1095 Market Street
San Francisco, California 94103
www.shapingsf.org/grant_bldg
grantbldg@yahoo.com
Agape Foundation (www.agapefn.org) is a nonprofit public foundation that raises and distributes funds to groups working for nonviolent change. Since its formation in 1969 by a group of pacifists and antiwar activists in Palo Alto, California, Agape Foundation has provided over $4.5 million in urgently needed grants, loans, fiscal sponsorships, and technical assistance to nonviolent grassroots projects throughout the western United States. Agape Foundation's mission is based on a vision of nonviolent social change in which individuals confront patterns of violence and also build alternative models for peace. Agape looks for projects which challenge the root causes of war and bring fresh energy and new perspectives to the ongoing movement for peace and justice. 1095 Market Street has been Agape's home since February 1999.
Manuel A. Alarcón is a businessman who has been a tenant of the Grant Building since 1997. He has been in the printing and graphics industry since 1978 and has served the printing/graphics needs of the City of San Francisco as well as other businesses He has been involved in charitable causes like sponsorship of surgical/medical missions to the Philippines and has always cosponsored the annual Thanksgiving Lunch hosted at the Cafe do Brasil to AIDS-stricken San Franciscans and their friends and relatives. Currently, he is involved in establishing a project that will help parents fund the cost of out-of-school remedial education of their children. A Filipino-American, he has been involved in civic organizations that advance the cause of his community. He is an active officer of a local and national Filipino-American organization. The Grant Building has served as an affordable place from which he could serve his diverse interests, until now!
Bob Armstrong is a freelance journalist whose stories have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and a monthly political magazine, The Progressive. In addition to his work for legitimate news outlets, Armstrong edited Exotica magazine, headquartered in the Grant, until it ceased publication last year.
James Brook is a poet, translator, and editor. His poems on the imaginary states of the city are soon to be published in a special issue of Processed World. He has translated works by Guy Debord, Victor Serge, Benjamin Péret, Alberto Savinio, Henri Michaux, and others. A longtime resident of San Francisco, he's had an office in the Grant Building for the past three years. He is the principal editor of two anthologies: Reclaiming San Francisco and Resisting the Virtual Life, both published by City Lights Books (www.citylights.com), where he is an acquisitions editor. Reclaiming San Francisco helped set the agenda for the antidisplacement movement. Two of his collaborators on Reclaiming San Francisco, also have offices in the Grant Building: Chris Carlsson and Susan Schwartzenberg.
James Brook
Chris Carlsson cofounded Processed World magazine (1981-1993) and edited the anthology, Bad Attitude. He has led the production of two editions of a multimedia CD-ROM, Shaping San Francisco (www.shapingsf.org), available in public kiosks around the City. Coeditor of Reclaiming San Francisco, he also helped begin Critical Mass back in 1992.
Chris Carlsson
Mary Ellen Churchill is one of the founders of Grand Illusions Film and Video, an independent film and video company now in its twenty-third year, a well-known San Francisco based media organization dedicated to a mission of serving the communities of the San Francisco Bay Area that don't ordinarily get a media voice. Ms. Churchill has been associated with hundreds of productions that showcase the needs and achievements of the city's diverse communities. She has worked with local television outlets and international media entities. She has developed and produced programming on CD-ROM and in a variety of video formats that educate, inform, and highlight community problems. Ms. Churchill has also been a media-literacy educator in the San Francisco public schools and is well known for work that is sensitive to the voices and aspirations of young people. Ms. Churchill, like many independent artists and media makers, has has problems finding affordable office space in San Francisco. She was evicted from the Second and Townsend area when the Pac Bell Stadium development went in. She has been in the Grant Building, as one its community of civic minded writers and artists, for three years.
Città Structural Engineering was founded in 1998 to provide structural engineering services to institutional, commercial, industrial, and residential clients. The firm's principal, Patrick Vennari, has lived in and practiced structural engineering in San Francisco for thirty-three years. Città has been in the Grant Building for three years. Città serves both private- and public-sector clients, including the City of San Francisco, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles Unified School District, Berryessa School District, the University of California, the Division of State Architect, Veterans Administration, the United States Postal Service, and United States Army Corps of Engineers. Notable local projects include: the seismic upgrade of the San Francisco Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and the structural design on San Francisco Center at Fifth and Market and Opus One Winery in Napa Valley.
Mohan and Norie Das are rare book dealers in the Grant Building.
Freewheelin' Attorney Service provides research and retrieval of court records, process serving, and other attorney- and court-related services.
