Hidden Part of Bernal Heights Looks Oddly Like Rural France

/ Todd_Lappin / 21 Comments

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Last year, Bernalwood showed you a secret part of Bernal Heights that actually looks a lot like Alabama.

Now, in the photo above, Neighbor Ed Brownson captured a secret part of Bernal Heights that actually looks a lot like rural France. And the funny thing is, the Alabama-like place and this France-like place are only a few hundred yards apart.

And where are these mysterious Bernal places that look sort of like Alabama and sort of like rural France, right here in the heart of San Francisco?

Let the Guess Where Games begin.

PHOTO: Ed Brownson

Friday: A Special Wine and Food Pairing at 903 Cortland

/ Todd_Lappin / 1 Comment

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Attention oenophiles! And foodies! And oenophiles who are also foodies! Or vice-versa!

Neighbor Alder Yarrow is the founder and editor of the glamorous Vinography wine blog, and he’s underground-famous in Bernal Heights for the enthusiasm he brings to organizing neighborhood events that combine good wine with friendly mixing and mingling.

Recently, Neighbor Alder joined forces with Neighbor Mutsumi Takehara from 903 Cortland to launch “Taste of Bernal Heights,” a series of cozy wine dinners during which 36 people (in two seatings of 18 each) get the opportunity to taste some primo vino while Neighbor Alder acts as resident sommelier/entertainer for the evening.

The pilot event was a big hit a few weeks back, so now Neighbors Alder and Mutsumi are doing it again this Friday, August 2:

Alder will be pouring hard-to-find wines from four of California’s hottest Pinot Noir producers to accompany an Asian-influenced, five-course menu created specifically for the evening by Mutsumi Takehara of Sandbox Bakery and 903 restaurant.

Alder will serve as host and sommelier for the evening, and will be available to answer your questions about the wines. Two seatings will be available: 5:30-7:30 and 8:00-10:00

MENU:
Stuffed Shishito Peppers with Shrimp plus Seasonal Fish Carpaccio
Farro Salad with Mint and Kaffer Lime
Mary’s Organic Roast Duck with Five Spice and Bing Cherries
Niman Ranch Pork Loin with Sautéed Mushrooms
Pinot Noir Poached Peach with Thai Basil Parfait

WINE PRODUCERS:
Peay Vineyards
Jamie Kutch Wines
Red Car Wines
Chanin Wines

Tickets are required, and you can get ’em right here… while they last.

ILLUSTRATION: Telstar Logistics

Free Wi-Fi Coming Soon to Cortlandia

/ Todd_Lappin / 8 Comments

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San Francisco is moving ahead with a program that will install free WiFi networks at 31 locations around the City, and the Bernal Heights Recreation Center just off Cortland was selected as one of the free hotspots. If all goes according to plan, the service will be operational by Spring 2014.

The free service comes courtesy of Google, and the San Francisco Chronicle provides the background:

Six years after a deal to blanket the city fell apart, Supervisor Mark Farrell and Google will announce a plan Wednesday to bring public wireless Internet access, on the technology company’s dime, to parks, recreation centers and plazas across San Francisco. The $600,000 gift from Google will cover the costs of the equipment, installation and maintenance of wireless capabilities for two years.

It will allow residents to work from Mission Dolores Park, let visitors download information to their mobile devices in Civic Center Plaza and make it easier for parents to sign their children up for recreation programs at centers from the Excelsior district to Bernal Heights, Chinatown, the Marina and the Sunset District. In some of those areas, it may be the easiest place to find Internet access, Farrell said.

Sad Neighbors Want to Know Who Hit Their Parked Car on Saturday Night

/ Todd_Lappin / 13 Comments

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This is a sad photo of Neighbor Amanda’s car. The car was hit on Saturday night while parked on the east side of Bernal Heights. Neighbor Amanda and her husband are understandably very sad, and they would welcome your help to track down the driver who did this:

My husband’s car was parked on the corner of Montcalm/Brewster [on Saturday] night, next to the mailbox. At around 2am, it was rear-ended hard enough to be pushed ~10 feet and wedged under the Subaru Outback in front of it. The car that hit it was apparently a teal Nissan, because it left its grille behind. Many neighbors heard it happen, but nobody called 911. Kind thanks to all the neighbors and Officer Adams from the Ingleside for their help (and coffee) this morning.

Officer Adams underscored the importance of calling 911 when you hear an accident, even if you don’t have a license plate number or description. More eyes and more cops around the neighborhood lessen the chances of drunk drivers racing through the neighborhood.

If anyone sees a teal Nissan with a smashed-up front end, please let the Hit and Run unit know at 553-1641.

