San Francisco: How it transformed from 'Nowheresville' to boomtown

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This was published 6 years ago

San Francisco: How it transformed from 'Nowheresville' to boomtown

By Guy Wilkinson
North Beach homes, apartments and Saints Peter and Paul Church.

North Beach homes, apartments and Saints Peter and Paul Church.

There was a place in the mid 1800s said to be the most dangerous on earth. It was a place where knives and guns were cheap, a human life cheaper still, where prostitution, racketeering and murder were as common as the north-westerly fog banks rolling in off the ocean.

Unlikely as it may seem, this place was San Francisco.

A few years earlier, nothing could be further from the truth. In the early 1840s it was barely even a settlement, more a small trading village inhabited by a few Californios, priests, Indian converts and a smattering of soldiers.

Suitably ramshackle: The Beat Museum at North Beach, San Francisco.

Suitably ramshackle: The Beat Museum at North Beach, San Francisco.

"It was the last place anybody wanted to be; the end of the world," says our guide Martin Allen, a historian and high school teacher originally from Massachusetts.

"They were bitter; they hated the fog and the climate, if you were a Mexican soldier stationed here, chances are you must have slept with your commander's wife."

Teaching aside, Allen is a guide with Walk SF Tours, a burgeoning operator specialising in the more unique aspects of the city's history. Having just moved here, I've joined his Guns and Gold excursion to discover more about the place I now call home.

It's a crisp night as we wander the backstreets of Chinatown, a blaze of neon cutting through the dank fog.

When gold was first discovered in 1848, it was mainly Peruvians, Chileans and other Latin Americans that first headed north to mine the fields. The following year, however, word spread like the dust cloud of an atom bomb and soon, men from all over the world were scrambling to the west coast in search of riches.

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The transition from "Nowheresville" to boom town was as sudden as it was dramatic; sailors jumped ship, fathers abandoned families and a population of 90 per cent men under the age of 30 meant trouble was never far away.

Our first stop for the night is Alfred's, San Francisco's oldest steakhouse whose side alley location belies a posh interior of deep red leather booths and low lit chic. As Allen explains, such establishments have always served as an unofficial place of power to cut deals beneath the veneer of fine wine and conviviality. It was to his considerable mirth that President Trump headed straight to a steakhouse in the wake of his recent election win.

Ingeniously, the tour has been themed around three historic cocktails, each in a different bar. We begin with The Last Word, a mix of gin, absinthe and chartreuse that was popular during the prohibition era. The taste is sharp and striking, the flavours almost pulling in different directions but somehow simultaneously complimenting each other.

Still buzzing from its effects, we head on to Commercial Street, originally the waterfront district before it was filled in and built upon to become what is now the Embarcadero area. Walking the pavement, it's strange to think the remnants of hundreds of raised ships still lie beneath us.

Many of the early sailors arriving here were Australian convicts coming as stowaways to escape from Down Under. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they soon formed the first official criminal syndicate known as The Sydney Ducks. Renowned arsonists, they would wait for the sundowner winds before setting fire to canvas tents made from abandoned ship sails; hurriedly ripping off casinos while others battled the flames.

Their infamous reign came to a bleak end when prominent American settler and publishing tycoon Sam Brannan ordered a dozen Australians to walk the plank, his "Vigilance Committee" form of vigilante justice proving as effective as it was controversial.

As San Francisco developed into a world-class port after the Civil War, sailors had it worst, especially in the dive and brothel laden district known as The Barbary Coast. Many a man was Shanghaied during this time, his beer or whisky spiked with opium, "the Mickey Finn" only to wake up at sea with two stark choices; work or starve. With ships sailing in a perpetually westerly direction back then, it could take a Shanghaied sailor two years to reach home again, only to find his wife and kids legally married and adopted by another man.

The record holder for supplying these unfortunate souls to unscrupulous captains was James Kelly, better known as Shanghai Kelly, said to have supplied enough men to operate three understaffed ships in a single evening. His villainy came full circle when he was Shanghaied himself before meeting a bloody end in a knife fight with one of his formerly Shanghaied victims.

Our next respite from the elements is Doc Ricketts, a swish cocktail bar named after a doctor who, despite being shamed out of his profession, was covertly lauded for making the best hooch in Monterey during prohibition. The Pisco punch, a blend of pisco – a Peruvian grape – brandy, pineapple and lemon juice was a favourite with Mark Twain and is the only drink on the tour invented in San Francisco.

There are many other facets to the excursion. At Jackson Square, one of the oldest surviving quarters of the city, we learn why the city built cisterns in intersections, why a whisky warehouse was the reason for one of the few blocks to survive the blazing fires following the 1906 earthquake and why an infamous strip around the corner known as Terrific Pacific became one of the only racially mixed hubs in America during the 1910s.

