Everyone knows San Francisco for its iconic landmarks and destinations: Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghiradelli Square, the Presidio, Embarcadero, the Transamerica Pyramid. But, of course, the city has its off-the-beaten-path areas that are as much a part of the city’s fabric as its more well-known brethren.
One of these neighborhoods is Tenderloin, which we say is ready to explode similar to the Lower East Side in New York has over the years. Now, Tenderloin is not for the faint. In fact, one website put it as thus: “Repeatedly described in most tourist guides as ‘the worst neighborhood in San Francisco,’ the Tenderloin thrives despite its bad rap. Sure, there are Tenderloinloads of drug dealers, addicts, prostitutes and mentally unstable street people, but if you can get past that, you’ll find it is also one of the city’s most exciting and diverse locales.”
This is all about to change, however, as described in this recent New York Times article. We quote: “But now San Francisco’s civic boosters have decided they want to add a highly unlikely stop to the tourist itinerary: the Uptown Tenderloin, the ragged, druggy and determinedly dingy domain of the city’s most down and out.”
Tenderloin is full of historical nuggets. As noted in the Times piece, “The Hotel Drake, where Frank Capra lived as a starving young director in the early 1920s, or the Cadillac Hotel, built a year after the great 1906 earthquake and fire and where Muhammad Ali later trained. Jerry Garcia also lived at the Cadillac, and he and the Grateful Dead recorded several albums in the area at what is now Hyde Street Studios, as did other Bay Area bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jefferson Airplane.”
Tenderloin is still a project, yes, but we’re interested to see how it turns out.
