Casa Bonampak at 1051 Valencia St. and Fiestas Fridas will be hosting a Frida Kahlo look-alike contest and birthday celebration Sunday beginning at 11 a.m. It is also Sunday Streets so the whole of Valencia will be a fiesta. At Bonampak, anyone can participate in the categories of Fridog, Fridrag, Little Frida, Diego and Frida. The winner of the best...
The storefront at 461 Valencia Street may not be empty any longer. Everlane, a clothing retailer, has recently shown signs that they may be moving in. On April 19, the company filed an application with the planning department to move in. More recently, in honor of Pride month, they painted a mural on one of the property’s doors to promote...
Advocates for infrastructure that better separates cyclists from drivers took to Valencia Street Thursday evening, forming a human barrier between bike and auto lanes from 16th and 17th streets. Dozens of cyclists offered high-fives and smiles as they passed through the corridor of roughly 20 yellow-shirted bike lane activists. Most drivers kept silent as they drove by, but a few voiced their dismay. “Find...
Update: Planning Commissioners approved the addition of a restaurant into the existing events venue and retail space called Amado’s, formerly Viracocha, on 20th and Valencia streets. The commissioners voted unanimously, 5-0, to allow Amado’s to add a restaurant at the back of its street-level commercial space, but also required that it increase the amount of space reserved for retail in the front of...
Plans are afoot to turn nearly 4,000 square feet of retail space on the corner of Valencia and 21st streets into a full service restaurant with some retail. The application for a conditional use permit allowing David Quinby, the owner of Amado’s at 998 Valencia St, to transform the space will be heard by the San Francisco Planning Commission on...
Before a former motorcycle workshop becomes a multi-story housing development, it will be home to a pop-up arts and design shop called “Parlor.” The developers of a mixed-use project planned for 235 Valencia Street at Clinton Park are sponsoring an arts and design pop-up at the site, which they describe as “Part community living room, part art house, and part greenhouse.” The collection will feature...
Stroll down Valencia Street on a warm spring evening and you’re likely to find, within barely two blocks of one another, two variations on a theme: Mobile theater. One is Mr. Brandy in his van – the ex-Texan pianist lives and works out of a van draped in sparkly fabrics and oddball decorations, crammed in next to the piano he...
A spa offering cryotherapy and float therapy is planning to open a location at 810 Valencia St. The space near 19th Street was formerly home to Gingko Furniture. Images that evoke science fiction adorn the window storefront, announcing the June or July arrival of Reboot Float Spa, which already has two locations in Rockridge and the Marina. Cryotherapy involves cooling...
Why does everything new getting built in the Mission look like it’s made of earth-tone Legos? Planning codes, costs, and opposition, suggest a few of those in the architecture know. Planning regulations prevent egregiously out of place structures like 20-story round towers from being plopped into the Mission, says San Francisco Chronicle architecture critic John King. But developers interested...
The new year marked the end of an era for the proprietors of Junko’s, a once clandestine thrift-store cabaret in the Mission and a two-decade stronghold of the city’s underground scavenging movement that unearthed everything from a letter from Ronald Reagan to a manuscript by Beat icon Neal Cassady. The owners, Derek Felten and Michael McQuate, made careers out of...
Valencia Street’s steady evolution into an increasingly upscale commercial corridor is claiming yet another local casualty as the two-decade old vintage and costume shop Retro Fit informed Mission Local of its exit. A bid on the shop’s space and a lease-less existence have made its continued survival on the corridor impossible, said owner Steven LeMay, adding that Retro Fit will be...
The owner of Valencia Street furniture store Gingko is preparing to close the store because rent increases and online sales have made the brick and mortar Valencia store financially unfeasible, he said. Jerry Hsia, who has run Gingko with a business partner for 15 years, said their headquarters are in Mountain View and that store will remain open. Prompting the closure was...
Not content with almost causing a stampede at 24th Street BART and a Muni blockage at Dolores Park, this week’s storm also left the sign of departed clothing and accessory shop Multikulti on Valencia Street somewhat mangled. Winds took down a tree on the block of Valencia between 16th and 17th streets and while the currently active storefronts nearby were spared any...
Nestled among the furniture stores, boutiques and restaurants on Valencia Street, One Medical, a concierge medical practice – one of three new clinics on Valencia Street – blended in almost too well. People mistake the health clinic for a furniture store almost daily, said Jenny Montoya, the receptionist at One Medical where the façade is lined with large windows. Inside,...
Update: Police have made an arrest in this case. Read more here. Police have confirmed the death of a 39-year-old man who was stabbed outside of Burma Love at 211 Valencia St. near Duboce Thursday evening. Mathew Fiame, a San Francisco resident, was found suffering from a stab wound around 6:25 p.m. outside of the restaurant and was transported to the hospital, where he died...
