Lisa Kellman and Dino Lucas are tired, but it’s the kind of fatigue that comes after a day’s work well done. Or in their case, after 20 years’ work well done. The couple, joint owners of the Scarlet Sage apothecary, have retired after pouring some 50 to 60 hours a week into what started as a tiny shop on 22nd and Guerrero streets in 1995.
Scarlet Sage, however, will remain open under the new ownership of Laura Ash, a former employee and an accomplished herbalist who has traveled the world studying and teaching traditional methods. She’s dedicated to the alternative medicine as well as the queer community (she moved to San Francisco with her two children) and plans to keep the store almost exactly the same.
“We feel really lucky that she wants to do this, and that she is able to do this,” Kellman said.
Kellman and Lucas were in their early forties when they opened the shop. It was a wildcrafting trip (on which herbalists sustainably harvest healing plants from the wild and create remedies from them) that sparked their collaboration. Kellman’s background was in accounting, but with time both owners became practiced herbalists, offering mostly Western herbal remedies from actual plant parts to tinctures to essential oils.
“It seemed like a great opportunity to use my herbal knowledge in a helpful way,” Lucas said.
With time, the two began arranging for classes to be held in the shop, cramming up to 15 people into the 200 square foot space to help customers and other community members understand herbal remedies and take charge of their own health. But the shop and the classes also offered an alternative to mainstream medical practice.
“The other thing that’s been important has been to educate people and empower them to take care of their own health, without this hierarchical system that we perceive doctors to be a part of,” Kellman explained.
With time, and with a move to a more visible storefront on Valencia, the shop’s clientele grew beyond the local herbalist community to include neighbors looking for a remedy for a particular ailment and immigrants who brought their traditional remedies with them and came in with lists of herbs they needed. To better serve their diverse community, Kellman and Lucas expanded their stock to include some Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese remedies. But it wasn’t just new herbs they brought in.
“When we started we were coming out of a medical herbalism focus,” Kellman said. “As we grew, we saw what the needs of the community were…[including] spiritual and metaphysical components.”
That included expanded literature, healing crystals, and tarot decks. But herbal remedies continued to be popular.
Pregnant women, for example, purchase pounds and pounds of a pregnancy tea containing raspberry and nettle leaves that Kellman and Lucas mix themselves. The stuff flies off the shelves, partly on the recommendation of a local prenatal yoga instructor at Yoga Tree nearby, leading to lines of pregnant women carrying yoga mats forming at the store.
The herbal apothecary’s expanded repertoire included remedies for pets. One curious customer tried out a mixture called “life force zest” on none other than his chickens, which suddenly began producing twice as many eggs with stronger shells than before. Skeptical, he withdrew the herbs gain, and found the hens’ output immediately reduced.
“It’s a good sign when things work on animals,” Lucas said. “You know it’s not a placebo.”
As the shop grew and developed, Valencia street changed around it. Toward 24th street, Lucas said, the street was less popular.
“People didn’t want to come down here. They considered it a dangerous area,” she remembered.
Conversely, that stretch of Valencia was also home to many businesses, several of them health-related businesses like a chiropractor’s office and a healing center, owned by lesbians. Beretta, Lucas said, was a women-owned cafe with mostly female patrons. A little farther down the street, of course, there were Amelia’s and the Lexington Club.
“There was a big history of Valencia being the women’s commerce area,” Lucas said. “And a lot of businesses that were there went out.”
The transition to new ownership came shortly after the store moved a few doors down Valencia street, which has, of course, become immensely popular. And though the population has changed, the shop still attracts a diverse clientele, attracted to the shop’s atmosphere.
“Despite being retail, it’s a center for different earth based and plant based healing communities,” said Bonnie Rose Weaver, a recent employee of the Scarlet Sage who has since moved on to start her own herb growing venture. “We find a rootedness connecting someone to a perfect flower essence.”
I met Lisa and Dino at The Real Food Company back 20 years ago before they opened. I have supported and referred to their store. Lisa and Dino have my respect as they have built community by being consistent in their focus to provide for the area. I also will miss their faces, however, I will continue to support all women owned businesses. There are still too few of them in the Mission area.
I love Scarlet Sage and the history it represents. I’ll miss seeing Lisa and Dino behind the counter…still, very happy it’s staying open.