Part I: Sixth Street

Convergent Histories

Source: Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley

Sixth and Minna, 18 April 1906.

After the earthquake and fire of 1906, San Francisco’s Sixth Street was rebuilt with rooming houses and residential hotels—also known as SROs, or single room occupancy hotels—that for many decades housed the working class. These days Sixth Street is where the poor are warehoused, and the neighborhood’s working class origins are largely forgotten. As poverty is for many people an uncomfortable truth to be avoided, there are prejudicial blind spots in the general consensus regarding Sixth Street; in fact, most people wish Sixth Street would just go away.

Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Pot Roast Restaurant, 1927. Long-ago demolished, the Pot Roast was a Prohibition era speakeasy on the corner of Sixth and Jessie, next to the Hillsdale Hotel.

Daily life on Sixth Street has been documented since 1992 by the staff and students of the Sixth Street Photography Workshop, and some moving portraits of neighborhood residents comprise a chapter of the book Many Voices by documentary photographer Virginia Allyn.* I began my own portrait of Sixth Street by documenting its architecture and signs. By getting involved in the neighborhood, I got to know the people who live and work there; by listening to their stories, I learned some history. I got involved with the neighborhood by living in it.

*2005, Trafford Books.

Sixth and Jessie, 1995. On the left is the Shree Ganeshai Hotel, and in the upper left corner are the three turret windows to my old room, #10. (Photo by Virginia Allyn.)

Even though at any other time in my life I would not have chosen to do so, pressing need is a powerful motivator, and thus in early 2001, while in the initial stages of recovery from a six year nightmare of homelessness and heroin addiction, and with little more than the clothes on my back and a monthly income of 690 dollars from State Disability Insurance (SDI), I moved into the Shree Ganeshai Hotel on the corner of Sixth and Jessie. There I lived until mid-autumn 2006. From the moment I became a tenant until the day I moved out, that hotel was home, my sanctum; the world wherein I reinvented myself, and the soil in which Up From The Deep was sprouted. The seed was a cheap digital camera that I rescued from the trash.

San Francisco Chronicle, 01 May 2003. Surviving on 690 dollars a month was a constant struggle. For a long time, my one daily meal was lunch at the St. Anthony Dining Room.

“Conveniently Located”

Midtown Loans. 39 Sixth Street.
Whitaker Hotel. 41 Sixth Street.

When I immigrated to San Francisco in 1968, the South of Market area was a working class neighborhood, largely populated by laborers, off-season migrant workers, merchant marines, and retirees eking out their golden years on meager pensions, men whose sweat and toil helped make San Francisco a thriving, prosperous, world-renowned city. I soon discovered that most people believed these men were all bums and winos, characterizations that had been cultivated since the mid-50s by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and downtown developers, instigated by hotelier and real estate mogul Ben Swig and aided by the San Francisco Chronicle and News Call-Bulletin, two of the City’s daily newspapers.

Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Newscopy: “Alcoholics on Skid Road.” (SF News Call-Bulletin photo, 1956.)

Following World War Two, the densest concentration of South of Market SROs was in the area known as Yerba Buena, just across Market Street from San Francisco’s business and shopping district. To Ben Swig, Yerba Buena was prime real estate for the expansion of commercial and civic functions, and because the most expeditious way of clearing the area would be to have it declared blighted, in 1954 he donated money to the redevelopment agency to prepare a study. Even though the money was returned by agency director and future mayor Joseph Alioto, the plan moved forward.

Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Newscopy: “Men gathered on Skid Road.” (SF News Call-Bulletin photo, 1956.) Look closely at the faces and attire of the men in this photograph and you’ll see that these same gentlemen were also posed in the next photo.

In a campaign to discredit the neighborhood’s residents, the newspapers published articles that depicted South of Market SROs as flophouses inhabited by alcoholics and lowlifes, embellishing the stories by posing unwitting hotel residents in photos that purported to show them getting drunk on the sidewalks.

Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Newscopy: “SKID ROAD, SAN FRANCISCO–’No one along Skid Road is likely to shop carefully.’” (SF News Call-Bulletin photo, 1956.)

Little mention was made of the workers and retirees who were by far the majority of SRO residents. The intention was to mitigate concern for the thousands of people who were to be displaced by the razing of every SRO from Third Street to Fifth Street, thus allowing the City to save millions of dollars by sidestepping the issue of relocation. Who would care about the evictions of bums and ne’er-do-wells?

Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Newscopy: “SKID ROAD–This is a hotel in the wino district. It has 200 rooms renting from 50 to 75¢ a night, chiefly to old-age pensioners.” (SF News Call-Bulletin photo, 1954.)

