Special Project: City Budget Cuts
Seniors and people with disabilities fight down to the wire to save programs that serve them
As Yogi Berra once said, "it ain't over till it's over." The baseball legend was referring to sports, of course, but the adage...
Life in the Later Lane
Following in the footsteps of heroes: My visit to the cradles of Civil Rights
SF SENIORBEAT COLUMN – March 17, 1886. A date you probably never considered. Carroll County, Mississippi. A...
Nonprofit director is happy to bug you, whether you’re 2 or 92, about saving the wild
If you grow up in Los Angeles, where do you find the wild? Norm Gershenz is not...
Bass playing lawyer takes on the landlords when seniors call for help
During the day, you’ll find Thomas Drohan in court or at his law office on Mission Street....
Former SFSU teacher shifts to helping union workers build leadership abilities
Like some people need coffee, Joan Wong needs to walk – and talk. Mornings, she puts in...
Joe Edley, a three-time national champion, has been racking up great Scrabble scores for decades
Joe Edley tucks his co-authored book, “Everything Scrabble,” under his arm and surveys the room. Around him,...
Robert Wachter, the doctor who is pioneering the use of artificial intelligence to treat patients
Robert Wachter is the doctor who oversees all the other doctors at the University of California, San...
Couple beat ‘fast furniture,’ pandemic and other challenges to keep upholstery shop going for nearly 50 years
J & G Upholstery stretches back farther than it looks from the sidewalk on Balboa Street. Stacks...
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...
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...
All Posts
Former Black Panthers’ volunteer proud of its community work: feeding, educating, protecting and lifting up African Americans
Despite winning a hard-fought scholarship to study commercial art at the University of Miami, Katherine Campbell stayed less than a year. It was 1969 and the school had only integrated a few years earlier. A handful of unsettling encounters left her feeling unwelcome and somewhat traumatized, so she returned to San Francisco and enrolled in ...
Land-use activist fighting SF ‘renovictions’ developed empathy for less fortunate in revolutionary Iran
When the penny Ozzie Rohm dropped into a pond started a ripple, she didn’t know whether she was going to get her wish or not. But she knew she was going to try. As a young woman studying at university in the years around the 1979 Iranian Revolution, she dreamed of a life without conflict. ...
Coping with Covid-19: Retired administrator now more productive at home but less worried about getting things done
Senior Beat writers are reaching out to all of the people we’ve interviewed over the past couple of years to see how they’re adjusting to this new, shelter-in-place lifestyle. We asked: How they feel overall about the situation; How their routines have been affected; If they know of anyone who has the virus; If people ...
‘Shopping for the apocalypse’: grocery worker offers a peek behind the scenes at beloved Rainbow Coop
Sarah Kennedy does it all as a longtime member of the team that runs the Rainbow Coop, one of the city’s oldest worker-owned groceries. Kennedy, 52, has seen plenty of changes over the years, but nothing compared to the effects of the Covid-19 virus. The one thing she never expected entering the food industry was ...
‘I’ll show them:’ After a career challenging sexism, pioneer and icon of underground comix for ‘wimmin’ fends off ageism
Reading comic books leads straight to delinquency. That’s what many parents believed in the 1940s when Trina Robbins, now 81, was growing up. Fortunately, Robbins’ family was not among them. Robbins, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., recalls taking her weekly, 10-cent allowance to the neighborhood candy store and after studying the week’s selection, buying ...
Those who saw something of value in him helped African-American chemist reach career heights
Charles George had charisma, smarts and a purposeful nature. They propelled him through life despite the constraints of poverty and racism. He was shepherded along the way by people who valued his worth. When George was born in 1923 in Wilmington, N.C., life was hardscrabble for most African Americans. “My father took jobs where he ...
