Dalere’s Beauty Salon, oldest business in Glen Park, gets a visit from the Mayor

Fifty years ago, a lot was happening in the world and in San Francisco. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. The Beatles released the White Album and the Oakland Athletics played their first regular season game at the Oakland Coliseum after moving from Kansas City.

In Glen Park, Glory Dalere opened Dalere’s Beauty Salon on Diamond Street in the building that is now home to La Corneta Taqueria.

It was October 6, 1968.

Fifty years later to the day, the mayor of San Francisco arrived in Glen Park to congratulate the Dalere family. Running a-hour-and-a half behind schedule, Mayor London Breed stepped from a SUV parked on Chenery Street and greeted milling staff and solitary shoppers.

“It’s fifty years,” she said, wearing a red blazer over a white blouse, black pants and red high heels. “That means something — and it’s a lot to celebrate.”

She entered through an enclosed alley leading to the salon, walking by photographs mounted upon a wall, photos of women coiffed in fashionable hair styles —a panorama of French twists, beehives and bouffants.

A 1970 photograph of young Glory Dalere hangs on that wall. Delare sports a top hat and wears a blouse partially covered by a scarf. Her left hand rests upon a hip, her tresses cascade over her shoulder. The photo of the family matriarch, now one month shy of 85, celebrates an urbane woman and business owner.

Glory Dalere emigrated from the Philippines to the United States in 1956. She joined thousands of compatriots who’d come to California and toiled in Central Valley fields. Her husband, Santiago, had done so in Salinas before he took up employment at the Fairmont Hotel. Married in 1957, Glory and Santiago went on to raise three children on Chenery Street.

Sons Santos and Dave Dalere graduated the Catholic boy’s school Riordan High School in 1975 and 1978. Daughter Marian Dalere, who joined her mother in the salon in 1985, graduated that same year from St. John’s Ursuline High School for girls in the Mission, now closed.

A week after the celebration Marian met with a Glen Park News reporter. She finished fashioning a client’s hair, booked another appointment for the woman, then sat down to reminisce. She fingered proclamations and certificates that commemorated the salon opening its doors on October 6, 1968, the year Joseph Alioto occupied Room 200 in City Hall and the salon occupied the store front on Diamond Street.

In 2013, when Glory and Marian learned that Rick and Nada Malouf, owners of the adjacent Cheese Boutique, had lost their lease after 19 years, she graciously made room for her neighbors and downsized to a smaller space next door.

In her proclamation, Mayor Breed noted the “incredible selflessness and passionate work embodied by Dalere’s Beauty Salon,” and proclaimed October 6, 2018 as Dalere’s Beauty Salon Day in San Francisco.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier waxed as eloquently in a Certificate of Recognition she sent to the Daleres, hailing Glory and Marian for “cutting and styling the hair of countless customers while pampering their souls.”

“Just being acknowledged is so meaningful, my mother believes,” Marian told the Glen Park News.

In early January Marian Dalere met then Acting Mayor Breed at an event. She told Breed — a Galileo High School graduate who went on to attend UC Davis and earn a BA in Political Science and later to attend USF where she earned a MA in Public Administration — that in 10 months’ time her Glen Park business would celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.

“Do you think I might get a certificate of honor?” Dalere told the Glen Park News she had asked Mayor Breed.

“Yes,” Dalere said the always stylish mayor had confided to her. “Now that I know it’s a beauty shop, I’ll even bring it to you.”

On October 6, Marian welcomed the mayor to her shop, filled to capacity with family and friends. “You remembered, and you kept your word.,” she told the mayor.

While friends mingled, and politicians worked the room, photographs were taken, introductions were made, greetings were exchanged and Filipino lumpia and pancit were downed.

Pushed for time, the mayor told Marian, “I have a wedding to attend in 30 minutes, but I want to see the Cheese Boutique before I go. If I didn’t have any place to be, I’d buy something.”