Special Project: Senior Housing
As the city’s older population swells, seniors who can no longer live at home face high costs, limited choices
EDITOR'S NOTE: See full profiles of the seniors interviewed by clicking links within the story. A panoply of health issues, including slow-moving Parkinson’s,...
Life in the Later Lane
Stephanie Ernst-Scott runs the last tackle shop in San Francisco. It’s been in her family for 60 years.
Walk through the doors of Gus’ Discount Fishing Tackle, and you’ll likely be greeted before you even...
City College café owner customizes and caters to make students, staff and professors feel at home
Thanks to Alberto Campos, students at City College of San Francisco’s Mission Campus can get an affordable...
One bold step opened up education and a career charting demographics in low-income countries
Sara Seims, an 18-year-old British girl, walked into the admissions office at New York University and knocked...
K.D. Sullivan: From Park Bench to Publishing House
At 15, K.D. Sullivan was homeless, hungry, and sleeping on park benches in Honolulu’s Aina Haina neighborhood....
Retired conference consultant embraces San Francisco and its history with tour of her own neighborhood
As she strolls toward the smallest park in San Francisco, Bonnie Wallsh calls back to the group...
Farm life couldn’t compete with the excitement of big cities and the challenge of the executive life
In college, Bob Britt worked as a night auditor at a roadside Holiday Inn in Southern Illinois....
Successful sous chef finds equilibrium and support after career sidetracked by health and hard times
Jon Insco has been a go-getter most of his life — always hustling for his next adventure....
Being an ‘old soul’ isn’t just about age but an attitude – best nurtured by intergenerational contact
SF SENIORBEAT GUEST COLUMN – There’s a corner of Gen Z internet culture that has popularized the...
How a dedicated teacher of young children became a dedicated civic volunteer.
Sharon Yow’s father drove a truck and tried his hand at farming. Her mother worked a switchboard...
Famed boogie-woogie pianist embroiders her performances with her own hand-crafted art
Caroline Dahl has never forgotten the glamorous, red-haired woman in a sequined dress she saw at a...
The biggest, best walk – and bath of a lifetime.
Tina Martin SENIORBEAT GUEST COLUMN – I love San Francisco, and I love to walk. So when...
‘So hard, all the losses and pain:’ Personal and world tragedies led daughter of Holocaust survivors to life of helping others help others
Juliet Rothman was living in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1992 when her 21-year-old son Daniel attempted a double...
Rock ‘n’ roll and diamonds shaped the life of Arthur Indenbaum
WRITER'S NOTE: Arthur Indenbaum died on November 28, 2025, with his wife and daughter by his side....
All Posts
An ‘open classroom’ spurred a young girl’s creativity. Now she’s offering a similar experience to older adults as head of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
When Don van Druten rumbled up to Kathy Bruin’s elementary school in his 1949 truck, she and some of the other fifth-graders piled into the truck’s bed, and off they’d go to his house on Lancaster Road in Walnut Creek. There, he would show them how to whittle wood and his wife, Gale, would teach ...
Picking up trash puts Bayview man back on the streets, but this time with a noble mission and hope for the future.
Charles Franks, who dresses neatly in pressed jeans and button-down shirts, said he gets his dress code from his late grandpa, Elmo Gerald McNeal, who “always stayed suited and booted. He’d come home from work at Southern Pacific and change into a suit for dinner.” Born in 1963 at San Francisco General Hospital, he gets ...
Ocean swimmer chronicling his beloved Dolphin Club, a home with ‘soul’ for eccentrics who like their water icy
Don’t talk to 85-year-old Sidney (Sid) Hollister about retirement. He’s not ready, not while the pages of an unfinished manuscript on the early days of his beloved Dolphin Club crowd his desk. And not while there are still many dips in the icy waters of San Francisco Bay to come. Hollister, a gig worker before ...
Violinist turns 1920 house grandpa ‘Moff’ built into center for teaching and performance
A baby grand piano resides regally in one corner of the great room of the white-washed, brick Spanish Colonial that in 1920 was the highest dwelling on Twin Peaks, the second highest hill in the city. It was built by Edward Moffitt, maternal grandfather to Lynn Oakley, its present resident. “It was like entering a ...
A Pope’s order reroutes a nun’s predictable routine: From parish schools to Third World deprivation and revolution
When she was 30, Frances Payne’s life was orderly, predictable and sheltered. She was a Catholic nun, teaching second and fourth graders in her hometown parish in Detroit. But her life took a radical and unexpected turn when she was ordered by the Church to serve in La Paz, Bolivia. Now 87, Payne smiles as ...
El Salvadoran community friendships make up for minimum-wage jobs and meager housing over immigrant’s 36 years in San Francisco
Can anyone live in San Francisco on a Social Security check of $350 a month? People do. Jose Mauricio Montes does. He barely manages by selling natural aloe vera shampoos and soaps off a card table near a friend’s bakery. “My sleep is often robbed from me, as my mind worries about paying rent,” he ...
