News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
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…
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…
ORNITHOLOGY | MONTE TRAVIS When I saw a golden crowned hummingbird up at Alta Plaza Park near the tennis courts, I was confused. I was unaware of any species that sports a golden crown. But then I watched as she dipped her bill into the long red tubular-shaped flowers adorning the bushes and witnessed the…
By ERICA REDER It’s 7:30 on a Tuesday evening, and nearly every seat in Dino’s Pizza at the corner of Fillmore and California is taken. Couples and families crowd the tables, sharing pizzas, draft beers and sodas. Three television screens broadcast the Tennessee-Vanderbilt basketball game, while mob movie stills and portraits of famous athletes stare…
[nggallery id=10] It didn’t take a cynic to question the need for another coffee shop and cafe on Fillmore Street — especially one in the exact same spot, at 2123 Fillmore, where Bittersweet and Sweet Inspiration and several others had tried and failed — and next door to recent arrival Citizen Cake, a superstar of…
BOOKS | KEN SAMUELS A customer walks into Browser Books on Fillmore and approaches the counter with a sly smile on his face. “Hey,” he says, “are you guys happy that Borders is closing in Union Square?” “I’m not happy for the people who lost their jobs,” I reply, “but it doesn’t surprise me.” I…
Ex-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak might consider moving to the neighborhood, suggest our colleagues at the Bay Citizen, since the Egyptian government has a lovely clinker-brick mansion with a fascinating history sitting empty at 3001 Pacific Avenue. It formerly housed the Egyptian consulate in San Francisco.
Fillmore’s newest establishment — originally to be called Sweet Jane, but now just plain Jane — is open for business at 2123 Fillmore. And there’s nothing plain about it. This location has been home to many other sweet shops: most recently the Bittersweet chocolate cafe and earlier Sweet Inspiration and half a dozen others. But…