Here's a story  that is Total SF, connecting a Muni operator with San Francisco transit riders and City College and showing how acts of kindness multiply and make long-lasting difference.

Eunice Lew, a retiree from teaching immigrants at City College of SF, showed me an article about a wonderful Muni driver, Alan Brown, who appeared in a SF Examiner article in 1999. 

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Riding-with-Muni-s-man-from-glad-3238334.php

 Eunice was also mentioned in the article, and when I asked, "Whatever happened to this beloved Muni operator?"  she told me a very touching story I thought would be of interest to you.

With his permission, back in 1999, she recorded his voice as he took people through SF streets and brought the recordings to class at the Chinatown/NorthBeach campus, where she taught both because they were learning the streets with numbers that he called out (34th Avenue, for example) at the same time that they were seeing how friendly and helpful he was, this Black man, who represented a race her students sometimes feared.

A year or so ago, deep in retirement, when she was going through things she needed to discard, she didn't want to throw the cassettes away, so she decided to contact his family so they could have that as part of his legacy.  You'll have to ask her how she found his wife, but she did, and now the wife has the cassettes and, apparently, a way to listen to them and share them with others.  She also told Eunice that he had had cancer back in the days when he was being so welcoming to every one and really making their day.  He died in 2003.  

This must have been before Sam Whiting was writing his wonderful obituaries/Life Tributes to locals because this is all I found after his death:  https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/brown-alan-2656405.php

Later, in response to my questions to Eunice, here's what she wrote:

Stored with Alan's recorded cassettes, there was a letter from Alan thanking me for praising him at a City Hall award ceremony with Mayor Dianne Feinstein.   Going by his return address, I found out that his S.F. home near Stonestown had been sold.  End of the trail -- how can I find him?   I tried searching online with the name of his wife Arlene Brown who I met at the ceremony.  Their daughter has an uncommon name "Niya".   But I didn't get far with "people search" sites.  A friend with better computer skills found an Arlene Brown with Niya in Louisville, Kentucky.  I called the number and sure enough, Niya answered and put her mom on.  Arlene still remembers me.  She was really excited to hear about my plan for shipping her the cassette tapes so Alan's memories will be available for their family history collection.  What a joy that would be for a grandkid to personally experience Grandpa Alan come to life and share the fun  that he brought to so many people.   A different twist on the contemporary "bring your child to work day" -- becoming "bring Grandpa at work home".  

 https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Riding-with-Muni-s-man-from-glad-3238334.php

 

A standing ovation for Betty Traynor, who has been president of SDA (Senior and Disability Action) for 13 years and is now stepping down.  

SDA had its annual fund-raiser, a CommUNITY Celebration on Thursday August 14 from 6 to 8.  

Plot spoiler:  This is the book whose title and author I tried to conjure up today.

I don't remember why this author, whose name I couldn't remember, and book, whose title I couldn't remember came to mind, making me wonder "Whatever became of...?"  Maybe it was because I was working on a eulogy for Dana, whose urged me for years to have a memorial while still alive and bring the fun back in funeral.  It was in the 1980s that she and I took the trip to Oklahoma to search for links to our mother's birth mother.  It was also the 1980s when we had our family reunion with Daddy and I found out the musical "White Christmas" didn't conjure in us both the same sweet memories.  That was the decade I got a part-time teaching job at City College and the decade my first marriage ended.  That was also the decade I had my 40th birthday party and got quite a lot of attention from the Examiner-Chronicle--even on the front page (now framed) along with Reagan and Marcos.  

Whatever happened to...I had my iPhone with me and Googled SF writer of book about the 80s Gornick, getting Vivian Gornick.  After several failed attempts, I started an email to Leah Garchik

Dear Leah~

Thank you for recommending the film "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight."  Because of your enthusiasm, a couple of friends and I saw it before it left the Opera Plaza, and we all loved it.  (It fits in with my favorite film about childhood, "My Life as a Dog.")

I have an unrelated question:  Who was the thirty-ish local writer in the 1980s who wrote a book of essays on being single in the 1980's?  I think her last name was something like Gonnick or Gornick.  I can't remember her first name, but she was definitely not Vivian Gornick.   She also wrote a poem for the SF Chronicle in the style of "The Night Before Christmas," but I think it was about San Francisco and the times. She had a column too for a while.

Any idea?

Thanks again,

Tina

 Now I see the column was "Failing at Living."

 

So...I made it to Udupi Palace on Wednesday night in spite of my carelessness.  They'd made the address super clear--and more than once--in text messages and reminders, but I managed to key in the wrong number and was told to get off at Market and Van Ness and walk 7 minutes.  But it turned out that it was more like a 30 minutes walk to the correct address, so the SF Vistas that I saw were all a blur as I hurried past them.  They were places like Dave Eggers'-founded 826 Valencia Street and City College's Mission Campus.  I've got to go back when being on Valencia isn't an accident.  
 

I don't think this is the kind of community-provided bench the SF Chronicle was talking about today in its article

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/mystery-benches-sidewalks-20418145.php

Yes, there were other articles--many grim, sad, alarming--but this was the one I focused on!  

 

San Francisco is still trying to create safer streets. So far this year four seniors, walking, have been killed by cars, so when I was asked to speak for Senior and Disability Action at a safe-streets-Vision Zero event Supervisor Melgar called at City Hall, of course I mentioned that. I also mentioned the concern many seniors express about not feeling safe on sidewalks because of bicyclists and scooters whizzing by them even though they're supposed to be in bicycle lanes. I related my experience with courteous bicyclists in Golden Gate Park too, and afterwards three bicyclists from the Bicycle Coalition told me that pedestrians often expressed surprise to them too that they were courteous, and they were definitely making an effort to make all cyclists aware of the importance of obeying rules and being courteous. Others who spoke were Supervisor Melgar, former Supervisor Norman Yee, Supervisor Mahmood, Robin Pam, and Jodie Medeiros.

 

 

At the 1906 earthquake commemoration in San Francisco on April 18, Laura Ackley, the author of  San Francisco's Jewel City: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915,  distributed handcrafted commemorative garters.   But I don't know what the significance of the 5 is!