111Places Sanfrancisco En.Pdf

Many San Franciscans shared their city secrets with us for this book. Special thanks are due to Barbara Roether and Mark MacNamara, who contributed not only suggestions but history, background, and literary inspiration. — F.P. © Emons Verlag GmbH All rights reserved All photographs © Steve Werney, except page 32 (photo by Melissa Kaseman), courtesy of Te Battery cover icon: Istockphoto.com © soberve Edited by Katrina Fried Design: Eva Kraskes, based on a design by Lübbeke | Naumann | Toben Maps: altancicek.design, www.altancicek.de Printing and binding: Grafsches Centrum Cuno, Calbe Printed in Germany 2015 ISBN 978-3-95451-609-4 First edition Did you enjoy it? Do you want more? Join us in uncovering new places around the world on: www.111places.com Foreword In all my years living in San Francisco, I have never stopped discover- ing new places, hidden stairways, unexpected vistas, and stories embedded in every crevice. Strolling the city’s rolling terrain brings you face-to-face with these charming details, like the scrollwork on an old Victorian, an overgrown garden of jasmine in a concealed alley, or the lively salsa rhythms drifting out of an open window. For a city that is only seven miles wide and seven miles long, the diversity here is stunning; from musicians, artists, and hippies, to hipsters and entrepreneurs, its population refects every human shape, color, and spirit. It’s not only the people who have defned the neighborhoods, but the land itself: there are 14 hills across which the city rises and falls. In San Francisco, each hill, from Telegraph to Potrero, and every valley, from Noe to Hayes, has its own architecture, its own history, and even its own weather. Visitors often fnd it hard to comprehend that the sunny blue skies of the Mission District turn to cold and fog just over Twin Peaks. Locals know to dress for the many micro- climates, and expect the sudden shifts in temperature. In many ways, extremes are in the DNA of San Francisco, a notion that becomes ever clearer as you delve into the city’s storied past. During the Gold Rush, the population went from around 1,000 in 1848 to 30,000 in 1850; and by 1855, almost 300,000 people lived here. For decades San Francisco was the only outpost of real civilization west of the Rockies. 1848 may seem new by European standards, but for the American West, this is the old mother city. All cities change; the recent boom in Silicon Valley has made the Bay Area a new playground for young millionaires. People, and wealth, come and go quickly here, but the landscape – the purple headlands jutting into the Pacifc, the island-scattered bay, the fog pouring over the Golden Gate Bridge – is as stoic and enduring as Nature itself. 111 Places 1_ 140 New Montgomery It’s all about communication | 10 2_ 826 Valencia Reading, writing, and “Ahoy, matey!” | 12 3_ 1450 Noriega Street Where the heiress robbed a bank | 14 4_ Alhambra Teater A cinematic workout | 16 5_ Anchor Brewing Company Born and brewed in San Francisco | 18 6_ Te Antique Vibrator Museum A history of good vibrations | 20 7_ Arion Press Lost and foundry | 22 8_ Te Armory Where kink is king | 24 9_ Te Audium Seeing with your ears | 26 10_ Balmy Alley Murals Struggle and change | 28 11_ Bar Agricole Keeping it local | 30 12_ Te Battery Club Old world, new school | 32 13_ Te Bay Lights Te Bay Bridge gets its bling | 34 14_ Te Beach & Park Chalet Upstairs, downstairs, in Golden Gate Park | 36 15_ Te Beat Museum Still on the road | 38 16_ Billionaires’ Row Life on the Gold Coast | 40 17_ Bliss Dance Forty feet of female energy | 42 18_ Te Bohemian Club A private place for powerful men | 44 19_ Bourbon & Branch Te password-protected speakeasy | 46 20_ Buena Vista Park A magical hush | 48 21_ Building One A sinking treasure | 50 22_ Building 95 If a tree falls in the forest … | 52 23_ Candlestick Park Long live the ’stick | 54 24_ Casa Cielo “Sunny Jim” Rolph’s love nest | 56 25_ Chinese Telephone Exchange 1500 names on the tip of the tongue | 58 26_ Clarion Alley Tese walls can talk | 60 27_ Te Cloud Forest Communing with nature on Mount Sutro | 62 28_ Te Condor Club Death by piano | 64 29_ Conservatory of Flowers Home to the beautiful and the bizarre | 66 30_ Cow Palace From moo to Who | 68 31_ Creativity Explored Art for all | 70 32_ Crissy Field From airfeld to House of Air | 72 33_ Dashiell Hammett’s Apartment Where the Maltese Falcon took fight | 74 34_ Te F-Line A journey back in time | 76 35_ Flora Grubb Gardens Cofee and air plants, anyone? | 78 36_ Te Fly-Casting Pools Angling for a good time | 80 37_ Fog Bridge A walk in the clouds at the Exploratorium | 82 38_ Forbes Island & Te Taj Mahal Boats by any other name | 84 1__140 