Backwater shifting with tides of change to prime waterfront
Like a lot of San Franciscans, I’ve always had an affinity for the backwaters of the waterfront, odd places with collapsing old docks, derelict boats that would never sail again, rusty railroad tracks. The coast of nowhere. This is a good time to see it, before it vanishes.
One of my favorites has been Mission Creek, just minutes from downtown but a world away. When I was a smaller kid than I am now, Mission Creek was a place where banana boats docked. These were big, white ships sailing from San Francisco to the West Coast of Central America. In my eyes, the banana boat dock was exotic, as if this little corner of the waterfront was a window into a wider world.
And before that, in my father’s time, lumber schooners and hay scows were crammed into Mission Creek — the busiest place on the waterfront. Also the foulest: It was an open sewer.
Country in the city
Years later, after the banana boats and the schooners had sailed away, and the bay had been cleaned up, it became a forgotten backwater. I’d sneak out of work early on spring afternoons and take long walks down by Blanche’s, a ramshackle restaurant and bar at the Fourth Street bridge. There was always a whiff of secret romance about Blanche’s. It was out of the way, perfect for a rendezvous.
More than 50 years ago, a fleet of 30 or so houseboats moved in up the creek. Commercial shipping was long gone, the big railroad yard just south had closed down, the warehouses were empty, and weeds grew 6 feet high in vacant lots on the shore.
“It was the country in the middle of the city,” said Ruth Huffaker, who lived on a boat on Mission Creek.
The boats are still there, grandfathered into their corner of the creek. But they are surrounded by a new city. “If you go away for a couple of weeks, when you come back something else has changed,” said Corinne Woods, who has lived in a floating home on the creek for more than 25 years.
You might say the baseball park, which opened 16 seasons ago at Third and King streets, started the transformation. And then UCSF, the cornerstone of the Mission Bay neighborhood.
And now, a new development called One Mission Bay, which is going up at the former banana boat dock, at the south end of the Lefty O’Doul Bridge, steps from the ballpark.
I remember watching the egrets and herons, long-legged birds, important looking, standing on the shore there. Now there are two construction cranes, helping to build a 16-story high-rise and a six-story mid-rise, home in a year or so to 350 waterfront residences with a 250-room luxury hotel next door.
“Escape from the concrete of San Francisco and be surrounded with color,” the ads for the condos say. “Nature is your neighbor,” a sign on a construction fence says. “Nature is your reward.”
I was taken a bit aback, as they say in the boat business. Any San Fran- ciscan worth his salt would be. So I took a long walk.
The north bank of Mission Creek has been upgraded for some years: condos and offices, a beautiful bay-side park and walkway. Young people were on the path, doing stretching exercises preliminary to a yoga session. Yoga on the old S— Creek? It’s a new world.
Across Third Street, on the south side of the creek near McCovey Cove, a food-and-drink place called the Yard will reopen soon. The Giants season is only weeks away, and this will be tailgate territory.
Development plans
But for now, the area around Pier 48 and Pier 50 is no place in particular, with one foot in the nautical past and the other in a new San Francisco. There are two gray ships tied up at the end of Pier 50; Military Sealift Command vessels, ready to go to sea in an emergency. They spend their days, months, waiting. There are tugs from Weststar Marine, part of the working waterfront, and a few other odd vessels.
There are little parks on the edge of the bay, overgrown with new grass and fennel. It is possible to sit on benches there and listen — to the squawks of the sea birds, and the sounds the city makes, a steady hum, like a well-tuned engine idling. The bay is flat calm here and greenish brown. The towers of San Francisco are in the medium distance. They seem to be moving closer every day.
The Giants have big plans for a parking lot near where towers of One Mission Bay are rising, the Warriors want to build an arena in a vacant lot not far away.
You see young mothers here every nice afternoon, with very small kids in strollers. These are the new native sons and daughters, who, if they stay, will grow up on a very different waterfront community, once a backwater.