One-step fitness plan for S.F. dog-walkers

Sign spotted by Donna Maruta in the window of One-Half on Polk Street: “Free Yoga Classes. Start by bending over, picking up your dog s— and depositing it into a trash bin. This is called the ‘Downward Dog’ position.”

Bertrand Pellegrin reports that he walked by 555 Golden Gate Ave., the site of the old Stars restaurant, once a hub of social activity of the glitterati/culturati, and “saw nothing but a huge hole and bulldozers.” Pellegrin remembers “the very famous, long bar studded with brass plates with the names of the notable patrons who quenched their thirsts there.” It is currently scheduled to become the site of what’s described as “an 11-story, mixed-use development.”

As for me, I feel nothing of the same wistfulness yet when I stroll past the Divisadero Street Shell station that (with the Touchless Car Wash) is the site of the proposed 400 Divisadero residential development. The Planning Commission, to have decided on the project on Thursday, May 23, canceled that meeting, putting off such consideration until a hearing on June 13.

Meanwhile, the station is still pumping gas and, although we are all equal under the sun shaded by the gas station’s canopy, maybe a few of its patrons are notable.

She parked her car for only a moment or two, says Suzy Locke, so she could run into her Oakland office and get her mail. When she emerged, an officer was writing out a parking citation.

“He asked why I did not put money in the meter that was right by my car. My answer, ‘Officer, I am cheap, and it was only going to be 5 minutes.’ He was so astounded at my honesty, he voided the ticket.”

BART announcement heard by Joseph Amster of Emperor Norton Tours: “If your cell phone was stolen, please call BART headquarters.” How are you going to call, asks Adda Dada, “when there are no working phones in a station?”

In other communications developments, Siri so annoyed Randall Elwood the other day by interrupting him and offering him help that he finally burst forth, “Shut up!” She responded, “That wasn’t very nice.”

Strange de Jim, not averse to making use of a publicity opportunity, posed for JR’s “The Chronicles of San Francisco” carrying his photo book, “San Francisco’s Castro,” standing next to Cleve

Jones. While paying a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to check out his image — who doesn’t want to check out his own image? — he says the third-floor security people were most amused by his comment, “The Living Wall is wonderful, but is it really the best revenge?”

In the East Bay, restaurateur/food maven Narsai David and activist lawyer Tom Miller — through the nonprofit Green Cities Fund — are organizing a “West Coast chefs food and solidarity” trip to Puerto Rico, “in support of its nascent sustainable food movement.” The trip, intended to be part of hurricane relief efforts, will be patterned on one a similar group made to Cuba in 2012. Along on that trip was “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” author Samin Nosrat, who Miller is hoping joins this trip too, along with about 20 other “food-loving” people he hopes will sign up. Miller may be reached at his Oakland legal office.

She was probably bestknown around here in the 1970s and 1980s, when she was a San Francisco supervisor, but Carol Ruth Silver was an activist way before that. In 1961, she went to Mississippi as a Freedom Rider. After being arrested in Jackson, she served 40 days in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

It was there that she used what she had on hand — soft white bread, saliva and blood — to build a chess set, so that she could play with her cellmate. That set is displayed in Jackson nowadays at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. And in early May, accompanied by a fellow Freedom Rider and a law school classmate, Silver donated a 3-D printed copy of the set she had made to the World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis.

The website for the Hall of Fame includes that institution’s assertion, “Chess, with its two opposing sides and iconic pieces, lends itself well to telling stories about good and evil.”

PUBLIC First woman: EAVESDROPPING “I’m learning how to up-level my inner download and get a better life.” Second woman: “At least in New York we don’t talk like this.” Conversation overheard at Whole Foods Market on California Street by Tosha Silver