North Beach's Contributions to Pop Culture

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Campaign Headquarters

As November 4 draws nearer, the presence of North Beach’s supervisor candidates can be felt in many different ways. Shop owners place their candidate of choice’s poster in their front windows, residents talk about their personalities and policies, and the candidates themselves can be found canvassing the streets.

            In terms of visibility, however, Joseph Alioto, Jr. has a distinct edge. His presence is felt physically in the neighborhood, thanks to his campaign headquarters. While other candidates are relying on word of mouth or headquarters in other districts, Alioto is clearly appealing to North Beach citizens with his office on Columbus and Greenwich.

            “We got really lucky with this place,” campaign volunteer Jennifer Stuart said. “Our campaign manager started looking for places to lease as soon as Joe announced his candidacy and found this pretty quickly. It’s great for visibility.”

The headquarters sit directly in between the tourist’s North Beach—full of vibrant restaurants and Italian specialty stores—and the resident’s North Beach, where people meander through the library or take classes at the community center. Additionally, the headquarters are visible from Washington Square Park.

            From the street, the building is a contrast to the colorful restaurants that surround it. Instead of loud signs proclaiming “Authentic Italian Food” and “The City’s Best Fondue!” the clean windows only show campaign posters. Inside, the room is clean and nearly all white, except for a lone painting of an Italian street. Otherwise, more posters, calendars full of appointments and debates, and the endorsement of Gavin Newsom line the bleach-white walls. Volunteers bustle around taking phone calls from people who would like to donate and making calls to tell people about Alioto. Passersby come in to learn about the candidate or let the campaign manager know what’s going on in the neighborhood. When I first walk in, resident Mel Woods is excitedly talking to campaign manager Jeff Dodd. When he leaves, Dodd explains that he has taken a personal interest in the campaign and that Woods “keeps his ear to the streets for us.”

The only person missing from the headquarters in the Alioto himself, who is out canvassing the streets. Though he and his wife live only a few blocks away, Alioto spends five to six hours a day going door to door.

            “Joe has a lot of energy and enthusiasm,” Stuart said. “He loves to go around and talk to people. We have to pull him out sometimes.”

Sidewalk poetry and the oldest bar in SF

While walking up Kearny after getting off at the Montgomery stop, I was inundated by the  cityscape-- high rise buildings, suits and skirts sipping their coffee while walking to work, the Jamba Juices and Starbucks that stand in every city. I started wondering if I was in the right place during this walk. Then I passed the Italian flag on a pole and suddenly I was in North Beach, where the coffee shops are mom and pops and most buildings are scaled down to three stories instead of 30. 

The first place I went to was City Lights, the famous bookstore of the beat generation. A sales clerk behind the desk told me about Allen Ginsberg's former place of residence across the street and how he stands there sometimes to see what Ginsberg saw when the poet walked out of his apartment in the morning. The sales clerk recommended I check out the poetry room of the bookstore, a respite filled with books from every poet imaginable. The room, with chairs and desks placed throughout, could have been an English professor's private library if not for the meticulous alphabetization of the authors and stands of postcards. I learned that City Lights, which is already a publishing house as well, is having its first meeting of a new monthly bookclub on October 7th. The featured book will be Voices of the Chicago Eight and I'm excited to report on what the book club will be like. 

Poetry in North Beach is not just contained within books and the minds of people who want to emulate poet-heroes of past generations. In fact, poetry is so alive in the neighborhood that it lines the sidewalks. Written with Sharpie on masking tape, phrases like "The Freedom of Speech at its Zenith" can be found (and followed) up and down the streets of North Beach. I'm curious to find out more about these poems--who writes them (anyone, everyone, one group of people, the ghost of Allen Ginsberg?), when they post them, and how and why they started posting their thoughts on the streets.

After the poetry binge, I decided to research binges of another nature. Locals and people working in shops told me to go to the Saloon, a bar on Grant Avenue. The bar isn't merely a bar, as bartender Agatha was quick to tell me. It's the oldest tavern in San Francisco (a fact assured  by her, but disputed by some Internet research saying it was the third oldest). Agatha, now between 50 and 60 years old, says she has been working at the Saloon since she was in her 20's; her first day is still far away from the day it opened. The tavern actually opened in 1861 as part of the Hotel Fresno. Back then, a sailor might describe its location as being on the Barbary Coast instead of on the corner of Grant street. For a bar with that much history, legends abound. According to Blues.net, "The building survived the '06 earthquake, it's said, because of its unusually stout timbers. It survived the subsequent fires, it's said, because the fire brigades made sure to protect the hookers who worked upstairs." The bar is now known for its blues, something that Agatha was even more excited about describing to me than its age. For a video of a blues performance at the Saloon--and the women dancing to the music-- here.