Hyde Street cable line, looking down Lombard to Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge.
Skate coasters, North Beach.
Steep Filbert Street staircase on Telegraph Hill.
Facade of a waterfront pier.
Parking on the steep hill just below the Mark Hopkins hotel.
North Beach clotheslines.
Cable car commuters.
Fog, Noe Valley at Eighteenth Street.
North Beach athletes, Kearny Street.
Navigating Nob Hill’s steep sidewalk in front of the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
Sunday in the neighborhood.
Lined up for the Sausalito school bus.
Steep parking at the Mark Hopkins hotel.
“Roller skate boarder,” North Beach hillside.
Pushing a cable car off the turnaround.
Interior designer John Dickinson’s firehouse in Pacific Heights.
Powell & Market
The cable car turnaround has long been Action Central. I took this shot from a second-story office window on the south side of Market Street to better showcase this urban crossroads and the long, steep climb up Powell Street to Nob Hill. The now long-gone Woolworth’s holds a special place in my heart. In those days, its bustling lunch counter was the source of my primary diet—cheap hot dogs.
Releasing the cable car turnaround.
Cable car, Jones and Taylor Streets.
Cable car turnaround, Market and Powell Streets.
Cable car passing the St. Francis hotel on Union Square.
Striding up the steep hills of North Beach.
Aerial view of downtown and South Bay, Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill in foreground.
California Street cable car prepares to climb Nob Hill.
Windswept cypress trees above Ocean Beach.
Painting under the roadbed of the Golden Gate Bridge. Alcatraz in distance.
The pilots of the small seaplanes I used for aerial photography never wanted to go as low as I did during our flyovers of the Golden Gate Bridge, but this viewpoint has an immediacy that excites me. Old Fort Point nestles under the south anchorage (at top). And just look at that traffic: it hasn’t been that sparse in decades.
The Golden Gate Bridge disappearing into the fog from the Marin anchorage.
Painters adding a new layer of “International Orange” to the Golden Gate Bridge.
Painter inside a beam, under the roadbed of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The base of Golden Gate Bridge’s south tower.
Sunrise and light fog, Alcatraz in distance.
Painting the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Golden Gate Bridge traffic.
A Golden Gate Bridge painter climbs a cable.
Seagull over the Golden Gate Bridge, facing west to the Pacific Ocean.
Fog shrouds the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Children playing in the surf on Baker Beach, Golden Gate Bridge in distance.
Foggy morning on Sausalito’s bayfront, Bridgeway. Author Ernie Gann’s yawl at anchor.
Playland at Ocean Beach.
Bridgeway in the fog, Sausalito
Sausalito’s tile-roofed homes cling to steep wooded hills at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. In the days before the bridge was built, the town’s harbor centered on the ferryboat terminal and was home to the remnants of a Portuguese fishing fleet, some yachts, and a graveyard of old sailing vessels sinking into the mud. After World War II, the laid-back atmosphere and availability of cheap space from the abandoned shipyard attracted many young dreamers (and one photographer).
Foggy family outing.
Piers on the foggy Embarcadero.
Seaside revelers at Baker Beach.
Late afternoon fog rolls in from the Pacific over Ocean Beach.
Cruise ship send-off.
Boys fishing, Fisherman’s Wharf.
Boatbuilder in Sausalito’s south cove.
Artist Jean Varda’s ferryboat home and studio.
Ocean Beach.
Sailors on the bay.
Sailors on leave at Fisherman’s Wharf buying souvenirs.
Ocean Beach from Sutro Heights.
The Cliff House, along with Sutro Baths, was Gold Rush entrepreneur Adolph Sutro’s westernmost jewel. Sutro’s turreted Victorian incarnation of the eatery (there have been five Cliff Houses altogether) burned down in 1907. A remodeled version of the structure seen here still stands.
Young sailors setting out to sea.
Boats of San Francisco’s crab fishing fleet at Fisherman’s Wharf.
Fresh-caught Dungeness crabs. Undersized crabs must be thrown back.
Herring fishermen, Sausalito’s Old Town in distance.
Sailing on San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz in distance.
Bay sailing; Sterling Hayden’s Gracie S.
A tanker heads out to sea through the Golden Gate.
Crab fishermen haul up a trap outside the Golden Gate.
Ship’s rudder frames Islais Creek in fog.
Fisherman’s Wharf, crabs fresh from the sidewalk cauldron.
Unloading an imported car from a freighter on the Embarcadero.
Freighter moored near the Bay Bridge.
The San Francisco skyline from Sausalito’s Hurricane Gulch.
Embarcadero coffee shop
The Embarcadero stretches along San Francisco’s eastern waterfront and was once the focus of massive labor uprisings. Here, stevedores, who were pivotal to handling Pacific cargos, crowd into a small coffee shack for a warming mug of strong coffee and perhaps a bowl of chili or other sturdy fare.
