Part One: Sixth Street

Conveniently Located

^{MIDTOWN LOANS & WHITAKER HOTEL – 39 & 41 6th ST}

When I emigrated to San Francisco in 1968, the SROs that filled South of Market were largely populated by merchant marines and retired blue-collar workers eking out their golden years on meager pensions, men whose labors helped make San Francisco a thriving, prosperous, world-renowned city. Most people thought of them as bums and winos, characterizations that had been cultivated since the 1950s by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and downtown developers, with the help of one of the City’s daily newspapers. The paper published stories that depicted South of Market SROs as flophouses and the men who lived in them as alcoholics and lowlifes, reinforcing these distortions by posing unwitting hotel residents in photos that purported to show them getting drunk on the sidewalks in front of their hotels. Intended to mitigate concern for the thousands of people who were to be displaced by the razing of every SRO from 3rd Street to 5th Street, this cynical manipulation of public opinion helped to engender a prejudice against hotel life that to this day shapes both public perception and government policy. 6th Street has suffered hugely for it.

Winter Evening - 6th Street

^{(VANTAGE POINT: SHREE GANESHAI HOTEL)}

In recent years, a sympathetic district supervisor helped to implement some needed improvements for the SROs that remain, but generally the policies of city government and law enforcement regarding 6th Street 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 use 6th Street as a containment zone for crime. The corralling of criminal activity by the SFPD and irregular, shoddy 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. The few hotels that have been bought and refurbished by non-profit corporations now have modern, better-maintained accommodations and offer in-house support services; major improvements to be sure, but as it turns out, even these SROs—especially those that are now managed through the City’s so-called Master Lease Program—have their own serious problems.

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
6th Street, circa 1950.

I have great love for 6th Street, not for what it has become, but for what lies beneath the veneer of crime and decay, its history. Much of what I have learned has come from the stories of old-timers who have lived and worked on 6th Street for many years. I also have personal memories of 6th Street that span the years since my landing in San Francisco. The few historical photos I have found are scattered between the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Historical Society. My own photography adds a little bit more to the record, but at its heart is an act of defiance, whereby I 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}

March 2001, I moved into the Sai Hotel, into the tiniest room outside of a closet I have ever seen. My room was at the very back of the hotel on the top floor. It was just large enough for a narrow single bed, with about twelve inches to spare at the foot of the bed and about twice that distance from the side of the bed to the opposite wall. A very narrow door opened inwards, just missing the miniscule sink attached to the wall opposite the bed. I had to climb onto the bed to close the door, as I was unable to squeeze between the sink and the bed, and had to face the sink from the side in order to use it. The only furniture was a small nightstand at the head of the bed. There was no closet, not even hooks or nails in the walls. The one electrical outlet was dangerously situated in an exposed utility box about two feet above the sink. A small window near the head of the bed kept the room fairly bright during the day and an unshaded light bulb that hung from the ceiling lit the room at night. My rent was $400 a month. It was like living in a broom closet, but it was the first place I could call home after six years of living on the streets.

Invocation

^{SHREE GANESHAI HOTEL – 68 6th ST.}

One month at the Sai was all I could take. 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 Ganesh, was Shree ganeshaya namah. In the Hindu pantheon, Ganesh 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. 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, whether it is a meal, a journey or a task. During my stay at the Shree Ganeshai, I found comfort in the knowledge that my home was an endless prayer to Ganesh for a bright and beneficent new beginning.

^{VIEW FROM MY OLD ROOM, SHREE GANESHAI HOTEL}

^{SAME ROOM, DIFFERENT VIEW}

^{INSIDE THE SHREE GANESHAI}

A corner of my old room, showing the never-empty pot of Life’s elixir.

Dawn - Rain’s End

^{(VANTAGE POINT: SHREE GANESHAI HOTEL – 68 6th ST.)}

As an insomniac, one of my perks is getting to see a lot of beautiful sunrises. I captured this one while seated at my computer one spring morning after a night of heavy rain. On the far left is a corner of the Hillsdale Hotel. The stacks are part of a PG&E steam plant on Jessie Street.

Island Out of Time

^{HILLSDALE HOTEL – 51 6th ST.}

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, really, is the beneficiary when we destroy our history?

My Back Yard

^{(VANTAGE POINT: SHREE GANESHAI HOTEL – 68 6th ST.)}

What I like most about this image are the windows to inner worlds. The closest building, of which just a corner is visible, is the Lawrence Hotel. Directly behind it is the Seneca Hotel. 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. The phallic structure in the background is the McAllister Tower. What appears to be a platform for an artillery turret is framework that once supported a rooftop water tank. Many of the older buildings in San Francisco have still-functioning water tanks, built in response to the devastation caused by the conflagration following the 1906 earthquake.

