Every time the first of the month rolls around and rent is due, are you thinking, “Dude this place sucks. If I owned a building, I’d totally run it like, with awesome-ocity”? Well, now is your chance as 625 Taylor Street is on the market. This forest green gem of Tendernobbery is just a mere $3,200,000. What a deal! Actually, when you figure that it has 21 units and that that makes than $152,000 apiece, it is kinda a good deal, although this is purely for someone looking to rent out the place obviously. And who could resist when the listing has shots like this? Moving boxes in a junior bedroom are soooo hot! Rar!

I was walking by Brenda’s today and checking on their expansion which looks to be moving along with some degree of progress.

For those who didn’t know, Brenda’s has taken over their entire building on Polk Street, including the laundromat space that used to be next door. The shot above is the new top of the building and is a nice touch. That and the sign taking up the entire front. We can only hope that soon our beloved breakfast spot shall be bigger, badder, and even more beignet-ful.

In case you haven’t walked up Post between Hyde & Larkin, there’s a big fat sign out front announcing the sale of 3 Meacham Place. Now, I love Meacham because in addition to being a cool little alley next to this this building, “meach” sounds like “peach” and “ham” sounds like “ham” meaning that it sounds like Peach Ham street, especially once I’ve been drinking and I like the sound that.

But I was curious at what #3 was in this alley and most importantly, how much this little gem costs. Well, as to the cost, that’s $1.4 million. As to what this space was, that was Voicebox Creative who I’m rather bummed to see are moving out of the neighborhood. Given that this isn’t really the best time to be selling real estate, I’m assuming that they were moving due to a slump in work, which is unfortunate as it was nice to have a design firm in the neighborhood while they were around. But, take a look at the real estate link above and see the photos. This is a mighty cool building, which will most likely not get any new kind of design firm at it, but just end up being a TIC or something.

This building really sums up what I call the Tendlet: all business downstairs and living upstairs. We have a good number of these mixed use, Tendlet buildings in the neighborhood and I’m quite happy when they stay that way because really, who wants an apartment on eye level with the sidewalk and who wants a business where people from the sidewalk can’t see it?

Or maybe, it’s 901 or 905 Post Street. I don’t really know. All I do know is that I’ve walked by this place a great many times and always wanted to see something done with it as it’s a nice, early 20th century building. According to SF city records, it’s owned by some property group in San Diego who do little more than paint over the graffiti once the city cites them on it. It also seems to have been a privately owned laundry a long, long time ago with the couple who owned it also living there. Whatever the case, I am curious and if anyone has any information, I’d love to hear it.

Some might argue with me that Hallidie Plaza (that hole in the ground outside the Powell Station) isn’t part of the Loin. I say that it very much is and that if you go to the right, where the escalators are, it’s the gateway to Union Square. You go to the left where the stairs are (and me walking up the stairs not making eye contact with the Street Sheeters), it’s the gateway to the Loin. In fact, it’s the perfect manifestation as to how San Francisco regards these two districts. Properly Done vs. Good Enough. No one really has been able to deal with the fact that this plaza is a complete disaster. If you haven’t read it, this article by John King from nearly four years ago is an excellent breakdown of what exactly is wrong with the Hallidie Hole and how it can be fixed:

When Hallidie Plaza opened in 1973, named in honor of cable car inventor Andrew Hallidie, the idea was to create a sunken plaza that could be a gathering place, a multilevel celebration of urbanity shielded from traffic and throngs.
Oops! We’ve learned since then that urbanity includes traffic and throngs. The commotion is part of the scene. By telescoping the plaza downward, its users were pulled out of sight and out of the action.

King went on to say that the other part of the plaza, which just seems like an afterthought anyways, should be done away with. I couldn’t agree more. And in fact, moving the visitor’s center up to the top is probably the best thing that could be done as any visitor that comes to visit me has no idea that it’s there, given that it’s on the leftward, Loiny side of the plaza.

Of course I can’t really see this happening with our current political mess. We’d end up with Chris Daly pushing for affordable housing to line the exit of Powell (which would look something like the prison cell scene in 12 Monkeys.) Then we’d end up with Newsom erecting a statue of himself over the entrance, standing with his legs apart so that we’d have to stare at his junk every time we would use the station. Whomever voted for Daly should have to live in his pet projects. Whomever voted for Newsom should have to spend time in a locked room with him.

But, my god, here’s one “small” idea that could actually work: a resevoir. Basically, as King was saying, give up on that extension bit. This has so many pluses to it, that I assume it won’t work in San Francisco due to it being firmly grounded in sensibility. First, it doesn’t have to be gorgeous or have artwork saluting some indigenous peoples. Second, it creates almighty surface area for development. Third, there’s the reservoir which it turns out will save the city money. I had no idea that the sound of rushing water I heard in Powell was actually the sound 44 million gallons of water a year being wasted! All this water is pumped out of the station to stop it from flooding when it could be used to fill up the various street cleaning trucks and other city vehicles that need water as well as washing away Newsom’s hubris on a daily, or as-needed basis.

