Carl Nolte, our Guest Speaker last December, speaking about Woody LaBounty, our Guest Speaker the previous May at our Spring General Meeting.
By Carl Nolte, Contributor Jan 31, 2026 - San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco likes to think of itself as a big city, but in reality it is a small town. A world-famous city made up of small neighborhoods. No wonder San Francisco is a city and county combined.
Some of us think the heart of the small town-city is just down the street — the corner store. There must be hundreds of them in the city, in every neighborhood. Stephen “Woody” La Bounty, a local historian, wrote a kind of love letter to corner stores in his San Francisco Story newsletter: “I know if you grew up in San Francisco you have your own corner store, be it Teddy’s in Visitacion Valley or Art’s Western Market in the Outer Sunset.” La Bounty wrote fondly about his own, Jack’s, in the Richmond District.
Steve Williams, who grew up in Crocker-Amazon, wrote about his corner store on a Facebook group called San Francisco Remembered. It was a place on the corner of Brunswick and Lowell streets, “and it was like a mini 7-Eleven,” Williams wrote. “It had groceries, canned goods, and everyday staples, like bread and milk, with none containing any expiration dates. … I have fond memories and will always remember my corner store.”
Those are old stories, but there still are plenty of corner stores in the city, surviving in a world full of big box retailers like Costco, supermarkets like Safeway and medium-size chains like the Good Life on Bernal Heights and Potrero Hill.
So I was intrigued when my friend Marsha Vande Berg told me about the Valentino Market at Filbert and Buchanan streets in Cow Hollow. It’s an old San Francisco story — the store has been in business for 130 years — and a new one, too. The current owner, Elie Chahwan, is a neighborhood fixture, a man who seems to know everybody. It’s the center of a small world.
The real center of S.F. is not the famous sights. It’s the neighborhood corner stores
Greg
Quick and Dirty
San Francisco likes to think of itself as a big city, but in reality it is a small town. A world-famous city made up of small neighborhoods. No wonder San Francisco is a city and county combined.
Some of us think the heart of the small town-city is just down the street — the corner store. There must be hundreds of them in the city, in every neighborhood. Stephen “Woody” La Bounty, a local historian, wrote a kind of love letter to corner stores in his San Francisco Story newsletter: “I know if you grew up in San Francisco you have your own corner store, be it Teddy’s in Visitacion Valley or Art’s Western Market in the Outer Sunset.” La Bounty wrote fondly about his own, Jack’s, in the Richmond District.
Steve Williams, who grew up in Crocker-Amazon, wrote about his corner store on a Facebook group called San Francisco Remembered. It was a place on the corner of Brunswick and Lowell streets, “and it was like a mini 7-Eleven,” Williams wrote. “It had groceries, canned goods, and everyday staples, like bread and milk, with none containing any expiration dates. … I have fond memories and will always remember my corner store.”
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
Those are old stories, but there still are plenty of corner stores in the city, surviving in a world full of big box retailers like Costco, supermarkets like Safeway and medium-size chains like the Good Life on Bernal Heights and Potrero Hill.
So I was intrigued when my friend Marsha Vande Berg told me about the Valentino Market at Filbert and Buchanan streets in Cow Hollow. It’s an old San Francisco story — the store has been in business for 130 years — and a new one, too. The current owner, Elie Chahwan, is a neighborhood fixture, a man who seems to know everybody. It’s the center of a small world.
See more S.F. Chronicle on Google
Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.
Add Preferred Source
The market looks ordinary. It’s on the ground floor of a two-story building, a blue awning, two display windows. Valentino sells the essences of life: “Wine, groceries, milk, liquor, beer,” the signs say. And maybe a bit of luck, too: The store sells lottery tickets.
There is also a bench outside where neighbors sit and talk. For years, two of the store’s regulars sat there — Emilio Bernardino and Mr. Gus, an old sailor whose real name was Vahran Guzelian. “One was deaf in the left ear and the other was deaf in the right,” Chahwan said, “So they talked LOUD. And they talked politics, always politics.”
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
They watched the neighborhood kids grow up, and always had a treat for the corner dogs. When the old men died a couple of years ago, Chahwan put up a memorial plaque, like a landmark.
The Valentino Market at Filbert and Buchanan streets is integral to Cow Hollow’s history.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
Inside the store it’s Chahwan who is the landmark. He’s owned the market for 25 years. Before that, he had an ice cream and yogurt place at Union and Filbert, just up the street.
Like a lot of corner-store people, small business was his introduction to America. He was born in Lebanon and still has family there. Now Cow Hollow and the Marina are home.
The customers and the neighbors are family to him. “When you do this, you are part of the community,” Chahwan says.
He’s invited to school events and birthday parties. He’s trusted. In a special place at the front of the store he keeps a small bag full of keys. There are dozens of keys all to neighborhood front doors or garages. “Sometimes, you know, people forget their house keys, so I hold a spare for them,” he said. None of them are labeled: “Everyone knows their own key, right?”
He stood at the store counter the other afternoon, halfway through a 12-hour shift, his back to shelves full of liquor bottles. The front counter had an assortment of snacks, candy bars and Danish pastries. The rest of the store is packed floor to ceiling with stuff, some of it towering over the aisles. Anyone trapped there in an earthquake would be buried in an avalanche of everything.
In the back is a sort of high-end wine cave; Cow Hollow is an affluent neighborhood. There are also an assortment of what Chahwan calls “treasures,” bits and pieces of the neighborhood: wine barrels, an antique stove, old pictures, snapshots. One picture shows the market soon after it opened in 1895. The streets are unpaved. There are horses and buggies parked at the curb. The place is a true piece of an older San Francisco.
Business was a bit slow that afternoon. Customers bought small things, lottery tickets, oranges, a half-gallon of milk, soft drinks. Nobody was in a hurry; everyone seemed to know everyone else and had time to talk. Chahwan called most of the customers by name.
“This is the best neighborhood in San Francisco,” said Tom Dehne, a Valentino regular, who has lived in several other neighborhoods and now lives just down the street and likes the district.
“It has a lot of pulse. You see people on the street all the time, and they all talk to each other. You get to know the people and the kids,” he said.
He thinks the corner store is the center of it. “It’s a place where people want to go,” he said.
The store gets five stars on Yelp mostly due to comments that call the market “a gem” and refer to the owner as “Dear Elie” and a friend. “Loved this place,” one customer said. Most Yelp comments are in this vein.
But San Francisco has another side. “The owner was rude and disrespectful,” one Yelper said. “Stay away!” wrote another.
I asked Chahwan about the negative comments. He thought it was what you could expect these days — small complaints made large and spread on social media.
“This is life,” he said, sighing. Small-town stuff in a big city.