Normally, spreading a picnic blanket in busy Page Street to sip wine, munch on cheese and crackers, and listen to live cello music would be a really, really bad idea. You’d probably get flattened like one of those crackers, or at least earn ire and loud honking from drivers.
And you’d certainly be considered, well, eccentric. Even for the Haight.
But nothing’s normal these days — and Page Street near Clayton Street has become an unlikely oasis for sporadic classical music concerts with the audience plopped in the middle of the street, sitting on curbs or just standing wherever they please.
They’re there to see Saul Richmond-Rakerd play his cello on his front porch eight steps up from the sidewalk. He spends two hours — two hours! — playing everything from Bach to “Lean on Me” to “Amazing Grace.” A bucket sits at the bottom of the steps for donations alongside a sign with his Venmo handle.
He’s part of a lovely shelter-in-place trend of professional musicians whose gigs have been canceled performing outside to entertain and console their bored, anxious neighbors. Like the man who plays sunset serenades in the Castro on his bagpipes and the woman who sings folk music from her Noe Valley garage, the Page Street performances have become the neighborhood event.
But the cello concerts have the added bonus of another San Francisco shelter-in-place trend. Page Street is one of an increasing number of roads closed to through traffic to give people space to exercise, get fresh air or, apparently, listen to cello music while keeping their social distance.
There’s so much open space now, Callie Waldman, 34, could even spread her picnic blanket on the pavement. An oh-so-San-Francisco spread of wine, chocolates, cheese and crackers sat in front of her. She lives a block away and said she teared up when she first heard Richmond-Rakerd’s front-porch cello music.
“This is pure magic,” she said. “Finding special little moments is really important right now.”
That’s the truth. So much of life is currently pretty miserable, but there are upsides that should become part of the daily fabric of San Francisco forever.
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Such as the continued shuttering to through traffic on some residential streets to prioritize people over cars. It creates a giant front yard to mingle from 6 feet apart with neighbors who too often go unmet in our busy city. It gives kids, many of whom live in little apartments with no outdoor space, an area near their homes to play. And it creates a stage for whimsical, wonderful things to happen — like live concerts and in-the-street picnics.
Richmond-Rakerd didn’t have all this in mind that first evening in mid-March when he took his cello outside to play. The 28-year-old grew up in Michigan and began playing the cello when he was 9. He moved to San Francisco in 2015 to earn his master’s degree in music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
He’s now an assistant principal cellist in the Santa Cruz Symphony, a section cellist with the Monterey Symphony and a substitute for the San Francisco Ballet orchestra. He also plays chamber music concerts and teaches cello, and that’s been fruitful enough to afford life with four roommates in the Haight.
But with symphonies and orchestras gone quiet, he’s had to get creative. He teaches music virtually and performs concerts on Zoom, though they’re not the same. He wanted to play for a live audience again and figured he’d give his front porch a try. Now, he makes a couple hundred bucks each time, and it’s helping him weather the shelter-in-place life.
“It turned out way better than I could have ever imagined,” he said. “It’s turned into quite a thing.”
Boy, has it ever. He plays about once a week — when the spirit moves him and the weather cooperates. He announces his shows on his website — saulrichmondrakerd.com — by 3 p.m. each day. Neighbors stalk the site so they don’t miss a show. When he started, Page Street operated like normal, and passersby would listen for a little while before moving on. Now that Page Street is shut to through traffic, the concerts have become an anticipated event, and people stay for the whole two-hour show.
“I’m all for it,” Richmond-Rakerd said of the slowed street, adding he hopes the configuration lasts. “It has a lot more of a community feel right now.”
It’s been pretty much the only community for Nikki Wise and Madison Teuscher, who just moved to San Francisco from Cleveland for Wise’s surgical residency at UCSF. It’s a very strange time to move to a city in which you know no one.
One evening, Teuscher was running an errand, spotted the cello concert and called Wise to tell her, “You have to get dressed. I’m taking you out.”
Wise said her partner scored “a lot of points — a lot, a lot” for that one, and they’ve been back to listen each time since. They said they love watching people amble by and seeing the music “catch them.” It’ll jolt them out of their own thoughts, and they’re pulled to listen.
Among those listening the other evening was a man sitting in a folding chair on the sidewalk, listening to the cello music as he read a book and drank a beer. A mother and her daughter, both wearing masks, sat on the steps next door. A dad sat with his 3-year-old twins on a curb across the street, remarking with relief that listening to the cello concerts is one of the few activities they’ll do without much squirming.
An older woman in rainbow jogging pants walked right up the middle of the street with her cane like she owned the place. A young woman on roller skates took a break, wine bottle in hand, to listen. A little girl with a pink helmet and purple scooter whizzed past along with her older brother, whose gold, sparkly shoes matched his gold, sparkly bike.
Owen Chang, 7, played with his sister and listened. His family lives nearby and attends every concert.
“It’s really good, especially at a time like this,” he said, echoing a phrase he’s surely heard adults utter over the past couple of months. “There’s usually not something like this that happens.”
For better and for worse, that’s a real understatement.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight usually appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
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‘Pure magic’: A street in the Haight closed to traffic becomes the stage for professional cello concerts - San Francisco Chronicle
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