Denise Sullivan

Author, Arts & Cultural Reporter and Worker

September 30, 2020 • 8:30 pm 0

Columnist Nabs Greater Bay Area Journalism Award

For the first time since I was in high school (which was a really long time ago), I’ve received acknowledgement for my work as a reporter. This month, I was awarded third place honors in the columnist category for my biweekly column, SFLives, for the San Francisco Examiner, by the Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards, held by the San Francisco Press Club and judged by members of the San Diego, St. Louis, Cleveland and New Orleans Press Clubs. Among the 70 columns I’ve written for the San Francisco Examiner since early 2018, I have my personal favorites to be sure, and all of them were made possible with the participation of some extraordinary San Franciscans who make our city what it has been historically and what it is in these unprecedented times. Our people are freethinkers, visionaries and lionhearted beacons who lead the rest of the country in their respective pursuits and professions. Whether working in the arts, activism or as essential workers, we simply could not endure, survive and thrive in these times at the edge of the world without the everyday people who make The City extraordinary (the tagline of SFLives). Congratulations to all of the great journalists and photographers who participated and received acknowledgement and thanks to all who voted. But the biggest thanks of course belongs to the subjects of SF Lives: There is no column without San Francisco and our people. My recognition from the San Francisco Press Club belongs to all of us – thank you.

Read the latest San Francisco Lives columns

Filed under: Arts and Culture, column, San Francisco News, , , ,

August 4, 2020 • 9:55 am 0

Surviving the Pandemic with Frisco Style

Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai (all photos by Kevin Hume for San Francisco Examiner)
Ericka Scott, an art curator and fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, sits outside the center on Tuesday, June 30, 2020. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)
Sew Frisco: Victor and Ari Cruz

Since March, I’ve been devoting my SFLives column in the San Francisco Examiner to people who are taking the virus and caring for others seriously by living their lives responsibly and generously. They are people like Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, who tracks the health of people in Bayview-Hunters Point where airborne toxins put the community at risk of all kinds of respiratory ailments and cancers.  Or Leroy F. Moore Jr, an international disability rights activist who is leading fellow artists in a fight for increased visibility and against police violence. And then there is Ericka Scott, who takes an interest in society’s forgotten and neglected population  – the people who are incarcerated, including her husband – by facilitating discussions among families with loved ones in prison. And there are the small business owners like Tricia Principe of Cal’s Pet Supply, where they took precautions early so the store could remain open for the sake of employees, locals pets and the community. Every neighborhood has its leaders, people like the Cruz family, who not only run a cleaning business but a sewing workshop.  Victor and Ariana call their custom goods and embroidery business Sew Frisco and started turning out masks when they heard of the shortages.

I am so proud of my fellow citizens who are doing their own thing and getting the job done in a way that’s so Frisco in these most difficult times. If you’re interested, you may read all about them in this collection of columns about our SFLives.

If you’re much of a traveler, well, hopefully you haven’t been to San Francisco in awhile. You see, our city, known to locals as The City, is taking quite seriously the shelter-in-place orders during the pandemic, as well as the guidelines to WEAR A MASK (as you will see in the above photos, all by photographer Kevin Hume for the Examiner). Aside from the essentials, only a fraction of our businesses have reopened; cultural destinations like museums have not reopened. Services like salons and barbershops remain closed. Restaurants are take-out only, some have adapted to outdoor seating but many remain shuttered. Some, like historic legacy businesses Louis’s at Seal Rock and the Tadich Grill downtown are closed forever. Sure the orders to close or limit services have been a terrific let down for small businesses and tourism: Without government assistance and cooperation from lenders, our beloved site-specific and characteristic businesses aren’t making it. However, the compliance with the orders has meant that for those of us invested in controlling and eradicating the coronavirus, staying at home and wearing a mask remain the best options. These are confusing, terrifying and disappointing times.

Despite the illness in the air, we must celebrate and breathe in our lives, particularly the lives of folks making a difference. Their devotion to community wellness has a ripple effect: I invite you to be inspired by them to follow your calling and do what you can in your own home and in your own community to make these days a little brighter for someone else. Until next time, I send wishes for you to stay healthy. And if you can are able, stay at home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: anti-capitalist, Arts and Culture, column, Environmental Justice, San Francisco News, Tales of the Gentrification City, , , , , , ,

February 2, 2020 • 8:41 am 0

A Dream of Fillmore Street

People walk by the Clay Theatre in Pacific Heights on Friday, Jan. 24, 2020, two days before the single-screen movie house closes its doors after 110 years. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

The mood went dark on Fillmore Street three weeks into January as locals took in the news that their cinema, The Clay Theatre, would be closing without a fight or fanfare before the month’s end.

A fixture between Clay and Sacramento streets for over 100 years, “The Clay is a pillar, a cornerstone of the neighborhood,” said Fred Martin, stationed behind the counter of Browser Books, one block down. Noting its great projection and offbeat programming, “there has to be some way to keep it. If they could do it with The Vogue, they can do it here,” said Martin, referring to another historic theater, just a few blocks west.

“This is Pacific Heights. There’s money here.”

The Landmark Theatre chain was tight-lipped about The Clay’s abrupt closure; its press announcement cited “the changing theatrical landscape and challenges to independent exhibition.” But Martin notes, the independently owned and operated Vogue seems to be doing fine, despite the challenges in film markets.

