A few minutes before noon on August 28, Fernando Aguilar closed the door of his pickup and walked to the O’Shaughnessy Blvd gate of his alma mater. He unlocked it, got back in and drove to his beehive on the campus of the former of McAteer High School. Aguilar, Class of 1976, tends a hive […]
From Medicine to the Fine Arts: Retired Glen Park ER doc launches new career studying (and teaching) art
Retired and on the hunt for a new hobby? Looking for a way to give back to the community? Long-time Glen Park resident Charlie Goldberg has some ideas you may find useful. For almost thirty years, Goldberg worked at Kaiser as emergency room doctor. And while he was always interested in the fine arts, a […]
Glen Park Canyon Rec Center to begin incremental reopening September 7
With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to sound alarm bells, Recreation and Park administrators are cautiously returning to some semblance of normal indoor programming and outdoor habitat restoration at Glen Canyon Park. On September 7, the Glen Canyon Recreation Center and other City recreation centers will be opening for fall programming. Glen Canyon Recreation Center will […]
A sign of the times: The Glen Park News ends print run, shifts to all-digital
For more than 42 years, print editions of our neighborhood newspaper have landed on doorsteps and been put out at businesses, giving neighbors the ultimate in local news. In 1979 the Glen Park Perspective featured articles about the redesign of the corner of O’Shaughnessy, Bosworth, Congo and Elk and the naming of Dorothy Erskine Park. […]
Remembering Bruce Bonacker, who helped make the Glen Park BART station a national treasure
BART started service in San Francisco, from Market Street to Daly City, on November 5, 1973. I played hooky from work that afternoon, and rode from Powell Street to Glen Park and back, with a friend visiting from out of town. I had heard that the Glen Park station was an architectural standout. We got […]
Vandals seem bent on destroying the ECOSF farm at SOTA, but volunteers are working to keep it up
For nearly two decades atop Diamond Heights strollers have happened upon the ECOSF farm situated adjacent to the former McAteer High School football field. Now housing the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and the Academy of Arts and Sciences, the community farm continues performing as a magnet for walkers during the unprecedented 2020-21 COVID-19 […]
Glen Park Café opens, a new business in an old space
The new Glen Park Café has a long history in the neighborhood. Three generations of history. The café opened on July 13 and is being run by Damon Victorson and his wife, Ellie. Damon graduated from the famed Culinary Institute of American in Hyde Park, New York in 2011 and since then has cooked as […]
Why is the median on Diamond Heights Blvd. so lovely these days? These volunteers are the reason. And you can help.
Betsy Eddy is a middle of the road kind of person. Literally. In the middle of Diamond Heights Boulevard tending to a the plantings. On June 5 she put in a three-hour stint keeping San Francisco beautiful, one block at a time. This time it was between Gold Mine Drive near St. Aidan’s Church and […]
Glen Park was so fascinating these intrepid walkers came back for a second look. Follow along on their rambles.
Glen Park warranted a second look. On May 21, eight women from the First Friday Walkers assembled at Café XO on Church Street. “We used to say ‘No repeat tours,’ but that we might repeat a walk one of these days,” long-time FFW Chris Greene told the Glen Park News. Back in 2017 they had […]
New $110,000 grant will help spiff up the Detroit Steps
On April 20, the Detroit Steps Project (DSP) got a well-deserved step up. It became one of 28 recipients of the Community Challenge Grant Program (CCG), a division of the City Administrator’s office that funds worthy neighborhood projects. The Sunnyside multi-phased community-led endeavor to improve and beautify the 186 Detroit Steps with landscaping and […]
Man with gun robs woman on 600 block of Chenery Sunday afternoon
A woman was held up at gunpoint on the 600 block of Chenery Street on Sunday afternoon at around 3:00, said Capt. Nicole Jones, captain of Ingleside station. The victim was a 25-year-old Asian woman whose purse, wallet and cell phone were stolen, according to the police report. The man brandished a handgun at both […]
The best-selling Glen Park author you’ve probably never heard of
Glen Park’s Chandra Ghosh Ippen is a best-selling author whose books parents hope their child will never need to read. But if they do, they’ll be a huge help. Take Once I Was Very Very Scared, which has sold over 50,000 copies and been downloaded over 100,000 times. In it, animals share with each other […]
A local filmmaker has been watching the owlets in Glen Canyon—and they’re adorable
February 18 – brand new owlets have a meal from Open Studio Productions on Vimeo. Many people hear the great horned owls in Glen Canyon Park. Mark Lipman sees them—and is kind enough to let others in on the view. On March 23 Lipman sat on the eastern slope of Glen Canyon Park filming a […]