SoMa Sunset

^{(VANTAGE POINT: SHREE GANESHAI HOTEL – 68 6th ST.)}

Beginning toward the east with Island Out of Time, followed by My Back Yard looking northwest, this photo of the western skyline is the final frame of my rooftop panorama.

Dentils of Metal

^{SUNNYSIDE & MINNA LEE HOTELS – 135 & 149 6th ST.}

The box-like components of a cornice are called dentils. While their size and shape may vary, they are always symmetrical and look like long rows of evenly spaced teeth, from which their name is derived.

A Lost Art

^{SUNSET HOTEL – 161 6th ST.}

Shown here is a small section of the cornice that crowns the Sunset Hotel on 6th Street. 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 that it is a metal fabrication and not 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 – 6TH & HOWARD STREETS}

The Hugo Hotel is the oldest hotel on 6th Street. A four-story masonry structure, it has been tenantless since a fire burned out a number of rooms in the late ’80s. In 1997 a group of artists headed by Brian Goggin staged a defenestration event at the Hugo, turning the hotel into an immense sculptural mural. Taking a liberty with the definition of defenestration, the artists cut apart and reassembled various types of scavenged furniture to give it the appearance of running or writhing. Tables leapt from windows and ran across the outside walls. Lamps corkscrewed from some windows, and sofas, refrigerators, bath tubs, even a grandfather clock squirmed and leapt from others. The furniture is there to this day, still running, leaping, and squirming out the windows. Now a designated sightseeing stop, untold thousands of photographs have been taken of the Hugo and its famous furniture, 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 - 6th & HOWARD STREETS}

2007 marked the tenth anniversary of Defenestration. Most of the sideshow-themed paintings that were part of the original installation have been painted over, but the remarkable graffiti that has appeared in recent years more than makes up for the loss. After a decade of exposure to the elements, the escaping furniture is still intact. While I appreciate the building as a work of art, the truth is that the Hugo Hotel stayed empty and rotting for twenty years because its owners couldn’t find anyone willing to pay their  preposterous $4 million asking price. Their outspoken contempt* for those less fortunate reflects an attitude that for years has been tacitly encouraged by the policies of local government.

Tired of years-long haggling with the owners, in January 2008 the redevelopment agency announced it was seizing the Hugo through eminent domain, foredooming this controversial landmark to demolition and setting a precedent for similar action in the future. Despite the agency’s assurance to the contrary, other likely consequences will be the incursion of gentrification and the displacement of people who have nowhere else to go.

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

6th & Natoma

^{(VANTAGE POINT: NATOMA near 6th ST.)}

The building on the far left is the St. Cloud Hotel, a wood frame rooming house with 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 108 years. The yellow building behind the St. Cloud is a wing of the Dudley Hotel, a renovated SRO that operates as non-profit housing.

Red Window

^{ALKAIN HOTEL – 948 MISSION ST. (vantage point: JESSIE ST.)}

According to tradition, the back streets in this area were named for some of the more popular prostitutes who worked in this part of town during the early years of the City. Whereas this may be apocryphal, some streets do have such names as Jessie, Harriet, Clara, Mary, and so on.  In fact, Jessie Street may well have been named after “Diamond Jessie” Hayman, a famous Tenderloin madam whose brothel was first on Mason Street and later on Eddy (see Joy of Life in Part Three: The Tenderloin).

Peeling Wall

^{ABANDONED FIRE STATION – JESSIE @ MINT ST.}

Appearing organic, alive and reminiscent of a bad sunburn, this is the facade of a closed-down fire station, located across Jessie Street from the Old Mint. After I photographed it, the building was restored and transformed into upscale lofts by the Martin Building Company. In memory of the old wall, a large print of this photograph now hangs in the Martin Building Company’s main offices.

Skyline

^{(VANTAGE POINT: NATOMA STREET)}

Looking northeast from Natoma near its intersection with Mary, one sees from left to right the rear of 447 Minna, the Chronicle Hotel, The Provident Loan Co. and the Chronicle Newspaper Building. Behind the Chronicle Hotel are the San Francisco Hilton Tower I, the then-unfinished offices of the Martin Building Company, the old fire station that is the subject of Peeling Wall and the Parc Renaissance Hotel. Behind the Chronicle Building are the pediment and red brick chimneys of the Old Mint.

