Changing the look of business in Noe Valley

Recently several large businesses have opened in Noe Valley and are threatening the existence of local stores. The opening of a new grocery store in a neighborhood that has a history of mom and pop stores and non-national chains doesn't usually go over smoothly. When it comes to Noe Valley however, there appears to be an exception. Small business owners like James Omar of the Shufat Market and Charles Kung of the 24th Street Cheese Company want to keep big chain stores out of the neighborhood, but most people in the area are all for the opening of the Whole Foods.

On Sept.30, Whole Foods opened its doors at 3950 24Th St. Since it's arrival in their neighborhood, Whole Foods has received an overwhelmingly positive welcome from the local residents. The small parking lot in front of the store is typically full of cars (how do we know that?), with a line forming down 24Th street and the picnic tables out front are equally full with mothers and strollers on sunny days. "Ultimately customers will determine what business will stay and what will go", said Jack Epstein of Chocolate Covered, the only chocolate shop in Noe Valley.

Most of the smaller stores in Noe Valley will not be able to compete with Whole Food's prices but they can compete for better service by gaining loyalty from customers. This is what several businesses like Bernie's coffee shop and Drewes Brothers Meats are doing. Employees at Bernie's greet each customer when they come in the door, most of them by name, and provide each customer with a sort of personalized experience. This is what Bernie Melvin believes is the key to the success of her coffee shop.

For other stores, offering things like classes for customers and other promotional rebate programs can help build loyalty allowing their bussiness to thrive.

Other Businesses Like PlumpJack Wines are taking what some consider the fight to distributors to get better prices or exclusivity on certain items.

"People should spread their purchases around", said manager Elio Longobardi of PlumpJack wines, who lives in Noe Valley. He shops at Whole Foods, Drewes Brothers Meats, and Noe Valley Bakery.

Still no matter what some small businesses do they are still going to take a big hit and not be able to compete with Whole Foods.

Charles Kung has owned the 24Th Street Cheese Company for 23 years and has recently had to borrow money from his father to keep the business going.

"I'm just waiting for my slow death" said Kung, who is adamantly against Whole Foods opening. He went on to say that people in the neighborhood don't care if small businesses survive.

The future of businesses in Noe Valley will be determined buy customers but small businesses need to realize that they have influence on their customers as well. The power to survive during hard economic times and competition with big business lies with the people.

What I Learned About Myself and My Neighborhood

This class is definitely my most challenging class so far. I took newswriting before and it’s nothing like this reporting class. The first assignment, which was to find 20+ names of contacts, freaked me out. I wondered for hours around Japantown just trying to find the “right person” and that person never appeared. So, I had to summon all the courage that I got, talking to strangers. The first step is definitely the scariest one!

As time went by, I learned not to freak out right before an interview (hint: do it secretly). Of course, there’s also a time when I was totally nervous but I tried to hide it. Journalism is definitely about learning to put a mask on. You can be super clueless in an interview or a meeting but you have to pretend that you understand only to gain a trust that you’re a professional (by the way, you still have to clarify and ask questions later… don’t just stay quiet). You may be bored to tears because the person you interview ramble on about things that are not really interesting or may not be your interest but you still have to put the professional mask and ask questions.

I’m learning to be persistent and not giving up easily. I experience failures and moments of feeling-like-I-want-to-give-up thing but it became less frequent. The crime story was definitely a lot of work. My God… I had a new respect for journalists who write criminal stories now.

As for my neighborhood, I learned to venture outside my comfort zone (read: the mall) and try to emerge myself to the neighborhood. P (Peter Yamamoto) said the best place to hang out with the locals is Benkyodo and that where I spent my time now when I’m in the neigborhood. I can sit there and hear people talking in Japanese. Bummer… I should learn some Japanese to be able to participate in their discussion. A plus for me is that I looked like a Japanese so people seemed to be comfortable to talk to me about their internment time, post- or pre-war story and Japanese culture.

I learned that Japantown was not as financially secured as I thought it was too. I definitely enjoyed talking to people and learning about new things. I hope this new knowledge will be of a use for me in the future.

One too many hits (FINAL)

The intoxicating aromas of exotic incense smoke creeps into John Amaro’s nostrils as he walks into a head shop on Haight Street. Reggae drumbeats fill his ears as he passes through the entrance where he is immediately surrounded by posters displaying psychedelic designs, counterculture art and sketches of cannabis. To his left, the owner of Euphoria Distractions, Jim Siegel, is talking on the phone while sitting behind a glass counter filled with pipes, roach clips and bongs. He is discussing the downfall of his business with the person on the other end of the line.

