Renaming Lower Fillmore the Fillmore Jazz Preservation District is a classic example of shutting the barn doors long after the cows have fled and the farmer has torn down the barn. The nightclubs are gone, and the shabby Victorians, brick storefronts, and aging movie palaces that housed them have disappeared. The blocks now contain faceless and rather charmless high-rise apartment buildings with long expanses of glass at street level; there's even a suburban-feeling drive-through McDonald's with a front lawn. What are "preserved" are the memories of a long-ago raffish, jazzy district recalled as you step over names of vanished clubs and the singers and musicians who played in them, inscribed on plaques set... More >>>