In 1969 many of those who would be affected joined together to form Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment, which took the City to court. After a grim and protracted battle during which people were killed, buildings burned, and political organizations suppressed, the City was forced to provide a measure of relocation support and to build a few residential facilities for seniors before the area was completely gutted. Be that as it may, the cynical manipulation of public opinion successfully engendered a prejudice against hotel life that to this day shapes the common perception of Sixth Street.

Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Newscopy: “Slum area hotel at 259 Sixth St., owned by William H. H. Davis, president of the City Board of Permit Appeals.” (SF News Call-Bulletin photo by Sid Tate, 1961.)

In recent years a sympathetic district supervisor helped to implement some needed improvements for the SROs that remain, but otherwise the policies of city government and law enforcement have created more problems than they have solved. As if filthy sidewalks and poorly maintained hotels with greedy owners and abusive managers weren’t bad enough, residents must also live with the constant threats of robbery and violence, because the police for years have used Sixth Street as a containment zone for crime. The corralling of criminal activity by the San Francisco Police Department and irregular, substandard maintenance by the Department of Public Works are underlying reasons why attempts to improve the appearance of the neighborhood never seem to make any lasting difference.

“Winter Evening – Sixth Street”

Vantage point: Shree Ganeshai Hotel. 68 Sixth Street.

The hotels that have been bought and refurbished by nonprofit corporations now have modern, better-maintained accommodations, a major improvement to be sure; but a system of tiered management circumvents meaningful dialog with tenants who have valid complaints, and so-called supportive housing has a dark side that none will acknowledge. The purport of supportive housing is to assist those who have been homeless and otherwise socially alienated, and indeed it has to some extent reduced homelessness in the short term; but many of the newly-housed come off the streets with drug problems, and to this housing staff and management respond with the protocol of “harm reduction,” which in effect means ignoring things until they get completely out of hand. Old habits and behaviors die hard, especially if there is no motivation to change them, and thus widespread drug use and associated problems are commonplace in many nonprofit SROs, as are drug-related evictions.

There is also a glaring dissociation between on- and off-site management, particularly in hotels that are operated by way of the City’s master lease program; yet another issue no one will openly address, an issue that adds fuel to the fire of drug-related crime. One of the worst examples of a master lease hotel is the Seneca, in essence a government-funded crack house, notorious for violence and open drug activity in the hallways.

Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Sixth Street, circa 1950.

I have great love for Sixth Street, not for what it has become, but for what lies beneath the veneer of crime and decay, invisible to all except those who live and work there: its people and its history. Much of what I have learned has come from the stories of old-timers who have lived and worked on Sixth Street for many years. I also have the experience of living in Sixth Street hotels for nearly six years and personal memories that span the years since my landing in San Francisco. While there are very few archival photos of Sixth Street, my own photography adds a bit more to the record; and though my portrait of Sixth Street is largely an expression of love, it is also an act of defiance whereby I call down the despoilers of individual lives and thumb my nose at the blindly onrushing forces of redevelopment and urban renewal, which have no use for history.

“Sai”

Sai Hotel. 964 Howard Street.

In mid-February 2001, freshly discharged from the hospital, I moved into the Sai Hotel, into the tiniest room outside of a closet I have ever seen. For a monthly rent of $400, I got a seven-by-five-foot room on the top floor at the back of the hotel that was barely large enough to contain an attenuated single bed (for reference, I am over six feet, four inches tall). A narrow door opened inward, just missing the minuscule sink attached to the wall opposite the bed. Unable to squeeze between bed and sink, I had to step onto the bed to enter or leave the room and had to face the sink from the side to use it. Furniture consisted of a small nightstand; there was no closet nor even hooks or nails in the walls. The only electrical outlet was in an exposed utility box just above the sink. Lighting the room by day was a small window near the head of the bed; an unshaded light bulb dangling from the ceiling lit the room at night. It felt like a broom closet, in fact I think it had been one, but it was the first place I could call home after nearly six years on the streets.

“Invocation”

Shree Ganeshai Hotel. 68 Sixth Street.

One month at the Sai was all I could take. Two months and two hotels later, I settled at the Shree Ganeshai. The title of this image is derived from the name of the hotel. Many centuries ago, Sanskrit scholars began their writings with an invocation to God, usually the one their family worshiped. One such invocation, to Ganesha,* was shree ganeshaya namah. Over time the invocation came to be used before starting any activity, and was gradually shortened until shree ganesh sufficed as a prayer for an auspicious beginning. The phrase is used today before any beginning, be it a meal, a journey, or a task. During my stay at the Shree Ganeshai, it was comforting to know my home was an endless prayer to Ganesha for a bright and beneficent new beginning. To this day I keep on my bookshelf a small golden effigy of Ganesha, a gift from the Shree Ganeshai’s manager, Nagin.

