For a brief period in the mid-1960s, when the city’s LGBTQ community was beginning to find its voice, “San Francisco’s Finest Female Impersonators” performed at the Casa Blanca Lounge in Glen Park. Evelyn Rose of the Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project shares how the story of the Casa Blanca not only reveals the rich Italian […]
Thieves saw down three light poles in Glen Canyon Park
Thieves cut down three metal light posts at the entrance to Glen Canyon Park Thursday, May 25. An alert park-goer called 311 that evening to report the vandalism and San Francisco Recreation and Parks responded. “Custodial staff cleaned up the fallen poles and put caution tape around the area and power was turned off. Electricians […]
Glen Park icon Joan Seiwald: Long-time SFUSD staffer, park-saver and A’s fan
Joan Seiwald, 91, one of a trio of young Glen Park mothers who in 1965 kept San Francisco from building a freeway through Glen Canyon Park, passed away on Thursday, May 11. Seiwald and her husband Robert bought their home on Burnside Avenue in 1960, just one block from the park. As today, parents spent […]
Chenery will not be a Slow Street, SFMTA Board votes
Chenery Street will not become a slow street again, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board voted Tuesday, May 16. After several hours of many heartfelt statements both for and against a reinstatement by Glen Park residents, the board said it felt there was too little consensus to vote to once again make Chenery a […]
Joan Seiwald, one of the women who kept Glen Canyon from becoming a freeway, has passed away
Joan Seiwald, 91, one of a trio of young Glen Park mothers who in 1965 kept San Francisco from building a freeway through Glen Canyon Park, passed away on Thursday, May 11. Seiwald and her husband Robert bought their home on Burnside Avenue in 1960, just one block from the park. As today, parents spent […]
Glen Park Welcomes Spring (and the Sun!) with a Block Party
Saturday, May 6th started with a torrent of rain, but by 10:00 am the sun was shining, allowing for residents of Glen Park to gather for a spring block party. About 100 people from across the neighborhood circulated through for snacks, chalk, bubbles and conversation to welcome warmer and drier weather. Some had planned the […]
Debra Lynn Hord, long time neighborhood figure, dead of injuries sustained in robbery
Debra Lynn Hord, a sometimes-homeless woman known to many in Glen Park for her kindness and helpfulness, died of an apparent head injury sustained after she was robbed outside the Glen Park Market at Diamond and Bosworth on March 2, 2023. It was at about 6:30 am, said Jung Ho Lee, one of the owners […]
Armed robbery on Chenery appears to have been teens who knew each other
Two teens were robbed at gunpoint at the corner of Chenery Street and Chilton Avenue at 2:39 in the afternoon on Wednesday, April 26. Video from a nearby house shows the two teens, a boy and a girl, walking backwards as two other teens, both apparently boys, walk towards them. One of them has a […]
Blowtorch attack on Wells Fargo ATM at Canyon Market
Glen Park residents who bank at Wells Fargo have been frustrated over the past few weeks when they stopped by the ATM in front of Canyon Market to get cash or deposit a check. Multiple times in the past month it’s been unaccountably out of service. Or maybe not so unaccountably. It turns out, people […]
Downed trees in Glen Canyon block popular walking path
The heavy winds of Tuesday’s storm downed multiple trees in Glen Canyon Park. While Glen Canyon was not on San Francisco Rec & Park’s closure list, the southern creek-side trail that goes between the Rec Center and the Silver Tree Day Camp/Glenridge Coop building was closed to walkers on Wednesday, March 22, 2023 due to […]
Popular Viking Giant Subs to close, owners retiring
After 18 years in Glen Park, the owners of Viking’s Giant Submarines at 2906 Diamond St. are taking a well-deserved retirement. Since 1995, Betty & Steven Chang have been working from early morning to after 5:00 pm providing the neighborhood with an eclectic assortment of sandwiches and lunch items. Those included the submarine sandwiches, hamburgers, […]
On Monday Perch is celebrating its 15th anniversary with drawings for $150 gift cards
Perch is celebrating 15 years in business this month. Since first opening in 2008, owner Zoel Fages has been offering a unique, curated selection of gifts and just-for-fun items on Chenery Street. To celebrate a decade and a half as part of the fabric of Glen Park, Fages is holding a drawing. When customers make a […]
Eucalyptus falls across Bosworth just at 280 South entrance – with Thursday update
A massive eucalyptus tree that grew in the street median along Bosworth fell over during high winds Wednesday, Jan. 4 at around 5:30 pm. The tree fell across the westbound lanes of Bosworth, snarling traffic and blocking the roadway. No one appeared to have been injured when the large tree came down, though a car […]