PHOTO: Neighbor Amanda

Tonight! Virgil’s Sea Room Patio Grand Opening Party

/ Todd_Lappin / 3 Comments

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Important drinky news from our new neighbors at Virgil’s Sea Room on Mission at Precita: Just in time for fog season, Virgil’s is ready to open up their backyard patio, and they’re having a grand opening party tonight to celebrate.

Co-owner Tom wrote to Bernalwood to invite you:

I wanted to be sure that you had all of the information about the Grand Opening Patio Party we are hosting at Virgil’s Sea Room on Friday evening July 26 from 7pm-close. Our gorgeous patio is ready for your outdoor drinking pleasure so come celebrate under the stars with us. We are pulling out all the stops to welcome you into our new backyard with a tasty pop up food vendor, photobooth, free giveaways and more at our patio opening party presented by The Bold Italic.

PHOTO: via Virgil’s Sea Room on the Facebook

Revealed: The Future of the Former Stray Bar on Cortland

/ Todd_Lappin / 42 Comments

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Bernalwood has received lots and lots and lots of questions about the former home of the (much-loved) Stray Bar on Cortland.

The interior of the bar was gutted a few weeks back, and a peek through the window reveals a hollowed-out shell that has been stripped down to the studs.  Clearly, this will not be a lightweight refresh of the old space. But what will it become?

Bernalwood has been in touch with the new owners for the last several weeks, and here’s what we’ve learned: The new proprietors also own two other bars in San Francisco, Churchill on Church at Duboce Triangle and Bloodhound on Folsom in SoMa.

The new name of the Cortland location has not been revealed, but Michael Goebel, a co-owner of the bar, tells Bernalwood:

We are still in the infant stages of our design/aestetic part of the project. What I can tell you is that we will be a friendly, locally focused, simple neighborhood bar. We are very excited about being a part of this close knit and unique community. The more time we spend here and the more we get to know people, the clearer our vision gets of how to create our space.

I can tell you that we will create something along the same lines as our sister bars Churchill and Bloodhound. We will be cocktail focused, spirit driven, and serve regional beers and wines.

If you have been by the space you can see  we are still in the beginning of the construction phase of things. We have relocated the bathrooms and opened the place up quite nicely. We are still hammering out final touches of design and concept, but what i wrote earlier is definitely true. We will be a great neighborhood bar focused on great, approachable, hand crafted cocktails. We will feature local artisan beers and wines and our staff will be focused entirely and creating a great customer experience.

This bar is a neighborhood bar first, with a laid back setting, comfortable for everyone. The space will have some amazing design elements to it as well, but more to come on that later — once I figure it all out 🙂

A final note: The new owners have informed Bernalwood that the big old painting that was on the wall of the Stray Bar has found a good home at Avedano’s, up the street.  That’s a relief.

PHOTOS: The former Stray Bar, June 2013. By Telstar Logistics

Register Now to Participate in the 2013 Bernal Heights Hillwide Garage Sale

/ Todd_Lappin / 4 Comments

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It’s that cathartic time of year again… time to purge all the excess crap in your life by selling it off to some other sucker bargain-hunter during the annual Bernal Heights Hillwide Garage Sale.

This year the hillwide sale will happen on Saturday, August 10, 2013 — SOON! — and Bernal neighbor Michael Minson has been leading the charge on the organizational effort. If you want to participate, get registered and get on the map.

Neighbor Michael says:

The Hillwide Elves have been feverishly working to get the 2013 Hillwide Garage Sale website, Paypal collector, map, posters, communications, and social media outreach kicked into gear.

We’ve had a few neighbors reach out from our save the date announcement, but now we’re all ready to kick it into high gear.

We’re asking Bernal neighbors to tweet and instagram their sale items using the #Hillwide2013 hashtag.

100% of the proceeds go to the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center – it’s their 35th anniversary!

You can register for the 2013 Hillwide Garage sale on the spiffy new website.

The sexxxxy interactive map shows the current list of garage sale locations (and if the past is any guide, it will become much more crowded in the days ahead).

For wannabe bargain hunters, Bernalwood will post updated information on garage sale locations the week before the sale. Until then, here’s a preview of the glamorous 2013 Bernal Heights Hillwide Garage Sale poster:

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Bernalwood: The Magazine, Now Available on the Web

/ Todd_Lappin / 3 Comments

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Glamorous news! Bernalwood: The Magazine is now available on the Web.

But wait. What is Bernalwood Magazine? Here’s what I wrote about the magazine-style version of Bernalwood when I unveiled it a few months ago:

As our longtime readers know, Bernalwood is many things. It’s a glamour-soaked nickname for Bernal Heights, our fabulous neighborhood. Bernalwood is a blog. Bernalwood is a Flickr group. Bernalwood is a Twitter account. And now, Bernalwood is a magazine.