While I’m pissed that this idea hasn’t come about before in a city that claims to be so green, I’m happy that at least now it’s being thought about and, aside from public officials not getting in to a hair pulling fight, it could actually happen.

Yeah, I get it, we’re “in the red”. Is that supposed to be funny? They can start paying my rent and let me complete my enrollment in Healthy San Francisco if that’s the case.

And while I realize it’s a border of the Loin and not actually in the Loin, what the hell was up with southbound traffic on Van Ness tonight? Looked like hell for anyone who was in a car, which thankfully, I wasn’t, as walking is something that soothes my soul–especially when contrasted against the fact I’m walking faster than the cars next to me are moving. To quote Nelson, “Ha, ha.”

(Pardon the sheer and utter crapitude of that photo. I didn’t have my real camera with me at the moment and had capture that with the delicate touch of my Blackberry.)

When you think of nice sections of San Francisco, the one thing that they usually have in common is an abundance of trees lining the street. Whether it’s Upper Hyde, Upper Fillmore, Pacific Heights, etc., it’s a no-brainer. Have some trees and people like. Tear out all the trees and people don’t like. Such is the case with the vast majority of the Tenderloin. There are no trees which in addition to removing nature’s air purifiers, it makes all the streets look like crap. Every piece of trash stands out more and the street’s ass is exposed. I don’t care who you are, but an exposed ass in never a good thing.

Naturally, whenever I see a sign that they want to rip out trees in a specific place, I am annoyed. Sure, people are allowed their due course as an owner, but those sidewalks in front of their buildings are not theirs. They are ours and it’s more than a little frustrating that simply the threat of possible legal action by some ambulance chasing lawyer some day in the future due to some unknown future person walking by who might hit their head on a branch that doesn’t exist yet, will make people want to tear out the trees in front of their buildings.

It seems I am not alone in this and some concerned citizen put up notices that a couple of trees on Polk street between Bush and Pine (the ones pictured above) are set to be cut down. Here is the notice on the Polk Street trees:

There was a bit of information in these notices, but since seeing the one that I did on Post Street and going back the next day to take a picture, they have since all been removed. If anyone has any information on this campaign, please leave it in the comments section. I’ve seen far, far too many trees removed in the Loin to sit by idly and let more get taken out just in the name of whatever lame excuse people have to remove them. Oh yeah, bug David Chiu. It’s about time he did a bit more on the ground for his district in this area.

And you may ask yourself why I spell wickedly as “wikkedly” for the title? The answer is simple. Back in my senior year of high school I ended up playing bass for a butt rock band called ‘Wikked Sinder’. Those were fun days playing Sabbath and living out my dreams of understanding why it was that I needed to go to college and not work as “lead chef” for Pizza Hut. The house of the guitarist where we “practiced” (usually just sitting around listening to the guitarist bitch about how his kids found his crack pipe again) was wedged between the main town church and a diesel gas station. The scene was similar to the one you see above.

Naturally, I have flashbacks to my Wikked Sinder days every time I walk past this house at 606 Ellis Street and wonder, “What in the hell happened here…?” Well, as SF Curb noted, it’s for sale. Yes, you could be the proud owner of one of four single dwelling homes in the Loin. They’re going fast, so get your hands on one while you can.

While the neighborhood is indeed a wee bit rough, I’m sure that’s a fine house. With a bit of gardening, you could easily end up with your own urban oasis like this. Now wouldn’t that kick some serious Sinder?

I came across the above image the other day, which is of the intersection at Powell and Sutter in 1895. I realize that this is most definitely not the Loin, but it’s a great shot of how this general area used to look. I’ve never seen this shot before for some reason and it’s really sad given that everything there was leveled in 1906 with the Big One. And yes, your eyes don’t deceive you, there was a cable car on Sutter.

If you take a look at the affected devastation areas you see that the Tenderloin was pretty much completely obliterated by the earthquake and fire. Had that not happened, obviously a great many things would have been different in San Francisco, but probably the biggest one is that the Loin wouldn’t be the Loin as we know it. It would have been full of single dwelling homes that would have looked a great deal more like Alamo Square than the tall, multi-dwelling apartments that we have now. Don’t get me wrong, because of when the earthquake happened, we really got some great architecture rebuilt in the place where all was lost. It’s just that I like to muse about what maybe coulda been.

We found this beautiful picture of a recent wedding at the St Boniface church on Golden Gate Avenue (between Leavenworth and Jones). It’s a pretty pink and yellow Roman Catholic church originally built in 1900, but since it was severely damaged by the 1906 earthquake, it was rebuilt in 1908 (and it was fully restored in 2002). We were happy to find these wedding pictures showing the interior of the church since we have never been inside and it appears that it would be worth doing so.

As a side note, the church is also known in the area for letting the homeless sleep on the pews during daytime when there are no services (they call it the Gubbio Project).