SAN FRANCISCO — I like to think that I knew San Francisco during its golden age, back in the ’60s, when this wonderful city was the forefront of social thought. The antiwar movement. Haight-Ashbury. Beat poetry in dusky coffee shops.
I had relatives in the Bay Area, and every summer my family would go to San Francisco for vacation. However, I was a little young, so my typical souvenir was usually a San Francisco Giants pennant instead of the 6-foot Jim Morrison skull bong.
Coffee wasn’t part of my life then, but it is now. Well, coffee shops are. American coffee often tastes like burnt tar served in a bucket. But I like hanging out in coffee shops. It’s where you find the pulse of a neighborhood, can relax with a good book and feel part of the social fabric.
Even American coffee tastes good in that setting.
I’m sorry I missed that slice of San Francisco during its heyday. Well, two weeks ago I relived it. I’ve taken walking tours all around the world but San Francisco’s Javawalk was one of the best. It’s a coffee tour. You’re taken to the great historic coffee shops, hear tales of the personalities that made San Francisco famous with The City’s coffee history sprinkled in.
By the end of the two-hour walk, I swore I could see Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg brooding over steaming cups of joe in a 90-year- old cafe.
I started the tour on a gray, drizzly day at the art boutique Hotel Triton on the corner of Grant and Bush, across from the arch that marks the border of Chinatown. Tour guide Collette Rowland, a San Francisco resident since 1989, pointed out that there are 450 coffee shops in The City. I couldn’t help noticing that across the street stood a Starbucks.
Starbucks is the McDonald’s of coffee shops. It swoops into neighborhoods, boots out the local cafe, replaces the comfy, overstuffed couches with cast-iron chairs Indian fakirs can’t sit in and produces ghastly, mass-produced coffee for an American workforce going too fast.
Rowland says Starbucks franchises make up as much as a third of all San Francisco coffee shops but, she says, “We have a lot of home-based mom-and-pop shops in every neighborhood. You go to any given neighborhood — North Beach, the Marina, South of Market, the Haight — and you’ll see the flavor of the neighborhood in the coffee houses.”
If you want the true flavor of San Francisco’s coffee history, to bite right into the city coffee bean, you go to North Beach. Rowland walked me through the nine blocks of Chinatown’s chockablock restaurants and souvenir shops. I could still hear the tinny twang of Chinese zithers when we reached North Beach, the pulse of San Francisco during the rollicking Gold Rush years of the 1850s.
At the time, San Francisco had the West Coast’s largest port, and coffee beans were shipped in from all over the world. They were roasted right nearby.
“I always picture in the old days a ship would pull into our port and the passengers would be greeted with that smell of roasted coffee,” Rowland said.
When Italians immigrated here in the 1870s, they made a beeline to North Beach and set up the businesses they had in Italy: delis, bakeries — and coffee shops. Back then coffee was just something to keep you awake between debaucheries. North Beach was lousy with gambling houses, saloons and brothels. She pointed out a sprawling office building that was once the Hippodrome, a brothel that serviced 50 men a shift.
But was the coffee good?
Actually, coffee houses didn’t reach their pinnacle until the 1940s. By then, the Italians had become prosperous and began moving out, leaving their businesses and North Beach the way you see it today: busy city streets lined with Italian restaurants, gelato shops, bars and coffee shops. The, um, porn shops and 50-foot neon stripper signs came later.
North Beach coffee shops became Ground Central for the Beat culture in the ’50s. Rowland led me to City Lights, the bookstore where owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti published Ginsberg’s “Howl,” the 1955 poem that the police seized on obscenity charges. For years Beat poets hung out at City Lights and had poetry readings upstairs before retiring across the alley to Vesuvio, which still has San Francisco’s longest bar hours: 6 a.m.-2 a.m.
Writers also flocked to North Beach, where Rowland squired me to Caffe Trieste. Old men in fishermen’s caps rubbed elbows with local youths in hoodies and young couples sipping wine. On the wall were pictures showing North Beach resident Francis Ford Coppola writing “The Godfather.”
Over a strong coffee and a killer chocolate croissant, John Henderson instead wrote questions to later ask new University of San Francisco basketball coach Eddie Sutton. So I’m part of the literary club. Sort of.
We walked down Columbus Avenue to the Tosca Cafe. It was closed that day but the city’s oldest espresso machines, still in use from the 1920s, were visible through the window. During Prohibition, it was famous for serving a house “cappuccino” that was steamed milk, brandy and a little chocolate, and a “white nun,” with Kahlua subbing for chocolate. They’re still served today, and the place is a popular last stop for Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage and other celebs who come for the San Francisco Film Festival.
“They were definitely nightcaps,” Rowland said. “They were basically warm milk and booze.”
We finished our tour at the Caffe Roma, a spitting image of the cafes I hung out at in Rome and where my beloved A.S. Roma soccer team was playing Real Madrid on TV. I ordered a velvety smooth espresso, and gazed out the window as North Beach walked by.
Oh, Jim Morrison really did die too young.
Staff writer John Henderson covers sports and writes about the food he eats on the road: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
If you go
Javawalk.com, 415-673-WALK (9255). $25 per person.
