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
Jonah Raskin: Tireless Bay Area peace activist, prolific writer, and educator
Jonah Raskin was 10 in 1952, during the height of the anti-communist fervor of the Cold War. His father was an attorney, among the vast intellectual class swept up in McCarthyism, the campaign to expose suspected Soviet sympathizers. Raskin’s father was never accused. Still, Raskin only learned much later the extent of his parents’ communist ...
She brought the magic to the screen, finding the perfect San Francisco location to shoot movies, TV shows, and commercials
If you’d been walking along one of the steepest streets in San Francisco one sunny afternoon in 1984 you might have seen a strange sight: A grand piano with a musician seated on its attached bench careering down vertiginous 22nd Street. Clad in a feathered hat, jacket and tails, and a bright red glove on ...
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 ...
