Tenderloin, San Francisco, California
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The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in San Francisco. It is known for its immigrant populations, ethnic restaurants, bar scene, and close proximity to the Financial District, Downtown and Civic Center.
Located close to San Francisco's major hotels, the Tenderloin is a historic place full of preserved hotels from the early 20th century. The squalid conditions, homelessness, crime, drug sales, prostitution, liquor stores (over 60), and strip clubs give the area a seedy reputation. However, these conditions have also made rents in this area more affordable to low-income and working-class families in a city that is among the priciest in the country. The Tenderloin has one of the city's highest concentrations of children.
With some of San Francisco's most prestigious real estate only a few blocks to the north, and the Financial District's high towers and hotels just to the east, the Tenderloin is often strikes tourists as a micro-culture within the city. As with other lower-income neighborhoods such as the Mission and SOMA districts, many artists and writers make the Tenderloin their home.
While the streets close to Market Street are among San Francisco's most undesirable neighborhoods, a gradual but distinct rise in income levels occurs as one travels north, ascending to the Nob Hill sector. Relative to other areas, the Tenderloin is the only largely working-class neighborhood within the downtown area.
The Dot Com boom in the late 1990s brought a great deal of redevelopment and resident inhabitation to the SOMA district in particular, but some revitalization funds put into the Tenderloin made a prominent impact — evident today by a much broader section of new ethnic restaurants and bars, as well as a more long-term young working class.
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[edit] Area
The Tenderloin is a dense downtown neighborhood located in the flatlands on the Southern slope of Nob Hill, nestled between the Union Square shopping district to the Northeast and the Civic Center office district to the Southwest. It encompasses about fifty square blocks and a conservative description has it bounded on the North by Post Street, on the East by Taylor and 6th Streets, on the South by Mission Street and on the West by Van Ness and Ninth Streets. The northern boundary with Nob Hill is especially hard to define and can range as far north as Pine Street in western sections of the Tenderloin, such as the Polk Gulch neighborhood.
The Tenderloin roughly lies west of Union Square, south of Nob Hill, east of the Western Addition and Van Ness corridor, and north of SOMA ("South of Market").
It includes neighborhoods referred to as Mid-Market, Civic Center, Theater District, Lower Nob Hill, Polk Gulch, and Little Saigon. The words "The Tenderloin" almost never appears in real-estate listings; instead, it is usually one of the above neighborhood names.
The extension of the Tenderloin south of Market Street in the vicinity of Sixth, Seventh, and Mission Streets is known locally as Mid-Market and is "Skid Row," or sarcastically as "the Wine Country," an allusion to "winos" (street- dwelling alcoholics) who live there. The northern part of it beginning at Post Street is called a variety of nicknames, including the Upper Tenderloin, Lower Nob Hill (widely used in real estate listings), or facetiously "The Tendernob," "Tenderloin Heights," and the "Trenderloin" (a reference to the area's increasing gentrification). The eastern extent, where it meets Union Square is known as the Theater District. Part of the western extent of the Tenderloin, Larkin and Hyde Streets between Turk and O'Farrell, was officially named "Little Saigon" by Mayor Gavin Newsom shortly after his election in 2004.
Nestled between successful commercial areas and high priced residential areas, parts of the Tenderloin have historically resisted gentrification, maintaining a seedy character and reputation for crime. The region includes City Hall, San Francisco Public Library, and the Asian Art Museum. Abandoned architectural landmarks are also located here, such as the old Hibernia Bank located on the dilapidated corner of Jones and McAllister Street, near a methadone clinic, the Saint Anthony Foundation and St. Anthony Dining Room, founded by Franciscan friar Alfred Boeddeker in 1950.
[edit] History
The Tenderloin borders the Mission/Market Street corridor which follows the Spaniards' El Camino Real (California) which in turn traced an ancient North/South Indian trail. Sheltered by Nob Hill and far enough from the Bay to be on solid ground, there is evidence of a community going back several thousand years, and when the area was excavated in the 1960s for the BART/MUNI subway station at Civic Center remains of a women dated as 5,000 years old were found.
