Wisewoman Iorillo

In an age when modern medicine and sterile hospital environments often encompass all concerns involving childbirth, midwife Maria Iorillo offers an alternative. Wisewoman Childbirth Traditions is a clinic focused on the safety and intimacy to accomplish the best results.

Iorillo claims to, "have always wanted to be a village midwife- strolling through the neighborhood recalling which baby arrived where." She believes that the beauty of birth lies in the unfolding of human relationships.

Iorillo founded Wisewoman Childbirth Traditions in 1986 and has served on the Board of Directors of the California Association of Midwives and the Midwives Alliance of North America.

Her clinic is also staffed with a nutritionist and four chiropractors whom offer their assistance along the practice.

1347 Church St. @ Clipper
(415) 285-9233

Lehr's German Specialties

The opening of a big-business chain grocery, Whole Foods, in the Noe Valley neighborhood brings with it concern of wiping out smaller food retailers that line the 24th street, but it seems to be no concern for that which has established itself over time.

Lehr's German Specialities on Church near 28th is a store full of Bavarian goods like braunschweiger, stollen, and spaetzle. In addition to hundreds of packaged food items, you'll also find German music, magazines, and plenty of amusing kitsch. A charming German lady who has owned the shop for 35 years happily reports that business is as strong as ever. Most customers, she says, are regulars from as far as Sacramento and Fresno who come for otherwise hard to find German products.

Lehr's has been around since the days when the Noe Valley community was home to Scandinavian and German immigrants.

1581 Church St @ 28th

photo courtesy of www.apartmenttherapy.com

Still Waters

To picture Kate Rosenberger Waters, get the image of the Bay Bridge over the water somewhere between Treasure Island and the city skyline, feel the frigid air of the San Francisco Bay in the early morning, and cutting through traffic suspended over fog put a graying yet youthful woman on top of a motorcycle with the confidence of someone who’s been riding since she was 15. Even if the wind wasn’t peeling back her face at 60 or 70 miles per hour, there would be a small smile there and if the wind wasn’t deafening your ears you’d probably hear her laugh a little. But wait, make sure to factor into the picture you’ve got of her in your head now with the fact that she normally stands before you wearing Crocs. Now, watch her disappear past the rest of the cars and the chaos knowing that she’s pulling away to a job much, much better than yours.

Kate Rosenberger Waters, 48, rides her “iron horse” every morning to go run one of three bookstores in San Francisco. Some days it’s the one she started when she was 24-years-old.

It was 1985 and Waters and her then-partner Kirby Desha discovered a community that to them, was an old hippie neighborhood. “At the time, Noe Valley was the kind of place where people really valued books and were seemingly on some sort of quest.” Young and green, they had been looking for a storefront to house their future business venture and decided to take a place right on 24th where Phoenix Books still is today.

“It was a different time then. I worked over at the Berkeley Half Price Books on Telegraph Avenue,” Waters explains. “There wasn’t this huge financial crisis and this economy. When you’re 24, maybe you don’t know the pitfalls so you think, ‘this will work’ and you just try it.”

The store has none of the aspects of the chain bookstores that customers tend to find unfavorable. Quaintly, the store holds together in and of its own. There are no paper coffee cups or Wi-Fi internet abusers and the staff aren’t just absentminded employees. The store is a comforting throwback to bookstores of old, where kids finds the first book they will remember reading.

The style of this Noe Valley neighborhood bookstore reflects the values of its owner. Waters is not your typical entrepreneur. Currently, she is excited about an arrangement she has with a company that plants a tree in Lebanon for every bookmark they sell to customers at her store. She measures success not by the bottom line, but by the connections she makes in the community. The staff at each one of her stores vouches for that.

Alvin Orloff, 48, has known Waters for over 10 years. He explains how Waters’ best trait as a person, and as a business owner, is that she is a good listener. It is this skill that enables her to let the employees of her bookstores reveal their own talents and each neighborhood bring to life the stores as their own.

Waters thought of the idea for Mission neighborhood bookstore in 1982 at a tea party at Radio Valencia, once a small restaurant with an attached art gallery and performance space. Dog Eared Bookstore’s originial location was on Valencia Street between 23rd and 24th Streets in the space that the Scarlet Sage now occupies. Waters picked the space because a large red heart had been painted on the window for years. In 1986, Dog Eared moved to the larger space it currently calls home.

