmore to the Clay Theatre to see a French film, Claudine-Claudel, about Rodin, his work and his mistress. We went to the…
They hoped to be welcoming holiday shoppers to their new store on Fillmore Street, but instead staffers from Black Fleece—a new brand from Brooks Brothers—were at City Hall December 17 seeking permission to proceed. Because it is part of the Brooks Brothers chain, the opening was delayed by the city’s formula retail ordinance, which requires…
SUDDENLY, although perhaps not for them, the owners of Vivande decided at the end of the year to close the restaurant. After 29 years at 2125 Fillmore, Vivande served its final meal at dinner on New Year’s Eve [December 31, 2009]. “The decision to close Vivande is based on several factors,” said co-owner Lisa Middione,…
By Chris Barnett His coolness, former mayor Willie Brown himself, walks in around the cocktail hour, making 1300 on Fillmore the first stop on his nightly round of drop-bys to schmooze with friends and cronies. “This is one of those bar-restaurants that instantly became a landmark of this great city,” says Brown, sounding as if…
PHOTOGRAPHY | THOMAS REYNOLDS When Gerald Ratto was a student at the California School of Fine Arts in the 1950s, he would hang out in the Fillmore with his camera and a bottle of brandy, which sometimes made it easier to make friends. “I wasn’t documenting anything,” he says. “I was just photographing the people…
FIRST PERSON | BUD JOHNS Consider me a sucker for commemorative plaques. One reason London is among my favorite cities is its many buildings with blue ceramic plaques noting the famous people who lived there. I find it impossible not to pause and read them. So it was inevitable I would stop my car when…
By Chris Barnett The price on the wine list looks like a proofreader’s mistake. But celebrated chef Charles Phan of Slanted Door fame — and owner of the new and wildly popular Out The Door Vietnamese bistro on Bush Street, just off Fillmore — is selling a 2008 sauvignon blanc from Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley…