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Memorial Service for Melanio Duarte to be May 8

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A memorial service for Caffe D’Melanio owner Melanio Duarte will be held May 8 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. at Ingleside Presbyterian Church, 1345 Ocean Ave.

Mr. Duarte, a native to Argentina, was an anchor in the Ingleside community for many years. He and his companion Laurie Martin worked hard to build up the restaurant, providing live music and neighborhood events on top of its dining and coffee.

The remembrance and potluck on May 8 will be intentionally held on Mother’s day because Mr. Duarte’s mother was the most important person on earth and heaven to him, according to his loved ones.

Reverand Roland Gordon of Ingleside Presbytarian will lead the celebration. Musicians will perform and friends will deliver thanks and remembrances. A potluck will be held afterward so dishes to be shared will be appreciated.

In lieu of flowers or other gifts, it has been asked that donations be made to Ingleside Presbyterian Church to help pay their share of the Ocean Avenue Community Business District. Any funds over that amount will help pay for expenses to return Melanio’s ashes to Argentina.

For more information, visit www.caffemelanio.com or call (415) 239-9495.

McLaren Park Plaza Spruce-Up Nearly Complete

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McLaren Park Garden

McLaren Park gardeners at work. Images courtesy of Help McLaren Park.

McLaren Park’s gardening crew planted three new flower beds at the Gambier Street entrance April 11 as part of an ongoing rebuild of a former play area that had been torn down years ago. With the sand removed and new granite surface in place, the three oval shaped beds were ready for the annuals to go in the ground.

Help McLaren Park’s Charles Farrugia said in an e-mail the plaza won’t be complete without the fountain that will be used as a raised planter.

“The fountain will eventually contain colorful annuals,’ he said. “The annuals planted (April 11) were left over from another park’s work party and our park supervisor donated them.”

Farrugia said the annuals in the ground would be joined by perennial Phylum’s that don’t need as much water.

New Bill To Improve Local Access to Cow Palace Board

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Cow Palace

Front of the Cow Palace. Photo by Dante Alighieri. Image used under Creative Commons Share Alike license.

San Francisco and Daly City stand to gain influence over the Cow Palace if a Leland Yee-sponsored bill passes in Sacramento.

Senate Bill 249, Yee’s office announced April 5, would give both cities two appointments to the nine member board of directors, a move that should increase oversight by the Cow Palace’s neighbors. This would be especially important to those neighbors in light of a May 2010 party that resulted in several drug overdoses, hospitalizations and deaths.

Friends and Advocates of Crocker-Amazon and the Excelsior said in their April newsletter they “hoped for quality programming to be offered at the Cow Palace.” With this bill, FACE would have more access to the board through the local appointment.

“The lack of local representation on the Cow Palace Board has resulted in decisions, especially regarding issues of public safety, that do not reflect the wishes and needs of the community,” Yee said in a press release.

The bill passed the Senate Agriculture Committee, April 5, and could move to the Senate floor within a few weeks, Yee’s Chief of Staff Adam Keigwin told The Light. The bill must still pass the state Assembly before reaching the governor’s desk, and if signed then, would go into effect Jan. 1, 2012.

“Senator Yee’s bill will give Daly City and San Francisco a much-needed voice at the Cow Palace, as well as allow us to coordinate with them to better deal with potential problems,” Daly City Mayor Carol Klatt said in a press release.

Keigwin said Assemblywoman Fiona Ma supports the bill and would help get it through the Assembly.

“We’re pretty confidant we can get this to the governor,” Keigwin said.

The Cow Palace is officially the 1-A District Agricultural Association, part of the California Department of Food Agriculture’s Division of Fairs and Expositions. Its current board of directors is appointed by the governor. Yee’s bill would let the mayors of each city name two members apiece.

Taraval Station to Restore Daily Crime Reports

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Taraval Police Station’s Capt. Curtis Lum is bringing back daily crime reports, an activity performed by previous Capt. Paul Chignell in 2009.

“There will still be the Friday newsletter with the crime information in this format, but when I can, I will send out only crime reports in this format Monday through Thursday,” Lum said via e-mail. “If I get busy, I will have to skip a day or so, but if I can I will try to do this daily.”

