| Pedestrian |
Mar 31, 2021 5:29 AM |
Quote:
In 'ghost town' San Francisco, explorer discovers signs of life
Carl Nolte
Feb. 20, 2021
Updated: Feb. 20, 2021 10:05 a.m.
I have to agree with what Mark Twain supposedly said on hearing of his own obituary: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” You could say the same about San Francisco.
So I headed from my humble home office down the hill to Mission Street. I stopped at Dianda’s Bakery near 25th Street to get a hot cross bun full of currants, raisins and tradition. They are a somewhat overlooked seasonal treat, baked only during Lent.
I dodged around the COVID vaccine station at 24th Street to get on a BART train headed downtown. It was only the second time in a year I’d ridden BART. There were only a handful of other passengers. We eyed each other warily, masked riders in the subway. I got off at Montgomery. The station was gleaming. No wonder, because it was empty. Up the long escalator to Market and Montgomery streets. I’m a city boy, so tall buildings still impress me. I noticed that the Starbucks at 44 Montgomery had a big sign: OPEN. Though it was nearly lunchtime, the place was empty except for a single barista. Downtown is a ghost town. Everybody knows that.
I headed up to Sam’s Grill on Bush Street, one of the oldest restaurants in the West. I gave the petrale sole a vote of confidence, as the late columnist Stanton Delaplane used to say, long ago, when a business lunch was a San Francisco ritual.
Sam’s is on Belden Place, where outdoor restaurants managed to get through some of the more draconian health regulations. The restaurants weren’t crowded, but they weren’t empty. Peter Quartaroli, the managing partner, thinks established places like Sam’s will survive the disaster that the pandemic has brought to the restaurant industry. And he’s optimistic about the city’s future, despite the reports of an urban exodus. “I think it will shake out,” he said. “The people who will be here will be the ones who want to live here,” he said.
I headed up to Old St. Mary’s Church at Grant Avenue and California Street. The church, built in 1854 on a foundation of granite imported from China, was one of the tallest buildings in California. The parish church is reportedly in financial trouble because of the pandemic — a symbol, it is said, of the virus on the very core of the city. It was locked up tight when I went by, but there are services every day, a symbol of the enduring nature of faith in the city.
These are the last days of the new year celebration, and this weekend would have seen the great Chinese New Year Parade winding sinuously from Downtown through Chinatown. Instead the parade became virtual.
Chinatown has suffered, too. Business is off, and times are tough. But a walk down Stockton Street shows the vitality of the community. It is quieter this season and Chinatown is not what it was, but it’s still there. Open-air markets selling fresh fruit and vegetables look busy, and there are all kinds of street life. This is the Year of the Ox, and ox pictures in red and gold are everywhere.
I ducked down Ross Alley, the oldest of San Francisco’s hundreds of alleyways, past the Golden Gate Fortune Cookies Co., past the Sweetheart Cafe. Arnold Genthe took pictures in Ross Alley in the 19th century when it was called the Street of Gamblers, and a scene from an Indiana Jones movie was filmed in Ross Alley. I don’t think there is any other city in the West that has a place like this.
I headed up Grant and cut into Kerouac Alley, which leads from Chinatown to North Beach, two worlds in a single little street, not a block long. It is an alley lined with poetry and murals, some of them new.
Then up Columbus Avenue, past the City Lights Bookstore, past the Molinari Delicatessen, to Green Street. The block between Columbus and Grant has been transformed by the virus, and in a surprising way. When the city’s restaurants were shut down more than a year ago and outside dining was permitted, Green Street exploded with nearly a dozen sidewalk restaurants, most of them elaborate.
There was nothing quite like it in San Francisco only a year ago. Now Valencia Street, Divisadero Street and Hayes Valley are full of restaurants built on parklets. But Green Street is the original and champion.
I sat there for a while in the warm afternoon sun of the last days of winter, in front of Gino & Carlo, a bar and sometime restaurant, sipping a glass of wine, thinking of techies who bailed out to Austin only to be caught in a Texas snowstorm.
As the afternoon wore on, it became a sort of street party; people kept dropping by. It seemed as if everybody knew everybody else.
“You know it reminds me of something I saw in Italy,” said Marco Rossi, whose family has owned Gino & Carlo for years. “About 4 in the afternoon, people stop what they were doing and they come by restaurants, and they have some food and they drink and talk. I think they call that ‘passegato,’ or something like that.” He could have meant “guardare il passaggio,” which means “to promenade.” Or maybe not. We took a sip of wine.
How’s business, I asked. “Good,” he said. “Gino & Carlo’s customers are loyal. And thirsty. God bless them.”
So maybe Mark Twain was right. The obituary is premature.
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https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/...photo-20630554 |
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