Readers of The Ingleside Light gathered at Charm Coffee on Tuesday evening to celebrate neighborly kindness and share thoughts on important neighborhood issues as part of San Francisco’s first-ever Good Neighbor Week.
“It’s always good to see new stories and see what’s going on in the neighborhood,” Ingleside Terraces resident Andrea Lindgren said.
The national Good Neighbor Day was first introduced in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter to encourage people to connect and build stronger community relations through kindness and understanding. Julia Gitis, the founder of Community News Lab and a member of the leadership team of Resilient West Portal, took it a step further this year and championed the holiday into a weeklong event series, which The Ingleside Light is among the founding news partners.
Fresh on attendees' minds was the local church The Father’s House San Francisco buying the former El Rey Theater. The church’s co-founders, Robyn and Tim Bittle, who live in West Portal, shared how they feel a range of emotions about their purchase and the coming renovations, including being excited and overwhelmed.
“Our background is in real estate, so for us, this is a dream come true,” Tim Bittle said. “We’ve done renovations for a decade, and to get to renovate a place like this, it’s going to be good.”
West Portal resident Al Frydenlund said the renovations will be a contribution to the city since the building is a historic landmark. Others, like Lindgren, said they were disappointed that the theater’s parking lots wouldn’t be turned into housing.
But a bonding moment for patrons focused on two Ingleside gems: Beep’s Burgers and the sundial.
“Please don’t judge me,” Bittle joked. “I had Beep’s for the first time the other day. I live in the neighborhood. I know it’s a right of passage…It was fantastic.”
Ingleside resident Mayo Pascua, who has lived in Ingleside since the ‘70s, shared memories on how the neighborhood has changed over the years, such as Java On Ocean’s space had once been a pet store. He also recalled when Lakewood Plaza was an overflow parking lot for the El Rey theater.
“Growing up with the kids I grew up with in the neighborhood, we would just play soldier and go up and down,” Pascua said. “The empty lot was like our battleground and then [we’d] go up and down the hill.”
Liza and Al Frydenlund also spoke on what they deemed an “interesting ongoing neighborhood discussion” regarding landscaping around the Waldorf High School, noting how green areas near the gym and school that were supposed to be upkept have not been.
“West Portal is a place where if you made it look pretty, it'd make a big difference in terms of the vibe of the neighborhood and one of these commercial strips, right?” Al Frydenlund said. “If you intentionally, one, make it look pretty, and two, try to be a good neighbor, it just changes dynamics.”
