Historic Pagoda Theater of Pigeon Coop?

North Beach has a handful of murals all around the neighborhood. One of the most famous and visited murals is the Bill Weber mural on Colombus and Broadway, which I ended up choosing to write about for my final story. Another is on the outside of the City Lights Bookstore in Jack Kerouac Alley, which is right next to the mural on Vesuvio's as well.

All these murals incorporate aspects of the North Beach Neighborhood and history. Especially this one:



I asked around at shops surrounding the mural, which was right next to Washington Square Bar and Grill on Powell Street and Columbus, but no one seemed to know much about it. The building it was painted on was hollow and boarded up, and I later found out that it was the location of the old Pagoda Theater. A former live performance venue, the building has been closed down and vacant for 15 years, according to this article on SFGate.com, and now mainly serves as a home for pigeons. In the top right corner of the picture you can see part of a white banner that was hanging on the scaffolding that says "Enough with the plywood," a sarcastic remark that shows the sentiment of the residents and some of the neighborhood's leaders.

Now there is a battle between different people who want to develop it or not, but that doesnt seem to be taking any action or going in any direction. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the near future.

While I was working on gathering information for my final story, I stopped by the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center. I was looking for information about the community organization North Beach Neighbors, but the center itself was very interesting.

The entrance to the center leads to a calming garden, and a wooden deck guides you to the main office. I peeked inside and was greeted by an employee who tried to help me find the information I was looking for. Even though I didn't really get what I needed, I was really fascinated by the center and began asking questions about it.

The Director of Development, Donna Faure, told me that the center provides services for preschool aged children to senior citizens, and everything in between. The center has a program for elementary school kids that provides academic and enrichment activities during the school year and summer. They also have a program for teens from low-income housing developments that can even offer some of them job opportunities at the Tel-Hi center.

According to their brochure, the center helps over 600 individuals every day. Located on 660 Lombard Street, the center hopes that by helping the community through services and programs, they can also help the community to give back and take pride in their neighborhood.

You can find out more about the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center by looking at their website at www.tel-hi.org, or by emailing Teresa O'Brien, the Director of Programs at teresa@tel-hi.org

Ode to the Heater

With this school semester being so busy, I often found it difficult to motivate myself to trek all the way to North Beach after a long day of school, work, or both.

I'd try to think about coffee. Oh, the gloriously rich and bold flavors of espressos and lattes that awaited at Caffe Greco. This thought alone usually got me going. Some days I would use gelato to motivate me. Sometimes the weather would suffice; the skies always seem to be a lot more blue in North Beach.

But weather can also be detrimental to my motivation, too. Earlier in the semester, it was freezing! Sometimes it would be raining. Coffee and gelato are great and all, but when it's cold, windy, raining, or a combination of those factors, nothing can really measure up to staying home bundled up in warm blankets. But North Beach apparently already addressed this concern with the overhead heaters they have at virtually every cafe, restaurant and bakery in the neighborhood. These ingenious little inventions are turned on when the cold weather even slightly pushes patrons away from North Beach establishments. These things draw humans in like a moth to a flame; it stops them dead in their tracks and makes them pause for a moment to bask in the glory of warmth even with arm fulls of groceries and a list of errands left to do.

I now have no plausible reason to stay home instead of go to North Beach, and neither do you!

Little Pet Shop of Horrors

There are lots of things in life that sound like good ideas at the time, but upon being carried out and reflected upon turn out to be not so good ideas.

Pet shops are one of these things.

Now, think about it. Furry, feathery, scaley creatures of all shapes, sizes and species contained in one building. No nature to trek though, no rocks to look under, and no tracking required. You can even purchase them! Ever wanted a gecko but lacked the means (or energy) to travel to a rainforest and get one? Me too. So your nearest neighborhood pet shop is starting to sound pretty good, right?

Wrong.

My friend and I were wandering around North Beach on evening when we stumbled upong what we thought was a giant aquarium store. From the sidewalk, the shop appeared to be just rows and rows of tanks full of twinkling fish and swaying seaweed. We soon found out however, that the shop had a lot more to offer than just fish.

A row of stairs led us to a new floor where dozens of animals were all contained in cages or glass cases. Chinchillas, hamsters, mice; all the usuals. We saw a bird cage with several different types of birds, and nect to it was a slightly bigger cage with a really big parrot in it. All the birds sat on their perches silently; they seemed sad.

In the back of the room, behind all the aisles of pet supplies, food, and toys was a room sectioned off with a wall of plexiglass, and there were three puppies on the other side. In one room was a pug puppy, and "next door" to him were two shih-tzu puppies wrestling with each other. The pug was laying with his head on his paws and looked back at us with his big eyes, he seemed sad that he had no one to play with.

After about 15 minutes of watching the pug, i stamped my foot down decidedly. "We can't let that pug be by itself anymore! I just got paid, I'll buy it!" I said. We then asked one of the empoyees how much the pug was. He told us it was $900.

$900? For a puppy? I thought for a moment about the situation and decided that I'd be more likely to risk my clean criminal records and steal the puppy than to spend $900 of the money I don't have on a dog that was probably sold to the shop from a puppy mill.

Walking out of the pet shop made me feel disappointed and sad. I thought pet shops were supposed to be full of happy, content little animals with equally happy humans taking them all home and setting up wonderful, happy households with their new companions. Instead I realized its just another business. I'd like to thank Pet Central on Broadway and Grant Street for teaching me yet another cruel reality of life and permanently ruining the idea of innocent pet shops that I've held for years.