*In the Hindu pantheon, Ganesha is the elephant-headed god who brought writing to the world by breaking off one of his tusks to use as a pen, the god of wisdom and auspicious beginnings.

Ganesha.

A view from my old room, #10.

Same room, different view.

A corner of my room: cramped but comfortable.

“abracadabra”

Reinventing myself meant foremost, reactivating parts of my brain that had lain dormant for six years, and recovering my hand/eye coordination. To accomplish this, I used writing, drawing, painting and calligraphy as my primary tools. Above is the first of my pen-and-ink drawings, dated July 2001, my third month at the Shree Ganeshai Hotel. While hospitalized, I had rediscovered my love of language and symbolism when I read Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum; soon afterward, I started a journal and sketchbook. Once I’d established myself at the Shree Ganeshai, I began poring over alchemical treatises and ars combinatoria of the Middle Ages, wherein I found the inspiration for many of my drawings, including “abracadabra.” Below, dated November 2001, is the first of three watercolor decorated letters that paid homage to poets whose writings had inspired me in years gone by. Early in 2002, after acquiring a castoff plastic camera, I began photographing my surroundings.

“Alone” (Stanza from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

“Dawn – Rain’s End”

As an insomniac, I’ve seen many beautiful sunrises. I captured this one while seated at my computer one spring morning after a night of heavy rain. On the left is a corner of the Hillsdale Hotel; the stacks are part of a PG & E steam plant on Jessie Street. This particular view resonated very deeply with me, and the reasons for this are to be found in my childhood.

“Gray Day #3″

I grew up in a Midwestern city in the 1950s, before urban renewal, corporatism, and the “form follows function” aesthetic of postmodern and corporate modernist architecture eviscerated much of this country’s soul. Grandpa “PR” Ellinger was a brakeman for the B & O Railroad, so some of my earliest memories are of freight trains being assembled in the yards by 0-8-0 switching engines, and of giant 4-8-2 locomotives waiting by the pit or in the roundhouse. Everywhere were the smells of coal smoke, oil, and hot metal, and the sounds of herculean iron machines at work: a crashing and hissing of superheated steam punctuated by whistle blasts that telegraphed the movements of the trains.

“Island Out of Time”

Hillsdale Hotel. 51 Sixth Street.

My other grandfather, “Red” Tobin, was a chemist for the city water purification plant, built circa 1912. When I was a boy, the plant’s enormous machinery, valves, pipes, filtration pools, and conduits were still original, as were the many brass-handled controls and oversize gauges, and all were perfectly maintained and housed in cavernous structures of iron and brick. All of this filled me with wonder, and I idolized Grandpa Tobin, so at times when he had to check plant operations, I would beg him to take me along. Each time he would walk me throughout the enormous facility, patiently explaining everything in great detail. Most wondrous of all was the pump house, a brick building five stories high and three stories deep that had brass-railed ironwork galleries instead of floors, and walls that were lined with banks of indicator lights and old-fashioned recording gauges—all built around the colossal, steam-driven, Corliss flywheel pumps that fed the city’s water supply. Such are the archetypes that inform my world view.

“Hillsdale”

It should therefore come as no surprise that I find poignant beauty in buildings most people consider lowly, squalid eyesores. These old hotels have an archetypal quality that stirs my blood and attracts me like a magnet. So many people, so many stories, so much living has taken place within their walls.  How can you not feel it? We are far too willing to dispose of anything that is old just because we are told that new things are somehow better. I would ask why we are being told this.  Who benefits when we are divested of our history and culture?

“My Back Yard”

The closest building in this photo is the Lawrence Hotel, behind which is the Hotel Seneca, where windows to inner worlds glow as evening falls. The rear wall of Fascination can be seen peeking over the roof line of the Lawrence, just before it intersects with the edge of the Seneca. Between the Seneca and the McAllister Tower in the background is black-iron framework that once supported a water tank. Many of the older buildings in San Francisco have still-functioning rooftop water tanks, built in response to the 1906 conflagration that was catalyzed by earthquake-shattered water mains.

“Dentils of Metal”

Sunnyside Hotel. 135 Sixth Street.
Minna Lee Hotel. 149 Sixth Street.

The box-like components of a cornice are called dentils. While their size and details vary, they are always symmetrical and look like rows of evenly spaced teeth, whence their name was derived.

“A Lost Art”

Sunset Hotel. 161 Sixth Street.

Shown here is a small section of the cornice that crowns the Sunset Hotel. I like it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the simplicity of its design. I also like the very large dentils and the medallion that decorates the bracket at the end. Rust reveals metal beneath the illusion of carved stone. Simplicity and neglect combine to make this architectural detail a perfect symbol for all old residential hotels.

