A melancholy note is coming from the legendary Jack London Square jazz club Yoshi’s, as the club’s founder Kazuo ‘Kaz’ Kajimura passed away Sunday after a bout with Alzheimer’s disease.

If your only impression of the live jazz club Yoshi’s is the ill-fated San Francisco Fillmore Street location that had the bad fortune of opening during the Great Recession, that is not a complete impression. Yoshi’s in Oakland is one of the more prominent jazz venues on the West Coast, albeit one that has moved a few times. One constant throughout Yoshi’s prolific 53-year run has been co-founder Kaz Kajimura, who helped start the place from humble beginnings in Berkeley.

But Kajimura is no longer a constant at Yoshi’s, as the Chronicle reports that Yoshi's co-founder Kaz Kajimura died Sunday after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 81.

“With heavy hearts, we are sharing that the great San Francisco Bay Area has lost one of its legends. On June 15, Kazuo ‘Kaz’ Kajimura joined his mother Yoshi Kajimura & father Noriyuki Kajimura in heaven,” the nightclub Yoshi’s said in an announcement. “Kaz was a local icon, and founder of Yoshi’s Claremont, Yoshi’s San Francisco and Yoshi’s Oakland. Since 1972, Yoshi’s became Kaz’s passion, and his life’s dedication. Those that had the privilege to work with Kaz, knew he was no stranger to working 10 to 16 hours days, 6 days a week…for over 50 years! Kaz invested his whole life and his whole family inheritance to navigate Yoshi’s through both different locations, and really tough times. Yoshi’s Oakland wouldn’t exist without him.”

Kajimura was born in Japan and attended grad school in China before moving to Berkeley in the early 1970s and co-founding the original Yoshi’s there in 1972. It was just a sushi and Japanese cuisine restaurant.

But its popularity grew, and the venue moved to a much larger space on Claremont Avenue in 1979, adding live music and dancing to the mix. It gained great prestige as a jazz nightclub, and moved yet again in 1997 to its current Jack London Square location. As KTVU notes, Yoshi's was one of the first live music venues to reopen after the pandemic in 2021, with a show featuring Sheila E’s father, percussionist Pete Escovedo.

Yoshi’s says they will be throwing a free live concert in Kajimura’s honor on Monday, July 14 at the venue. And in something of a nice coincidence, there will be a series of concerts for Pete Escovedo’s 90th birthday at Yoshi’s on July 25-27.

Related: Sheila E. and Father Pete Escovedo Get Street Named After Them In Oakland [SFist]

Image courtesy Yoshi’s

The Fillmore Heritage Center that was home to the former Yoshi’s has been a bust, and its latest disappointment is a mere $100,000 settlement payment from a developer who got a city loan on the place for $5.5 million.  

Way back in 2007, the jazz nightclub and sister to the popular Oakland club Yoshi’s opened at Fillmore and Ellis streets, to great fanfare at the new city-owned Fillmore Heritage Center. But the club and sushi restaurant was not a success, and was sold off in 2014. It later became a club and venue called The Addition, which also bombed, and closed just months after opening. The restaurant 1300 on Filllmore that anchored the other end of the block closed its doors in 2017. And, this all happened after Fillmore Heritage Center developer Michael Johnson got a $5.5 million loan, among other help, from the city to revitalize the place.

So in 2018, when London Breed was mayor, Vallie Brown was the district’s supervisor, and Dennis Herrera was City Attorney, Herrera sued Johnson to reclaim the $5.5 million. Johnson promptly sued the city right back, saying it was the city that mismanaged the project. And now seven years after these lawsuits, it might appear that Johnson had a point. Because today, KQED is reporting that Johnson will only have to pay a $100,000 settlement on the lost $5.5 million.

Though as part of the settlement, Johnson is barred from doing any business with the city for a period of five years.

“We believe the proposed settlement is the best outcome for the city,” City Attorney spokesperson Jen Kwart told KQED. “We are pleased the defendants and their affiliated businesses have agreed not to do business with the city for five years.”

To point out the obvious, that statement does not acknowledge why the city accepted such a paltry sum for the settlement. And the full text of the settlement document does not acknowledge any of this either. KQED also notes that Johnson got a $4.8 million loan from the city's erstwhile Redevelopment Agency two decades ago to kickstart this project, and that loan was written off when the agency disbanded in 2011.

Either way, the proposed settlement goes before the SF Board of Supervisors’ Government Audit and Oversight Committee on Thursday March 20, before being up for approval by the full Board of Supervisors, likely on March 25 or April 1.

And the city-owned Fillmore Heritage Center has struck out on a few new attempted reincarnations over the ten years since The Addition bombed out. There was grand talk in 2023 for a new jazz hall and a restaurant from Marcus Samuelsson of Harlem’s Red Rooster fame. That proposal fell through, but a few nonprofits like the SF Housing and Development Corporation stepped up with a scaled-back plan for a food hall in February 2024. At the time, we were told it could open “by the fall 2024.”

But once Fall 2024 got here, the Chronicle reported how that deal had pretty much fallen through as well. And in early December, SF Housing and Development Corporation program director Pia Harris died from pancreatic disease complications.

Related: The Former Yoshi’s in the Fillmore Could Be Reborn as a New Food Hall Sometime This Year [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

In under three months of life as The Addition, the nightclub that took over the Yoshi's space will close tomorrow. It's unclear what's happening to the restaurant which was slated to morph into something more casual-Californian, but it is likely shuttering as well.

Yoshi's opened its doors back in 2007 as a sister establishment to Yoshi's in Oakland, but exciting as the 420 seat, 28,000 square-foot sushi and jazz joint in the Western Addition might have sounded, business failed to take off and has basically struggled ever since. Yoshi's SF even filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

Ownership was finally sold to the Fillmore Live Entertainment Group, who changed things over to the Addition in November. Now that iteration appears to have met the same fate as the one previous, according to sources like the SF Chronicle and SF Business Times.

Peter Williams, the venue's artistic director and formerly the artistic director of Yoshi’s Oakland, wrote that the causes were "some financial hardships resulting from reduced revenue since the club was taken over in July." All upcoming concerts on the Addition's schedule, including acts like the Bobby Hutcherson Quartet and T-Pain, have been canceled according to the venue's website.

The business is' "also seeking a potential lead partner to take over operations at the earliest possible time, and continue to present quality headline entertainment, in addition to re-concepting the existing restaurant," said Williams.

Previously: Yoshi's Is Becoming The Addition; Poison Guitarist Will Play The New Venue