If anything keeps visitors away from San Francisco this year, it is likely to be fear. The earthquake that made buildings, bridges and highways wobble and crumble here last Oct. 17 may have caused more long-range damage to people than to structures. Physical scars can be repaired or shorn up;
psychological scars and paranoia are something else.
There`s no doubt that in some people`s minds, a visit to San Francisco is a dicey thing, especially if their heads are filled with the images of fire and destruction shown on television and in newspapers and magazines. The San Andreas Fault won`t go away and what happens far beneath the Earth`s surface, unlike a hurricane or tornado, is unpredictable in terms of a days or hours timeframe.
Yet, life goes on here. Quite well, in fact. If visitors were unaware of the earthquake that registered 7.1 on the Richter scale and left 67 people dead, they would be hard-pressed to find signs of the damage to the San Francisco that most tourists see. The worst damage is confined to the Marina District, a residential area not on the tourist circuit, and the Embarcadero Freeway exit to Chinatown and North Beach. The exit ramp, reinforced with supports, is closed while city officials debate its fate. The California Cafe, which sits beneath the ramp, closed because diners quit going there. Business in Chinatown suffers.
But as it always has, the city gleams in the sunshine, glistens in the rain or plays hide-and-seek in the fog. Cable cars, the city`s moving landmarks, rumble up and down the hills, their bells clanging out rhythmic tunes. Flower sellers peddle their colorful blooms in Union Square every day. The crabpots bubble and steam on Fisherman`s Wharf, where vendors sell crabmeat cocktails and thick, white clam chowder. Chinatown blends its foreignness with Hong Kong-style merchandising of cameras, electronic gadgets and all sorts of goods from the People`s Republic of China. In the window of a fortune cookie bakery a sign advertises ”French Adult Fortune Cookies.”
In the evening, tony restaurants such as Kuleto`s on Powell Street and Wolfgang Puck`s Postrio on Post Street are packed. So are old noisy standbys such as the Washington Square Bar and Grill. The theaters and jazz joints still draw their patrons.
The big difference noticed here early last month, however, was the scarcity of tourists: There were some, but not the numbers hoped for by the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, even though the tourist season really doesn`t begin until April. The quake has cost the city`s tourism-related businesses nearly $200 million. Hotels alone lost $47 million in revenue in the first 45 days after the quake.
Conventioneers aplenty
As I rode the cable cars, walked along Fisherman`s Wharf or window-shopped around Union Square early last month, I saw plenty of
conventioneers, recognizable by their name tags, as well as tourists. But the cable cars weren`t as jammed as they usually are and the lines to board them were virtually nonexistent.
”We don`t think it`s entirely a fear factor that`s keeping people away,” said the bureau`s Sharon Rooney. ”We had more than 100 percent hotel room occupancy during the World Series when the quake struck and not a single tourist was killed. Of the 67 people who lost their lives, 13 were in San Francisco and in the Marina District. More people were affected by the windstorms that struck France and southern England this winter.”
Rooney also suggested that a lot of people who may have been planning a San Francisco vacation decided to go elsewhere. ”We won`t know if we`re rebounding until the end of April.”
The bureau, however, has maintained its convention business, with 60,000 people slated to attend the Macworld (computer) Expo April 10-13.
Awareness program helped
San Francisco`s stringent building codes were mentioned by Rooney as a positive factor. ”The buildings withstood the test. And the quake banded the city together,” she said. Every April since 1981, the city has promoted a two-week awareness program that encourages citizens and public agencies to participate in drills and keep informed about earthquakes, Rooney pointed out. (San Francisco`s worst earthquake-8.2 magnitude-occurred in April, 1906.)
Several tourists near Pier 39 on Fisherman`s Wharf said they weren`t bothered by the quake-fear factor.
Two women from towns north of Detroit said their friends back home are more concerned about post-quake San Francisco than they are. ”What will be, will be,” said one. ”It`s beautiful here. I really think the people who live here aren`t worrying about it. They said the media made far too much of it. I didn`t see much damage.”