Longshoremen loading sacks of wheat, Islais Creek.
Sidewalk produce market, North Beach.
Chinatown fish market, trout.
Chinatown fish and meat market.
Cable car maintenance worker.
Market Street, Hibernia Bank.
R. Matteucci jewelers’ street clock.
Shoppers on Chinatown’s Grant Avenue.
Jones and O’Farrell Streets cable line.
Cable car passenger.
Two construction workers revel in their front-row seats above the bustle of the noonday crowd. Post and Kearny Streets have long been crossroads for upscale shoppers and office workers. But in those days all the men wore suits and both sexes would have been embarrassed to appear without their hats. Today the friendly yellow signal lights have been supplanted by nagging LED miracles, but the bustle remains.
Green Street, North Beach.
Chinatown butcher shop.
Chinatown produce shop.
Chinatown cowboys.
A Sunday trip to the Fleishhacker Zoo.
Secrets behind the fence, Sausalito.
Bocce ball players, Aquatic Park.
Sidewalk produce vendor, Chinatown.
Italian butcher shop, North Beach.
Lion dancers, Chinese New Year, Grant Avenue.
Union Square flower stand in front of the posh store I. Magnin.
North Beach, looking up towards Telegraph Hill.
Tin Wah Noodle Company, Chinatown.
Cable car at the foot of Market Street, Ferry Building at right.
Post and Powell Streets, Union Square.
Grant Avenue, Chinatown.
Caffe Trieste, Beat Generation North Beach hangout.
Reading the daily news, Chinatown.
Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn’s fame as a painter continues to grow. Here he’s in his Oakland studio, but I first knew him in Sausalito, where a group of artists would sit around with a jug of Gallo’s Hearty Burgundy and moan about how badly they were treated. Diebenkorn, always the lanky kid in the corner of that group, never joined in on the complaining. A burning cigarette was his constant companion in almost every shot I ever made of him.
Washington Square, hub of Italian North Beach life.
Russian Hill reflected in window of Coit Tower. WPA murals visible inside.
Saltwater pool at Sutro Baths.
Cable car crests Nob Hill on California Street with the Fairmont Hotel in backgound.
Schoolyard monkeys.
Sunset District, Golden Gate Park at right, Ocean Beach at top.
Watching a spring parade, Maiden Lane.
North Beach adventurer.
Washington and Jackson Streets cable line. The Bay Bridge in distance.
Montgomery Street, Telegraph Hill.
Apartments on Montgomery Street, Telegraph Hill.
Steep stairway from Telegraph Hill down to waterfront piers.
North Beach, looking up Kearny Street from Broadway.
Playground slide at the Fleishhacker Zoo.
Waterfront grooming. Embarcadero barbershop.
Dizzying curves, Potrero Hill.
Lantern repair, Chinatown.
Huntington Hotel atop Nob Hill in fog.
Powell Street novelty shop.
Chinatown’s Grant Avenue, night.
Barker at a strip club on Broadway.
Barbary Coast nightclub barker.
Sally Stanford
It’s long been standard practice for San Franciscans to celebrate our oddballs, outsiders, and rogues. So was the case with the legendary Sally Stanford, perhaps the city’s most famous madam. Stanford later flourished as the proprietor of The Valhalla, her waterfront bar and restaurant in Sausalito (seen here at the bar with her parrot, Loretta). Sally even ran for mayor of Sausalito in 1972—and won.
Chinatown’s Grant Avenue, from California Street.
San Francisco newsman Herb Caen boards cable car at Powell and Market Streets.
California Street cable car, night.
South San Francisco Opera House, off Third Street in the Bayview District.
Stage and orchestra pit of Fox Theater on Market Street.
Ballet class for young dancers.
Backstage at the San Francisco Ballet.
Entry courtyard of the Mark Hopkins hotel atop Nob Hill.
The San Francisco Opera, opening night.
San Francisco Ballet performance of the Nutcracker Suite.
Traditional debutante ball at the Palm Court of the Palace Hotel.
Muggsy Spanier, the masterful jazz cornet blower.
Orchestra Pit, San Francisco ballet.
Beloved San Francisco jazz bassist Vern Alley.
Jazz great Sonny Rollins at Basin Street West.
Cotillion ball
The old guard loves their traditions, and each winter they revel in an age-old ritual, the Cotillion Club of San Francisco’s debutante ball. In the Palm Court of the Palace Hotel, the area’s toniest citizens present the season’s debutantes to society. Anachronism or no, it’s a grand spectacle and the bubbly flows and flows.
Opening night of the San Francisco Opera season.
Awaiting an escort from the opera house.
Chinatown phone booth at the corner of Grant Avenue and California Street.
Coit Tower at night, from Castle Street on Telegraph Hill.
Lombard Street grapevine on Russian Hill.
Foggy night, Land’s End.