The decreased business he speaks of is a result of an increasing number of head shops opening on Haight Street. There are 14 of these shops already open in the Haight-Ashbury district, all within close proximity to each other. Siegel has owned Distractions since 1976 and will be closing up shop within the next seven months. His decision came five months after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a moratorium banning the opening of new smoke shops on Haight Street. The measure, which was introduced by District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and received a unanimous vote, was passed to prohibit any new head shops from opening in the district for the next three years.

Four months before the ban was placed, a large smoke shop called Goodfellas opened on Haight Street. Called the “Wal-Mart of Bongs” by some competitors on the street, Goodfellas draws residents and tourists in with huge window displays of bongs, pipes and tourist merchandise.

John Amaro, 53, has lived between Masonic and Ashbury streets for 15 years and frequents the various smoke shops on Haight Street. He considers Goodfellas to be one of his least favorite smoke shops in the Haight district.

“I feel that owners and operators of Goodfellas have a personal grudge against the other pipe shop operators on the street. They are too in your face,” Amaro said. “It’s a nice store but it’s too large for its own good, and that results in it having no style or direction.”

The style and direction Amaro speaks of first became evident during the 1960s hippie movement that took over the Haight district. Along with the rest of San Francisco during this time, the Haight District gained a reputation for its drug culture with the use of marijuana, LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs. Independently owned bookshops and poster stores soon grew into smoke shops to blend in with the neighborhood.

Not long after the hippie movement began did Siegel decide to open up a business in the Haight district in the late 70s. Most of the shops on the street were boarded up and there were mostly liquor stores. The owner of a smoke shop called The Phoenix was in the process of closing his business, but Siegel didn’t want it to close since he felt the shop was all that was left of the hippie days.

“He said ‘if you want to be the last hippie, here you go,’ and he gave me everything,” Siegel said.

With everything that was given to him, Siegel opened The White Rabbit, which didn’t work out as a business. Afterward, he opened Pipe Dreams, the oldest smoke shop in San Francisco. After business with a partner there was unsuccessful, a new owner took over, and Siegel opened Euphoria Distractions in 1976.

“For many years we did very good business because it was just [Distractions] and Pipe Dreams,” he said. “But then in 1994 they opened up Ashbury Tobacco Center and in the last two years its gotten worse.”

Siegel said that because of so many head shops on Haight Street, including the oversized Goodfellas, he is losing more than $2,000 in business per week. Goodfellas declined to comment on this matter or others related to their recent opening in the district, but their silence doesn’t stop neighbors from speaking their mind about the problem with too many head shops in the area, and the negative effects it has on their business.

“There aren’t enough people buying things. People look, but they don’t buy,” Siegel said. “We’ve got too many stores on Haight Street selling exactly the same stuff. They need to lose half of them.”

While some merchants like Siegel feel that all of the head shops are offering the same merchandise, 24-year-old San Francisco State University alumnus Caryl Carino points out that although some of the products might be the same, there are differences.

“I have noticed that most people who are buying hookah accessories tend to favor one store over the other,” Carino said. “If you go to almost any smoke shop on Haight, prices and selection will vary. It just depends on what the customer needs and wants.”

To 41-year old Marwan Zeidan, owner of Ashbury Tabacco Center, it’s more about the preservation of Haight culture rather than what products are being offered. Zeidan said the shops that have been on the street for a while have grown into the culture of Haight Street, but he has a problem with the newer shops like Goodfellas and believes the displays of smoke pipes in their front windows aren’t good for the neighborhood.

“The newer shops [on Haight Street] don’t embrace the culture of Haight, and the two new stores that opened up are something we just don’t need. We have enough shops to serve the neighborhood,” Zeidan said. “None of the owners are happy, none of the neighbors are happy, and none of the merchants are happy.”

With grief from shop owners joining the smoke in the streets of Upper Haight, Siegel felt it was time to make a move. He went to Ross Mirkarimi asking him to propose a ban to prevent any more from opening, and was told he needed neighbored support. This led him to the Haight-Ashbury Improvement Association.

“When I first went to them they didn’t seem to think it was necessary and didn’t follow through with it,” Siegel said. “But then when Goodfellas opened up everybody in the neighborhood agreed that there’s way too many head shops.”