“If Walls Could Speak”

Hugo Hotel. Sixth and Howard.

The Hugo is Sixth Street’s oldest hotel. Shuttered and vacant since a fire burned out several rooms in 1987, the unreinforced masonry building also suffered structural damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. In 1997 a group of artists led by Brian Goggin transformed the Hugo into an immense sculptural mural called “Defenestration.” Scavenged furniture and appliances were modified by the artists to make it appear animate, and then cleverly affixed to the hotel. Tables and chairs leapt from the roof and ran across the walls; lamps corkscrewed from some windows, and sofas, refrigerators, bathtubs, even a grandfather clock squirmed and leapt from others. The furniture is there to this day, still leaping and running about, and squirming through the windows. Untold thousands of photographs have been taken of the Hugo and its famous furniture, now a designated sightseeing stop, a housing crisis turned into public art. I took this photograph of what used to be the Hugo’s service alley because it shows the one wall of the hotel that has not been altered, save by the hand of Time.

“Defenestration”

Hugo Hotel. Sixth and Howard.

“Defenestration” has now endured for some thirteen years, although most of the original sideshow-themed paintings have disappeared beneath eye-popping murals of polychrome street art. As a work of conceptual art, the Hugo Hotel is universally appealing—everyone likes it—and I’ve become more attached to it with each passing year. Yet few people know the hotel remained empty for over twenty years because its owners cared more about profits than people. They didn’t want to repair and maintain the building as low income housing, but were unable to sell it because their asking price vastly exceeded the building’s actual market value. Their outspoken contempt* for those less fortunate reflects an attitude that for years has been tacitly encouraged by the policies of local government. After years of haggling with the owners, in January 2008 the redevelopment agency announced it was seizing the Hugo by eminent domain, foredooming the controversial landmark to demolition.

*“They can put the low-income people somewhere else… you can be homeless somewhere in Idaho.” –Varsha Patel (former owner, Hugo Hotel)

“Daybreak – Hugo Hotel”

Hugo Hotel. Sixth and Howard.

As embodied by the new Yerba Buena pavillions, galleries, malls and tourist hotels, and a widespread proliferation of drab and overbearing condominiums, modern urbanism has been steadily taking over the South of Market landscape for several decades. The old “South of the Slot” district is no more, and Sixth Street for years has been slowly dying by attrition. Inasmuch as the Hugo Hotel has helped prevent the total dissolution of the old neighborhood by holding off encroaching modern urbanism and gentrification, the transformation of Sixth Street will no doubt proceed in earnest once the hotel is razed. Despite its longtime closure in the face of a housing shortage, the Hugo has also served as a signpost; a reminder of the past and a symbol of the present that will soon be just a memory.

Architecture and Signs

“Rainy Afternoon – Sixth and Natoma”

The building on the far left is the St. Cloud Hotel, a wood frame rooming house above a storefront occupied by the San Francisco Mission, now City Team Ministries, a respite for the City’s dregs that has been in operation for over a hundred years. The yellow building behind the St. Cloud is a wing of the Dudley Hotel, a renovated SRO that now operates as supportive housing.

“Legacy”

447 Minna Street (rear).

There are still places South of Market, mostly on narrow back streets between the main thoroughfares, where the buildings have stood virtually unchanged for a century, remnants of a vibrant past, survivors of the slash and burn strategies of urban renewal.

“447 Minna”

“Peeling Wall”

Abandoned Fire Station. Jessie and Mint.

When the City closed down its Jessie Street fire station, the building was left empty and unmaintained for so long that its sunburned facade began to look like something organic and alive. After I photographed it, the building was transformed into upscale lofts by the Martin Building Company. In memory of the old wall, a large print of this photograph now hangs in their main offices, serving to hinder the old district’s utter submergence in the waters of oblivion.

“Skyline”

Looking north from Natoma near its intersection with Mary, one sees from left to right the rear of 447 Minna, the San Francisco Hilton Tower I, the Chronicle Hotel, The Provident Loan Company, the Old Mint’s west pediment, and its red-brick chimneys peering over the roof line of the Chronicle Newspaper Building. Behind the Provident are the unfinished offices of the Martin Building Company, the disused Jessie Street fire station, and condos over-topped by the enormous Parc Wyndham Hotel in the background.

“Chronicle”

Chronicle Hotel. 936 Mission Street.

As the long-empty Chronicle Hotel has languished into uselessness, its blade sign has rusted and faded into cryptic hieroglyphics.

“Dusk – Harriet Street”

The raw, post-industrial atmosphere depicted here has, regrettably, almost completely vanished from the South of Market landscape. Many of the old factories and warehouses were torn down during the dot-com boom of the ’90s, to be replaced by gauche live/work lofts and oppressive condominiums that have effaced much of the district’s industrial and working-class history.