Read the whole SFLives column in today’s San Francisco Examiner

Filed under: Arts and Culture, California, column, gentrification, income disparity, new article, San Francisco News, Tales of the Gentrification City, ,

May 25, 2019 • 10:30 am 0

Double Duty

“Look, Ma!  I made the papers!” This week, I filed stories for my hometown’s two daily newspapers, The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner. The milestone (or over-achievement) is significant to me because I have wanted to be a hometown reporter since at least since the age of nine and definitely since I was a teenager, editing my high school paper, though I fell into music journalism as a career. I’m pretty sure what my journalism teacher would have to say about making the move to cityside reporting, though he’s no longer here to say it, nor are my university media studies professors who sent me out into the world to work as an independent reporter, while finishing my senior year.

Honoring skateboarder Pablo Ramirez, who died on April 23. Photo by Kevin N. Hume for the Examiner.

I’m thinking of my own youth, age, and the cycle of life because it’s been a season of terrible losses for my communities and in the world; some have hit closer to home than others, but it was the death of 26-year-old skateboarder and musician, Pablo Ramirez, that really opened the floodgates of grieving for me (and in those moments, I tend to write).  Following his story to the top of Twin Peaks, I had the privilege of speaking to his mother, Loren Michelle, and learned more about his life. They are the subject of my column, SFLives, this week wherein I also tried to shed some love and light on The City’s beloved skateboard community.  I’m so grateful to have had the sense to follow my nose on this story, and for the photos by staff photographer Kevin Hume that accompany it, and especially to the Pablo Ramirez Foundation.

The piece for The Chronicle is about another San Franciscan,  Patrick Marks, a longtime Bay Area bookseller, who made the leap to opening his own store, The Green Arcade, at the same time online bookselling began to rise.  Ten years later, his business is alive and well, serving readers of all kinds, but particularly those who are eco-conscious or interested in utopian futures.  Anyone who reads me regularly knows about my interest in the preservation of small bookstores.  Covering Patrick and the Green Arcade was a chance to celebrate one of the best in the business. That it coincided with my return to the Chronicle Datebook section after a 20-year hiatus (I think the last story I wrote for them was about Soul Asylum hitting the charts), is an aside, but it’s a reason enough for me to celebrate: The Chronicle has been Northern California’s newspaper of record since 1865; it’s the paper I grew up reading.

Patrick Marks at The Green Arcade. Photo Michael Short, special to the Chronicle.

I see now that one of the things I was reminded of by following the story of Pablo, attending his memorial, speaking to his mother and stepfather and the people around them, was how important it is to pause. To breathe. To reflect on and appreciate what we have, to express gratitude for the people and the beauty and the love and the life and world around us — right now. I’m grateful to do work that I truly love. I appreciate not not only yours and others, but my own life. And I’m exhausted. Last night I filed a third story about legendary muralist Juana Alicia which will publish soon in the digital CurrentSF where I am also a frequent contributor (though I’m mostly there to compliment the images of award-winning San Francisco photographer, Ekey Kitpowsong).

My horoscope this week said I would be recognized for my work, particularly if I work in publishing. I shook my head like I do and laughed it off (while secretly hoping someone of power and influence, my own neighbor or maybe even my dog would take notice). And then I got it: Yesterday’s papers might be lining your trash bin, but I can still celebrate me and you and us today. Thank you to Pablo and Patrick and Juana Alicia for keeping me on my toes, inspiring me to stay in the game. “Life is beautiful.”

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Keep On Pushing, San Francisco News, What Makes A Legend, You Read It Here First, , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 23, 2018 • 10:36 pm 0

23 San Francisco Lives

Baker-owner Howard Ryan stands for a portrait at the worker-owned cooperative Arizmendi Bakery in the Inner Sunset District on Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2018. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)
Anna Lisa Escobedo, an executive assistant at the California Historical Society and an artist who chairs the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District’s Cultural Assets and Arts Committee in the Mission District, on Monday, Oct. 22, 2018. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

This year it was my great pleasure and honor to have conceived and contributed my biweekly column, SF Lives, to The San Francisco Examiner.  The basic idea behind the installments is to profile everyday people who live and work in the most expensive city in the US yet manage to make a difference in the lives of their fellows. The larger concept is to point toward how our lives as San Franciscans intersect, despite our specific neighborhood identities. Here in the highly-touted progressive and diverse San Francisco, we are too often insulated and in essence segregated by divides of race, class and sexual orientation. But those who live here long enough or adapt accordingly become adept at crossing our permeable neighborhood distinctions to become interconnected citizens of one city. It’s a micro-cosmic thing, and not always easy to navigate or articulate, though as Tamara Walker explained it, “If you stay here long enough, you’ll meet everybody.” A diagram, or one of those New Yorker style maps might include Downtown, the Mission, Hayes Valley, Ocean Beach, and “everywhere else.” But for the rest of us, life happens in the Excelsior, the Richmond and the Sunset, the Ingleside and Sunnyside Districts. There is still more life in the Fillmore and the Haight and in the Western Addition, Glen Park and Crocker-Amazon. Japantown, Chinatown  the Tenderloin, the Bayview, Potrero Hill…all of it, San Francisco, all of us San Franciscans. I invite you read today’s column on coop business advocate and musician Howard Ryan and catch up on past columns: Read all about the lives of some of my favorite San Franciscans, from seamstress and office worker Rita LaForce and poet/movement worker, Tongo Eisen-Martin to painter and cultural organizer Anna Lisa Escobedo and  HIV/AIDS activist Mike Shriver.  

And thank you to all the faithful readers of SFLives and of this space: To you, I wish the best for the final days of 2018 and raise a toast for a joyful 2019.

(All photos in this post were taken by Kevin Hume for The San Francisco Examiner, 2018. Pictured from top left to right: Tongo Eisen-Martin, Howard Ryan, Rita LaForce, Mike Shriver and Anna Lisa Escobedo).

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Poetry, San Francisco News, Tales of the Gentrification City, Women's issues, , , ,

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