But by the time the neighborhood came together to discuss the issue, it was too late; Goodfellas had already opened. Haight-Ashbury Improvement Association member Joan Boyd felt that Mirkarimi had betrayed the neighborhood because there was no community communication about Goodfellas’ plan to open a store on Haight Street.

“This ban on head shops is not about protecting the business or profits of existing head shops,” Boyd said. “And by letting Goodfellas open before the ban took effect was really deceptive and hurt existing businesses.”

Mirkarimi and his press secretary Rick Galbraith declined to comment on the unexpected opening of Goodfellas. Carino sees the opening of the large bong shop as the “straw that broke the camels back,” and that it was a store that appeared at the wrong time. But she doesn’t understand the amount of attention that has been brought to Goodfellas specifically.

“I dislike the amount of attention it is getting because there have always been many smoke shops on Haight,” she said. “Like other smoke merchants in the area, the ownership is looking to get a piece of the smoke shop culture in the district; I don’t see what the hype is about.”

But the increasing number of head shops in the Haight district and a possible overturn of the neighborhood’s original hippie culture are not the only concerns. There is also skepticism of the appeal the products sold at these shops might have toward teens. In September, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that the making, distributing or selling of flavored cigarettes is illegal. According to the legislative details of the ban, these flavored cigarettes are marketed toward teens who are under the false impression that these cigarettes don’t contain any nicotine. Boyd feels this is false advertising especially because hookah tobacco doesn’t fall under the category of the banned tobacco products, meaning that smoke shops can still sell it.

“Unbelievably, there is great denial about the harmfulness of smoking. Education of the public has not worked as well as one might think,” she said. “However, people do respond to laws like smoking bans and taxes. ”

One of the only items Carino picks up from these smoke shops is hookah tobacco, and says that with the economy in the state its in, its not the hookah tobacco itself that will necessarily appeal to potential buyers, but the price differences. When she visits the Haight District to buy shisha, she keeps an eye out for which shop has the most reasonable prices.

Many Haight residents and store owners hope that the three-year moratorium will extend and an agreement will arise that permanently bans any more shops from opening. This will put an end to the grief of those that have made their place there more than 20 years ago.

“I know and like a lot of the shop owners,” Amaro said. “But a lot of the pipe shops on Haight Street are there just so they can one up each other.”

The Rise and Fall of Japantown (Final)

Japan Center’s hottest topic of the month was the construction of a new little square looking thing in front of Café Hana. Many people stopped when they saw it and argued about what that thing was. The square thing was built in replace of the small waterless fountain but other than that, there was no other clear explanation known to people in general.

Seiko Fujimoto, a Japan Center’s merchant, half-jokingly said it was an Olympic swimming pool. A visitor of the Japan Center said it looked like a shiatsu bath. No one was able to figure out what that thing was exactly. It remained a mystery for everyone for sometime until the construction workers started to put colorful tiles on it.

“It’s a pond,” another visitor said.

The pond is like a premonition of Japantown’s future that is still unknown and in questioned.

San Francisco’s Japantown, one of the three remaining Japantowns in California, struggled to stay afloat. A merchant said in the Japantown Merchants Association’s meeting if sales went down constantly since September.

Steve Nakajo, the co-founder of Kimochi, a non-profit organization that assists senior citizen, said, “Do you see how many people in the Japan Center? It’s dead, man. There are probably two to three people.”

“Do you want a business here?” he asked.

Most community members and activists agree if an immediate action needs to be taken immediately before all of the merchants go out of business.

However, generational and cultural gaps got in the way. Everyone had a different point of view about what was best for Japantown. Each felt strongly about his or her stance and did not seem to willing to let it go.

Some people wanted Japantown to stay the way it was with little changes or minor renovations to bring old customers back. Others wanted to turn around Japantown’s image of being a quiet neighborhood to a hip and cool neighborhood for youngsters and this will be done by bringing trendy places to hang out at Japantown.

E.J. Varela, the food and beverages director of Hotel kabuki, said, “They do not want any society trends.”

Varela directed the statement to people who do not share her point of view and those who preferred to preserve Japantown like it was “a museum.” She mentioned Starbucks, Subway and several big names in the list of “trendy” brands that will bring more people to Japantown.

Under the city’s zoning code, Japantown has a rule that every business in the area has to be culturally relevant. This rule and regulation automatically bans chain restaurants like McDonald’s and retails like Macy’s and Bloomingdale's. The idea is to protect the small businesses in the area but will it help? Do people and businesses think they need to have a McDonald’s in the neighborhood?