Source: California State Library

Sixth and Mission, 1910. Both the five story industrial lofts and the rooming house over storefronts on the corner are still standing today, although the corner building has been stripped and so altered that it’s nearly unrecognizable. Partly visible near the upper left above Jessie Street is the Hillsdale Hotel.

Source: Bancroft Library, Jesse B. Cooke Collection

Sixth and Folsom, 1926. All of the rooming houses and light industrial buildings pictured here have been demolished.

“Inner City (Homage to Chester Gould)”

Stevenson Street.

Spanning Stevenson Street midway between Sixth and Seventh, a covered footbridge connects what used to be Weinstein’s Department Store and the building that served as that company’s office and warehouse space. The department store has been converted into live/work lofts, and the onetime warehouse is now occupied by a dot-com enterprise. I remember when such footbridges were numerous in the back streets of San Francisco, not so very long ago. This is the only one that now remains in the central city.

Chester Gould was the artist who for many years drew Dick Tracy, one of my favorite comic strips when I was a boy. I loved the way he drew urban settings; they were always ominous and foreboding, and the buildings had a tendency to lean inward over the streets, making people appear small and insignificant. He owed a certain debt to film noir, I think, and I owe a debt to his memory for inspiring this picture.

Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library (Photo: Larry Moon)

Stevenson Street, circa 1959.

“Imprint of the Past”

Stevenson Street between Fifth and Sixth.

This building’s architectural heritage is revealed by an archway, though its opening was long-ago filled in. The design and complexity of the original brickwork hearken back a hundred years, to a time when horses were still in common use. Sadly, this humble but charming example of post-fire architecture will soon be demolished, to make way for a strikingly unattractive, five-story shopping mall and parking garage called CityPlace.

“Back Street Transfiguration”

Fascination (trade entrance). Stevenson Street.

The day I photographed Fascination’s service entrance promised to be beautiful and sunny. I savored the early morning quiet as the fog began to burn away with the rising of the sun, exposing more blue sky by the minute, signaling the impending demise of the dawn’s pink light. Of the many photos I took, these two captured the magic of Aurora’s brush. (see also “Fascination” in Part II: Mid-Market).

“Daybreak”

Fascination (trade entrance). Stevenson Street.

“Stairway to Sunnyside”

Hotel Sunnyside. 135 Sixth Street.

Residential hotel interiors are not easy to photograph. In general, the managers of SROs are strongly, sometimes violently, opposed to any public exposure of themselves or their buildings. This forbidding stairway leads to the rooms in the Sunnyside Hotel, a place where ghosts linger in dark corners and on the landings.

Room 210, Hotel Sunnyside. 135 Sixth Street.

The conditions shown here are these days fairly typical of the profit-driven Sixth Street hotels, and though a few are much better, there are some that are far worse. Monthly rent in 2010 for an equivalent room is commonly between 700 and 900 dollars. In case you are wondering, the dark-brown splashes on the walls are blood.

Room 302, Desmond Hotel. 42 Sixth Street.

Early in 2006 I was contacted by a tenant at the Desmond Hotel because the manager had refused to either make his room livable or give him another room, and the tenant wanted photographic documentation for legal purposes. Happy to be of assistance, I later met him in his room, which the Departments of Building Inspection and Public Health had each given a “pass.”

“Alkain Hotel from Mary Street”

Alkain Hotel. 948 Mission Street.

“Red Window”

Alkain Hotel. 948 Mission Street.

As seen from Jessie Street, the rear of the Alkain Hotel betrays the living conditions inside. Legend has it that the back streets in this area were named for some of the prostitutes who were popular in the days of the Gold Rush, but though in their own way charming, such stories are apocryphal. Jessie Street, for example, was named for the wife of nineteenth-century explorer and California politician John C. Fremont.

“Desmond”

Desmond Hotel. 42 Sixth Street.

Having been consigned to History’s dustbin in the name of alleged improvement, most of Sixth Street’s old blade signs have disappeared, to be replaced by cheap canvas awnings and marquees. Gone is the sign for the Desmond Hotel, and the canvas marquee that replaced it is already faded and damaged.

“Sunset – the Alder”

Alder Hotel. 175 Sixth Street.

Of the few blade signs that remain, the Alder Hotel’s is the finest. It was restored when the hotel was refurbished in 2006.

“Dawn – the Alder”

Alder Hotel. 175 Sixth Street.

“Henry”

Hotel Henry. 106 Sixth Street.

Though not restored, the Henry’s blade sign is still in good repair.

“Lawrence”

Lawrence Hotel. 48 Sixth Street.

