San Francisco, California
by Troy Herrick
San Francisco never ceases to entertain. The city is diverse, exciting and cosmopolitan. No matter how many times you visit, there is always something new to see. But the city hasn’t always been this refined. Between 1849 and 1917, the city enjoyed a raucous reputation known as “the Barbary Coast” period. The Barbary Coast, the original red light district, acquired its name around 1860 from the coast of North Africa where Arab pirates attacked Mediterranean ships.
The Barbary Coast arose with the infusion of prospectors seeking their fortune in the California gold fields and the Comstock silver lode in Nevada. This boom-town was well-stocked with saloons, gambling halls, brothels and opium dens. Just about every vice known to man was made available to these “49ers” as a means of separating the men from their gold and silver. While these dens of iniquity are long-gone, you can still visit many of these former sites.
Labor was scarce as passengers and crew jumped ship to seek their fortune. This problem was alleviated with the practice of shanghaiing – signing up sailors by coercion. Prospective sailors, no experience required, were slipped a “Mickey Finn” (opium) in their drink then dropped down a trap door in the saloon floor. This may be where the expression “down the hatch” originated. Upon awakening, they would find themselves unwilling crew members on an outbound ship destined for a two year tour.
The Old Ship Saloon is the only remaining “shanghaiing” bar from the Barbary Coast era. At the front door, you find a decorative model ship hanging overhead. Inside you find a brown wooden ceiling and scenes of early “Frisco”, as the sailors called it, hanging on the wall. Seating myself in the corner, I ordered a pint of steam beer, a San Francisco tradition, and asked the waitress where the trap door was. She was reluctant to tell me. For the next 30 minutes, I gingerly sipped my beer and kept a watchful eye on the patrons who were seated around the bar. After finishing my beer without incident, I was informed that the trap door is only used when people don’t pay the bill.
Those who were not shanghaied often frequented the local dance halls. Exit the Old Ship Saloon and walk approximately three blocks to the Hippodrome. Now an art supply store, the sidewalls of the entrance are still graced with the original white bas-reliefs of dancing nude nymphs. Superficially this establishment catered to lonely men but it also housed a secret tunnel used for smuggling goods and people. Descend the stairs into the basement and face the wall at the front of building. In the far right corner you find the entrance to a now walled-off tunnel approximately 15 feet long with 10 foot high arched ceiling.
Lonely men seeking more intimate contact with the opposite sex could visit the brothels lining what are now known as Maiden Lane and Commercial Street. Maiden Lane brothels catered to Johns at the lower end of the socio-economic scale while the Commercial Street bordellos, staffed by French madams, served a more genteel clientele. Today visitors to Maiden Lane find that stores like Prada and Hermes have replaced the bawdy houses where women literally hung out of windows to beckon the Johns inside. Commercial Street (between Kearny and Grant Avenues) on the other hand is now a rather drab looking block at the edge of Chinatown.
A history of more vice follows in Chinatown’s Ross Alley (“the Street of the Gamblers”). Walking along, you find many of the doors in the alleyway covered by metal gates. Any one of these doorways potentially leads to a former gambling or opium den. While nothing from this time is clearly visible, it is not difficult to imagine men and women sprawled out in a drowsy or completely overcome condition. While you proceed through the alley, stop by the Golden Gate Fortune Cookies factory for a free sample and see how that product is made.
The raucous Barbary Coast was not to last. By 1900, the original harbor-front was enclosed behind a seawall thereby changing the landscape along the waterfront. Visitors should note that the Transamerica Pyramid now sits on the former shoreline. The 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire leveled many of the drinking and dancing establishments; and a number of laws were passed which forced many of the vices underground.
Those wishing to view some of the vessels that plied the waters around San Francisco during the Barbary Coast period should visit the San Francisco Maritime Museum and the Hyde Street Pier. The main attraction is the sailing ship Balclutha with its square rigged masts. While this is not one of the schooners that employed shanghaied sailors, it evokes an earlier time when unfurled sails and a gust of wind signified the start of a long sea voyage.
When you complete your visit to the maritime museum, take the short walk up the street to the Buena Vista Café for an Irish Coffee. Sip your drink slowly and savor every taste as this is not something that should go “down the hatch”.
The Real San Francisco Chinatown Food Tour
If You Go:
♦ The Old Ship Saloon is located at 298 Pacific Avenue.
♦ The Hippodrome is located at 555 Pacific Avenue.
♦Maiden Lane (known as Morton Street during the Barbary Coast era) is a small street just off the east side of Union Square.
♦The Golden Gate Fortune Cookies factory is at 56 Ross Alley in Chinatown.
♦The SF Maritime Museum is at 499 Jefferson Street near Fisherman’s Wharf. The Hyde Street Pier is across the street from the Maritime Museum. Admission to the boats is $5.