Let me back up and explain. By day I work at Flipboard, a company that produces a rather lovely app for reading news feeds […] For the last few months, I’ve been test-driving the new version of Flipboard by publishing a magazine called (…wait for it…) Bernalwood!

In essence, it’s a curated compilation of all the other manifestations of Bernalwood, all packaged together in one place, in a paginated, visually rich format.

Bernalwood Magazine is colorful and rather gorgeous, and for media wonks, it’s an interesting experiment in community-powered journalism for the social-media age. But there was one glaring problem: Until now, you could only view Bernalwood Magazine while using Flipboard on an iOS or Android mobile device.

Happily, that barrier no longer exists. Yesterday Flipboard introduced a new feature that makes it possible to view Flipboard-created magazines in a regular Web browser, complete with the beautiful covers, intuitive page “flips,” and spiffy interface that are Flipboard’s signature design elements.

Here’s a sample of what Bernalwood Magazine looks like on the web:

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Here’s another taste:

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There’s nothing to download, and nothing to learn. To flip the pages, just tap the arrows on the edges of your browser window, or use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard. Click to read Bernalwood Magazine on the Web, and if you like what you see, add it to your bookmarks, right alongside the cherished one you use for the standard Bernalwood blog.

Finally — and most importantly — no matter what flavor you prefer, thanks as always for reading and contributing to Bernalwood.

New Rental Real Estate Report Functions as Bernal Heights Rorschach Test

/ Todd_Lappin / 4 Comments

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The number-crunchers at Priceonomics released a new report on San Francisco’s rental market late last week, and it generated a lot of teeth-gnashing around town. Looking at the City as a whole, this was the big takeaway:

Rents aren’t just high in San Francisco, they’re rising quickly. In June 2011, the median price for a one bedroom was $2,195. Two years later, the price of a one bedroom has increased 27% to $2,795. During the same time period, the price of a two bedroom apartment rose 33%. That’s almost 10 times the rate of inflation during those two years.

Oof! So how has the Bernal rental market fared amid all this?

On the bright side, Bernal remains relatively affordable — with the emphasis on  relatively. Bernal is the 23rd most expensive neighborhood for 1BR rental units, coming in just ahead of the fogdwellers in the Inner Sunset:

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On the downside, Bernal’s reputation for stylish fabulousness is getting around, and glamour-seekers from far and wide now want to live here. That shows up in local price trends:

Nearly all rental apartments in San Francisco are getting more expensive. But some neighborhoods are getting more expensive faster. The neighborhoods that are increasing in price the fastest are the ones that used to be somewhat affordable like Civic Center, Bernal Heights, and the Mission.

In fact, Bernal Heights has experienced the City’s second-largest rise in one-bedroom rental rates since 2011:

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And if for some morbid reason you’re curious about the going rates for rental units in Bernal Heights right now, here’s your infographic:

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For more in that vein — along with some discussion about causes and effects for the rapid rise in rental costs — read the whole article.

GRAPHICS: via Priceonomics

UPDATED: Vintage Photo Was Very Probably Taken from Bernal Heights

/ Todd_Lappin / 19 Comments

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Sarah from the Bernal Heights History Project recently posted this photo, soliciting input to help pinpoint the location where the picture was taken.

Obviously, it’s a view looking east, so that pretty much narrows it down to either Potrero Hill or Bernal Heights. Based on my own armchair historiography, I’d say it is definitely a view from Bernal Heights, likely taken sometime in the late 19th or very early 20th century.

The perspective seems just right for Bernal Hill, but the key detail, I’d posit, is the elevated railroad trestle that stretches across the photo near the shoreline, roughly following the same route used by the present-day Caltrain. The area shown is present-day Bayview, but before it was filled in (in no small part with debris from the 1906 earthquake), the area was a vast, swampy marsh — which is why the railroad was built on an elevated trestle. Let’s zoom and enhance for more detail:

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This panoramic illustration from 1868 shows the marshland of Islais Creek and the railway bridge that spanned it:

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So that’s my guess. Do you see any other details that might help identify where this photo was taken?

UPDATE: Bernalwood contributor Joe Thomas (who lives in a house with an east-facing view) notes that there is a warehouse visible in the vintage photo:

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From where Joe sits, it sure looks like that warehouse is still there, on Hudson at Toland!

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Here’s the Google Streetview. Note the right-justified configuration of the doors:

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PHOTO: Top, via Bernal Heights History Project