Reaching a consensus is definitely a painful thing because there is hardly a middle ground in the process.

Aya Ino, a member of Nihonmachi Roots, a new youth group that taken an interest of Japantown issues related, pointed out the importance of having a dialogue to bridge the wide gap between those who want to preserve and those who want to change.

In the mean time, Japantown continued to show signs of dying and many people became frustrated, racing with the time to save their neighborhood.

These people had every reason to be frustrated: the two community’s newspapers, Nichi Bei Times (founded in 1899) and Hokubei Mainichi (founded in 1948), which had been circulating around Japantown for generations, suddenly disappeared. The two newspapers closed down with just two months in between.

Karen Kai, a community activist, talked about the community’s reaction of the closing of the two newspapers, “Everybody knew about the closing of Nichi Bei but when Hokubei’s closing down, they said, ‘Hokubei?!’”

When Nichi Bei Times announced it would publish its last issue on Sept. 10, Robert Okamura, the owner of a family-owned mochi store, Benkyodo, said even if Nichi Bei Times shut down, they still have the Hokubei Mainichi.

But now, with both newspapers folded up, Japantown’s community had no one to tell the story of the mom and pop store that went out of business and the life journey of a community’s elder who passed away. There will be no more tales about the neighborhood that survived two redevelopments in the past.

Basil Lee, a volunteer in Kimochi, said, “The younger generation, who born here, they adapted to American life. Maybe they don’t like sushi as much. Or rice. They eat hamburger.”

Japanese-American has a very unique identity. They have Japanese roots and history but many assimilate to the American culture. Today, many Japanese-Americans have only a trace of Japanese culture in them.

Fujimoto, who worked and raised her children in the United States, said that her son tried hard to be an American when he grew up and in the process, Fujimoto said she believed her son had became more of an American than a Japanese.

Another problem is language. Language is culture. However, many Japanese-Americans who grew up in the United States have little or no knowledge about Japanese language.

Kai, who served in the advisory board of Japantown Better Neighborhood Plan, said, “During the internment camp, many Japanese, me included, were raised under the belief if the assimilation was the key goal. And piece of that assimilation was to speak flawless English so my parents never sent me to Japanese school.”

Many parts of the culture are lost in translation. Thus, the generations of Japanese who do not speak the language will probably feel weaker connections with their roots and less eagerness to learn and pass on their culture to the next generation. When the language died, the culture died too.

Peter Yamamoto of the National Japanese American Historical Society said Japantown has a slow replenishing rate from immigration to keep it alive.

If what Yamamoto said was true, who will keep Japantown alive? Will it even needed to have a Japantown when the younger generations feel less attachment with the Japanese culture?

Benh Nakajo, a community activist who worked at Benkyodo, said, “[Our] goal is to leave something for the future generation. At least, physically.”

From there, the fight continued.

While some stores closed, others open. NEW PEOPLE, a new store in Japantown that markets itself on the image of Japanese pop-culture, was hoped to bring more people, especially youths, to the neighborhood. On a community forum on the Japanese-American Press, there was also a possibility to turn both of the community’s newspapers into non-profit organizations just to keep them going. While some people moved out of Japantown, grassroots organizations like Nihonmachi Roots appeared and organized to promote Japantown. When one thing falls, another rises.

