Editor’s Note: Two buildings were damaged and
seven tenants were
displaced as a result of a major fire at 4049–51 24th Street
the afternoon of
Saturday, Sept. 10 (see “Benefit Planned for Tenants in 24th
Street Fire,” home
page). Christina Vo, one of those who lost her home due to
the blaze, sent the Voice this
open letter to the community, writtenfour days after the
event.
An Expanded View of Home
In the last few days since the fire that
destroyed our Noe Valley
apartment, I’ve been thinking more than ever about the concept
of “home”—and
trying to extract any meaning from our temporary loss. We’re
lucky, though, and
I know that: nobody was hurt in the fire, and we were able to
salvage most of
our belongings.
Our upstairs neighbors, however, were not as
fortunate. They lost
many of their personal items.
We’d just begun to settle into our place, when
this fire hit.
While I had never initially made a target of
living in Noe Valley
(not fitting into the stereotypes, since I am both childless
and dogless), I
couldn’t help but fall in love with the apartment when I first
saw it—the
light, the large rooms, the hardwood floors, the huge closets.
The apartment
had just had a fresh makeover, after 20 years’ occupation by
the same tenant,
and it was beautiful. Our landlord was amazingly kind and
trusting; she let us
come over a few weeks before the apartment was finished to
repaint the rooms in
the color of our choice, to paint cabinets, and to make small
modifications for
our aesthetic pleasure.
Have fun playing house, she said to us.
Having a naturally nomadic spirit (in the last 10
years, I had
lived in North Carolina, Hanoi, Saigon, London, San Francisco,
Hanoi, Geneva,
Hanoi, and San Francisco)—I was more than ready to call this
apartment my home.
My housemates—one who’d just moved here from Boston—were
equally ready to
commit to the place. We befriended our upstairs neighbors and
a week after we
moved in, we’d already thrown our first full house party. A
Halloween party,
hosted by the two apartments, was already in the works.
I focused on perfecting the back rooms: the
kitchen and the living
room. I wanted it to be beautiful, I wanted it to be home. I
found a customized
reclaimed wood table for the kitchen, had shelves installed,
painted tables and
chairs bought from Craigslist, found vintage tins, ordered
lamps from a vendor
at the Alameda Flea Market, and displayed the items I’d
brought from Vietnam.
All of us worked to create an ambience that would
reflect our
three personalities: a space we could all call home. We wanted
to put love into
this house, to make it grow and flourish.
After about six weeks, we weren’t quite finished.
One of my
housemates had arranged to have all his childhood belongings
sent to the house.
His boxes sat in the front room, waiting to be unpacked.
Though it was still
unfinished, the house had already started feeling like home to
us. We held
dinner parties, received friends visiting from other cities
and countries.
Always, I felt secretly delighted when friends would comment:
how beautiful the
house was; how warm it felt. Congratulations, one
said.
For the first time in my life I relished the fact
that I felt no
desire to leave. I felt rooted and solid in this physical
structure, certain
that my San Francisco life was beginning—now that I finally
had a real home. I
relied on this structure to ground me in a place. I kept
telling myself to
consider the importance of “home”: that for a person to really
flourish, he/she
needed to feel grounded in something.
We were at a barbecue on Saturday afternoon when
we began
receiving worried texts and calls from friends in the
neighborhood. One text: I
don’t mean to alarm you, but I think your building is on
fire. I didn’t
really believe that the fire was in our building.
It wasn’t
possible. It couldn’t be. In the taxi, my friend called Radio
Shack, which is
located on the first floor of our building: no one answered.
He then called
Valley Tavern, the bar across the street from our house, who
confirmed that it
was the Radio Shack building that had caught fire.
It didn’t really hit me on Saturday night, even
after I had seen
for myself the damage inside our apartment. It didn’t really
hit me on Sunday
or Monday. I was too busy thinking about what was next—where
were we going to
live; trying to move what remained of our belongings out of
the house. There
was too much to do to really absorb the reality, let alone
what it might mean
in the long run.
Over the past few days, we’ve received an
outpouring of support
from neighbors and friends who’ve offered to help us in any
way possible. The
night of the fire, Valley Tavern gave us free drinks, Patxi’s
brought pizzas to
us, Bernie continues to offer me free coffee and kind words.
One concerned
neighbor left a note on the door, asking if she could host a
fundraiser for us.
Supervisor Wiener’s office calls us almost daily (sometimes
twice a day). We
were amazed by the support.
Even though my housemates and I are temporarily
staying in other
neighborhoods, we still go back to Noe Valley to attend to
business, trying to
extract the rest of our belongings. The benches on 24th Street
have become the
new meeting place for the displaced tenants of 4051 and 4051A,
as we put the
pieces back together.
