Bounced by city, skipper seeks fish sales site
On a typical Saturday morning before the pandemic, hundreds of customers would form a line on Pier 47 to buy inexpensive whole halibut, black cod and rockfish from the Pioneer, the only fishing boat in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf that sold to the public. But now, the Port of San Francisco has halted the Pioneer’s retail fish sales, and its captain is looking for a new harbor to call home.
“The fact is that San Francisco has made it very clear there is no place for us anywhere in San Francisco,” said Giuseppe Pennisi, a thirdgeneration fisher who was the subject of a Chronicle special indepth report, “The Fisherman’s Secret: a ModernDay Treasure Hunt,” which told the story of his yearslong quest to recover what he believes are gold ingots from the bottom of the ocean.
Though he has leads on a new Bay Area location that may ultimately be better for business, customers who live in the area are disappointed, and they have been sending angry emails to city officials complaining about the hurdles that the Pioneer has faced.
“Mayor Breed is bending over backwards to accommodate and bend the rules for restaurants and other businesses,” said Charles Thomas, a customer who has been involved with community issues through the group North Beach Neighbors for decades. “They’re deliberately closing this business down. They’re doing the opposite of what they should be doing. They should be supporting fish markets.”
The Pioneer had been selling fish directly to the public in 2017 as part of a pilot program, and over time, it became a beloved part of the neighborhood. Then on June 10, the Port sent Pennisi a notice saying that his sales would be suspended for 90 days so that Scoma’s, a 54yearold seafood restaurant that leases the part of the pier where Pennisi’s customers usually line up, could set up five or six tables for outdoor dining. About 10 days later, the Port said the fishing vessel could no longer unload fish at the site, which gave Pennisi another reason to look for a new location for his ship.
Currently, outdoor seating is the only type of inperson dining allowed in the city, and
Scoma’s has had a lease on the space for decades, according to Randolph Quezada, communications director at the Port.
“It’s an unfortunate timing situation, but as the rules and regulations regarding what was acceptable during the pandemic changed, Scoma’s had the opportunity to get back to work,” Quezada said, noting that the restaurant used to have over 100 union employees. “We had to help them out with this.”
Pennisi and many of his supporters say the city shouldn’t pit one business against another and should find another place for the Pioneer. The Port says that there is no other berth at the wharf where the 68foot boat can sell fish to the public safely. Meanwhile, Scoma’s owner Tom
Creeden, who originally allowed the Pioneer to set up its fish market in the restaurant’s small valet parking lot, said that difficulties with the fish sales started before the pandemic.
Creeden alleges that Pennisi didn’t abide by their verbal agreement to finish doing business by 11 a.m. each day, including washing down the small asphalt area that separates the boat and the restaurant, getting rid of any trace of fish guts. He also said Pennisi didn’t do enough to keep the boat’s customers from leaving their cars in the restaurant’s parking lot.
“We had a good relationship, and things kind of fell apart,” he said. “Managers sent letters and asked him to keep cars out. It was hampering our business.”
Pennisi acknowledges that his customers sometimes left their cars in the wrong spot, but he had a different understanding about their handshake agreement over when he could unload and conduct sales. Overall, he said, he is more frustrated by the actions of the Port, which he said isn’t doing enough to support the fishing fleet, especially with the recent fire at Pier 45 and the disrupted market that fishers face with so many restaurants closed or doing very limited business.
For many nearby residents, the Pioneer has been a critical way to buy fresh whole fish instead of the imported and defrosted fish fillets at supermarkets, according to emails they sent to the Port. Sales to locals have done well as wholesale business has waned, Pennisi said.
In a June 21 email to the Port, longtime customer Holden Benon said that he “can share through firsthand experience that they are a oneofakind, familyowned business that delivers a wonderful product while maintaining the authenticity of our wharf (and indeed the City of San Francisco, generally).”
Quezada, though, said that the opportunity to sell to the public is available to other fishing boats through the program.
“We know people were very committed to the Pioneer,” said Quezada. “We’re trying to walk a really fine line to balance the needs of the industry, our tenants and the entire Fisherman’s
Wharf community.”
It may be a loss for people living right around the wharf, but Pennisi feels that he may still get lucky. After calling harbors up and down the coast for a new berth, he might have found a spot in the Bay Area where he can do direct fish sales and also unload fish. The stillsecret location would also allow him to realize his dream to run a fish and chips business, he said, and sell cooked Dungeness crab — purchased from other fishing buddies — from a food truck.
Serendipitously, on Thursday he was given a delivery van by a man he bought a food truck trailer from on Craigslist, who said God told him to give it to him.
“It was a two to threehour wait to buy fish at our boat during the pandemic,” Pennisi said. “I have to find a way to get fish to the public.”