New Montgomery It’s all about communication Te Pacifc Telephone Building rose up at 140 Montgomery Street to be San Francisco’s frst skyscraper. It was built in 1925 for $4 million and provided ofces for 2,000 workers, mostly women. With its fresh look of verticality and its Art Deco lobby, including the reddish ceiling full of unicorns, phoenixes, and clouds, the building suggested a new style of workplace. Dressed in highly refective, granite-colored terra-cotta exterior panels, it presided over the city for 40 years. Te architect was Timothy Pfueger (1892 – 1946), a San Francisco native, who – in the wake of the 1906 earthquake – never went to college yet found his way to the feld of architecture and interior design. Following Prohibition, Pfueger’s interiors graced the city’s most renowned cocktail lounges, most notably the Patent Leather Bar at the St. Francis Hotel. Other well-known Pfueger buildings include the Castro and Alhambra theaters (see p. 16), and 450 Sutter street. He also designed buildings for the Olympic Club, the quintessential West Coast men’s club, of which he, himself, was a member. One night, after his customary swim, he dropped dead from a heart attack on the street outside. Pfueger’s inspiration for 140 Montgomery was a never-built skyscraper imagined by the great Finnish architect, Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen. Now, almost 90 years after it was built, the 26-story building is lost in the glass-and-steel forest that has grown around it. Yet it remains not only an architectural landmark, but also a symbol of the city’s focus on communications: Pacifc Telephone was a cutting- edge company in its day. Te building’s main client now is Yelp, the online review site. Today, the interior includes various “perks” typical of the modern, progressive, start-up workplace culture, such as showers for commuters and a bike repair shop built inside a former wood-paneled boardroom. 10 Address 140 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105 | Getting there Bus: 8 X (3rd St & Howard St stop); 10, 12 (2nd St & Howard St stop) | Tip Te restaurant and bar Trou Normand next door ofers delicious charcuterie. 2__826 Valencia Reading, writing, and “Ahoy, matey!” Tis city is full of creative characters and always has been, and writer Dave Eggers is among the most honorable examples. Eggers is a genuine renaissance fellow, a Bono of words, whose 2000 block- buster memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, became a way to parlay his literary wits and profts into various collaborations, some of which involve methods for teaching kids how to read and write and teachers how to inspire their students. In 2002 Eggers teamed up with educator and advocate Nínive Calegari to organize a one-on-one tutoring program for kids. He found a location at 826 Valencia Street, which in those days was in a “shopping-hood” with retro furniture stores and a Santeria shop. Te idea was to run his quarterly literary magazine and publishing company, McSweeneys, out of the same building, and have his staf and community of writers and editors work with the neighborhood kids after school. From the start, the charter was to draw students into a space where imagination was king, and where writing was respected and explored. To make it a going concern, Eggers and Calegari opened up a pirate-supply store in the front of the building, where you can pick up practically anything an aspiring or practicing swashbuckler might need – from peg legs and mermaid bait (or repellant), to eye patches and planks sold by the foot. Although the shop was created as a means to an end, it is an enchantment in its own right, not to mention a terrifc magnet for potential pupils. After all, who wouldn’t rather do their homework surrounded by pirate paraphernalia instead of at their kitchen table? Incidentally, 826 Valencia has nonproft extensions in seven other cities across the country. Programs for kids ages 6 to 18 include tutoring, publishing, and college and career training, along with parallel opportunities for teachers. 12 Address 826 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110, www.826valencia.org, +1 415.642.905 | Getting there Bus: 33 (18th St & Valencia St stop) | Hours Daily 12 – 6pm | Tip Stop at Dandelion Chocolate at 740 Valencia Street. You can sit in the front cafe and watch the chocolate-making process in the factory in the back. 3__1450 Noriega Street Where the heiress robbed a bank In the 1970s, the Outer Sunset District was an increasingly Asian suburb far removed from downtown. On the corner of Noriega and 22nd Avenue stands what was then a branch of the Hibernia Savings & Loan.

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