Lunch spots, public plazas fulfill plans made long ago
I have seen the future, and it’s a great place to go for lunch.
Most seasoned San Franciscans will tell you the city is going to hell in a handbasket — it’s dirty, it’s full of bums and, worst of all, it’s full of new people who are ruining the place. You hear that all the time.
But on further review, as they say in sports, maybe they are wrong.
All I know about San Francisco I learned by walking, so I took a couple of lunchtime strolls not long ago and not far away, between First and Second streets, Market and Folsom, with a little jog to Beale Street, an area that’s not very big. But it is very tall and full of life.
It used to have light industry and a number of second-tier office buildings. The big boys were in the Financial District. This was the wrong side of Market Street.
Old buildings, new uses
Now look. This is the center of a new San Francisco, all tall glass buildings, reflecting off each other like a forest of highrise mirrors. The buildings are square and angular, mostly. Many of them look like giant dominoes stood on end. The new city is booming: a crane on every corner.
A few brick and concrete buildings from an earlier era are still there, mixed in with the new towers. Some have fading signs from long-ago businesses painted on the walls, reminders of an older world: DIE MAKERS MACHINERY or CHARLES C MOORE ENGINEERS.
Many of the older buildings have been converted to modern uses, new wine in old bottles.
The district is laced with alleys, including the classy intersection of Stevenson and Jessie streets, two small streets lined with restaurants and classic old buildings. Off Jessie is Elim Alley, only 8 feet wide, half a block long and as dank as a canyon. The alley leads to First Street, where at Mission the giant Salesforce Tower is rising. It will be just over a thousand feet tall and will be the centerpiece of the new San Francisco.
The area around the building is described on the Salesforce Tower website as “Silicon Valley’s second home and birthplace of the next great thing.”
I didn’t look up so much as I looked down, at the streetscape. A bit of a surprise — despite the tall buildings, most of the streets are sunny and many have public plazas, an amenity the city requires of potential developers.
There are 64 of these public places in private buildings — some of them sun-washed plazas, a couple of rooftop gardens, a greenhouse or two — all sandwiched in less than a square city mile.
One of the best of these public spaces is at 55 Second St., on a mezzanine up a set of polished stairs. Here is a big room with hardwood floors, skylights and grand leather chairs, like a private club. The public is welcome to sit, read, eat lunch or just hang out. Here a couple of men were sitting, feet up on the window sill, snoring gently, taking an urban snooze.
“It provides a place that provides some breathing room when you are between things,” said Jon Golinger, who lives on Telegraph Hill and studied law at Golden Gate University’s Mission Street campus.
Peaceful streets
In other parts of the city, this sort of public lounge would probably be a mess, but not here. The district is free of the kind of urban ills that have plagued the rest of the city, at least in the daytime. In two long afternoon expeditions to the First and Second street district, I saw only one beggar and no graffiti. The streets were clean, too.
There are little lunch places all over, some with chairs and tables outside. It is a lunchtime kind of district; it comes to life in midday and early afternoon.
But this is not your old San Francisco. It is a shirtsleeve kind of place, not a coat and tie in sight. And young. If there was anyone older than 40, I didn’t see them.
All this is the result of years of planning and all those endless meetings and conferences that sought to control the seismic shift in the city that began 30 years ago. “It was a premium time for planning,” said Dean Macris, who served as city planning director three different times.
“Much of what you see today is a result of those plans,” he said, when the hope was to build a new Financial District in character with the rest of the city. “The scene works, as you can see.”
He may be right. Take a look for yourself.