The Tenderloin has been a downtown residential community since shortly after the California Gold Rush in 1849. It had an active nightlife in the late 1800s with many theaters, restaurants and hotels. Almost all of the buildings in the neighborhood were destroyed by the 1906 Earthquake and the backfires that were set by firefighters to contain the devastation. The Tenderloin was immediately rebuilt with some hotels opening by 1908 and apartment buildings shortly thereafter. By the 1920s, the neighborhood was notorious for its gambling, billiard halls, boxing gyms, "speakeasies," theaters, restaurants and other nightlife depicted in the hard boiled detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett and others.
In the mid-1900s the Tenderloin provided work for many musicians in the neighborhood's theaters, hotels, burlesque houses, bars and clubs and was the location of the Musician's Union Building on Jones Street. The most famous jazz club was the Blackhawk at Hyde and Turk Streets where Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk and other jazz greats recorded live albums for Fantasy Records in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
With housing consisting almost entirely of single room hotel rooms, studio and one bedroom apartments, the Tenderloin historically housed single adults and couples. After WWII, with the decline in central cities throughout the United States, the Tenderloin lost population creating a large amount of vacant housing units by the mid-1970s. Beginning in the late 1970s, after the Vietnam War, the Tenderloin received large numbers of refugees from Southeast Asia -- first ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, then Khmer from Cambodia and Hmong from Laos. The low cost vacant housing, and the proximity to Chinatown through the Stockton tunnel, made the area attractive to refugees and resettlement agencies. Studio apartments became home for families of four and five members and became what a local police officer called "vertical villages." The Tenderloin quickly increased from having few children to having 3,500 and this population has remained. A number of neighborhood Southeast Asian restaurants, bahn mi coffee shops, ethnic grocery stores, video shops and other stores were created at this time which still exist.
The Tenderloin has a long history as a center of alternate sexualities. One of the first "gay riots," pre-dating the Stonewall riots in New York, happened at Compton's Cafeteria at Turk and Taylor Streets in August 1966 when the police, attempting to arrest a drag queen, sparked a riot that spilled into the streets. Prior to the emergence of the Castro as a major gay village, the Polk Gulch at the western side of the Tenderloin was one of the city's first gay neighborhoods and a few of the gay bars and clubs still exist on Polk Street. Parts of Polk Street now cater to the recent gentrification of the neighborhood - such bars as Vertigo, Hemlock, and Lush Lounge.
Both the movie and book The Maltese Falcon were based in San Francisco's Tenderloin. There is also an alley, in what is now Nob Hill, named for the book's author (Dashiell Hammett). It lies outside the Tenderloin because the boundary was defined differently than it is today. Some locations, such as Sam Spade's apartment and John's Grill, also no longer lie in the Tenderloin because local economics and real estate have changed the character and labeling of areas over time.
There are a number of stories about how the Tenderloin got its name. One is that it is a reference to an older neighborhood in New York with the same name and similar characteristics. Another is a reference to the neighborhood as the "soft underbelly" (analogous to the cut of meat) of the city, with allusions to vice, graft, and corruption. There are also some legends about the name, probably folklore, including that the neighborhood earned its name from the words of a local police captain, who was overheard saying that when he was assigned to another part of town, he could only afford to eat chuck steak on the salary he was earning, but after he was transferred to this neighborhood he was making so much money on the side soliciting bribes that now he could eat tenderloin instead. Another version of that story says that the officers that worked in the Tenderloin received a "hazard pay" bonus for working in such a violent area, and that is how they were able to afford the good cut of meat. Yet another story, also likely apocryphal, is that the name is a reference to the sexual parts of prostitutes (i.e., "loins").
[edit] Community
According to the U.S. Census the population of the Tenderloin is about 25,000 people, although neighborhood activists feel this is an undercount. It is one of the lowest income neighborhoods in San Francisco with among the highest concentrations of homeless, elderly, disabled, ex-offender and Southeast Asian populations. It is an ethnically diverse community, consisting of families, young people living in cheap apartments, downtown bohemian artists, and recent immigrants from Southeast Asia and Latin America. It is home to a large population of homeless, those living in extreme poverty, and numerous non-profit social service agencies, soup kitchens, religious rescue missions, homeless shelters and Single Room Occupancy hotels. All of this comes together to make this one of the most interesting and diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco.
With few exceptions, housing is rented in dense 4-6 story Edwardian apartment buildings. The Hamilton, on O'Farrell Street, is a 20 story former hotel which has condominiumized and is owner occupied.