After more than 30 years, Glen Park’s Tyger’s Coffee Shop has closed
Note: In an earlier version of this story we called Tyger’s Glen Park’s “beloved greasy spoon.” That was meant as an endearment and is a phrase that, for the author, had only positive connotations. Clearly, this is not the case for everyone and we apologize for having caused offense. Having happily eaten at Tyger’s for […]
Gold-medal pickleball player stumbled onto the popular game at Glen Park Rec
“Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the country,” Paul Johnson told the Glen Park News on March 19. Johnson, who has resided on Detroit Street for three years, emigrated to United States seven years ago from Pershore, England, a small town near Bristol. He founded and operates Lemonaid Health, an online health provider that […]
Madison Hatfield: The artist behind the Glen Park Strong signs
One in an occasional series on people who live or work in Glen Park. “I needed a broom,” Madison Hatfield told the Glen Park News while sipping a latte at Higher Grounds on March 6. Hatfield, 22, arrived in the Bay Area in 2016 and began scouting San Francisco neighborhoods for a job when she began […]
Despite COVID, Glen Park Festival makes $5,500 in community donations
The last Sunday in April would have marked the 22nd Glen Park Festival. But, as it probably goes without saying, this annual event has been deferred again this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While we must wait for another season to be together again to celebrate our neighborhood, the Glen Park Festival’s neighborhood grant […]
Sunday afternoon drive-by shooting at Chenery and Brompton leaves young man injured
Sunday afternoon saw the second drive-by shooting in two months in Glen Park, leaving a young man in stable condition at San Francisco General Hospital and the Glen Park neighborhood shaken. It began at approximately 4:40 p.m. on Sunday when a 25-year-old man dropped his mother off for work on Bosworth street and then turned […]
Glen Park through the eyes of a 60-year resident – cardboard sledding where the freeway now stands
As we near the one-year anniversary of pandemic quarantines, lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, many of us have come to know what lies out our own front doors better. We’ve gone for walks close to home, hoofed it to stores we might once have driven to and generally focused on local neighborhoods. But however deeply we […]
Your daily moment of Zen – A beautiful Glen Park sunrise
As photographer Marian Dalere of Dalaere’s Beauty Salon put it, “so pretty … for garbage day.”
Picture this: The Detroit Street steps with amazing tile work
The Detroit Steps Project continues making giant strides. Launched on November 3, 2018, the multi-year and multi-phase community-led beautification project, with an objective of fashioning 186 stairs with either mosaic or colored tiles, has taken another significant step towards its goal with the inauguration of the “2020 Drawing Contest.” “The contest is to derive imaginative […]
Drive-by shooting at Sussex and Diamond leaves one man with non-life-threatening injuries
A mid-afternoon drive-by shooting on Sunday in Glen Park left a man with non-life-threatening injuries and Diamond street blocked for several hours as police investigated. Officers arrived on the scene and found an adult male victim suffering from a gunshot wound, police said. The victim was transported to a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries. No […]
Glen Park artist’s work chosen for de Young exhibit
You’ve seen his work if you’ve read the Glen Park News, or perhaps strolling down Chenery Street. In the coming months you will be able to see it at the de Young museum. Glen Park resident Michael Waldstein’s piece “Red” is one of numerous Bay Area artists whose work was chosen to be part of […]
Bird & Beckett is open despite the pandemic — stop in and safely say hi
With dire warnings from City public health officials that the coronavirus will continue through a dark winter and with California beginning a statewide curfew, Eric Whittington, owner of Bird and Beckett Books and Records continues keeping Glen Park supplied the latest in best seller releases and used titles. “As long as the COVID numbers stay […]
Get out of your COVID rut — Go on a tree tour of Glen Park
Glen Park neighbors have long experienced California wildflower walks through Glen Canyon Park along with spider walks, and then of course Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project history walks. But they have never encountered anything like what greeted them on Sunday morning, October 25, 2020. Chalked on the sidewalk in front Bird & Beckett’s Books and […]
Pandemic or no, the Detroit Street steps are getting the love they deserve
In the midst of the COIVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco needs more inviting outdoor spaces to pause and enjoy being outdoors. Which is why Sunnyside neighbors aren’t stopping in their efforts to beautify one of the City’s lesser-known stairways. “We are continuing to clean up the Detroit Steps,” Suna Mullins emailed the Glen Park News on […]
Scary times: COVID stops Halloween this year, but we’ll be back in 2021!