To sign up for Taraval Station’s crime reports visit taraval.org.

Taraval Station Capt. Curtis Lum

Mission Street Overpass Mural Design Now on Display

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A new  mural design is now complete and residents have the opportunity to help install it Saturday, April 9. The design is on display at Mama Art Cafe, Excelsior Library and Mission YMCA.

Excelsior Action Group’s $30,000 Community Challenge Grant helped fund this beautification project, and was designed with over 100 residents’ input.

Mural

The Mission Street overpass is shown here in two parts. One for each side of the street.

Riordan High School Stages Jesus Christ Superstar

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Riordan High School Drama will stage Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, starting April 1, for its 61st annual spring musical. The production runs Friday, April 1 and Saturday, April 2 at 8 p.m. both nights. There are three more performances the next weekend, Friday, April 8 and Saturday, April 9 also at 8 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinée on Sunday, April 10.

Junior Alex V. Ruiz stars as Jesus in the rock opera that tells the story of the last week of Jesus’ life. Valerie O’Riordan directs and over 50 high school students in the cast and crew produce the Tony award nominated show.

Tickets are available in advance at www.riordanhs.org. Adults are $10, seniors and students are $7 and children under 12 are $4.

Ocean Avenue Film Fest

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Just as City Hall has recently moved to bring more Hollywood crews to film in the city, Ingleside district has also encouraged neighborhood film makers.

The second annual Ocean Avenue Film Fest was held January 14 and featured a smorgasbord of local indie talent. The OMI Cultural Participation Project helped raise money for the Ingleside Branch Library and the OMI International Family Festival, while promoting the local film scene. Caffe D’Melanio hosted the nine films for nearly 40 people, and Joanna Zhang won the audience award for Sweet Kiss.

“It was the last film shown,” OMI-CPP Executive Director Maria Fe Picar said.

“I don’t think the films were better (than last year), they were just more diverse in subject matter.”

Indeed. There was a documentary, an abstract piece that was done for a graduate school class, and many plot twists in the varied short films.

The graduate school film was for a class in the Transformative Arts program at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, and was produced by festival emcee Todd Jones Donahue. He also created the festival poster. Donahue said he thought the festival was great and he would like to stay involved with the local arts scene.

“It was fun because it involved a local venue with heart and respect in the neighborhood,” he said. “It was cool.”

Karolina Garrett expected to see a much smaller crowd, but wanted to support Caffe D’Melanio.
“I come here every morning for coffee,” she said.

Garrett liked Living Roofs, a documentary about bay area rooftop gardens. Film buff that Garret is, she recently applied to SF State’s graduate program for cinema.

Capt. Sanford Leaving Taraval Police Station

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Less than a year in, Capt. John Sanford Jr. will be moving downtown. Capt. Curtis Lum will be his replacement. Below is Capt. Sanford’s goodbye letter taken from the Taraval Station newsletter:

Dear Taraval Community,

It was with great honor I had the opportunity to serve as your district Captain. My stay here at the Taraval was short, but extremely pleasing. Captain Curtis Lum will be my successor and I can only hope that you accept him with open arms as you did with me.

I will always cherish my time and memories here in the Taraval district because this community was so engaging. I had the privilege of meeting so many great community members, merchants, and neighborhood groups, but apologies to the associations that we had scheduled to meet with in the upcoming months. I hope that all of you will continue to partner with SF SAFE and build those neighborhood associations and neighborhood watch groups.

Lastly, I will truly miss all of our regular members who attended the monthly community meetings every month. There were many special community members that showed up 30 minutes prior to the start of the meeting and made sure that I was ready to go at 7:00 p.m. sharp and I thank them for being my time-keeper.

The Taraval Station has an extremely talented Community Police Advisory Board (CPAB) that I would like to respectfully thank for their time, patience and dedication to the Taraval District. I hope that each CPAB member will hang in there through yet another transition and help the new captain so the flow that we all strived for could continue without further delay to this great flourishing group.

My heart and prayers will be with the great residents and merchants of the Taraval District, may God bless you all.

Respectfully,
John Sanford, Jr.