After 22 years, Sassy Salon owner is moving to Noe Valley
Genevieve Potter has loved her time in Glen Park, but after a 22-year run as the owner of The Sassy Salon her time here coming to an end – but she’s only moving her business a hill away. “I’m moving to a space that’s just a hop, skip and a jump away, over in Noe […]
Canyon Market is being sold to Gus’s Community Market
Canyon Market is getting new – though still local – owners. After 16 years, owners Richard and Janet Tarvlov are ready for a break. So they have sold the bustling business to Gus’s Community Market, owned by the Vardakastanis family. The sale will be completed on Dec. 21 and the Vardakastanis’ will take over. They […]
SF Chronicle on Glen Park’s Birdseed Lady problem
One S.F. neighborhood’s severe rat problem may have a single culprit: ‘Birdseed Lady’ San Francisco Chronicle Nora Mishanec Oct. 12, 2022 It started with piles of bird seed, small mountains that would arrive on the asphalt at San Francisco’s Glen Park BART station and on nearby city sidewalks. Next, neighbors said, came swarms of rats […]
Update: Glen Park Cleaners could still come back, Tommy Baik still pondering
Editors’ note: Baik reached out to the Glen Park News to clarify that he’s still considering his options when it comes to reopening his business. The story has been updated to reflect this. The Glen Park News regrets the error Four months after a fire swept through building at the corner of Chenery and Diamond, […]
Tommy Baik is still pondering whether to reopen Glen Park Cleaners
Editors’ note: Baik reached out to the Glen Park News to clarify that he’s still considering his options when it comes to reopening his business. The story has been updated to reflect this. The Glen Park News regrets the error Four months after a fire swept through building at the corner of Chenery and Diamond, […]
Homeless man acquitted in murder of Glen Park’s Leo Hainzl in 2020
A jury in San Francisco on Friday acquitted Peter Rocha, 55, in the death of Glen Park’s Loe Hainzl, 94, who had been walking his dog in Glen Canyon when he was attacked by the morning of Memorial Day in 2020, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Initially, witnesses said that Rocha, who was sitting on […]
Go Fund Me campaign launched for family burned out of apartment over Glen Park Cleaners
Neighbors have launched a GoFundMe campaign to help the family that lost their home when Glen Park Cleaners at Chenery and Diamond was destroyed in a fire on June 4. While there were only minor injuries in the fire, the cleaners was gutted and the upstairs apartment rendered uninhabitable. Shannon Weber and her three children […]
Glen Park reporter and Canyon stalwart Murray Schneider dies at 79
By Elizabeth Weise and Bonnee Waldstein If you’ve wandered through Glen Canyon or read about the neighborhood in the Glen Park News, you have been the beneficiary of Murray Schneider’s decades of work here. He helped pull invasive weeds in Glen Canyon, dug for planting and lopped ivy at regular Greenway work parties, wrote copiously […]
Canyon Market celebrates 15th anniversary with a party for all
A bevy of San Francisco politicians was on hand December 11, 2021 to celebrate the birthday of the Canyon Market, which held its soft opening on fifteen years before. Mayor London Breed, State Senator Scott Wiener, District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman all attended the festivities on Dec. 11 to celebrate. Bevan Dufty, District 8 Supervisor […]
Temescal String Quartet make triumphant post-COVID return to Sunnyside Conservatory
While the neighborhood isn’t quite back to pre-pandemic normal, on October 9, the Sunnyside Conservatory featured an in-person performance of chamber music, an extraordinary event since the COVID-19 pandemic rained down upon the Sunnyside a broadside of falsetto notes. There was not one discordant note on a Sunday afternoon when four local musicians, the Temescal […]
After 25 years, Lisa Wayne leaves Rec & Park (and Glen Canyon) to help keep San Francisco’s water supply safe
One of the last times Lisa Wayne dug into Glen Park soil was on January 11, 2020, a month before COVID-19 changed everything. With her teenage son, Isaac, Wayne planted dozens of drought-tolerant plants and shrubs such as gooseberry and red flowering currant at Fairmount Plaza, a postage-stamp oasis nestled between Diamond Heights and Fairmount […]
Boo! Will there be a Glen Park Halloween this year?
After more than a decade of increasingly lively Halloweens in Glen Park, COVID-19 shut everything down in 2020. Instead of streets swarming with Ruth Bader Ginsburgs, Jedi knights and the occasional BART car, there was the eerie silence of the pandemic. But—with proper precautions—Halloween is back this year! St. John the Evangelist School at 925 […]
Bees, honey and mentoring in Diamond Heights
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 […]