North Beach is a place of hidden delights, and like any proper temptress, reveals her wonders slowly. For 15 years now, Al’s Attire has been one of those charms: a custom clothier and leathermaker that is as idiosyncratic as it
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I’m a food guy, and as anyone in my orbit can attest, this is nothing new. I’ve always been this way, largely due to my Italian grandmother’s influence. For Grandma, food was the primary activity; when I was growing up,
In North Beach, a neighborhood that makes dressing down an art form, bespoke fashion might sound like a nonstarter. But for Al Ribaya, custom clothing has proven to be anything but. Al’s Attire, the shop the clothier opened on
I understand collectors. My mother was a collector, but she had her own name for it: she called herself a “picker.” What this meant for me as a child was a lot of time spent at garage sales, estate sales,
As an enclave that has always been chockablock with bars, North Beach is, not surprisingly, a place where bartenders are held in high esteem. The neighborhood’s barkeeps have an outsized place in our hearts and in our history, as should
Here in North Beach, we see our fair share of celebrities, as one would expect: this is where everyone wants to be these days. But like most San Franciscans, here in the Beach we tend to play it cool in
Everyone is different, but we’ve all got rituals when it comes to looking our very best. Whether it’s a straight-razor shave, a shoeshine or getting your curls blown out, its always good to know we’ve got these things in our
It all started with a phone call last Tuesday morning. It wasn’t a number I recognized, but I picked up anyway. “Joe? George Chen.” A pleasant surprise: I had reviewed Chen’s genre-redefining restaurant China Live in September, and spoken to
San Francisco is a city known for its distinct neighborhoods, and perhaps none of them possesses more charm and mystique than North Beach. There have been a lot of reasons posited for our unique position in the public’s imagination, and
North Beach has changed a lot over the past 10 years, and there is one thing that is undeniably better than it used to be: the Italian food. Francesco Covucci, along with his partner Pete Fazio, has been a big