14th Street Described

[It surprises me that, as I read ahead in my new-to-San-Francisco journal, that I find little description of my new neighborhood. While my flat was a squalid, boardinghouse-style piece of hell, the block on which I lived was an unending source of interest. 14th Street in its entirety is quite a study: it begins in the heavily industrial Northeast Mission district, travels across palm-lined Dolores Street (which always reminds me of Santa Barbara in its studied, Mission-era revival), crosses Market at the busy intersection with Church Street, bisects the leafy Duboce Triangle district, then climbs a steep hill to end in wealthy Corona Heights. In only ten or so blocks, 14th runs the socioeconomic gamut from gritty to glam.]

[I lived in the last gritty block. When I arrived in fall 1996, the four corners of 14th and Valencia held: a weed-filled lot which was empty most of the year, but which hosted a pumpkin patch in October and Christmas trees in December; a used car lot called, strangely, Trader Joe's; a wholesale casket outlet; and a grimy apartment building with an even grimier liquor store beneath. Around the corner on Valencia were, and are, the Valencia Gardens housing projects. Made walking to BART at 16th and Mission an adventure, not to mention coming home and finding people smoking crack on my front steps.]

[My block, between Valencia and Guerrero streets, held the strangest combination of establishments. Nap's II was a bar frequented by blue-collar, straight African Americans. This was a fascinating place which was, I assume, driven out of business by the gentrification of the Mission. Multi-generational, noisy, messy, and vital, Nap's couldn't be considered a cultural resource, as such, but I do wonder what happened to the large clientele when the current Hush Hush, a hip, Gen-X establishment, opened last year.]

[Across the street from Nap's was [and is] a tattoo parlor, frequented by the under-25 punk set. Next door was [is?] a dyke cafe where some of the women really were bearded. There was a graphic design studio on the other side of the tattoo parlor. Next to that was a very charismatic, evangelical church, whose ancient pastor was jealous of his reserved, on-street parking space. Next to THAT was an apartment house from whose third floor flew a prominent rainbow flag. The rumor was that every full moon, bearish types held orgies in that apartment. Indeed, the bigger men did congregate around the front door on those few occasions when I remembered to check it out.]

[On the corner of 14th and Guerrero, there was another liquor store, an anonymous apartment building, a cafe space that never managed to hang on to a tenant for more than six months, and the laundromat I used while a resident of this 'hood. A nice old lady used to come in and clean up that laundromat, though I never could determine if the owners paid her, or if she just needed something to do. She was always up for a chat, in between chasing out the drunks from Nap's, yelling a kids to quiet down, and picking up used dryer sheets from the floor she kept immacualate.]

[The 400 block of 14th couldn't be called a village (we all walked to Church & Market for groceries, drinks, and transit, or to the Mission proper for burritos, drugs, and transit), but there was enough coming-and-going, enough variety, and enough familiar faces for me to call it home, at least at that time in my life.]

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