Ross Mirkarimi, San Francisco’s sheriff, is a hard man to get a hold of. An interview with a View reporter was rescheduled twice through his office. But then he provided his personal cellphone number and email address, and invited the reporter to his Potrero Avenue home. Despite the digital and physical contact information, Mirkarimi remained…
Final touches are being made to the renovated San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) and Trauma Center building, scheduled to open in December. The new hospital inpatient tower was funded by Proposition A, passed in 2008. Public monies amounting to $887 million were recently supplemented by a $75 million donation from Priscilla and Mark Zuckerberg. Even…
Last semester, California College of the Arts (CCA) scholar-in-residence Chris Treggiari turned to Potrero Hill to serve as his studio class’s primary subject. Treggiari directed students in his Making the Invisible Visible course to develop new ways to enliven Starr King Open Space. Treggiari’s undergraduates focused on catalyzing public interaction, creating marketing concepts and…
San Francisco’s vibrant film scene, which offers a rich and diverse “ecosystem” of independently produced movies, can require as much creativity by viewers in search of a good, or provocative, time as it does to produce the work. According to Peter L. Stein, local film festivals that aren’t to be missed include the recently completed…
District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen has called for a hearing to examine the San Francisco Police Department’s efforts to combat violent crime and automobile break-ins. In social media and local gathering places, Dogpatch and Potrero Hill residents have complained that SFPD has largely left it up to community members to deal with vehicle thefts, burglaries…
By Marc Passen Denise was a lifelong friend of my mother’s, Ruth Passen, who served as The Potrero View’s editor for more than 30 years. They became instant friends when they met in San Francisco in the early-1950s, soon after Denise and her young daughter, Joanne – who later would sometimes “babysit” me! – moved…
The Noonan Building, located on Pier 70, has served as an affordable work space, with inspiring surroundings, for San Francisco artists for more than 35 years. For most of that time the building was off-the-beaten-track, surrounded by such industrial activities as automobile wrecking and ship yards. In 2012 the future of the idyllic arts haven…
Ask any parent of a teenager who was notified of what public or private high school in San Francisco offered them a spot last month about the application process. You’ll hear “stressful,” “overwhelming,” and “time consuming” in response. As with elementary and middle school, families can apply to any of the San Francisco Unified School…
Last month a California Appeals Court halted work on the Mission Bay Loop project, a Third Street T-line turnaround that’s planned for 18th, 19th and Illinois streets. The Loop would enable San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) trains traveling south to return downtown once they reach Dogpatch. As part of the Central Subway project, the…
California College of the Arts (CCA) students will soon get a respite from San Francisco’s high-priced housing market. The Panoramic, located at 1321 Mission Street, is set to open in August, and will house around 200 artists-in-training. Half of the 160-unit complex will be set aside for CCA students, with the other half dedicated to…
The “Harmonics of Unity” exhibition by the San Francisco Gurdjieff Society, held this month at two Potrero Hill locations, presents an overview of the interactions of art, science, and religion based on insights from Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. The society is mounting two concurrent shows: at Farley’s and the Entropy/Consciousness Institute…
Project Artaud – pronounced Ar-toe – on 499 Alabama Street is an artists’ village/cooperative/collective. Technically, the project is a nonprofit, but “nonprofit” doesn’t capture the undertaking’s essence, which is hard to characterize, admitted visual and performing artist Anna Dal Pino. “The difficulty and beauty of Project Artaud is that there is no consensus on the…
Behind a set of bright yellow doors on the third floor of the American Industrial Center (AIC) is a room filled with printmaking equipment: four etching presses, two litho presses, a letter press, an aquatint box, silkscreens and a hot plate. These are just some of the tools printmakers at the Graphic Arts Workshop use…
In a neighborhood known for its concentration of artists Creativity Explored fits right in. The fine art studio, located on Arkansas and 16th streets, works with artists who have developmental disabilities. Founded in 1983, the nonprofit was initially launched in the Mission, after artist Florence Katz and psychologist Dr. Elias Katz noticed a lack of…
Occupying fuseproject’s lobby, the Fused Space gallery, now in its second year, hosts new art shows every two to four months, with a focus on exploring the overlap between art and design. The building, located at 1401 16th street, was covered with graffiti in 2011 as part of a Sean Parker/Shawn Fanning event celebrating the…
Wanxin Zhang considers his art to be a question, not an answer. That quiet curiosity is evident not only in his sculptures, but his demeanor. Zhang’s personality and artist sensibility can likely be attributed to his formative years in China, which coincided with the Cultural Revolution. Born in 1961 in Changchun, Zhang grew up in…
Born in San Francisco in 1932, raised in Alameda, artist Robert Bechtle has lived most of his 82 years in the Bay Area. He received his Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, and taught painting at San Francisco State University for 30 years. He currently resides…
With the opening of the $1.5 billion UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay earlier this year came hundreds of art installations throughout and outside the facility’s three buildings. Complementing the pieces installed in lobbies, terraces, atriums, elevator bays and outdoor plazas, the center offers art therapy programs for patients occupying the nearly 300 hospital beds.…
You never know what might be behind a front door or garden gate in Potrero Hill. Indoor swimming pools, high-tech lighting arrays, lavish tropical gardens, elevators, dungeons, and hand-hewn homes can all be found on the other side of fences and exterior entryways. Inside Jeff Dauber’s Hill residence is a dense collection of artworks,…
Jan Padover grew-up in the Potero Hill of the 1960’s, a close-knit, creative community. The neighborhood was a magnet for bohemians and artists drawn by its affordability. Padover was raised in what he described as an “open house,” where friends of his father, Carl Padover – all of whom were artists or interested in the…
The perplexing question of what happened to sculptor Henri Marie-Rose’s infamous public statue, Sailor and Mermaid, remains unanswered after 44 years. Marie-Rose, a 58 year Potrero Hill resident who died in 2010, created the piece from bronze and copper sheets; cut, pounded and welded. It sat atop a cement base installed in front of the…
Ten years ago Charles and I bought a house on Potrero Hill, not far from Ferlinghetti’s. We were led here by a need we didn’t know we had for seclusion, privacy and a distance between us and the restless ambitions of North Beach life. Potrero Hill is one of the oldest settlements in San Francisco,…
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Potrero Hill Artists’ Exhibition, reputedly the oldest annual art show in San Francisco. Various news accounts suggest that the show emerged sometime between 1951 and 1955 – most likely in the latter year – when artist Charles Griffin Farr heard that the City was planning to close…
On her way to becoming a spectacular educator Ruth Goldhammer took to heart a mentor’s advice: paint your life in vivid colors, laugh mostly at yourself, and always keep learning. Ruth adhered to this counsel, following a creative approach to public education, engaging in travel that carried her across the country and the globe, enthusiastically…
Susan Bruce O’Malley passed away on February 25th. She was just 38 years old. The Berkeley resident was nine months pregnant with baby girls, Lucy and Reyna, when she died. The newborns were delivered by emergency cesarean section after O’Malley unexpectedly passed out and failed to regain consciousness. Her daughters expired shortly after their birth,…