Well, it’s finally summer.
As we bid adieu to spring and embrace the summer, we had the pleasure of participating in the 70th Annual North Beach Festival over Father’s Day Weekend. Our booth, located along Grant
Avenue between Union and Green Streets, provided the perfect setting to meet and recruit new members. It also served as a hub for our current members and old friends, offering a wonderful opportunity to catch up and share experiences.
This year, since our regular booth was fully staffed by our hard-working board members, we decided to help the North Beach Business Association (NBBA) operate a beer booth on Grant Avenue and a wine garden at Vallejo Street and Columbus Avenue. Amazingly, after a call (email) to our membership, we received more than 20 volunteers to assist our cause. We want to make sure to shout out to all of those who were kind enough to give their time to support THD and NBBA. We very much appreciate it. We hope you enjoyed yourselves and met new neighbors in the process.
As in other years, we sold tee shirts, hoodies, both zippered and unzippered, and pullover crew-neck sweatshirts that read ‘North Beach.’ We added a new edition of a long-sleeve black tee shirt with white lettering that reads ‘Telegraph Hill Dwellers.’ Of course, many of you know that this isn’t exactly a new item, but during the pandemic years, Telegraph Hill Dwellers shirts were not in our selling arsenal. If you don’t have a “Dwellers” shirt and want one, they are $30, and we can arrange to get one to you. For that matter, if you want one of the other tee shirts, sweatshirts, or hoodies,
please contact us at hello@thd.org. Their prices do vary. We also sold Telegraph Hill books and gave away some parrot swizzle sticks. I think a few Coit Tower glasses were sold as well.
Remember—since we are a community-based, membership-funded organization and not a dark
money one, we rely on sales from the Fair and membership dues to keep THD going. This year, we didn’t sell as many sweatshirts as last year because the weather blessed us with being relatively warm. However, we sold a fair amount, given the lower demand. We also picked up about 30 new members and made a lot of new friends discussing the issues of the neighborhood.
Interestingly, it appears that a lot of people are unaware of what is happening in terms of what some of our more donor-driven politicians are proposing for our neighborhood and city at large. However, that can be left out for other conversations.
Finally, I would like to add a special thank you to former THD presidents Al Fontes and Stan Hayes for their help in organizing THD’s participation. Thank you to current president Nick Ferris, along with the other board members, for making this a successful endeavor. We could not have done this without you.
Until next year.