♦The Buena Vista Café is at 2765 Hyde Street at Beach Street.
♦For more information about San Francisco, visit www.plan-a-dream-trip.com/san-francisco.htm
♦Plan your vacation at: www.plan-a-dream-trip.com www.plan-a-dream-trip.com
San Francisco Chinatown Ghost Walking Tour
About the author:
Troy Herrick, a freelance travel writer, has traveled extensively in North America, the Caribbean, Europe and parts of South America. His articles have appeared in Live Life Travel, International Living, Offbeat Travel and Travels Thru History Magazines. He also penned the travel planning e-book entitled ”Turn Your Dream Vacation into Reality: A Game Plan for Seeing the World the Way You Want to See It” based on his own travel experiences over the years.
Photo credits:
All photos are by Diane Gagnon, a freelance photographer who has traveled extensively in North America, the Caribbean, Europe and parts of South America. Her photographs have accompanied Troy Herrick’s articles in Live Life Travel, Offbeat Travel and Travel Thru History magazines:
Entrance to The Hippodrome
Maiden Lane
The Old Ship Saloon
Ross Alley
Sailing Ship Balclutha
The park, designed by the famous Olmstead brothers of New York City’s Central Park fame, combines both the best of man’s landscaping ideas with Mother Nature’s unspoiled beauty. The area is prefaced by basalt rock formations jutting out everywhere. In the midst of the unspoiled habitat, my eyes were captivated by a stone bridge built in the 1930s. Even on a warm, sunny afternoon with the public out hiking, biking, or admiring one of the six gardens (including for lilacs and roses), I felt a real sense of calmness and peace in a place that once was a zoo, until the hard times of the Great Depression caused its closure. At the north central end of the park, one can still see remnants of the bear’s habitat, as just behind the Park Bench Café resides a basalt rock formation that has iron bars sticking out of it.
Tree-lined avenues to walk on are especially welcome during a balmy morning, which the Browne’s Addition provided for me. About a five-minute drive west of downtown, it was established in 1883, making it one of Washington State’s oldest neighborhoods whose homes include a mix of small and large dwellings and an array of 1970s and 1980s apartment complexes.
The spacious Campbell House, one of the inspired designs of architect Kirtland Cutter, offers tours. On the first and second floor, I got to view the family’s living quarters and Campbell’s personal office space. Guests get to see what life was life for the servants, who worked primarily in the basement. Here, 19th century lighting has been recreated (using old Thomas Edison reproduction light bulbs) to show how little light Campbell’s staff had while doing the laundry and other chores, which explains why there are windows in the basement for extra lighting. The property’s carriage house has plenty of exhibits that go over the history of the family and the late 19th and early 20th century times in Spokane. As big and dated as the house is, there’s been no reported haunting, even though it’s a bit creepy to explore. I took lots of pictures, and found no traces of orbs or ghosts.
I took another tour of another famous Browne’s Addition house, The Roberts Mansion, also located on 1st Ave. It’s an 1889 Queen Anne Victorian home that serves as a bed and breakfast. The interior has been restored to reflect earlier times, but does offer guests the creature comforts of internet access and plasma TVs. I found the most notable aspect of the property in its backyard. It contains a “Secret Garden,” which is easily missed by guests because large shrubs obscure it, but once inside, it offered me a peaceful setting to rest in while surrounded by trees and other plant life. No wonder this place is used to host intimate gatherings.
Dating back to the late 1800s, the South Perry District offered me a more rugged and vibrant city experience than the historic tranquility of the above two neighborhoods. It has blue collar roots, for its first businesses included a couple of lumberyards and a butcher shop. The most conspicuous landmark is located on the main drag of South Perry Street. It’s a Dutch windmill that originally housed a bakery, but has since had many businesses in it. Currently, there’s a health food and herbal store there, where I got some real black licorice made out of licorice root extract.
I walked over the waterlogged ground to the nine slave cabins that were in the front yard. The cabins are made from brick, which is incredibly unusual for the time because most were made out of wood. Visitors would have seen these cabins first before the main house, and the reasoning was that if the slave cabins were made from brick, you knew you were entering a wealthy plantation. Each cabin would have housed between 6-12 people, mainly house slaves as the field slaves would have lived in wooden cabins in the fields. (There was a hierarchy among the enslaved, and you were considered ‘higher up’ on the scale if you worked in the house.)