Final Story

Two people lay on the wet grass of the Civic Center Plaza. Pigeons flew throughout the foggy sky. A grocery cart piled with black plastic bags and three rows of Little Red Flowers housed the men in their slumber.
Meanwhile, men and women in heavy jackets who hold fanny bags around their waists and hang cameras on their necks take pictures of each other in front of City Hall.
“They take one-hundred thousand pictures everyday,” snickered a scrawny man as he adjusted a worn-out San Francisco 49ers hat and lit a cigarette.
Van Ness Avenue, California, Market, and Leavenworth streets enclose many of San Francisco’s largest government and cultural buildings. Some people think of the Civic Center as a place for protests and festivities only. The truth is that when one listens to the people—the homeless, vendors, tourists, workers, and residents— one sees in them the reflection of a diverse and complex community. To say it’s the homeless, or the city’s supervisors, or the flee markets that depict the Civic Center is an illustration of a limited observation.
Jose and Bertha Yepez emigrated from Mexico and have been living in a neighborhood that lies to the west of the Civic Center for fifteen years—the Tenderloin.
Bertha Yepez said the “hazardous” conditions of the Civic Center’s playground have forced her to take her 5-year-old son to Yerba Buena Gardens where he can enjoy a “safe and clean park.” The playground in the Civic Center, which the neighborhood’s
own residents don’t know its name, has trash and pieces of broken glass under the swings.
“San Francisco is a beautiful city,” Jose Yepez said. “But the people in City Hall close their eyes to issues affecting the up-bringing of our children.”
According to the Yepez couple, this year’s Love Fest, which is a festival that includes floats and techno music that occurs annually in San Francisco, exceeded its limits.
“We’re not against the festivities,” Bertha Yepez affirmed. “My participation has always been optional, but this year, two naked women were outside of the event’s boundaries. That’s disrespectful.”
Bertha said the police arrived too late to McAllister and Fulton streets, where the women had been exposing themselves. “I hope the city sets stricter rules next year,” she said.
Betina Cordova, also from the Tenderloin, said she’s been living in the neighborhood and has been walking through the United Nations and Civic Center plazas to arrive to work for the past five years.
“The media exaggerates,” she said. “Shooting, stabbings, and violence from the homeless don’t happen every hour of every day.”
Cordova said she has noticed a decreased number of tourists in the Civic Center at later hours. “When the media focuses on the violence in these neighborhoods,” she said referring to the Tenderloin and the Civic Center, “People are afraid to come. They have a bad image of our community.”
However, a group of nine men and women tourists from China, who declined to give their first and last names, felt differently.
“Nothing here frightens us,” said the only man in the group who spoke English as he took a picture of the Simon Bolivar equestrian statue. “We come to San Francisco for nine days. The Civic Center is our first stop and the people are very nice.”
Cordova also believes that people who are new to the neighborhoods have a distorted image of the homeless who sleep and spend their waking hours in the streets of the Civic Center and the Tenderloin.
According to Cordova, the homeless men and women who find shelter in the plazas aren’t dangerous. She said most of the homeless keep to themselves, in fact, she said that throughout the five years she’s walked through the Civic Center, familiar faces welcome her with a ‘hello’ and a smile every morning, and wish her a good night at 10’ O clock, when she’s walking back to her apartment.
“A lot of the homeless are consumed in their loneliness and frustration,” Cordova said, “They just want to be left alone.” Cordova remembers seeing two of her neighbors
sleeping next to the Asian Art Museum after they lost their jobs and couldn’t afford to pay for rent.
Tom Jackson, one of Supervisor Chris Daly’s aides, said, “Well, there isn’t a lot of open space in such dense city. Of course a place like Civic Center is going to have people lying on the grass.”
Jackson said no complaints regarding the homeless in the plazas or in the “blue and yellow” playground have been reported to neither he nor Daly during his four months in office.
“Not every person resting in the plazas is homeless,” Jackson said, “There will be details that give them away,” he continued. According to Jackson, it’s obvious that the homeless will “want” to “hang out” in the area where most of the homeless health and shelter services are located.
According to a San Francisco Chronicle story written by C.W. Nevius, San Francisco spends a reported $100 million a year on its homeless population. In the same story, Kate Shuten, a public health nurse who has worked with the homeless in the city’s shelters, said many of the homeless men and women would rather live outside than in one of the downtown “crack” hotels.
“They [homeless] tell stories of people climbing through their windows, assaulting them, stealing their stuff, and even raping them,” Shuten said.

Jackson didn’t comment when asked to confirm that every one of the homeless “hanging out” in the plazas lived in one of the shelters that the city offers.
However, the plazas in the Civic Center are not solely inhibited by the homeless and don’t only illustrate the extreme poverty that exists in the community. The vendors in the plazas and their customers are an expression of the neighborhood’s grandeur and vitality that attracts San Franciscans and people from other Northern California cities alike.
For example, the United Nations Plaza, which extends from Market to Hyde streets, is home to the Heart of the City Farmers Market every Wednesday and Sunday. Youmna Yassad, from the Hayes Valley, says “the produce is more cheap and fresh” compared to the rest. Oranges, grapes, orchids, and fresh bouquets of flowers adorn the wooden tables that border the United Nations Plaza.
Adrian Alatorre from Modesto, an enthusiastic and avid 28-year-old vendor for Mora Farms who also works at the farmers market in Palo Alto and Daly City, said the market in the Civic Center has high- potential because it attracts a diverse range of people.
“I love the diversity of people in this neighborhood and the weather is a nice change,” he said about the Civic Center. “I’m thinking about living here while the farmers market closes for the season.”
On 7th and Market streets, the smell of Chinese and Japanese cuisine that diffuses from the Oriental Restaurant and the Oasis Barbeque Grill welcomes commuters who arrive from the Civic Center Muni and Bart stations.

