San Francisco - Alison Bing [52]
SF ARTS COMMISSION GALLERY Map
415-554-6080; www.sfacgallery.org; 401 Van Ness Ave; admission free; noon-5pm Wed-Sat; 5, 42, 47, 49, F, J, K, L, M, N; Van Ness
Get in on the next art movement at this lobby-level public gallery featuring international perspectives and local talents. You never know what you might find. As well as hanging shows and hosting receptions in its gallery, the commission also sponsors wide-ranging works, such as a recent sound sculpture in the rotunda of City Hall. Very cool. Drop by to hear what’s doing now.
UNITED NATIONS PLAZA Map
Market St btwn Hyde & Leavenworth Sts; 6am-midnight; 5, 6, 7, 14, 21, 31, 71, F, J, K, L, M, N; & Civic Center
This vast brick-paved triangle commemorates the signing of the United Nations charter in San Francisco. It offers a clear view of City Hall, sundry Scientologists drumming up converts, and the odd drug deal in progress. Thankfully, a wonderful farmers market ( 415-558-9455) provides a fresher perspective on the Tenderloin, every Wednesday and Sunday from about 7am to 5pm.
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CHINATOWN
Drinking; Eating; Shopping; Sleeping
Chinatown cropped up within a year of the 1849 Gold Rush, and how it survived since then is even more amazing. At first it wasn’t exclusively Chinese at all, but a bachelor community of Mexican, American, European, African American and Chinese miners who bunked, prospected and caroused side by side. Women who entered these streets automatically surrendered their reputations, and those who did might make a living as a prostitute behind the iron-clad doors of Ross Alley or prosper as a madam. Working conditions were often harsh, and in 1852 San Francisco’s first labor strike was orchestrated by the Chinatown guild of masons.
But the solidarity didn’t last. When gold prices came crashing down with the discovery of gold in Australia, miners down on their luck turned their irrational resentments on resident Australians and Chinese. Australian lodging houses were burned to the ground, anti-Chinese riots broke out and Chinese miners’ and farmers’ land claims were rendered null and void. In 1870 San Francisco passed its first law restricting housing and employment for anyone born in China, creating tough competition for space and legitimate work in these increasingly cramped quarters. Restrictions on marriage and family immigration turned Chinatown into a community of bachelors and ‘paper sons’ claimed as relatives in order to get around exclusion laws.
Most services in Chinatown were provided not by the city but by tongs, neighborhood family associations whose headquarters you can still see in Waverly Place. Meanwhile, white landlords, police and even the mayor looked the other way as long as they benefited from brothels, opium dens, gambling houses and bootlegging operations. Police ignored plumes of fragrant smoke escaping subterranean opium dens on Duncombe Alley, but when a white person was spotted emerging from the alley, every Chinese person in sight was rounded up on ‘corruption’ charges. After the red-light Commercial St caught fire in 1906, Chinese brothels were replaced by white-run ‘parlor houses.’
Officials planned to oust Chinese residents and develop this prime property after the fire, but the Chinese consulate and rifle-toting Chinatown merchants persuaded the city otherwise. Instead, Chinatown residents reclaimed their neighborhood and held temple services in the smoldering ruins. Chinatown businessmen led by Look Tin Eli pooled funds to reinvent the area as the tourist attraction you see today, with pagoda-style roofs and dragon lanterns lining shopping streets. Grant Ave soon began a brisk business in tchotchkes for the tourist trade and beer for Beat poets, with Stockton St to the north supplying Chinatown locals with fresh produce, roast duck, herbal remedies and dumplings galore. Some 41 historic alleyways are packed into Chinatown’s 22 blocks.