In each cabin, there was a small exhibition on the life of a slave and what happened to them after the Civil War. Quotes by Frederick Douglass, the fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and former slave Harriet Tubman adorned the walls. Tubman, my personal heroine, declared “there is either liberty or death, and if I can’t have one, I will have the other.” Standing in those slave cabins was the most surreal moment of my life so far. I had read about slavery for five years, imagined what life must have been like for a slave living in the heart of South Carolina, or in the humidity of Louisiana, but nothing came close to standing in that cabin, feeling the marks of fingerprints on the walls, and looking out of the window to stare at the alley of oak trees. Feeling the dust beneath my feet and staring at the broken pieces of glass, animal bone and metal. What would the enslaved have experienced within these walls? Loss and sacrifice. Heartbreak and death. Love and defiance. Survival. These slave cabins bridge the gap between two completely different worlds. We may never be able to recover the memories or the stories that scream to be heard, but the cabins stand as strong and silent testimony to those that lived and worked here. It was an incredibly moving experience, and one that I shall never forget.
After the presentation I rushed to the ‘Big House’ for my tour, an elegant home that is still lived in. Unfortunately, you were not allowed to take photographs, and the tour was confined to the library, the study and the dining room. Little was mentioned about the role of the slaves within the house, but the tour was interesting nonetheless. It was beautiful, although not as grand as some of the plantations you will find in Louisiana. Perhaps that is a good thing, depending on your taste. And so concluded my powerful trip to Boone Hall. I made my way to the car park, which now resembled a small river, and carefully drove down the alley of oak trees, this time in the sunshine. The best destinations are those that stir the soul, pull at the heartstrings or blow us away with their beauty. For me, Boone Hall managed to do all three.
As I walked through the downtown area, I couldn’t help but notice just how much brick, stone, and terra cotta dominated the exteriors of the buildings. This came about after the fire in 1889, which destroyed 32 blocks. One of the city’s landmarks, Steam Plant Square, once provided much of the steam heat and electrical power for the city from 1916-1986, then it would remained neglected for ten years. To make a long story short, the building has been restored with some of its original infrastructure in tact that helps make the existing businesses and offices a unique place to explore or work in.
But I also savored some great-tasting beer and fish inside the landmark at the Stacks at Steam Plant. It has an intimate atmosphere dominated by an industrial brown and black motif. I dined amidst the factory’s old fixtures. The restaurant features a full menu of seafood, beef, chicken, and pasta dishes and brews its own beer, including one uniquely-flavored and really smooth tasting Double Stack Stout, which contains chocolate, vanilla, and espresso. I highly recommend the Smoked Steelhead, which has a taste to die for, as the fish was smoked over alder wood and brined in the restaurant’s Highland and Scottish ale and spices.
As a travel writer, a hotel is generally the first and last place I visit during a stay in a city. I’m more concerned about its functionality than anything else. Yet I couldn’t appreciate Spokane’s history without appreciating the history of a hotel that helped put Spokane on the map, The Davenport Hotel.
I’m impressed with Art Deco design, and in the heart of downtown an old movie house that originally showed 20th Century Fox pictures has become one of the city’s cultural meccas. The Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox was first opened in 1931, and what drew people there weren’t only the feature films, but the fact that it got to be the first place in town to get air conditioning, a must-see for Spokane’s curious locals. After it was closed down in 2000 during its bargain-movie-showing period, the long road to restoring it to its Art Deco glory would begin. Seven years and $31 million later, the dream came to pass. I was especially impressed with the auditorium, which holds 1,620-1,720 people and has green and pink stripes on the walls. The lobby exudes tropical designs on blue and gold walls. It took considerable time to remove the thick layers of red paint that dominated those days of cheap second-run flicks.
The High Line was set to be demolished around 1999 when a couple of New Yorkers started a movement to not only save the structure, but make it an extraordinary space for park goers to enjoy. The High Line is perfect for an early evening stroll when the Big Apple starts to cool down on a hot summer’s day. It’s free and although uncomfortably crowded in spots, you can’t beat enjoying the ever-changing streetscapes and unexpected scenery at your feet.
My travelling companions and I started the High Line near its northern terminus on West 30th Street between 10th and 11th avenues. Signage was not great and we got on the High Line by climbing a metal staircase only to find that there was an elevator nearby.
The walking path itself narrows to several people wide and expands to triple that in places with seating when it is most unexpected and appreciated. This includes a place called the 10th Avenue Square, complete with bleachers and huge picture windows for a broad view of the street life.
Sections of rusted track can be spotted throughout the High Line, but they are not always easy to find. This caused our group of park goers to each try to be the first to find a piece of old rail line at every change in garden space. The searches bordered on the obsessive by the end of our walk. Sometimes the old rails were far from the walking path and shaded by lush plants, growing among the rail ties like weeds did in the 1980s.
The High Line’s scale is more manageable than upper Manhattan’s huge Central Park. The two share a quirky characteristic in how the old concrete jungles appear to butt up against the green space of the parks for abrupt visual contrasts.