The Revolving Door of SoMa

The loft is 2100 sq. feet with large windows and bamboo color wood floors. The look of his furniture is minimal, sleek and impeccably pristine. Just like a typical bachelor’s pad the smell of leather and cologne exudes independence and wealth.

Kreisler Ng, 28, a business consultant lives in the new lofts on 5^th Street and Folsom Street and commutes to San Jose for work.

“ I’ve lived in the Sunset and San Jose and I just wanted to live in SoMa because it’s much more lively.”

He admits that living behind 1015 Nightclub can become a nuisance when club goers roam around the streets inebriated but says for the most part the noise doesn’t bother him.

“ I feel very fortunate to live here and to be able to afford to live here” Ng said.

Ng is a representation of the new face of SoMa and what could become the majority.The young, the rich, and the educated.

South of Market over the decades served as a transient neighborhood that housed many people from all walks of life.

The ever evolving neighborhood was once home to struggling artists, punk musicians and immigrants from Mexico and the Philippines.

In 1990, Filipinos comprised 30 percent of the population and became the largest ethnic group in South of Market. Today they are currently 5 percent of the population living in SoMa whom most are working in the district in hotels, restaurants, and commercial businesses.

MC Canlas, 50, lived in South of Market for 8 years said that everyone has credited Daly City as the center of the Filipino community but SoMa has always been the true stomping grounds.

As Canlas sits in his office at the Bayanihan Community Center, on Mission and 6^th Street, he said “ SoMa is where we struggled, so it just makes sense that the driving center is here.”

The struggle Canlas is referring to occurred in 1977 when 50 Filipino and Chinese immigrants received eviction notices to move out of their one bedroom home at the International Hotel which unofficially was considered “Manilatown”. Many of those who were evicted were in their 70’s and 60’s relocated to SoMa.

Gentrification is nothing new to San Francisco let alone in SoMa. Every year in SoMa a new apartment complex springs up and affordable housing becomes one of many challenges plaguing this neighborhood.

Jim Meko, chairman of The Western Task Force primary goal is to “ preserve and enchance” SoMa.

Meko has lived in South of Market for 32 years and can recall what it was like during the 1970’s.

“There was a series of murders the first year I was here and quite a few muggings. It was scary but there was an incredible sense of freedom and community too” Meko said.

The amount of good stories Meko shared out numbered the bad. Which explains why he still lives in the “Seedy” district and also explains why he is running for a seat on the board of supervisor for District 6 this upcoming election.

Meko’s fondest memory his past were Friday afternoons at the Ambush.

“ The Ambush was a neighborhood bar that was a real focal point for the community. A real "Cheers" kind of bar with a beloved cast of regulars” said Meko.

He adds, “I found an apartment that was practically next door. Started a business there a few years later. As independent entrepreneurs, we chose to close at noon every Friday so we could meet a couple friends at the Ambush and play pinball all afternoon. The bar is gone and the friends have moved on but we still close at noon on Fridays.”

Change is inevitable. Bars and businesses have come and gone throughout the years. Churches and schools are also not exempt for foreclosure especially in tough economic times.

More recently this past June, Catholic Charities CYO which runs the Children’s Village Child Development Center, announced they will be closing it’s location on 10^th Street between Howard and Folsom “due to re-structuring of the agency” said Gabrielle Slanina, communications cfficer of Catholic Charities CYO.

The prekindergarten school will close June of 2010, leaving parents and students with no alternate location for child care.

Slanina said “ We are working with parents to help with the transition.”

The closure of the school affects the parents who now have to find other locations outside of SoMa. But more importantly in the long term, the closure will affect the district’s demographic as a whole.

Currently, the neighborhood isn’t ideal for families and without institutions for child care or service catering to their everyday needs, SoMa will continue to shape into a domain for singles.

While Ng who lives a mere walking distance from bars and night clubs occasionally enjoy a night out every week with friends and co-workers.

Ng said, “ I don’t really have any idea of what I want SoMa to be because I don’t plan to settle here. It’s just fine for me for right now.”

North Beach, ti amo