Grant Street, Chinatown

I'm not often in San Francisco's official Chinatown, which swarms with packs of gawking tourists from the midwest on the best of days. I prefer Clement Street or Irving near 19th for my chinatown fix. (which, oddly enough, usually involves Vietnamese food, not Chinese...) Anyway, as a young child, I remember my mom loved to take us to Chinatown, where I would be shoved aside by mean old Chinese ladies trying to buy the freshest vegetables at various green-grocers on Stockton, and inevitably rewarded with some cheesy tchotke (a "jade" horse figurine is strongly embedded in my memory) purchased at some sort of "showroom of the oriental arts" or something on Grant Street.

As one would assume, Chinatown has a lot of interesting history. In 1906, after the earthquake/fire, the SF goverment, in a valorous showing of both racism AND greed (oh, they go hand in hand!) tried to keep the Chinese from coming back to Chinatown, because the rich white people wanted the real estate for themselves. So the Chinese community had to make some concessions, one of them being that they would make Chinatown more tourist-friendly, and more "Chinese" looking. So that's why a lot of the buildings in Chinatown have a little oriental flare to them - it was to placate the white populous and make Chinatown more "cute", and, I assume, less of an opium den.

Anyway, here are some photos I took the other day of old signs and stuff on Grant Ave.



The Buddha Bar on Grant &... something. Obviously, I wasn't paying close attention to street signs. I wonder how old the street lights are here?



"The Art Co" sign. I wonder what it was like down here before everything was a goddamned souvenir store.





Old Signs for souvenir shops.





Some really cute deco tilework on storefronts... It's kinda amazing to me how much tilework like this there is in SF.



Eastern Bakery sign.



The amazing thing is, this place is STILL a drug store.



Looking down Grant towards Bush St.



Looking down Grant towards Columbus St.

You know the Chinatown Gate on Grant and Bush? It's ugly, you know, and has, like, dragons on it? Anyway, apparently when they put that up, the committe in charge of it had a choice between building a new library or putting up that gate. Just so you know where everyones priorities lie. sigh. Oh, and apparently the gate is wrong, the animals on it are in the wrong place or something. heh.

Perhaps the Cutest Building Ever

Here are some not-very-good photos of the Royal Baking Company building and storefront (plus an anonymous beautiful lady!) on Mission between Persia and Russia. I don't know anything about this building, but I'm guessing it was built around the 30's, and it is beyond adorable. They make their own bread and have a little bakery where you can buy rolls shaped like turtles and coffee, and are a relic from when the Excelsior was a predominantly Italian neighborhood. (More on that later!) There are lots of old businesses in the Excelsior, aka the neighborhood that time/the rest of the city forgot.

• Below is a better image I stole from flickr of the building before its recent paint job. Anyway, I hope the Royal Baking Co. is protected, because it's super unique and beautiful. I wonder what it looks like inside? Old deco tile? A girl can dream!

Even Boring Stuff at Least Used to Look Cute

Back in ye olden days, even boring stuff like the sign for a parking garage had some style. Like this one, located on the San Francisco Marketplace building, which is on Market and, uh, 9th or something:



Anyway, the point is, it seems like everything that is built nowadays, especially buildings/structures which serve a semi-utilitarian purpose (government buildings, hospitals, parking garages, etc.) are made as boring and ugly as humanly possible. It's like, Slab Of Concrete, Slab of Concrete, window, repeat, ad nauseum. You know? I mean, a parking structure is not an interesting place to be. But do they really need to be so aggressively ugly?