NVV: We Read It So You Don't Have To

The Noe Valley Voice is published ten times a year and has been a neighborhood fixture since 1977. Here are highlights from the latest issue. Links are to stories we've covered at NVSF.

May 2009

• Front page: Pritikin Mansion to become "Only in SF" museum?; Tuesday Farmer's Market; Noe Valley Quest; more parking tickets for parking...illegally (interesting tidbits: parking in a blue zone is $300, and you can print your own passive aggressive missives to leave on windshields).
  
• Cost of Living in Noe: Housing market is still slow and expensive.
  
• Event: Local entrepreneurs are invited to showcase their wares/services on 24th St on May 16, 10AM-2PM. More info at SF Small Business Week's website, or send an email to the NVMPA or So Tell Me More.
  
• Letters: Someone is happy the evil shrine to Obama finally came down at Just For Fun; complaints about off-leash dogs; a long letter about teens behaving badly on the J-Church.
• Obits: Bacco's Paolo Dominici.
  
• Store Trek: Arara, an eco-boutique way out on San Jose and Valley across from Mitchell's. (Ed.--Is that really the only business even a little to close to Noe that opened?)
  
• Rumors: The Chronicle won't reveal circulation numbers for 94114 and 94131; the Examiner states their NV circulation has gone up (read: more litter on our doorsteps); 24th St gets news racks; Bell Market's manager Enrico Fornesi will join the management team at Whole Foods when the last Bell closes this December; Peter Gabel wants to turn Real Foods into a food court and DVD movie theater; Just Awesome games reports the most popular game is...Pandemic; Bacco, Incanto and Firefly made the Chronicle's Top 100 (Ed.--Bacco didn't actually make the list); Cook's Boulevard and Global Exchange have added wedding registries.
  
• Traveling Voice: It traveled to Bhutan, Java and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Hope it wore sunblock.
  

[The Noe Valley Voice]

Paolo Dominici: Hit By A Boat?

Missing restaurateur may have been killed by boat

DNA testing has confirmed that a bone fragment recovered in the waters off Ali'i Drive is that of missing spearfisherman Paolo Dominici, 49, of San Francisco, according to Hawai'i County police.

Dominici, owner of Bacco Ristorante in Noe Valley, went spearfishing with a friend offshore of the Kona Makai Condominiums on the morning of April 11 and was reported missing after failing to return to shore. Fire department personnel found the bone fragment and other items belonging to the man, indicating he may have been run over by a boat.

Police said witnesses reported seeing a boat in the area where Dominici was believed to have been diving.

[HA: Missing restaurateur may have been killed by boat]
[NVSF: Bacco Owner Missing in Hawaii]

Bacco Owner Missing in Hawaii

SF restaurant owner missing in Hawaii
John King, Chronicle Staff Writer

(04-13) 21:22 PDT San Francisco -- The owner of a popular Noe Valley restaurant is missing in Hawaii, where he entered the ocean on a spear-fishing expedition and never returned.

Paolo Dominici of San Francisco was reported missing on Saturday in the waters off a condominium cluster in Kailua-Kona, where he was vacationing with his wife and daughter.

Dominici and a friend went into the calm waters together but became separated. Search teams have since recovered the mask, snorkel and a portion of Dominici's swim gear, but there has been no sighting of Dominici himself.

"We terminated the search today pending any new leads or developments," Reuben Chun, a battalion chief for the fire department on the big island, said Monday evening. "We don't have a comprehensive picture of what might have happened to him."

The Sunset District resident is the owner of Bacco Ristorante on Diamond Street in Noe Valley, a neighborhood fixture since it opened in 1993. Bacco made the Chronicle's list of Top 100 Restaurants in 2004; last year, on KQED's "Check, Please!," Dominici spoke proudly of making all Bacco's pasta and bread in-house.

The trip to Hawaii has been an annual ritual for Dominici and his family: "He loves the sea, the ocean, spear fishing," said Luca Zanet, a waiter at the restaurant since 1995. Zanet described his longtime employer and friend as "soft-mannered, a very nice person ... Everybody likes him."

Update: The family has called off the search.

[SFGate: SF restaurant owner missing in Hawaii]
[SFGate: Noe Valley grieves for missing restaurateur]