Pacific Heights News.

Just a short break to review some local Pacific Heights neighborhood news here in San Francisco. Perhaps many or most are already familiar with these topics, but here I go anyways.

Newcomer High School is available for lease. It seems that neighborhood protests forced San Francisco City College to rescind its offer of $700,000 a year to use the property. Newcomer School has moved its location to the Sunset, still hoping to find a tenant. My question is, wouldn't virtually any tenant raise protests from the neighborhood residents. Mostly it's about parking, traffic, and noise issues. I mean (as a WAG hypothetical) would the neighbors be okay with eBay offices next door instead of CCSF? C'mon, not really.

The City council may still have considerations for improving the dog area at Alta Plaza? Are you familiar with the history of Alta Plaza Park? Hmmm, there was an interesting incident during the filming of Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 movie "What's Up Doc," a film starring Ryan O'Neal and Barbara Streisand. In 1938 the park was almost sold by the city to generate revenue for other city parks. Wow, think of that.

I've really enjoyed the history of Lafayette Park, since I read about it in The New Fillmore a few years ago. I'm not sure if this guy, Hank Donat, is behind the paper, but he sure is a major part of San Francisco. Lafayette Park is prolly the only City Park in the U.S. to have a residential building inside its perimeter. The story of a City Attorney who "squatted" in this area and won property rights in court against his very employer are astonishing. I believe the photo (left) is of Gough at Clay Street (looking towards downtown SF).

DYK (Did You Know) that: Kerouac, Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Hunter S. Thompson, William Saroyan, Allen Ginsberg, and others have a strong history with San Francisco addresses? Oh yeah, and that famous romance novelist perched atop Laguna Street at Lafayette Park. Cheers.

image credits: Barbara Streisand photo from imdb.com, Lafayette Park photo from SFneighborhodparks.org.