Life in the Later Lane
Retirement sends Vonn Scott Bair full speed into long days as actor, playwright and game developer
"Do what you want, and you will never work a day in your life." That old adage,...
The play’s the thing as Michael Sullivan and the San Francisco Mime Troupe bring new meaning to “A Christmas Carol”
Michael Gene Sullivan’s version of Charles Dickens’ traditional “A Christmas Carol” is not about Scrooge, the miser...
From weddings, funerals and proms to Dead concerts, Mandela and Pope visits, Hoogasians have been flowering SF since 1928
In San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s, before the internet, match.com, and social media, flower stands...
Seniors take on new roles with ‘Drama with Friends,’ a Zoom project that had its first live performance
Herbert and Gloria are flirting. Like spooning teens, the elderly pair are joking about their relationship and...
Podcast hosts leaned into aging, a topic they call ‘cutting edge’ and ‘sexy’
They met harvesting bananas on a kibbutz in Israel, part of a summer tour introducing young Jews...
Her name honors a famed New Zealand author. With her first novel published, Sally Abbott is also leading the life of a writer.
Sally Abbott believes her role as a novelist was written before she was born. It started with...
Retiree wants your blood: Donor Ambassador devotes his all to Red Cross collection efforts
Mark Sugarman wants to repair the world. The 79-year-old Financial District resident has spent his whole life...
Bruce Neuburger: The life of a student radical turned farmworker, turned author
Bruce Neuburger was never an armchair radical. Organizing against the Vietnam War while in the Coast Guard...
Three generations of a San Francisco family thrived running popular oceanside eatery overlooking Sutro Baths
It was, you might say, the last breakfast. On a summer Saturday in 2020, dozens of family...
Art and science vied for Sarah Young’s heart: Both found a place
Few who end up in the hospital are likely to be thinking about whether there’s a sufficient,...
Baking for bodily autonomy: Nan Wiener tackles controversial end of Roe v. Wade with brownies, macaroons, muffins and more
SENIOR BEAT GUEST COLUMN – Many years ago, I spent a year baking desserts in a restaurant...
New author and former drinker embracing alternative therapies to help others break the habit
Seated in the backroom of a café on Polk Street, Kevagne Kalisch leans against the wall and...
From fisherman to cook to inmate to owner: Frankie Balistreri’s odyssey to opening his dream restaurant
When his mother, Lucrezia, was diagnosed with cancer, then 25-year-old Frankie Gaetano Balistreri cared for her at...
Wisdom of the Japanese Tea Garden helped volunteer Chrisie Giordano come to accept a child’s absence
It’s an overcast summer morning, and Chrisie Giordano is leading a tour of Golden Gate Park’s Japanese...
It’s the little things that count for Margaret Lew, swept up in the world of miniature craftmanship
If you think dollhouses are just for children, you haven’t met the artisans and collectors, like Margaret...
Desire to learn mah-jongg helped Stephanie Riger overcome her own biases toward seniors
SENIOR BEAT GUEST COLUMN – Even though I’m 78 years old, I have resisted seeing myself as...
Retirement can be scary. Library worker hoping the end of his career will be the start of a happy new chapter
Seventy-one-year-old Richard Marino is on the cusp of retirement. And it’s making him anxious. He’s gone through...
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She relives history as a guide on the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, one of the WWII Liberty ships that brought troops and cargo to Normandy beaches
Eve Maher stood next to a gangway atop the deck of the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, a WWII Liberty ship parked at Pier 35 at Fisherman’s Wharf. A volunteer on the ship, she greeted visitors as they arrived for a special memorial cruise for Armed Services Day on May 18. Petite and stylish, the native of ...
Pen pals from afar build rich relationship over 60 years through old-fashioned correspondence – no WhatsApp about it
A SENIOR BEAT GUEST COLUMN – My correspondence with Jutta Mengersen (now Brockhaus), the “World’s Ideal Pen Pal,” began in 1963, when we were both in high school. She was in Detmold, Germany, and I was in Columbia, South Carolina. Since then, we’ve met in my home in San Francisco and in her home in ...
This Mexican immigrant fought in the ring, started a dozen restaurants, raised five children, and never let defeat wear him down.
When 17-year-old Jose Heriberto Garcia came courting the young girl who’d become his wife, his future mother-in-law was so outraged that she ran him off her property – waving her pistol and shooting at his feet. “I beat it out of there, oh si, senor,” Garcia recalled. “I came back the next day to state ...
The ghosts of San Francisco’s past are still there if you only look and listen
SENIOR BEAT COLUMN: I got my first job in San Francisco nearly 40 years ago, in the Flood Building at Market and Powell streets. A chubby, cheerful, uniformed lobby attendant pressed the elevator buttons for me. The lobby was marble and, oh wonderful, there was a Woolworth’s on the ground floor. I loved to sit ...
Mutual support but separate hobbies and workshops keep crafty couple’s marriage going strong
They met on the dance floor of the Avenue Ballroom on Taraval Street. Etta Hallock was an instructor, Bill Lafferty a student. She liked Bill because he wasn’t pompous like other men she had met. “He was just Bill.” He liked her because she didn’t hold too tight. Other women he’d dated didn’t like him ...
SFUSD admin behind Bay Area’s only school nurse credentialing program adds pickleball pro to her resumé
When Mary Jue, 59, handled a pickleball paddle for the first time eight years ago, it handed back the excitement she remembered as a kid growing up in the Richmond District. “It instantly brought up all those rewarding competitive feelings,” said Jue, who was the youngest daughter and seventh of nine children. “I couldn’t wait ...