White middle-upper income inhabitation ("gentrification") accelerated somewhat during and after the Dot-com boom of 1999-2001 in the northern blocks ranging from O'Farrell Street to Sutter Street.
One of the centers of community in the Tenderloin is Glide Memorial Church on Ellis & Taylor Streets. Glide provides social service programs to the area's residents and homeless and has been doing so for over forty years. They serve over 1,000,000 meals a year to homeless and poor residents of San Francisco – most of whom reside in the Tenderloin. Cecil Williams has been leading Glide since 1963 and the Sunday Morning "Celebrations" are noteworthy for their gospel-jazz choir and band. The church and the surrounding neighborhood are the primary location of a movie filmed in the Tenderloin and starring Will Smith called The Pursuit of Happyness--although few residents witnessed the actual filming leading many to suspect the film's having been largely shot off-location.
Recently, residents have spearheaded a local arts revival with the creation of The Loin's Mouth, a semi-quarterly publication about life in the Tenderloin and Tenderloin Heights area. The Loin's Mouth was conceived of by its Editor, Rachel M., in the spring of 2006 and released its first issue in June the same year. It has a current circulation of approximately 6,000.
[edit] Parks
Historically, the downtown Tenderloin had no parks between Union Square to the East and Civic Center Plaza to the West until a number of activists, organizing around the City's Citizens Committee for Open Space, advocated for more open space in the Tenderloin in the 1970s. As a result a number of parks and playgrounds were created including first Boeddeker Park, a multi-use facility, then the youth oriented Tenderloin Playground, followed by a number of mini-playgrounds.
Boeddeker Park, located at the corner of Ellis and Jones Streets, is one of the most used parks per square foot in the City but has had difficulty meeting the needs of the neighborhood's varied communities. It is often unused by children and is commonly occupied by drug addicts and intoxicated people during the daytime. Periodically there are efforts to improve the park, such as holding free concerts.
The Tenderloin Playgound, on Ellis Street between Leavenworth and Hyde Streets, has attractive indoor and outdoor recreational facilities and hosts a number of community and family events.
Sgt. John Macaulay Park, named after a San Francisco police officer who was killed in the adjacent alley while on duty, is a small gated playground at the corner of O'Farrell and Larkin Streets. It is usually vacant, perhaps because of the proximity of open-air drug markets and the frequency of open drug use, particularly crack cocaine. The park is across the street from a strip club.
[edit] Restaurants and night life
The Tenderloin has a number of restaurants of various types of cuisine, especially Vietnamese, Indian, and Pakistani. There are also some Italian and Mexican restaurants. The neighborhood has a number of alternative cultural facilities including EXIT Theatre, the Luggage Store and the Rx Gallery that attract young artists and performers. Many Tenderloin bars have withstood the test of time with their 1920s character and there is a mix of new bars and lounges. There are also numerous musical venues and theaters, such as the Great American Music Hall and the Warfield. There are similarly many strip clubs. The Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater is the most famous, or infamous. Other strip clubs are clustered either nearby, on Market Street, or in the Theater District.
[edit] Crime
Prostitution is commonly seen on the streets in the area. Transgendered streetwalkers center on the area around Post and Polk Streets near one of the most famous transgender bars of the Tenderloin, Divas.[citation needed]
Dealing and use of illicit drugs occurs on the streets. Property crimes are common, especially theft from parked vehicles. Violent acts occur more often here and are generally related to drugs. Separate statistics on gun violence are not reported but it is known to occur.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Tenderloin Photo Tour Complete with narration, part of a massive guide to San Francisco.
- San Francisco Neighborhood Guide Tenderloin entry on sfgate.com.
- The Tenderloin: San Francisco's Fountainhead - article arguing for the importance of working class neighborhoods to a city's vitality.
- The Tendernob - 21st Century San Francisco Enclave for the Nouveau Poor
- Glide Memorial in the Tenderloin
- The Loin's Mouth Free semi-quarterly neighborhood zine about life in the Tenderloin/Tenderloin Heights area
- Once Upon a Time in the Tenderloin: a treatise about one year spent living and working at a Tenderloin residential hotel
- Tenderloin Housing Clinic