Note: Several readers have asked for a downloadable version of the lovely poster created by GPA webmaster and designer Mary Szczepanik. You can click the link below to get a printable copy. GPA Halloween 2020 PDF Halloween has always been a joyous time in Glen Park. Chenery and many side streets are awash in trick-or-treaters. […]
Fire skies over Glen Park – September 9, 2020
Smoke from distant wildfires layered on top of fog produced reddish-orange skies over San Francisco on Wednesday, September 9, 2020, giving the day a surreal feel that was compared online to variously Mars, the movie Blade Runner and the Apocalypse. Even at midday the city remained darkened. Many street lights stayed on all day and […]
Mask up, Glen Park! Local seamstresses make it easy
“We’re in a major health emergency and neighbors looked around and asked, ‘how can I get involved, how can I help my community?’” Joan Lasselle told the Glen Park News on August 13. Lasselle, who has lived on Laidley Street since 1987, is a charter member of It Takes a Village, a nonprofit that credits […]
Geoffrey Gallegos: Glen Park’s 7 o’clock trumpet serenader
If you’ve stopped in Glen Park at 7 pm and heard the haunting strains of a trumpet and wondered where they came from, it’s Geoffrey Gallegos playing on his front steps over on Congo Street. He’s been playing almost every night since early April to honor essential workers — teachers, grocery clerks, public transit […]
Quick-acting neighbors save chickens, bees after vandalism at SOTA farm
Vandals destroyed a chicken coop atop Diamond Heights at the ECOSF student farm by the School of the Arts and smashed an adjacent beehive earlier this month. The eight fowl —seven hens and one bantam rooster named Diego — would almost certainly have become dinner for local wildlife if not for the quick action of […]
With COVID, cones are a no-no, but Mitchell’s Ice Cream is still dishing the good stuff
Photos by Linda Mitchell Many things have changed about the legendary Mitchell’s Ice Cream in its years at 688 San Jose Avenue, but never the quality. In 1860 Edward and Margaret Mitchell ran a dairy on 29th and grazed their cows on Red Rock Hill just above what’s now Glen Canyon Park. In 1953 their […]
Bus-only lanes may be coming to O’Shaughnessy, Bosworth — MTA wants your comments
Editor’s Note: Many people are leaving messages in the Comments section below. If you want to tell readers of the Glen Park News how you feel, that’s the right thing to do. But if you want to tell the SF Metropolitan Transportation Agency or District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, you need to email them directly. […]
Chenery Slow Street a little shorter than originally planned, still quite popular
Fifteen swaths of street in San Francisco have so far been blocked off to create Slow Streets where people on foot and bicycles can more easily share the space. It’s part of the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic but life on the streets doesn’t always play out exactly as it’s depicted on the City’s […]
Could there be turkeys on Turquoise?