What I’ve come to realize, only a few days after
the fire, is that
one of the lessons that I’ve already gained from this ordeal
is a broadened
perspective of home.
Now, I see that home is not just about the
physical structure, or
the comfort, say, of my bedroom. A truehome extends
beyond the
actual structure. Home to me now encompasses the upstairs
neighbors, our
friends in Noe Valley, and the beautiful city of San
Francisco. It’s so much
more than I thought it was—so much bigger, so much stronger,
so much more
beautiful.
Thank you, Noe Valley.
Christina Vo
4051 24th Street
Church
Should Alert Parishioners About Abusers
Editor:
Thank you for publishing the article on Father
Don Flickinger
[“Former St. Paul’s Priest Accused of Child Abuse,” September
2011 Voice].
Your article reminds parents to be alert even when an
environment is thought to
be safe. It was indeed puzzling that Flickinger was assigned
to a parish with
an elementary school when a police report was made years ago
about his
troubling sexual behavior with a child.
Your article also provides an opportunity for
those who may have
been abused to step forward and reach out for help and
support. As a survivor
of clergy sexual abuse at age 13, it took me over 30 years to
take a step
forward and face my abuse.
The Archdiocese failed to take the necessary
corrective action
years ago, namely, to alert parishioners when a clergy has
been criminally
charged, credibly accused, admitted guilt, or settled in a
lawsuit for child
sexual abuse. The church leaders, both locally and
internationally, need to
change their ways and consider the welfare of our children as
being primary,
not the concerns of its hierarchy and reputation.
Tim Lennon
S.F. Leader
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)
Drive to
Donate 500 Pizzas
Editor:
Hello there. My name is Bruno Matos and I am the
owner at Twin
Peaks Pizza, located at 1681 Church Street in San Francisco. I
am originally
from Brazil and immigrated to the USA in 2000. I worked very
hard to be where I
am right now, and like the words on the Bruno Almeida Matos
Day proclamation
signed by former Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2010, I try to “make a
positive impact
to those less fortunate.”
That said, I decided to give back the community
more than I
usually do. We at Twin Peaks will donate 5,000 slices of pizza
to San
Francisco’s homeless shelters and we need your help.
We would like to motivate people, as well as
businesses, to follow
in our footsteps and give back to the community. We have told
customers,
civilians, and local businesses that when we reach 5,000
“likes” on Twin Peaks
Pizza’s Facebook page, the slices will be donated. However, we
have found that
it motivates others to start giving if they see us donating
slices as we go.
We are hoping to donate 500 pizzas (5,000 slices)
by Christmas. So
far we already have 486 people who “liked” our page.
Can you help us collect these 5,000 “likes”?
Thank you.
Bruno Matos
Twin Peaks Pizza and Pasta
1681 Church Street
www.twinpeakspizza.com
www.facebook.com/twinpeakspizza
STAFF
THE NOE
VALLEY VOICE
P.O. Box 460249
San Francisco, CA 94146
www.noevalleyvoice.com
The Noe Valley Voice is an
independent newspaper
published monthly except in January and August. It is
distributed free in Noe
Valley and vicinity, on or before the first Friday of the
month. Subscriptions
are available at $30 per year ($25 for seniors) by writing to
the above
address.
The Voice welcomes your letters,
photos, and
stories, particularly on topics relating to Noe Valley. All
items should
include your name, address, and phone number, and may be
edited for brevity or
clarity. (Unsigned letters will not be considered for
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contributions will be returned only if accompanied by a
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envelope.
The Noe Valley Voice is a member
of the San
Francisco Neighborhood Newspaper Association.
Email: editor@noevalleyvoice.com
Editorial: 415-821-3324
Website: www.noevalleyvoice.com
Distribution: Call Misha, 415-752-1726
Display Advertising: Call Steve, 415-239-1114
Class Ads: Click “Class Ads” top of home page.
Display Advertising Deadline for the
November Issue: Oct. 17, 2011
Editorial/Class Ad Deadline:Oct. 15, 2011
CO-PUBLISHERS/EDITORS
Sally Smith, Jack Tipple
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS AND
EDITORS
Olivia Boler, Other Voices Editor
Corrie M. Anders, Associate Editor
Heather World, Associate Editor
Heidi Anderson, Karol Barske, Helen Colgan,
Chrissy Elgersma, Jan
Goben, Liz Highleyman, Laura McHale Holland, Florence Holub,
Tim Innes, Jeff
Kaliss, Doug Konecky, Erica Reder, Pat Rose, Roger Rubin,
Shayna Rubin,