With this photograph, my commitment to this project began. Shortly after I captured this image, the sign for the Lawrence Hotel became landfill. The old Desmond Hotel sign, taken down a year later, is partly visible behind the coarsely made-over barber shop sign (for its former appearance, refer to the next photo).

Signs on Sixth Street, 1995. All but three of the blade signs pictured here have been removed and among those that remain, the barber shop sign has been ruined. (Photo by Virginia Allyn.)

“Upper Sixth Street”

Seneca Hotel. 34 Sixth Street.
Winsor Hotel. 20 Sixth Street.

Grady’s was a very popular bar that for many decades opened into the lobby of the Seneca Hotel. While its run-down appearance in more recent years may have qualified it as a dive, it was in fact an important social hub for the neighborhood’s older residents, serving as living room and even dining room for folks whose homes consisted of a single small room. After the Seneca became a master lease hotel and management was taken over by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, Grady’s was served with a three-day eviction notice. It closed its doors for the last time on St. Patrick’s Day 2002, leaving many of the community’s seniors without a place where they could meet and socialize. Since then, nothing has been done to address that need. Their social lives erased, it is as if these people never existed; they are rarely, if ever, seen anymore. All that is left for them is the solitude of their lonely rooms.

Grady’s and Club Charleston, 1995. (Photo by Virginia Allyn.)

“Arrow”

The Arrow. 18 Sixth Street.

Less than a year before I captured this image, the Charleston was a neighborhood gathering spot, a place to socialize for the people who live in the area’s hotels. Near the end of 2002 the proprietors sold their liquor license to some young entrepreneurs, and the Charleston became the Arrow, which became the Matador in 2007, and is now in 2010 the Show. Within a year of the Charleston’s closing, every other bar on Sixth Street had closed, to be later reopened with new names, catering to a very different clientele.

My friend Jim Ayers, a resident of Sixth Street since the mid-90s and manager of Grady’s until it closed, kindly helped the Charleston’s new owners get started. For a couple of years he worked the opening shift, and I would drop in for a pint now and then while he was working. One of those times I took some photographs of the bar; this one is my favorite.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

When a fourth of the City’s power was knocked out for several days by a Mission Street substation explosion in 2003, Jim fired up his portable generator at the Arrow, tuned in the 49ers game, and grilled steaks for patrons on his barbecue, making the Arrow the only place for miles around that was open for business. In this Chronicle Sports Section front-page photo, Jim was actually bemoaning a 49ers touchdown—not the other way around, as the caption would have you believe.

“Moon over Sixth Street”

Hillsdale Hotel. 61 Sixth Street.

On a cloudless April evening in 2004, I stood in front of the Arrow, talking to Jim. The sun was setting as we talked, and as the sky grew darker I saw that I could capture the waxing moon just as the sun disappeared below the horizon. What appeals to me about this image is its simplicity: just the dark roof line of the Hillsdale, faintly highlighted by the last red rays of sunlight, and the moon in a clear, ultramarine sky.

“Reflection”

Lawrence Hotel. 48 Sixth Street.
Hillsdale Hotel. 51 Sixth Street.

After Angel Cruz was barred from associating with any NASD* member in any capacity for his stock market shenanigans, he used his ill-gotten gains to open Club Six on the ground floor of the Lawrence Hotel. A decades-old neighborhood bar called Frisco was transformed by Cruz into a loud and trendy nightclub, patronized by rowdy hipsters and suburban gangsters getting their kicks by slumming on Sixth Street. Frisco was an affectionate way of referring to the home port used by the merchant marines who once populated Sixth Street’s SROs; it was a name I loved for its in-your-face appeal to the bar’s clientele. Alas, that pride of place has all but entirely vanished, having been replaced by the ethos of the disaffected and the morés of the culture of greed.

*the National Association of Securities Dealers, now part of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

The Street

“Sublime Sixth” poster, 2003.

Around ten months after I’d begun photographing my surroundings, I had a group show with two of the founding members of the Sixth Street Photography Workshop, Nappy Chin and S. Renee Jones, and a former resident of the Auburn Hotel, Dan Cope.

“Sublime Sixth” exhibit, December 2003. An unidentified visitor and Joann Babiak inside the Community Justice Office at Sixth and Minna.

The exhibit was in DA Terrance Hallinan’s Community Justice Office run by Joann Babiak, at that time an Assistant District Attorney and one of the founders of Positively Sixth Street, a community fair that sadly ended seven years after it was begun.

Positively Sixth Street logo. (Graphics by Mark Ellinger)

Positively Sixth Street Community Fair, 2004. Nappy Chin sets up a group portrait of the fair’s volunteers.

Positively Sixth Street, 2005. A fair-goer dances with the Sun and Moon Ensemble that graced the fair several years.