Watch a video from May 20 by Roz Romney here: IMG_9554 On May 23, Glen Park Association president Scott Stawicki was walking his dog on Amber Street near the top of Glen Canyon Park when he encountered something he’d never expected to see in San Francisco — a wild turkey. “We saw it walking from […]
Two months in: Reminiscing about Glen Park during the lock down
Two months ago, on March 17, San Francisco went on lockdown when the City ordered residents to shelter in place to slow the spread of COVID-19. Long-time Glen Park News writer Murray Schneider spent some time over the past few weeks using the time to revisit sites he’s written about over the past decade. There’s […]
Local designer creates “We’ve got you covered!” sign for businesses
As of Friday night midnight, San Franciscans are required to wear face coverings when they go into grocery stores, medical offices and other essential businesses — including hardware stores. Madee Hatfield, who’s been working at Glen Park Hardware for the last nine months, realized there was a need and quickly worked up a sign for […]
Stop and smell the wildflowers of Malta — Malta and O’Shaughnessy, that is
The next time you catch the 44 O’Shaughnessy — which is one of only 16 buses still operating in San Francisco during the coronavirus crisis — at Malta Drive you might want to stop and smell the flowers along the way. Denise Louie — who resides only a hop-skip-and-a-jump from the boulevard that serpentines from […]
Business update from Sunday
Please refer to our latest story, which you can read here. It’s been updated as of Monday, March 23. UPDATED: Saturday, March 21 Glen Park Hardware is OPEN Glen Park Cleaners is OPEN Critter Fritters is OPEN Cafe Bello is OPEN. Buddies Market is OPEN Glen Park Market (across from BART) is OPEN […]
Take a hike and visit a newly revitalized local park with an amazing view
Fairmount Plaza sounds as if it’s located at an El Camino Real shopping mall in San Mateo County. It isn’t. It hugs a hilltop — part of the Rancho San Miguel Mexican land grant bestowed to José de Jesús Noé in 1845 — and now acts as a natural area frontier separating San Francisco’s Fairmount […]
Glen Park: Home to one of the City’s long-term, intimate venues for live jazz
Neighborhoods change. Just look at ours. In a little over a decade Glen Park has witnessed Canyon Market claim the corner of Diamond Street and Wilder Street while it watched Hal and Susan Tauber retire as hardware store owners on Chenery Street and Aaron Esquivel and his crew take it on. We’ve seen Chenery Park […]
Did you miss Tuesday’s amazing sunset? Here’s a reprise
Courtesy of Marian Dalere
Planting woodland strawberries with the City’s “Most Empowering Employee”
On January 8, five members of Friends of Glen Canyon Park worked in Glen Canyon planting varieties of California native plants. Supervised by Dylan Hayes, a Recreation and Park’s Natural Resource Division natural resource specialist, the volunteers placed woodland strawberry, Douglas iris and pink flowering currant on either side of a split rail fence bordering […]
For the first time ever, a Summer Tanager appears in Glen Park, attracting flocks of bird watchers
Glen Canyon was aflutter early Wednesday morning, January 22nd. A flock of bird watchers descended on the 70-acre natural area, armed with cameras boasting the latest high-powered lenses. They stood, even sat, beneath the eucalyptus tree that houses Great horned owls each year, trained their cameras on another gum tree rooted on the bank of […]
Detroit Street step-a-thon raises money to beautify Sunnyside
by Murray Schneider “Won’t you be my neighbor?” Children and parents, sans Tom Hanks in red cardigan and sneakers, gathered at 10 a.m. on Nov.24 at the foot of the neighborhood’s lower Detroit Street steps to kick off the inaugural step-a-thon run, a fundraiser to beautify a Sunnyside neighborhood landmark. An early fall chill had […]
The Glen Park email lists have a new home
The Glen Park Parents list is dead. Long live the Glen Park Parents list! Fifteen years ago, I launched an email group for parents in Glen Park. The idea was to help connect people and give a stronger sense of community. It worked. Today the group has 2,277 members. That first email was a notice […]
Deb Lunsford’s rent party at Bird and Beckett — What goes ’round, comes ’round
“Dollars for Deb” Eric Whittington billed the fund-raiser. Whittington, proprietor of Bird & Beckett, has thrown rent parties with live jazz before, to help keep his independent bookstore open for another month. But over the summer, he threw a rent party for Destination Bakery’s Deb Lunsford, a neighborhood favorite who’s recovering from surgery. Bakery regulars […]
We’re swimming in change in San Francisco
San Francisco is constantly reinventing itself. Gold Rush seekers giving way to Comstock silver barons. Merchantman brigs surrendering to coal powered steamships, then complemented by coal-powered railroads. The latter engineered by entrepreneurs with names such as Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins and Crocker. Which got me thinking about how, less than a century later, the outer Sunset […]
Sunnyside’s Detroit Street steps got spruced up on June 8
The Detroit Street steps in Sunnyside are getting a spruce up and local residents can take part on June 8, when Sunnyside volunteers are scheduling a “Cleanup and Celebration Day.” During the event, neighbors will have an opportunity to work alongside DPW’s Green and Clean Team, weeding the upper and lower steps. It’s the start […]
Dogs of Glen Park: Meet Bruce Bochy
San Francisco Giants Bruce Bochy is taking victory laps around National League ball parks as he finishes a storied major league career as a big-league catcher and manager. There’s another Bruce Bochy, the Chenery Street Bochy, and he’s caught a few pitches himself. The Glen Park Bochy is in mid-career, takes his own laps and […]