Rock ’n’ roll crash pad
The Tenderloin District, long the bad-boy part of town, is gentrifying. For better and for worse, some measure of diversity is being lost. The “better” is that the city is ever so slowly replacing the old SRO hotels, those firetraps for residents living on Public Assistance and forgotten medications, where the night porter grimaces behind the bulletproof glass inside a heavy metal cage in the lobby. In other ways, little has changed. This is the most ethnically and sexually diverse district in the city, and is still home to schizophrenics screaming from the rooftops, addicts shot up and half dead in Boeddeker Park, and the same old faces cued up outside St. Anthony’s Dining Room on Golden Gate Avenue next to Saint Boniface Church. The last large-scale free food source left in the city, it serves 2,700 people a day. It’s all a puddle of clouded humanity gradually drying up from the edges.
Of course, there are more mainstream gems in the Tenderloin: certain restaurants, cafes, clubs, churches, and hotels. And there are still echoes of the old Barbary Coast, when this whole neighborhood was the city’s Cotton Club. One of these is the Phoenix Hotel, on Eddy Street at Larkin. The neon sign reads, “Hotel, Restaurant, Cocktails.” At a glance, it looks like a 1970s roadhouse in the San Fernando Valley. But there’s also a tropical vibe and a kind of sensuousness. It bills itself as a motor lodge, but seems vaguely like a California version of the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, a local curio with a retro-chic vibe, which has served as a rock ’n’ roll crash pad for musicians such as Pearl Jam, the Killers, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Info
Address 601 Eddy Street, San Francisco, CA, 94109, www.jdvhospitality.com, +1 415.776.1380 | Public Transport Bus: 31 (Eddy St & Larkin St stop) | Tip The brunch at Brenda’s French Soul Food at 625 Polk Street is a local favorite. On your way there from the Phoenix Hotel, keep your eye out for the five-story mural of a farm girl, painted in muted colors by the artist named Aryz.
These days, clients also include well-heeled hipsters on vacation and city officials at a work conference. One Yelper wrote about the place, “Rock star, starlet, trust fund baby, Stepford wife. It’s like they all converge and swim around in that beautiful pool.”
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