Positively Sixth Street, 2006. Sixth Street residents rock to the music of Bobby Webb, a perennial favorite among the fair’s headliners.

“Perceptions” poster, 2003.

One of my earliest photographs, the Lawrence Hotel at sunset became the poster for my first solo exhibit—on Sixth Street, of course.

“Fire Escape”

Looking across Jessie Street from my fire escape, I could see the Seneca Hotel behind the Lawrence, and the McAllister Tower in the distance. In the time I lived at the Shree Ganeshai Hotel, I had a very close relationship with that fire escape.

“Rainy Sixth Street #1″

This photo of a wet evening in late autumn is for me a living image. I hear the sounds of traffic on wet pavement, footfalls on the sidewalks, and the faint staccato of light rainfall. The traffic whizzes by in a darkening world that feels so comforting to me, as though Mother Earth were tucking me in for the night.

“Rainy Sixth Street #2″

On a wet December evening the following year, I captured this little scene going down in front of what was once another neighborhood gathering place, Ginger’s Too.

Pawnshops and Ginger’s Too, 1995. (Photo by Virginia Allyn.)

“Window Onto Sixth Street”

For all its problems, Sixth Street has an unquenchable vitality. The day may be cold and rainy or warm and sunny, but the activity on the street remains constant. The weather was wet and blustery when I took this photograph. I liked the way the grime and soot, which for decades had accumulated on the window, imparted the look of a watercolor to the street scene below.

Sixth and Stevenson, 1995. (Photo by Virginia Allyn.)

The redevelopment agency’s Sixth Street Beautification Program has widened the sidewalks, installed new street lights, planted $10,000 palm trees around the intersections of Sixth Street at Mission and Howard, and hung banners from the new street lights that proclaim Sixth Street is being beautified. I offer here various prospects of Sixth Street that show the results thus far of the Sixth Street Beautification Program.

“Sixth and Stevenson”

“Club Six”

“Sixth and Jessie”

“Sixth and Mission”

“Sixth below Minna”

“Sixth and Natoma”

“Sixth and Howard”

“Beer, Liquor, Wine – Jesus Cares”

“Twilight Skyline – Sixth and Bryant”

As seen from the bottom of Sixth Street, the Manhattanization of downtown San Francisco has almost entirely obscured the beautiful Beaux-Arts architecture that once defined its skyline. Soon, very soon, the ground swell of modern urbanism will wash over Sixth Street, expunging a small and overlooked yet nonetheless significant part of San Francisco, leaving only memories in its wake.

The People

In the time I lived on Sixth Street, many people’s paths crossed mine. Jozsef, Nagin, Mama, Vijay, Dan, Stephanie, Chrissy, Sophie, Denise, Robert . . . the list is too long to mention them all, yet my portrait of Sixth Street would be incomplete if it didn’t include at least a few of the more memorable characters I encountered. Each person in the following stories has added depth and meaning to my life; they have each in their own way inspired me. Through them shines the soul of Sixth Street.

Still Bill

The sun had disappeared behind a shroud of fog that scudded by in great swirling drifts, like the sails of a phantom armada. What had been a warm day was quickly becoming cold. Sixth Street between Market and Howard was all noise and hubbub, but beyond Howard Street the chaos subsided and the sidewalks were empty. As I walked past the rotting hulk of the Hugo Hotel, I overtook a lone pedestrian, a man with a cane, burdened by a backpack and a duffel bag. Moments later, from behind me he called, “Hello? Hello?”

The man sounded genuinely distressed, so I retraced my steps to see if I could help. Even from a distance I could see that he was troubled. I saw it in the lines of his dark-brown face and in his eyes, but when I stood before him, he seemed hesitant. He tested the water by asking me how I was feeling. Then, apparently encouraged by my friendly response, he said, “I’m still Bill.”

Whether that meant his name was Still Bill or that he remained Bill, I couldn’t tell, so I just asked, “Still Bill?”

With a voice that softly rattled like pebbles beneath a flowing stream, Bill answered,

“I’m still Bill, always was, always will.
“Had a wife named Lucille,
“Had us a home down in Mobile.
“Come the war in Vietnam,
“They sent me off and made me kill.
“Come back a broke-up man,
“Weren’t no more home, no more Lucille.
“She’d gone and left me, but I’m still Bill.”

Someone had told Bill a shelter was nearby and he’d become lost trying to find it. I said I would show him the way, offering to carry his bag while we walked. Bill had been drinking and was unsteady on his feet, obliging us to stop several times as I helped him regain his balance. I put his arm through mine when we crossed the street, for traffic was heavy and I was afraid he’d stumble into the path of a speeding car. When Bill expressed gratitude, it went straight to my heart, experience having taught me that when you’re homeless, penniless, lost and alone, most people ignore you.

