The woman behind Noe’s Nest Bed and Breakfast

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You are a Brooklyn girl, raised by Holocaust survivors in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, a graduate of PS 164 in Boro Park and Hunter College in Manhattan. In 1977, you’re a school teacher in Harlem and a single mom to a beautiful biracial daughter, Anais, age 2. Her existence is a secret from your Orthodox Jewish parents; your older sisters told you it would kill them. So, instead, you marry a gay white South African Jewish guy in need of a green card. This makes your parents so happy, they offer you a paid honeymoon to San Francisco. They are happy. The guy is happy. You are happy. There are stranger ways of ending up in San Francisco.

Sheila Rubinson Ash recalls landing here 46 years ago.  “I was so sick of the New York cold; 1977 was one of the coldest winters, and I couldn’t do it anymore. Plus the hustle and bustle of raising a kid alone, schlepping the stroller up and down the subway. “

On a sunny afternoon, she sweeps her arms expansively in front of her Guerrero Street home, on the Noe/Mission border, where for 20 years she has run Noe’s Nest Bed and Breakfast. Ash’s trajectory from single mother on welfare to innkeeper is a story of hard work, timing and, as they say in New York, chutzpah.

The early years

As a newcomer to San Francisco, Ash got welfare and food stamps, and, eventually, many jobs. For a while she waitressed by night, substitute-taught by day, and rented rooms to other single parents so they could share childcare.

If she went to a party, “I would empty a drawer in a bedroom and put Anais in it. Ah, that was a time.”

 “The 70’s was a great time to come out here; there was a huge influx of people, including many single parents, and we navigated towards each other, had support groups, shared childcare.” 

She recalls a constricted childhood, where the world was viewed through the prism of Orthodox Jewish values, where the ghosts of her parents’ Polish relatives who perished in the Holocaust were a palpable presence:

Clothes should be dark and somber, and material possessions were, well, immaterial. “Our family values were intellectual,” she said, “learning, study. If a book fell on the floor, you kissed it.”

The loss of so many family members in World War II had a significant impact on how Ash looks at life. She never knew a grandmother or an aunt. She wanted to live large for those in her family who never had a chance to.

She also had her own burden to bear. Born without a left ear, she was labeled “handicapped” in school. It caused her jaw to retract and her eye to droop, and she has undergone several surgeries to lift the eye. Her mom dressed her in bonnets and hats to hide the “defect.”

Her interest in clothes, fashion, hats, and style dates back to that experience.  “I was so shy and half deaf, and wanted people not to notice me, so dressing brightly and colorfully deflected attention onto the clothes and, in time, that became my signature.”

These days, she walks the neighborhood around Noe’s Nest in one of her multicolored fur hats and eye-popping coats. Under her gowns are what she calls her “faithful flannel pantaloons. They keep me warm,” she said.

Another thing she desperately wanted as a child was a Christmas tree. That was a non-starter.

So, secretly in her room, she arranged a bunch of chairs and draped red ribbons and tin foil over them, vowing to marry a non-Jewish man so she could have her wish.

She never had a birthday party either, so naturally in San Francisco she became a partygoer. Now in her young 70s, still managing her business full-time, she maintains a hectic nightlife, out three or four nights a week to see live theatre, to dance, to attend fundraisers, openings and concerts. She is often accompanied by her boyfriend, Dave Kong, a musician and IT professional.

Her cell phone rings constantly to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” She speaks briskly, with the cadences of her native New York and a deadpan delivery. “I met Dave at a wedding. He says I wear him out, and he is 15 years younger than me,” she waits a beat, “I went younger ’cause the older ones are dead.”

The Nest

Walking into Noe’s Nest is a bit like stumbling into the Mad Hatter’s tea party amid the Antiques Roadshow. The long dining-room table for guests features a pouncing jade dragon, three dancing blind mice, a silver rabbit, colorful glasses and crystals. The foyer and living room are jammed with an explosion of baubles and antiques, colorful paintings and figurines, an antique gramophone, two life-sized wooden soldiers guarding the fireplace, a pair of cherry-red-and-white striped Italian settees, and her Japanese tea set collection. 

“I was so poor when I came here, I haunted the thrift stores. I couldn’t believe all the treasures I found!”

There are photos of Ash with Gavin Newsom (“I dated him once”), Willie Brown, Michael Douglas and Francis Ford Coppola. 

She runs Noe’s Nest with a staff of four: A bookkeeper, a cleaner, a carpenter, and her elder daughter, who helps with the administrative tasks. “I cook the breakfasts,” she said. 

In 1982, with the help of her now ex-husband, she bought her first house, on 23rd Street. By then she had a second daughter, Kendra. As a single mom, she said, she couldn’t get a loan, but her then-husband cosigned it, then quitclaimed it over to her, “and I had a house.”

She stops a moment, “I would never ever have been able to do this in New York. Ever.”

Nowadays, Noe’s Nest seems like a family business, with her older daughter here, and Kendra living near Atlanta, Georgia, where she is preparing to open a B&B in a house she restored from the studs. Ash never set out to become an innkeeper, but she took the plunge to help pay the mortgage, eventually running her home as a bed and breakfast. 

“I was the first bed and breakfast in this area. When I started, there was no such thing as a license.”

In 2002, she bought an 1891 Victorian on Guerrero Street and transformed it into a licensed bed and breakfast. The house comprises 4,300 square feet on four floors, and has a lush garden. The eight guest rooms are furnished in her signature vintage style, and all feature a mezuzah on the door frame, an expression of Jewish identity. 

Mindful of the help she received when she was struggling, she often gives her home over to fundraisers. Before Covid-19, she had regular latke suppers to benefit the leukemia and lymphoma society (Ash is a cancer survivor), and also threw parties to benefit the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, which raises money for scholarships. 

The business

Before the pandemic, Noe’s Nest had no trouble filling its rooms. But when San Francisco went into lockdown in March 2020, Ash had to refund more than $100,000 worth of bookings. Business came back in 2022-23, but only to half of what it had been. 

This year has started out worse than 2020.  For the first time she can remember, she has slashed prices at Noe’s Nest. “The media has basically trashed San Francisco, and San Francisco hospitality is hurting more than ever. I am working twice as hard for one-half the income.”

However, Ash is fiercely loyal to the city that welcomed her and gave her the chance to reinvent herself.

“We mustn’t lose sight of what makes San Francisco great: The diversity of people who show up here from everywhere in the world, the artists who create new worlds and works, and the natural beauty that surrounds us.”

She is confident things will get better. Meanwhile, she is working non-stop.

Her cleaner walked out on her right before Christmas with the place solidly booked. So, the Wednesday before the holiday found Ash at Trader Joe’s and Costco buying supplies and trudging upstairs to put them away.

“It’s a good thing I still have the energy I have,” she said with a sweeping gesture from her perch on the stairs. “I want to inspire people to jump out of the box and do something outrageous.”