A Farewell to Martita

Martita Timiriasieff (Dec. 21, 1954 – Oct. 13, 2023)

Martita Timiriasieff, 68, passed away on Friday the 13th. Larger than life, loving and hilarious, Martita was born in Puerto Rico and made her mark on the world in her beloved San Francisco following sojourns in Boston and New York with stints at Emerson and NYU.
 
A career retail worker with deep roots in San Francisco’s dance community, Martita became one of the people who make it The City. She fitted thousands of dancers, performers, and students in her 35-year career at Capezio downtown and later the 1887 Dance Shoppe on Union Street.
 
In the 1970s Martita was an instructor at the Anna Constance Studio in Santurce, Puerto Rico and the San Francisco Conservatory of Theatre & Ballet. She went on to manage Augusta’s Restaurant in Berkeley and Sushi Kinta, Hyde Plaza Café, and the Golden Venus Health Spa in San Francisco.
 
Martita’s garden courtyard became an epicenter of the lower Nob Hill community and a real-life Barbary Lane in the 1990s. Photos of her garden were featured in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1996. She was a deeply loyal and caring friend who always had an ear and an insight, backed up by a side-splitting anecdote.
 
Martita lived passionately. She loved cooking and gardening, food and wine, music and dance, art, Lina Wertmuller, Jersey Kosinski, Dianne Feinstein, Dynasty, Thanksgiving, Boucheron perfume, LINES and SF Ballet, Beach Blanket Babylon, South America, yoga, The Rolling Stones, animals, oceans, sunshine, Erika Kane, and her friends.
 
Preceded in death by her parents Ivan V. (John) Timiriasieff and Margaret (Maggie) Graham Timiriasieff, and her cats Tochka, Handsome, Charcoal, and Sabor. Survived by her cat, Samantha, her brother, John Timiriasieff Jr., and the friends that were her family: Molly, Syam, Roger, Kimberly, John, Stephanie, Samuel, Erik, Anna, Chris, Trish, Jeff, and Hank.