My most recent offering to the reporting gods

HOOD1
Sept. 16, 2009

The small, elderly woman wanders into the Beat Museum in North Beach carrying a plastic shopping bag, her black jacket wet from the persistent drizzle outside. She paces silently for a moment before setting her sights on a classic car featured prominently near the museum’s entrance. Although the license plates say 1941, she tells anyone who will listen that the car is actually a 1935 model. She repeats this at least a dozen times, circles the vehicle and eventually heads back into the rain.

Brandon Loberg, a part-time museum employee, seems unfazed by what has just transpired. He refers to the woman as Millie and says she’s been known to stop by the museum every now and then. Loberg, who moved to North Beach four years ago, muses that the line between normal and not so normal has blurred since he took up residence in the neighborhood known as Little Italy.

"This part of North Beach has always been pretty crazy," said Loberg of the Broadway strip. "It’s historically a place where you could go to get anything."

"Sunday through Thursday it’s quaint," said Aaron Smith, owner and operator of the bar at the Basque Hotel on Romolo Place, just an alley away from the Beat Museum. "I like living up here. I don’t leave much."

North Beach, bordered by Fisherman’s Wharf to the north, the Financial District to the south, Telegraph Hill to the east and Chinatown to the west, was settled in the 1850s. In the late 1930s, the square-mile neighborhood experienced an influx of more than 60,000 Italian immigrants but by 1970, just 10 percent of the city’s Italian immigrants lived in North Beach.

"Most Italians have moved out," said Andrew Haag, a San Francsico State University senior. "The culture’s dying out."

In the 1950s, the corner of Broadway and Columbus Avenue was the epicenter of literary culture as it played host to the San Francisco Renaissance. Beat poets William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac all flocked to this creative mecca.

"This whole Broadway was the happening place," said Jerry Cimino, owner and curator of the Beat Museum. "These strip clubs used to be jazz clubs."

Although the entertainment along Broadway is mostly adult fare, those looking for less risqué forms of amusement find it at area hot spots like Cobb's Comedy Club, Bimbo's 365, Jazz at Pearl's and Club Fugazi, home of Ron Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon.

Over the years, North Beach has made a name for itself as home to some of the city's best Italian eats, but one's dining options are hardly limited to pizza and pasta. Brandy Ho's Hunan Food, Maykedah Persian Restaurant, O'Reilly's Irish Pub and Restaurant, Sushi On North Beach, Taquería Zorro and Tandoori Mahal are just a few of the non-Italian offerings available in the area.

"A lot of the dishes are Italian. We don't want to stray away completely," said Pierre Tell, a server at Manga Rosa, a Brazilian restaurant on Stockton Street.

Originally from Sweden, Tell attended San Francisco State University on a soccer scholarship. He lives near Union Square and has worked in North Beach for the past five years.

"I've had pizza in every country in Europe and I've never had better pizza than on the corner," said Tell, referring to Tony's Pizza Napoletana, also on Stockton Street. "That spot has been doomed for seven or eight years. Tony came and there's a line out the door."

In 2007, the American Planning Association named North Beach one of the top 10 great neighborhoods. Washington Square Park, Coit Tower and Saints Peter and Paul Church all enhance the often picturesque beauty of Little Italy's awning draped avenues. They also provide a stark contrast to the flashing neon signs announcing Broadway's strip clubs and the vacant storefronts that now pepper the quaint streets.

"Some people aren't willing to turn down Broadway because they see skin," said Cimino. "The strip clubs are good neighbors. They’re good to me."

With a median home price of approximately $1.3 million and an average household income of $93,961 compared to a city-wide median of $65,519, not everyone can afford such good neighbors.

"You see more SUVs, more dogs. That whole diversity of economics doesn’t exist in cities as much as it used to," said Robert Carlson, branch manager of the North Beach public library, which has become a source of neighborhood controversy in its own right.

For the past decade, community leaders have struggled to decide whether the library’s existing building, originally constructed by Appleton & Wolford in 1958, should be renovated or if a new branch should be constructed. Among those in favor of preserving the current building are the Telegraph Hill Dwellers and the North Beach Neighbors while area writers Jack Hirschman and Lawrence Ferlinghetti support the proposed new branch.

"I see no historic value in this current building," said Carlson who recalled bringing an umbrella to work when rain began seeping through the library’s badly damaged roof onto his desk. "In my personal opinion, it’s a bit of an eyesore."

North Beach has seen its share of change in its nearly 150 year history, but the overall sense of community shared by residents remains strong.

"I feel safe here. I feel good because it's a community," said Ethel Jimenez, an insurance broker who opened Gallery 28 on Grant Avenue in July. "It’s been great here. The other merchants came out and welcomed me."

"I like the family feeling of the neighborhood," said Loberg of the Beat Museum. "It’s one of the last neighborhoods that feels like a neighborhood."