Chronicle

^{CHRONICLE HOTEL - 936 MISSION ST.}

If a contest were held for old hotel signs, the Chronicle Hotel’s would win hands down as most illegible.

Legacy

^{447 MINNA ST. (rear), CHRONICLE HOTEL, HILTON TOWER I}

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 ST.}

Imprint of the Past

^{STEVENSON ST. between 5th & 6th STREETS}

The history of this building is indelibly stamped upon it by the changes in its brickwork. The windows and doors were undoubtedly added when the opening through the arch was bricked up. The design and complexity of the original brickwork hearken back a hundred years, to a time when horses were still in common use. I like to imagine a smithy had his shop set up here (blacksmith shops needed plenty of ventilation, requiring an open wall), where he tended to the needs of some of the City’s horses back in the day.

Dusk - Harriet Street

^{PARKING LOT - HARRIET ST.}

The raw, post-industrial atmosphere depicted here has, regrettably, almost completely vanished from the South of Market landscape.

Inner City (Homage to Chester Gould)

^{STEVENSON ST. between 6th & 7th STREETS}

Spanning Stevenson Street just about midway between 6th and 7th Streets, 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 one-time warehouse is now the home of a thriving dot.com enterprise. What matters to me is that the footbridge is still there. At one time, such footbridges were numerous in the back streets of San Francisco. This one is the only one that remains in the central city.

Chester Gould was the artist who drew the comic strip Dick Tracy for many years. 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 him for inspiring this picture.

Daybreak

^{FASCINATION (trade entrance) - STEVENSON ST.}

Fascination was the name of a unique Market Street business that first opened its doors in the 1950s and closed them for the final time in 2003. It was a kind of midway arcade game located on the main thoroughfare of San Francisco. The fact that Fascination was a successful business for all those years is an indication of the steady, if not devoted, patronage of its clientele, who were almost exclusively the tenants of surrounding SROs after BART construction disrupted Market Street commerce in the mid-60s.

The day I photographed Fascination’s service entrance promised to be beautiful and sunny. The early morning fog was starting 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. I happily snapped away, enjoying the early morning quiet. Of the many photos that I took, these two captured what I was after.

Back Street Transfiguration

^{FASCINATION (trade entrance) - STEVENSON ST.}

Stairway to Sunnyside

^{HOTEL SUNNYSIDE – 135 6th ST.}

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.

Desmond

^{DESMOND HOTEL – 42 6th ST.}

In the relatively short time since I began this project, many of the old signs have disappeared, having been consigned to History’s dustbin in the name of improvement. The sign for the Desmond Hotel is gone, replaced by an unlovely canvas marquee resembling a shoe box that, having been up for only a few years, is already badly damaged.

Early in 2006, I was contacted by a new tenant at the Desmond, who asked me if I would photograph the conditions inside his room. The hotel manager had refused to either make his room livable, or give him another room. The tenant, entirely savvy to his rights, wanted to have photographic documentation for legal purposes. Happy to be of assistance, I later met him in his room. This is what I found:

^{ROOM 302 - DESMOND HOTEL}

Sunset - the Alder

^{ALDER HOTEL – 175 6th ST.}

Renovation of the Alder was completed mid-2006 and the hotel is once again open for business. The hotel’s neon sign was also refurbished. It is one of only two neon signs remaining on 6th Street, thanks in no small part to the Six on Sixth plan, a program of low-interest property improvement loans designed by the redevelopment agency specifically for 6th Street hotel keepers and small business proprietors and negotiated by the agency’s emissary, Urban Solutions. The purported goal of the plan is to stimulate commerce and economic growth by improving 6th Street’s outward appearance. Among other things, loan applicants have been encouraged to replace their historic, but decayed neon signs with cheap canvas awnings. The results of this band-aid approach to improvement have been disastrous. The awnings subvert the neighborhood’s visual and historical integrity, their impermanence and tawdry appearance adding insult to injury.

Dawn - the Alder

^{HOTEL ALDER - 175 6th STREET}

Henry

^{HOTEL HENRY – 106 6th ST.}

I’m still hopeful the Henry’s sign might some day be restored.

Lawrence

^{LAWRENCE HOTEL – 48 6th ST.}

Although it is by no means my first photograph, my commitment to this project began with this picture. A few short weeks after I had photographed it, the sign for the Lawrence Hotel became landfill. Visible behind the barber shop sign is a few inches of the old Desmond Hotel sign that was taken down a year later.

People occasionally ask me why I don’t take “after” shots, photographs of the way things now appear. My answer is that the results of so-called modernization are going to be around for a long time, but history, with rare exceptions, is being obliterated before our eyes.