Although Waters moved back to Berkeley after the birth of her daughter, she had been a Bernal Hill resident for 15 years and thinks of herself as part of the blue-collar generation before the area became gentrified. When the building located at the corner of Cortland and Bennington went up for sale, Waters seized the opportunity. What was once a possible relocation spot for Phoenix became the current Red Hill when the store’s lease was in jeopardy around 2003. However, since then, Red Hill has grown into a community hub of it’s own.

Currently, Waters is expanding the inventory at Phoenix to include vinyl records. Since the closing of Noe Valley’s only music store, she has come together with a record shop in Lower Haight to make available a couple of shelves, or 800 records, in her store. The store’s audiobook rental program will continue as well, although she says it has become less popular lately with the majority of people downloading MP3s instead.

“The nature of the used book business is that you have to keep paying attention to changes in society and culture and change with the times,” says Waters adjusting her knitted sweater. “But of course, we are back to selling vinyl again.”

photo courtesy of www.dogearedbooks.com

A Vex on Vendors

Noe Valley may be the only neighborhood in San Francisco scolded by police for being too involved.

Residents of the normally sleepy community of young parents and dogs have actually been warned to tone it down by beat Officer Lorraine Lombardo in order for her to be more responsive towards things of concern like thefts and break-ins.

Over the past few months, young hispanic men thought to be from Salinas and San Jose are selling fruit on the corners of residential areas. Mission Police Officer Lombardo has received an increasing number of complaints for a crime that has apparently put the community in debate.

Officer Lombardo is said to be getting it from both sides of the fence. Noe Valley residents keep voicing mixed opinions about the vendors, complaining to have them removed but also accusing police of hassling sellers who are trying to make an honest buck.

Gwen Sanderson of the Noe Valley Merchants Association is among those complaining with other grocers who don’t like the competition.

“The illegal vendors are avoiding permit fees and taxes while cutting out the grocers who do it the right way,” Sanderson explained.

Lombardo speculates that this is an issue that concerns other agencies such as immigrations and health. It seems as though officers are busy and need the help of the community to help focus on real problems.

District 8 Supervisor Candidates

2010 is another election year for district supervisors in San Francisco. District 8 residents of Noe Valley currently have four candidates in the running trying to win over their votes. The election is to take place on November 10, 2010 but candidates are already debating for the position currently held by Bevan Dufty who must step down due to term limits.

Below is a little introduction to the candidates for the 2010 election. The election is to take place on November 10, 2010 but candidates are already debating for the position currently held by Bevan Dufty who must step down due to term limits.

Below is a little introduction to the candidates for the 2010 election.

Scott Wiener - scott2010.com - Deputy City Attorney, past co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, member of the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee and past chair, President of the Eureka Valley Promotion Association, helped found Castro Community on Patrol. Scott Weiner had the first literature - very impressive eight page brochure which included a window sign.

Laura Spanjian - lauraspanjian.com - Assistant General Manager for External Affairs for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Treasurer of the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee, past co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, EQCA Board member and member of Noe Valley Democratic Club, Friends of Noe Valley Valley and Eureka Valley Library Steering Committee.







Rebecca Prozan - rebeccaprozan.com - Assistant District Attorney, grassroots organizer, former Obama Delegate. Was Mayor Willie Brown's Liaison to District 8, Legislative Aide to Supervisor Bevan Dufty. She was past co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club.






Rafael Mandelman - rafaelmandelman.com - Lawyer, currently President of Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, Vice Chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, Commissioner on the San Francisco Board of Appeals, Past President of Noe Valley Democratic Club, Board Member of Livable City.

All candidates have at one point worked together on different committees or serving various clubs, which should result in an exciting race to come!

All photos are courtesy of www.fogcityjournal.com and www.facebook.com

Kate Rosen- Noe Valley Historian

Kate Rosen is what you may call a kind of Noe Valley historian. Aside from being a resident of the neighborhood, 85 year old Rosen, gives bi-monthly walking tours on Sunday afternoons to share with tourists and residence alike, some of Noe Valley’s most important historical aspects.

The Big Boys of Blackwater

With the much anticipated meeting with Steve Fainaru , author of Big Boy Rules, lined up for next week, I thought it appropriate to share this article by Mark Mazzetti and James Risen of the New York Times.