The City and County estimates that there are roughly 100 encampments – two or more people living without a structured home, typically in tents – and 700 campers at any one time in San Francisco. However, based on a survey of state and local government officials, including with the California Department of Transportation, Caltrain, and…
Potrero Hill and Dogpatch are home to a number of “Landmark Trees,” so designated for their size, historical value, or beauty by the City. These include the Acer rubrum, “red maple,” at 862 Kansas Street; the Callistemon citrinus, “lemon bottlebrush,” on the east side of the 400 block of Arkansas Street; the Carpinus betulus ‘Fastigiata,’…
It started as an idea between three longtime friends who liked to brew beer at home. What if we quit our day jobs, and made beer for a living? After more than two years of planning, securing real estate, finding investors and installing large scale brewing equipment, Eric Tisch, Jon Verna, and Ed Gobbo opened…
Over the past decade and a half former Alabama Street resident Kieron Sinnette experienced all the elements of a rags-to-riches-to-rags story. Sinnette, an immigrant from Trinidad, arrived in San Francisco in 2001, less than a month after 9/11. He was an 18 year-old high school graduate, gay, homeless and unemployed. After securing assistance from Larkin…
After a quarter of a century as director of community relations at the University of California, San Francisco, Barbara Bagot-Lopez retires this month. She hopes to use her free time to reconnect with her neighborhood, Bernal Heights, and rededicate herself to her activist roots. “Hitting 25 years was like ZING!” laughed Bagot-Lopez. “Wow, 25 years.…
Gardening is often praised for the beauty it creates, as well as the benefits it provides the gardener in terms of mental clarity and stress relief. Mission Creek resident Maria Suarez, 75, is a great-grandmother who takes recreational gardening seriously, using the pastime to achieve personal tranquility and to give her neighbors an eyeful. Suarez’s…
My 11 a.m. was at a rundown house in the Excelsior, not far from Highway 280. No one answered the door. I called the potential customer, who showed up about 15 minutes later in a late-1960’s beat up panel van. He was in his early 60s, with dirty fingers, wearing a filthy jumpsuit, big, smeared,…
Three women, Mary and Alice Goodwin and Elizabeth Hammersley, started the Boys and Girls Clubs of America in the state of Connecticut in 1860. They wanted to give kids a place to go who otherwise might not have one. More than 150 years later, the Boys and Girls Clubs in San Francisco alone serves more…
Longtime Potrero Hill resident Judy Baston’s passionate commitment to Jewish genealogy earned her the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, awarded at the Association’s annual conference in Jerusalem last summer. Baston was born in Oakland to parents who encouraged her to pursue a professional career. Her father suggested that she…
The electronic rock band Fifty Foot Hose emerged from San Francisco’s iconic 1960s music scene. Its music, including its sole album, Cauldron, issued in 1967, was influenced by a mixture of jazz, rhythm and blues, rock, and electronic music. The latter genre’s current popularity was sparked by pioneers such as Cork Marcheschi, a Bay Area…
I leaned forward on the couch and waited for “Heart of Gold” to play over the sound system. As a lifelong Neil Young fan, I’ve probably heard the song a few hundred times, or more. It’s one of my favorites, along with “Sugar Mountain” and “Cortez the Killer” and “Like a Hurricane” and…the list goes…
It’s been seven years since Vanessa Marlin took over Bell and Trunk Flowers, located on 18th Street. When asked to be interviewed by the View, Marlin accepted, with an invitation to dinner with her family. Her house, close to her business, is home to her teenage daughter, Elise Marlin, and Marlin’s fiancée, Krista Gaeta. Two…
After twenty-seven years working in the financial services sector, in 2000 Sharon Johnson was informed that her company, Mellon US Leasing Corporation, was being sold. She was asked to relocate to the East Coast, all expenses paid. She turned down the offer and took a year’s sabbatical, during which she attended the ceremonies of a…