San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Amid autumn’s cool, green shoots form
To everything there is a season, the Old Testament says. Shakespeare saw it differently: Hamlet said, “The time is out of joint.”
Maybe that’s why people are confused these autumnal days. We had a fierce rainstorm to start the season, snow in the Sierra, then glorious sunshine. The little creeks on Mount Tamalpais — Fern, Rattlesnake, Spike Buck, Bootjack — that had dwindled away in the fire season all sprang back to life. You could hear them roar.
Across the bay, San Francisco glowered in the dark rain clouds, then glittered when the sun came out. It looked like a kaleidoscope, shifting colors when you moved.
The scene kept shifting too. They played the last game of the World Series in November, the middle of football season. When I turned on the television to watch some football, it was Christmas season. The Halloween ghosts and goblins had just been put away, and here was a TV Santa Claus, advertising the World Cup, which will be held in a desert kingdom on the Persian Gulf.
Confused by the artificial world of television, I headed for North Beach, where they were celebrating the 80th anniversary of Gino and Carlo, the celebrated saloon. The street was packed. It was like a rerun of another time in North Beach, when everybody was Italian — or wanted to be.
The city’s changed, of course. Or maybe it hasn’t. Toward the end of the afternoon, the local fire truck moved slowly down Green Street, the firefighters leaning out and waving to the people outside Gino and Carlo, like a procession in a small town where everybody knows everybody.
The next day I had to go downtown to see the dentist at 450 Sutter St. Going downtown is still a bit unnerving. The crowds are still not there, and there are lots of empty storefronts. It was the first Monday in November, and already the big Christmas tree was up in Union Square. Too soon.
It was still election season the next day. The big Election Day party was at John’s Grill on Ellis Street — free food, free drinks and all the political talk you could want. Willie Brown presided, like the uncrowned king of local politics. John Konstin and his son Johnny, who own John’s Grill, provided the free stuff. The joint was packed.
The mayor was there. So was the district attorney and a host of other politicos, consultants, city officials and news types interviewing each other. Everybody’s an expert, and everybody’s got an opinion. They say politics is a blood sport in San Francisco, but not at a free lunch on Election Day. The polls were still open, and you just never know: Until the votes were counted, everybody there — smiling, shaking hands — was a winner.
There are places for all seasons in San Francisco, but not where you might think. They are ordinary places that make the city out of the ordinary.
One of them is the Tennessee Grill, on Taraval Street and 21st Avenue in the Parkside. “This place really is so San Francisco,” said Ken Sproul, a pal who collects old-time restaurants. “But it’s not the San Francisco people think of.”
The place is plain but honest, serving big portions of American food. “An American diner,” owner Kyaw Soe called it. The grill, named by a former owner from Tennessee, has been in the same spot for 70 years.
“I haven’t changed it a bit,” Soe said. “It’s just the way it was.” But nothing is really what it was, especially the Parkside, which used to be the old-time Irish and Italian heart of the west side of the city, the classic “out in the avenues” section of San Francisco. Now it’s mostly Asian with a mix of other folks.
Soe himself came to San Francisco from Burma, and he got a job at the Tennessee Grill in 1998 as a dishwasher. “My first and last job,” he said. He saved his money and bought out the place in 2017.
“I do everything,” he said. “I wait on tables, I cook, I’m the cashier. Everybody knows me, and I know all the customers.”
He’s open from 8 a.m. to 7 at night, seven days a week. There are 50 items on the menu, breakfast, lunch and dinner, two cooks and two grills, one broiler, breakfast all day. You can sit at the counter and watch the show. “Try the pot roast,” Soe says, “I have ox tails on Friday, and that’s pretty good.”
Two air conditioning workers were in for lunch. “We come when we are in the neighborhood,” said Kashmi Nabil, one of the AC guys. He offered the simplest of food reviews. “It’s friendly here, the service is good, and we like the food.”
We had a little lunch, and I went home for an afternoon walk on my local hill. The rains had brought out the first shoots of new green grass, and soon, if the big white clouds bring another shot of rain, the hills will turn a deep winter green. It’s almost the season.