The municipal shelter was in an old industrial building at Fifth and Bryant. As we neared the entrance at the back of the building, I asked Bill if I could photograph him. The only other person in sight was a distant figure walking toward us along Fifth Street, a Native American woman who soon blithely joined us, though she was a stranger to both Bill and me.

To behold her was to like her. The light of kindness shone in her eyes; her smiling countenance was open and serene. She was thickset and earthy, yet her hands were slender and sensitive, and she moved with the suppleness and grace of a dancer. Seeing that she was curious, I explained I was photographing Bill to commemorate our encounter, and suggested that I could also photograph her. Much to my delight, she went straight to Bill’s side and gently put her arm around his shoulders; but this made Bill self-conscious and awkward, so I played the fool to distract him while I shot numerous frames to capture him in an unguarded moment. Manifest in every photograph I took are the woman’s radiance and warmth, and her compassion for Bill. Before I departed, she told me she’d look after Bill inside the shelter.

I don’t know her name; for all I know she doesn’t have one. I never thought to ask and would probably have forgotten it anyway, because most names in and of themselves are largely meaningless. We remember people by their actions. I will always remember her for the light and love she shared with Bill and me. If such things as angels exist, she was surely one of them.

In Praise of a Hero

I could talk for a long time about Jim Ayers. His life story is not just remarkable, it is truly inspiring, like a tale written by John Steinbeck or Mark Twain. HL Mencken would have loved him. As I have only two minutes to speak, I’ll give you instead the simple, unadorned reasons that Jim is so highly deserving of this award, which I am enormously pleased to be presenting to him.*

Integrity: Jim is the living, breathing definition. He is, without question, the most trusted person in his community. Jim may be a man of few words, but you can be certain that what he says will always be the truth. Blunt, gruff and unpolished, Jim is also one of the most lovable persons I have ever known, and he has a heart to match. A more compassionate man you will not find. Best of all, Jim shares these virtues with his community.

During the eleven years that he worked there, Jim made Grady’s a comfortable and safe haven for the many seniors who live on Sixth Street. It was, in fact, the only place in the neighborhood where they could escape from their lonely, cramped hotel rooms to socialize, have their morning coffee and read the paper. For Jim, tending bar was entirely secondary to providing for the social needs of Sixth Street’s seniors.

Jim has fought tirelessly and single-handedly for the rights and welfare of the tenants of the Lawrence Hotel, where he has lived for the past fourteen years. After years of thankless, solitary struggle at City Hall and in court, and in the face of intimidation, property damage and physical threats, Jim is winning the battle to force Club Six, the bane of Sixth Street residents since it opened, to comply with noise and public nuisance laws. No one has done more for his community than Jim Ayers, a man I am proud to call my friend.

*The text is a speech I gave when presenting Jim with a Community Leadership Award in May 2007. Regarding the photograph, Jim hates having his picture taken, so he’ll make faces or look away if he’s aware of the camera. In order to catch Jim off-guard, I photographed him through a crowd of people from across the Board of Supervisors chambers at City Hall, hence the grainy and tightly cropped image.

Remembering Jeoflin

Jeoflin Roh was a founding member of the Central City Restorative Justice Project, the Central City SRO Collaborative, and the Positively 6^th Street Community Fair. Dedicated to improving his community, Jeoflin had “been there and back.” I know, because for seven years he was also my friend. Jeoflin was fifty-seven when a brain tumor claimed his life in midsummer 2008.

My initial encounter with Jeoflin was at the original Turk Street office of the Central City SRO Collaborative, when it was still a fledgling organization. It was my first visit there and the only person around was Jeoflin, who was sitting in the sunshine just outside the open back door, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and reading a book. Jeoflin’s picturesque appearance was his trademark. What caught my eye that day were his distinctive mustache and goatee, his lurid Hawaiian shirt, and the huaraches and Panama hat he wore on sunny days. What won me over were his warmth and sincerity, his wittiness, and his quaintly eccentric demeanor. It was very easy for me to like Jeoflin.

As things turned out, Jeoflin was with me when I first downloaded my photos from the castoff plastic camera with which I began shooting Up From The Deep. I was appalled by the small and muddy-looking images, but Jeoflin ignored the toy-camera flaws and saw only my subject matter and framing. His enthusiasm kept me from tossing that little camera right back where I’d found it, and even now I find encouragement when I think of the ardent appreciation for my work that he expressed up to the very end. Thus Jeoflin lives on in my memory; and now through these words of remembrance, he’ll live on when I am gone.

A Couplet for Jeoflin

To live without fear of death, life to its fullest,
Is to live each moment as though it were our last.

Thus did Jeoflin, and so may we all.

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