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rteen year old boy those red light bulbs outlining her silhouette on the marquee nipples and all were the most magnificent thing i had ever seen in my young life channel 36 even used her silhouette as their station id only in san francisco her act was something else entirely she d descend from the ceiling on a white grand piano hydraulics lowering her onto the stage years later after hours one night in 1983 the club s bouncer jimmy the beard ferrozzo and his girlfriend decided the piano would make a romantic venue for a private performance of their own in the heat of the moment someone hit the switch the piano rose to the ceiling and crushed jimmy the beard to death his girlfriend survived only because she was thinner the janitor found them both when the club opened at 7am only in san francisco san francisco has always had a tawdry streak going back to the barbary coast days and it never much apologized for it but what happens in san francisco doesn t stay in san francisco its influence goes global even the darker corners of american culture got transformed here jim and artie mitchell a couple of okie kids from concord who learned filmmaking at sf state opened the o farrell theatre out in the tenderloin on july 4th 1969 and proceeded to drag an entire industry into the mainstream they took a fresh faced ivory soap girl named marilyn chambers and made her a cultural icon in behind the green door hunter s thompson called the o farrell the carnegie hall of public sex in america and basically lived there when he was on the west coast the mitchell brothers were outlaw brilliant fast living bright burning and like thompson they didn t exactly fade quietly jim shot artie in 1991 cocaine and chaos having finally taken their toll convicted of manslaughter the era ended the way it probably had to the mitchell brothers wow ok i digress back to north beach fisherman s wharf in the late 60s and early 70s was still a working wharf don t let anyone tell you different the smell of boiling dungeness crab hit you a block before you arrived crab cocktails were a buck or two served in those little paper cups with the tiny forks and ripley s believe it or not was there as a kid the building itself was a little disappointing but you could buy these paperbacks collecting the original ripley cartoons and those were worth every penny what i remember most was a giant faucet floating in midair water pouring out of it into a barrel below with nothing holding it up no pipes no supports nothing i stood there for a long time trying to figure that one out the original cost plus before it became a chain selling wine and crackers in strip malls was a maze of connected warehouses with holes knocked through the walls white porcelain jade tapestries rugs that smelled like camel piss when wet and coffee whole bins of it origin stuff i d never heard of kenya aa sumatra guatemala antigua my first espresso drinks the whole glorious mess smelled like the world pier 39 didn t exist yet this was before the sea lions before the souvenir shops before the tourists had fully taken over just the boats the crab pots the fishermen and the smell of the bay the marina was the city s front lawn young beautiful athletic the neighborhood that jogged before jogging was a thing the bay views from the green were as good as it got fourth of july meant staking out a spot two days early blankets and lawn chairs marking territory like it was normandy the marina safeway was basically a singles bar disguised as a grocery store everyone knew it nobody admitted it and garbage night was its own parade twenty somethings cruising the curbs for rich people s castoffs before candlestick the 49ers played at kezar stadium tucked into the eastern edge of golden gate park this was 1970 maybe earlier parking was a nightmare you d end up in the panhandle or god forbid the haight my dad had opinions about that too but kezar had a gritty charm that candlestick never quite matched the giants even played there briefly it felt like football was supposed to feel close loud and slightly dangerous but kezar was just the entry point golden gate park itself was its own universe and the thing that still stops me is that every inch of it was made by human hands sand dunes the whole thing was nothing but sand dunes before they went to work on it like central park conjured from nothing into something that feels like it was always there miles of gorgeous grass eucalyptus trees and a few bison wandering around because why not the japanese tea garden was mandatory tea and fortune cookies in one of the most serene spots in any city anywhere and the academy of sciences that place made me who i am a giant alligator display you peered down into from above dinosaurs taxidermy that made the natural world feel enormous and close at the same time a planetarium that tilted your whole understanding of where you were standing and the aquarium that s probably where i first fell in love with fish it was a magical place for a young nerd and i mean that as the highest possible compliment the haight you didn t wander in there casually in 1970 my dad had opinions about hippies and parking near kezar meant you were going to hear about them on the walk back to the car but even as a kid you could feel it something had happened here and the ghost of it was still warm the grateful dead lived on ashbury jefferson airplane had that mansion up on fulton janis was gone by then but her presence was still around every corner the haight ashbury free clinic was already a neighborhood institution dr david smith opened it in 1967 because someone had to because the kids flooding into the summer of love needed a doctor who wasn t going to judge them or turn them in he just showed up and helped that same instinct would define the city again fifteen years later being gay in america then meant hiding coming out carried risks that are hard to imagine today san francisco was one of the few places you could actually live openly and then aids came for exactly that community the free clinic was among the first to see it kaposi s sarcoma young men wasting away no name for it yet no treatment no answers i lost friends you d find out someone was gay and that they had died in the same sentence san francisco was grieving while the rest of the country looked away the city that showed up for the runaways in 67 showed up again it s just what san francisco does when i lived in the city in the mid 80s i was on octavia and i d walk to polk street and catch the 19 polk gulch was the original gay neighborhood the white swallow bar was right across from the bus stop i watched that neighborhood every day from the bus by then the castro had taken over as the center of gravity but polk still had its scene the castro theatre anchored the neighborhood and the brunch spots had waiters who looked like the electrician from the village people cutoffs tank tops mustaches mirrored sunglasses the place to be was the patio cafe on castro street from the outside it looked like nothing standard storefront easy to walk past but you d push through the door and suddenly you were in this massive lush sun soaked greenhouse atrium plants everywhere light pouring in the whole neighborhood seemingly packed into every table eggs benedict bottomless mimosas poured with a generosity that bordered on civic duty and waiters who made the whole thing feel like theater it was legendary and it knew it halloween