The tour winds up at the Comstock Saloon in North Beach. Though the original bar burned down in 1906, the modern incarnation has been rebuilt to evoke the speakeasy era. Inside, a kicking live jazz band performs on a mezzanine floor above a sharp-dressed crowd knocking back cocktails amid oak-panelled furnishings.

We round off the night with a Cherry Bounce, a delightful fusion of bourbon, champagne, brandied cherry juice and bitters that has me wishing I'd stocked up on Alka-Seltzer before leaving home.

Having caught the history bug, I team up a few days later with Val Hendrickson, another Walk SF guide who spearheads the North Beach Underground Tour. Dressed in a black flat cap and dark glasses, a white goatee adorning his chin, he oozes an air of bohemian elan, an image distinctly in keeping with the theme of the tour.

We head down Kerouac Alley, a pedestrian-only thoroughfare flanked with trippy murals and quotes from everyone from John Steinbeck to Kerouac himself.

Many of the "Beats" as they came to be known ended up in San Francisco thanks largely to Neal Cassady, the flamboyant countercultural figure who subsequently featured as the character Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's seminal novel, On the Road.

Having courted friendships with jazz musicians and prize fighters, Cassady's rapid fire delivery, eschewing of materialism and fondness for a new style of non-conformist literature helped sparked a generational movement rejecting conservative post World War II values.

Many of these beatniks would congregate in the bars and coffee shops of North Beach and the neighbourhood still retains something of a grungier air.

Following Hendrickson through a maze of streets skirting Chinatown, we pass the apartment where Allen Ginsberg – another massively influential Beat figure – is said to have written, Howl, the epoch-making poem that subsequently became a landmark case in relaxing US censorship laws.

Onwards to Grant Avenue, a strip that gained notoriety with beatniks following the publication of On the Road, we pass endless coffee shops, record and book stores that make it easy to imagine the scene back in the mid 1950s.

Periodically Hendrickson points to areas of cultural significance with an amiable nonchalance: "Oh, that's Caffe Trieste where Francis Ford Coppola penned The Godfather screenplay in the backroom."

Our outing culminates at The Beat Museum, an endearingly ramshackle affair with threadbare carpets and worn furniture that would do Cassady himself proud. Opened in 2003 it's stuffed full of memorabilia, anything from original manuscripts to the 1949 Hudson used in Walter Salles' 2012 film, On the Road.

After parting ways, I feel it would be remiss not to toast our literary forefathers, so on Hendrickson's suggestion I duck into Vesuvio Cafe on Columbus Avenue for a cocktail.

Founded in 1948 by Henri Lenoir, this was the favourite haunt of anyone from Cassady to Dylan Thomas or Bob Dylan. A rowdy joint in its heyday, legend has it that Lenoir would etch the name of especially unruly patrons in the cement out front to ensure they could never set foot inside again.

When I enter, there are no such rabble rousers but there's a wonderfully historic air with stained glass lampshades, framed beat memorabilia on the walls and an upstairs deck encircling a line of barflies below.

Inherently this is the beauty of such tours. Beyond the obvious educational benefits – and the guides certainly know their history – it's also a window into these kinds of places, the sort you would otherwise likely walk straight past, oblivious to the pedigree lying beyond that creaky front door.

It's a way of piecing together the historical jigsaw of one of America's best loved cities while sampling a few damn fine cocktails in the process.

And who can argue with that?

TRIP NOTES

MORE

traveller.com.au/usa

sftravel.com

TOUR

Walk SF Tours offer three excursions operating on specific days of the week. They include Guns & Gold in Downtown SF, $69; North Beach Underground, $25; and Handcrafted in Dogpatch, $79. Some drinks included. Phone + 1 415 779 5879 or see walksftours.com

FLY

Qantas flies direct from Sydney to San Francisco up to six times a week. See Qantas.com

STAY

Scarlet Huntington blends Singapore Straits Chinese heritage with modern luxury at a prime location on Nob Hill with rooms from around $US429 a night. See thescarlethotels.com/huntington-hotel-san-francisco/

Guy Wilkinson was a guest of Walk SF Tours.

ALSO CHECK OUT AFTER THE TOUR…

CITY LIGHTS BOOK STORE

Opposite Vesuvio Cafe and next to Kerouac Alley this landmark independent bookseller is among the best in the city. See citylights.com

THE SALOON BAR

The oldest saloon in San Francisco is a stone's throw from the tour's ending point. It's the best live blues venue in the city. See sfblues.net/Saloon.html

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