Life in the Later Lane
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
By the time he was 12, Arthur Indenbaum had been playing the piano for four years and...
A lucky phone call steered him into a 54-year career as a shipping executive.
Tony Hanley felt stuck. He’d flunked out of San Francisco City College and was working at an...
He rode the rails, he slept on the streets, Kevin Fagan spent decades reporting on the homeless for the San Francisco Chronicle
It's a Friday night at Chief Sullivan’s, an Irish-themed bar in North Beach, and The Irish Newsboys...
Circus Bella veteran juggler and ‘right-hand man’ keeps his family in on the act
Lots of parents talk about juggling responsibilities when it comes to their kids. Not so many literally...
Retired scientist, avid cyclist, and world traveler faces the challenge of Alzheimer’s
For many high school biology students, dissecting a frog is an unpleasant rite of passage. But for...
A tale of love and lighting on Divisadero Street
How deeply did Yury Budovlya fall for Liya Klets, an 18-year-old Siberian beauty? When she traveled to...
“Mr. Mahjong” teaches San Francisco to love a 19th-century Chinese game
When Andrew Keeler was five, he would fall asleep in his living room to the sound of...
Practicality atop an adventurous spirit has Potrero Hill resident contemplating eventual move even as she continues to build community
Contact her at robinevans@sfseniorbeat.com. Even as she speaks, calmly, about uprooting herself from the neighborhood she’s lived in...
All Posts
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 downtown were one place a boy could meet a girl. Harold Hoogasian met his wife, Nikki, in 1974 at his dad’s Post Street flower stand, where he helped out. She’d accompanied her dad, a funeral director, who’d come ...
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 contemplating new places to have sex. Riding a horse, suggests Herbert, garnering a slightly lascivious grin in return. I loved my (late) husband, says Gloria, hinting that the usually creative man was a rather unimaginative bedmate. Herbert preens ...
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 to the then-new country. These days they’re working together as the co-hosts of “Not Born Yesterday,” a half-hour podcast focusing on the challenges and joys of aging. Miriam Goodman and Lynn Winter Gross went on to become college ...
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 her middle name: Abbott’s mother was so enamored of the renowned short-story writer Katherine Mansfield that she gave her second daughter the middle name “Mansfield.” To top it off, both Katherine and Sally were born in the same ...
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 following that maxim, which in Hebrew is known as Tikkun Olam. He does that through volunteering, which he refers to as “my job.” His latest focus is on the Red Cross’s Market Street branch, where he volunteers each ...
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 earned him an early, though honorable, discharge from the service. He helped organize GIs at Fort Ord and spent nearly a decade as a lettuce worker in California’s fields, supporting efforts to improve the miserable working conditions endured ...
