Cetana Salon
Delivering a luxury experience is much more than simply selling goods or providing a service. Luxury retailers and service providers put a great deal of energy and passion into taking care of others.
Products and services are imbued with the experience of having acquired them, not unlike how you might feel about a book or mug purchased from a museum gift shop after viewing an especially resonant retrospective. You take a piece of that experience home and are able to revisit it whenever you sip tea from that mug, or glance down at that book on your nightstand, perhaps one you’ve never actually had to time to study until Covid-19.
After a stressful day, especially one full of discordant energies, which nothing in my power can align, I like to return home and face the mirror. I look inside myself and ask what I could have done differently and why I didn’t. After washing my face and brushing my teeth, my attention sometimes turns to my hair.
I allow myself to travel back to a space in time when all I had to do was close my eyes and listen to a story, told in a melodious English, or an explanation of what Turgenev or Doestoevsky or Nabokov actually meant with those words. Fingertips working shampoo into a lather, a piano concerto played across my scalp - the sound of scissors, cool steel brushing against my ears. The soothing scent of ylang ylang and neroli oil hang in the air.
For more information about Cetana Salon and how you can support them, please visit the link below.
155 Brannan Street
Bell’occhio
Secret gardens in Paris, hidden courtyards, a door left ajar…
In the midst of the rubble that is often San Francisco these days, especially along the stretch of Market Street adjacent to a tiny street that barely registers on Google Maps, there is a tiny parallel universe where time stands still if at all.
I am a retailer’s nightmare. I hate to shop. It’s the last thing I want to do on a day off. Covid-19 has changed all that. I long for the small secret spaces where I can satisy my fetish for useful things I will probably never actually use.
Bell’occhio is one of those spaces that seems to exist outside the Copernican limitiations of space and time that we call reality. This is where I find unexpected necessities, the things that are essential simply because they have no purpose but to delight the senses.
You can support Bell’occhio by making a purchase on their website. Please visit the link below.
10 Brady Street
Boulette’s Larder
A plate of tiny but exquisitely precious cookies, and a perfectly pressed coffee. Savoring each cookie slowly while sitting outside the Ferry Building, enjoying waterfront views of the Bay Bridge - a perfect way to enjoy a rare morning away from the shop.
Inside, the open kitchen and communal dining tables invite fantasies of gathering the people most dear to me for a celebratory dinner in a post Covid-19 world. Attentive servers will fill our glasses and kneel down to explain the menu. We’ll sit elbow to elbow and share bites from each others plates. Leaning in to hear the conversation a few seats away, we’ll clink glasses of champagne and drink away the memory of the difficult months behind us.
Even if the plates set before us were filled with only light and air, we would still leave the table with full hearts and nourished souls. We leave, arm and arm, for an after dinner stroll along the promenade and disappear into the foggy night air while snacking from a bag of still warm beignets.
For more information on how to support Boulette’s Larder, please visit the link below. Or, you can consider contributing to their fundraising campaign here.
1 Ferry Building #48
Nightbird Restaurant
Behind a hand carved wooden door, off the busy Gough Street traffic corridor, is a tranquil and elegant respite from the hustle and bustle of Hayes Valley. There are no cell phones in this bubble of refinement, no loud chatter about funding or public offerings.
There is a sense of peace not unlike what one might encounter in a small rural Japanese inn, like stepping onto a cloud.
Everything, from the surroundings to the courses, is designed to filter out noise and allow focus on what is immediately in front of you: your dining companion, the soft lighting, the murmer of quiet voices enjoying civilized conversation, a perfecly composed dish with a nest of crisped leek and a poached quail egg drizzled with hollandaise.
For more information on how to support Nightbird Restaurant, please visit the link below.
330 Gough Street
Metier
To do one thing and to do it well.
The phrase is attributed to Douglas McIlroy, creator of Unix pipelines, which allows users to perform complex computing tasks by connecting two or more software tools. The words are also claimed by Jan Koum, creator of WhatsApp. While both men can boast of remarkable achievements, it’s doubtful the quote was never used before the birth of either, respectively in 1932 and 1976, or the implementation of their inventions in 1969 and 2009.
The world used to be full of artisans and masters of craft, and experts and enthusiasts who devoted themselves to one pursuit. You could rely on their passion and deep understanding of that pursuit to help you choose a kitchen knife, a pair of shoes, a supportive bra, a new car, or a gift of fine jewelry for your partner.
In between big box stores, online resellers, and lifestyle flagships, there remain a few specialty shops where the selection is deeply curated and presented in a manner that speaks to its essence. It’s not convenient for modern shoppers to visit 6 different boutiques to outfit themselves, but there is such revelatory joy to be found in objects imbued with years of training and pursuit of craft.
For more information about how to support Metier, please visit the link below.
546 Laguna Street
Birba Wine Bar
Imagine stumbling into a tiny wine bar while wandering the narrow streets of the Barri Gòtic or along the canals of the Dorsoduro. It’s a warm summer day, not quite lunchtime. Inside, it’s quiet and comfortingly dark. A few small plates, perhaps some boquerones with bread and some olives, would go down well with an ombre, a shadow of a drink.
You recognize a few selections on the wine list but you are in the mood for a surprise, so you ask for a suggestion. The bartender asks you what you like and maybe you say that you like wines that are interesting, something unusual. She brings you a taste of something that tastes a little like dirt and smells kind of like cat pee.
But, hey - you asked for it. So, you give it a chance. You notice the color, rich with amber. And, then it starts to open a bit and the smell of dirt evolves into a memory of standing in a field of sunflowers somewhere in the south of France, sun pouring down on you like warm honey. Before the glass touches your lips, you can taste sunbaked straw and wet rocks where you originally detected cat pee.
You open your eyes and return to the present. Looking up, you notice a garden patio beyond the back door. This you would probably not find in a boîte off the cramped streets of Barcelona’s gothic quarter or the canals of Venice. But, if you did, it would probably feel a lot like this moment.
For more information about how to support Birba, please visit the link below.
458 Grove Street
(415) 549-7612