The large yellow Edwardian on Folsom Street, between 24th and 25th, affectionately dubbed the Pigeon Palace, is the kind of building that is becoming increasingly rare in the Mission District: It is home to long-term tenants whose primary occupations are to advance arts and letters.
On the third floor, prolific public historian and founder of Shaping SF Chris Carlsson lives with his partner, author Adriana Camarena, a leading organizer against police violence in the neighborhood.
Across the hall is Keith Hennessy, a pioneering choreographer in San Francisco’s queer performance scene. Artist and AIDS activist Kirk Read and his partner, Ed Wolf, an activist chronicled in the award-winning documentary "We Were Here," live below. Cook and author Carin McKay resides on the first floor.
But all of their lives are about to change -- their home is up for sale and bids will be taken on Wednesday. Given the impending sale, all six of the Pigeon Palace’s tenants face the question of how much longer they’ll be able to remain in a building where most of them have lived for more than a decade.
While the group of tenants has banded together to form a nonprofit in hopes of buying the building from their elderly landlord, who they say always intended to keep them there, a contentious legal process is making that outcome increasingly unlikely. ...