Upper 6th Street

^{WINSOR & SENECA HOTELS – 20 & 34 6th ST.}

Next door to the Winsor Hotel is the bar formerly known as The Charleston. A portion of the sign for Grady’s, a very popular bar that once opened into the lobby of the Seneca Hotel, is visible in the lower left corner. It was for a long time commonly believed that these bars were little more than watering holes for down-and-out alcoholics. While their run-down appearance may have qualified them as dives, they were in fact important social hubs 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 being served with a thirty day eviction notice, Grady’s closed its doors for the last time on St. Patrick’s Day, 2002, followed by The Charleston later that year, 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 life 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.

Arrow

^{THE ARROW – 18 6th ST.}

The Charleston became The Arrow, which in late 2007 became The Matador. Not long before I captured this image, The Charleston was a neighborhood bar, a place to socialize for the people who live in this area’s hotels. Then, near the end of 2002, the proprietors sold their liquor license to some young entrepreneurs and the owners of other bars on 6th Street soon followed suit. In the space of about a year all of the bars on 6th Street had closed, then re-opened with new names, catering to a very different clientele. My friend, Jim Ayers, who for many years has lived on 6th Street and managed Grady’s until it closed, helped the new owners of The Arrow 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.

Jim at The Arrow

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 Bar, 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. Jim was actually bemoaning a 49ers touchdown in this Chronicle Sports Section front page photo, not the other way around, as the caption would have you believe.

Waxing Moon over 6th Street

^{HILLSDALE HOTEL – 51 6th ST.}

On a warm April evening in 2004, I was standing in front of The Arrow, talking to my friend, Jim. The sun was setting as we talked, and as the sky grew darker I saw that I could get a shot of the waxing moon while the last rays of sunlight were still visible. What appeals to me about this particular 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 & HILLSDALE HOTELS - 48 & 51 6th ST.}

On the street level of the Lawrence is Club Six, a very trendy nightclub patronized by hordes of  shallow, self-indulgent, young suburbanites, oblivious to their environment and completely unmindful of the local residents. Before it became Club Six, the ground floor was a decades-old neighborhood bar named Frisco, a name that I loved for its in-your-face appeal to the bar’s clientele. At one time, ‘Frisco was an affectionate way of referring to their home port used by the merchant marines and sailors who once populated 6th Street’s SROs. Alas! That pride in place has all but entirely vanished, having been replaced by the morés of the culture of greed.

Fading Light

^{LAWRENCE HOTEL – 48 6th ST.}

The Lawrence Hotel, silhouetted by the last dying embers of a spectacular sunset, is one of my earliest photographs for this series, shot from my window across the alley.

Fire Escape

^{(VANTAGE POINT: SHREE GANESHAI HOTEL – 68 6TH ST.)}

Looking across Jessie Street from my fire escape, I could see a small part of the Seneca Hotel behind the Lawrence and in the distance, the McAllister Tower. As you will see in the next few images, I had something of a love affair with that fire escape.

Rainy 6th Street #1

^{HAVELI, WHITAKER & OAK TREE HOTELS – 37, 41 & 45 6TH ST.}

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 pulling up the blanket around my chin for the night.

Rainy 6th Street #2

^{WHITAKER, OAK TREE & HILLSDALE HOTELS – 41, 45 & 51 6th ST.}

On a wet December evening a little more than a year after I shot Rainy 6th Street #1, I photographed this little scene taking place in front of what was once another neighborhood gathering place, Ginger’s, Too.

Window onto 6th Street

^{(VANTAGE POINT: SHREE GANESHAI HOTEL – 68 6th ST.)}

For all of its problems, 6th 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.

6th Street Beautification

The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency has been trying for years to change the face of 6th Street. Their efforts have primarily consisted of widening the sidewalks, installing new street lights, planting $10,000 palm trees at the intersections of 6th & Mission and 6th & Howard Streets, and hanging banners from the new street lights that proclaim 6th Street is being beautified. Urban Solutions, pusher of the redevelopment agency’s Six on Sixth plan, has made it possible for a few of the hotels to repaint their facades and replace their historic neon signs with cheap canvas awnings. The combined costs since 1999 have exceeded 100 million dollars. I offer here various prospects of 6th Street captured at the end of 2006, so that you may judge for yourself how successful the Sixth Street Beautification program has been.

6th & Jessie

6th & Mission

Club Six

6th Street in Winter

Beer, Liquor, Wine — Jesus Cares

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