Mary Jane Galbiso and Daryl L. Qualls own and operate The REALL Co. We service public employees through the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS). Our work consists of holding Benefit Information Sessions (BIS) at various governmental agencies to inform members of their employee benefits and entitlements through the CalPERS Member Home Loan Program. As real estate and mortgage brokers, we interface between authorized CalPERS wholesale lenders and public employees who are seeking mortgage financing. We chose to locate our office at the Grant Building because it is a conveniently located to the State Buildings, various governmental agencies as well as to the BART. Since we have almost daily appointments at these sites or have members coming in for individual appointments before/after getting on the BART, it is vital that our business continue to be situated in the Civic Center. We have been at this location for nearly two and a half years.
José M. Galindo is a muralist who has shown extensively in the Bay Area, New York, and Mexico. He is the founder and coordinator of La Reconstrucción, a mural workshop. La Reconstrucción has worked with high school students, minorities, and the disabled in San Francisco, New York, and Mexico City.
GPC Insurance Agency is a small family-owned business spanning three generations. It has been located in the Grant Building for about five years. It has worked with many of the small nonprofit organizations to develop insurance plans suitable to their needs. It has also worked with the arts community to keep expenses to a minimum. To maintain its high level of service to its clientele and keep their expenses to a minimum, it operates at very low margins and must keep its own operating expenses down.
IFAM is an exporting company, a Grant Building tenant for the past four years. We help establish connections between trading partners from the U.S. and Europe. Since the Bay Area (Moscone Center) is a very active business hub, we share the information collected here with our partners in Europe.
Frederick C. Roesti is an attorney whose practice consists primarily of representing people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Fair Employment and Housing Act in State and Federal Court. He has had offices in the Grant Building for the past two years.
The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is a membership-based grassroots organization promoting the bicycle for everyday transportation. To create safer streets and a better community, SFBC members advocate for bike lanes and paths, slower speeds, better access to transit, more secure bike parking, and better educated bike riders and motorists. The SFBC also advocates better public transit and safer, more pleasant walking conditions. Recent victories include a new bikes-only path in the Duboce Triangle, a dozen new bike lanes throughout the city, a new requirement that all City-owned buildings to provide secure bicycle parking, and easier access to BART and CalTrain. SFBC members receive a monthly newsletter, discounts at most San Francisco bike shops, and invitations to a wide variety of cycling-oriented events. Call 431-BIKE (2453), or send email to sfbc-info@sfbike.org, to join.
Dave Snyder and Leah Shahum of the SF Bicycle Coalition
San Francisco Low Income Housing
Susan Schwartzenberg is a visual artist whose work explores the interrelationships of history and memory. Much of her work has focused on stories of life in California and studies of the urban condition in San Francisco. With landscape architect Cheryl Barton, she recently completed the Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Richmond, California. The memorial honors women who worked in the defense industry during World War II. Her To Quiet a Foreign Pain is the story of a former slaughterhouse worker, his family, and his community, who lived in Hunters Point. She contributed a photo essay on San Francisco's Civic Center to Reclaiming San Francisco, a City Lights anthology. Through the San Francisco Art Commission she published Cento: A Market Street Journal, a combination walking tour, journal, and map. Her most recent book, Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism, a collaboration with author Rebecca Solnit, examines the current economic/property boom in San Francisco and its disastrous impact on the arts and cultural life of this city. She also works for the Exploratorium and teaches at several school, including the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of Arts and Crafts.
SpinCycle Legal Services offers courier services, process serving, and general legal-related services.
Streetside Stories (www.streetside.org) was founded in 1992 with the vision that sharing stories is the heart of human learning. Streetside Stories serves youth through programs that (1) motivate students to develop their reading, writing and oral skills by relating the learning process to their environment; (2) foster community and parental involvement in the schools; and (3) provide community forums for the works and ideas of students and their families to be seen, heard and read.
Streetside Stories
Jim Swanson is a principal in Typesetting Etc., a typesetting and graphics business since 1982. Typesetting Etc. concentrates on producing community newspapers, literary journals, and small press publications. Clients have included, for example, The Tenderloin Times, The Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, and City Lights Books.
Jim Swanson
Maurice Trad is an attorney in general practice.
Peter Booth Wiley has been a tenant in the Grant Building since 1987, during which time he has written two books: A Free Library in This City: The Illustrated History of the San Francisco Public Library and National Trust Guide, San Francisco: America's Guide for Architecture and History Travelers. A resident of San Francisco for thirty-three years, Wiley has founded a political magazine, worked for an antiwar newspaper distributed to servicemen and women during the Vietnam War, covered Western resource issues for Pacific News Service, coauthored a weekly newspaper column called Points West, and written for numerous newspapers and magazines. Suitably, Wiley's latest book, National Trust Guide, San Francisco, offers a graphic portrait of the impact of real estate developers and land speculators on the cityscape.
Peter Wiley