in the castro wasn t just a holiday it was the event on the gay calendar costumes drag queens leather guys and what felt like thousands of ethel mermans belting their way down market street it was joy defiance theater and community all rolled into one night a year in 1990 this preacher from texas larry lea decided he was going to purge the castro of sin he brought a busload of followers to san francisco on halloween night of all nights i heard about it and told my wife i m going to the city tonight she just said don t get arrested they had a revival at the civic center larry did his fire and brimstone thing and then the whole group came pouring out ready to march into the castro and bring jesus to sodom and gomorrah they were met by san francisco royalty the sisters of perpetual indulgence gay men in full nun habits whiteface makeup glitter lashes for days and with them dykes on bikes who have led every pride parade in the castro for as long as anyone can remember larry and his flock didn t stand a chance the sisters confronted them with camp and holiness and satire the dykes on bikes revved their engines and then i swear to god guys on stilts wearing assless chaps pressed their bare cheeks against the high bus windows a little pressed ham for the faithful larry and his crew turned right around got back on those buses and headed straight down market toward the bay bridge and whatever rock they d crawled out from under larry by the way later ran off with his church secretary after 27 years of marriage because of course he did san francisco wasn t having it not that night not ever i lived at 19th and geary for a while the alexandria theatre was right there and while i never set foot inside the place it made parking on weekends an absolute blood sport but the street itself was its own world great chinese food russian bakeries where the bread was serious business a kosher market near the ocean that felt like it had been there since the beginning of time on weekends i d grab my giant surf rod and head out to lands end you d walk past the ruins of the sutro baths this enormous victorian era public bathhouse that had burned and collapsed into the cliffs what was left were the old pool basins filled with dark water of indeterminate depth absolutely certain to be harboring some demonic water spirit waiting to grab you by the ankle with a tentacle cross the causeway to seal rocks and the whole pacific opened up in front of you waves hammering the rocks sea spray in your face sea lions hauled out and bellowing at nothing in particular and absolutely nothing between you and honshu on a good tide you had a shot at stripers or salmon at high tide it was genuinely suicidal slippery rock cold water nobody coming to help you if you hooked something you had to navigate back across that causeway and land it on the beach i never once thought this was a bad idea lands end it really was the perfect name saturdays were reserved for clement street chinatown west the locals called it real chinese food none of the tourist veneer of grant avenue the dim sum palaces were massive ornate rooms packed with chinese families doing what chinese families do on a saturday morning enjoying each other loud and unhurried over endless rounds of dumplings and tea you d point to what you wanted from the carts and at the end they d tally up your stack of plates after dim sum you walked it off browsing green apple books room after room of organized treasure the kind of bookstore that made you miss it before you d even left and the restaurants went well beyond chinese that s where i had my first rijsttafel the dutch indonesian feast of a dozen small dishes that arrived in waves and made you rethink everything you thought you knew about spice and indonesian spiced french fries that had absolutely no business being that good out in the outer richmond clement gets quieter mostly residential the energy bleeding south a block to geary but tucked in there was one gem that still brings a smile fairy lake blue discus palace at 1609 clement run by herman chan and his family since 1967 walking in felt like stepping through a portal old metal frame slate bottom tanks lining every wall the smell of fish food and aged water and something you couldn t quite name herman was a true master his hand bred discus turquoise reds wild crosses were unlike anything you d find anywhere else his jet black angelfish were a genetic masterpiece deep matte black without a single iridescent scale the result of generations of meticulous selection on any given day you could walk out with a portion of freshly hatched baby brine shrimp there was a resident shop cat the whole place felt like it existed outside of time which i suppose after fifty years it did for a guy in his mid twenties who was already half in love with fish it was church herman chan spent his whole life perfecting that craft places like that don t get replaced they just disappear and leave a specific kind of hole from the richmond you could head south cross golden gate park and find yourself in an entirely different city the sunset the first suburb that wasn t actually a suburb still firmly within the city limits but feeling like it belonged to a quieter slower san francisco fog stucco houses with curved corners pastel paint and hedges trimmed to match the architecture quiet residential its own ecosystem entirely stern grove concerts on summer afternoons free music in a natural amphitheater carved into the eucalyptus one of the great hidden pleasures of city life lake merced for trout fishing with marshmallows and pautzke balls o fire salmon eggs i can still smell the oil on my hands they held their own until powerbait came along and changed everything san francisco state was out there too still carrying the energy of the strikes and student movements that had shaken it a decade before the sunset didn t shout it just was fog rolling in off the pacific every afternoon like clockwork burning off by noon if you were lucky a neighborhood that felt like it belonged to the people who actually lived there which in san francisco was rarer than it sounds and through all of it the whole mad beautiful city of it i read herb caen religiously every morning in the chronicle three dots and a digression the city talking to itself through one man s typewriter the original blogger before anyone knew what that was a daily love letter to san francisco filed without fail for sixty years two hundred thousand words into my own rambling career as a writer old and in the way as garcia would say i still see herb everywhere in what i do the sidebars the anecdotes the way a thought trails off before it finds another one to chase and of course the three dots always the three dots a hat tip to a sacramento kid who adopted the city and made it sing i was just a sacramento kid who loved it from across the bay apparently i still do 2 comments filed under life tagged as california san francisco travel usa writing april 28 2026 8 53 pm prepping for the cpo i ve been preparing a proposal for the chief procurement officer aka mrs s for the purchase of my 2026 fishing licenses every year i buy a minnesota version a wisconsin version and this year an iowa version the wisconsin and iowa licenses are out of state so they re significantly more expensive than the minnesota version also and i forgot about this looking at my minnesota license from last year it s a three year license coolio one less discussion about putting joint family re...