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: Full profiles of the seniors interviewed will be published each day after today's introductory story. Publishing dates are noted in the...
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
‘Wild writing’ softens clinical healthcare leader’s shift to solo career and enriches retirement
Kathryn Santana Goldman showed an affinity for science as early as grammar school when she captured and chronicled a variety of insects found in her backyard. “My parents had one of those 30-volume encyclopedia sets that I used to look up the insects and document my findings in a small notebook,” she said.“I especially liked ...
San Franciscans and San Francisco share the spotlight in venerable film festival
Two of the many films slated for San Francisco’s 12th Annual Legacy Film Festival on Aging next month are set in the city and produced by local residents. “Waiter for Life” is a short documentary about five waiters over the age of 60 who have worked for between 20 to 30 years at Scoma’s, a ...
Host of group that supports women forge new life after retirement fitting out her Dodge van to recapture the joys of childhood camping
It’s 11 o’clock on a Saturday morning and Janice Wallace is on Zoom hosting the Bay Area chapter of Women’s Connection, a national network that supports those looking for new life opportunities past retirement. Wallace joined in part to make new friends. Her husband wasn’t all that social, she said. His main interest was collecting ...
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, intones 66-year-old Vonn Scott Bair, “is a myth, a lie, a LIE.” He’s been doing what he wants since retiring eight years ago, but said, “I work longer and harder than I ever have.” It’s not that Bair ...
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 who hates the holiday. Sullivan’s “A Red Carol” is “about everyone else,” a world unrepentant for its cruelties, said the 64-year-old resident director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, appearing at San Francisco’s Z Space Theater through December ...
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 ...
