Castro News Briefs

Local LGBT Charity Active in Haiti

In response to the destruction following the earthquake in Haiti, Castro-based Rainbow World Fund (RWF) launched a Haiti Earthquake Relief Campaign with an initial $50,000 donation. According to RWF, the initial fund has now doubled to over $100,000 through the generosity of the LGBT and friends community.

Since 2004, the LGBT international humanitarian aid charity has been active in Haiti by supporting ongoing projects in Gonaives, the island’s second largest city, developing access to clean, safe drinking water and improving nutrition through urban gardening education.

To address this current crisis, RWF is working with CARE, their long-term disaster relief partner, which is already on the ground providing emergency food, safe water, plastic for shelter, blankets, and basic medicines: 100 percent of donations to RWF for Haiti will go to these life-saving services.
“Rainbow World Fund’s work is about serving humanity, gay and straight alike,” said Jeff Cotter, RWF founder. “LGBT people in the United States worked actively on relief efforts for Katrina and the tsunami, and we will do the same in response to the crisis in Haiti.”

To make a donation to the campaign, visit rainbowfund.org/donate or call (415) 431-1485.

Trader Joe’s Signs Lease for Market & Noe Center

Culminating months of negotiation, grocery retailer Trader Joe’s signed a lease on Jan. 7 for the space vacated three years ago by Tower Records at the Market & Noe Center.

The deal is contingent upon RadioShack agreeing to move across the street or upstairs in the building, according to Kent Jeffrey, Manager and General Partner of the Market & Noe Center. If RadioShack does not agree to vacate their space, the deal may fall through since it would restrict the space available to Trader Joe’s. Jeffrey could not comment further on the matter.

Both the space offered across the street as well as the open location upstairs in the Market & Noe Center are larger than RadioShack’s current store.

Despite the possibility that the deal could be derailed, Jeffrey is delighted at the progress. “It’s a long process,” he said about getting Trader Joe’s in. “They have to get a conditional use permit, builder’s permits. We’re probably talking eight or nine months before their doors are open for business.”

Jeffrey’s grandfather, a brick mason, moved to San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and bought the land where the Market & Noe Center is located for $20,000 in 1928. The location housed a large public sauna known as the “Finnish Baths” from 1933 to 1986, setting up shop at a time when the neighborhood was known as “Little Scandinavia” due to its large number of Nordic immigrants. Jeffrey even lived briefly at Market & Noe as an infant when there was a house above the sauna business.

“It’ll be one chapter of my life I’ll be glad to have over,” Jeffrey said about the ordeal of filling the space. “I’ve made a lot of new friends in the Castro but it’s a big stress.”

Copyright 2010 Castro Courier