Markus Markonni, a street performer at Pier 39, said ”this place was a ghost town right through Christmas. But business picked up in February. It`s a mix of locals and tourists.”
While visitors will most likely creep back to what Northern Californians call ”The City,” San Franciscans can`t quite put the quake behind them though most have plunged ahead with their lives. It`s more difficult for those who were directly affected, who had to vacate their apartments or condos in the Marina and begin anew in another neighborhood.
Everyone has stories. Three friends have acquaintances who refuse to drive on the Oakland Bay Bridge, closed for a month after a 50-foot section of the upper deck collapsed. The bridge reopened 30 days after the quake. I crossed it twice, but even someone who commutes over the bridge daily had trouble pointing out the replaced and reinforced section where the bridge curves gently toward Oakland.
A friend who lived in the Marina District had to find housing elsewhere while her building`s owners make plans to restore the handsome white stucco on Beach Street. The quake left some buildings unscathed, others askew on their foundations like a section of layer cake that has slid. Street-level garages are being framed with steel I-beams, which are being inserted to stabilize the upper floors of the three- and four-story units.
Aside from the Marina District, which will come back to life; the propped-up and closed ramps of the Embarcadero Freeway, which may be torn down if some politicians and city dwellers have their way; some old brick structures south of Market Street built prior to stringent codes; and a few buildings in Chinatown, the remainder of San Francisco appears sound.
Quakes are part of city lore
”Earthquakes have always been part of the city`s folklore,” Mayor Art Agnos told Tribune correspondent Mary T. Schmich last month, ”but they`ve never been reality (to most people). So it sobered people who thought this is a paradise where nothing could go wrong.”
As with any disaster, there are people who see a way to make a buck. Among the souvenirs: a $10-$15 orange-and-white sweatshirt emblazoned with
”The Great Earthquake” and in smaller print: ”Date: Oct. 17, 1989-Time:
5:04-Magnitude: 7.1.” Also popular is a slick, Time-sized magazine co-sponsored by United Press International. It contains news accounts and color photos and sells for $9.95. Its cover screams: ”EARTHQUAKE 7.1.”
Despite its foibles, San Francisco remains almost as inviting as it always has-a pastel city with touches of green from lush trees and shrubs. But the city has a tackier look than I can ever recall. And, as in most big cities, street people have proliferated, more so since the quake damaged dwellings used as inexpensive housing.
San Francisco has lost some of its charm over the years. The
”Manhattanization” of the city continues, with some fairly tasteless architecture protruding from the once-undulating skyline. Among the latest is what San Franciscans have dubbed the ”Juke Box Marriott” because its towers are topped by silvery glass with a juke-box-like design. Officially called the San Francisco Marriott, a 1,500-room convention hotel a block from the Moscone Center, it opened the day of the quake. (It serves a growing convention complex-the Moscone Center is being doubled in size-and is part of Yerba Buena Gardens, a recreational and shopping development is in the early stages of construction across the street.)
Most of the city`s 10 tallest buildings, however, topped by the 853-foot Transamerica Pyramid, sprout from the Financial District or Embarcadero Center. None of the skyscrapers or other major buildings, for that matter, were affected by the quake other than the designed-in swaying.
If San Francisco goes rumble-free for awhile, the tourists will return. There`s so much to see and do in this unusual city that crawls over 40 hills, but most notably Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill and Russian Hill.
Virtually the first thing that everyone wants to do is ride the cable cars, officially designated as National Historic Landmarks. One ride costs $2, but you can ride all day on a $6 pass. Best ride is on the Powell-Hyde Line, which you can catch at Union Square and ride the roller-coaster route to Fisherman`s Wharf. It stops at the Buena Vista Cafe, home of Irish coffee, and a block from Ghirardelli Square, a chocolate factory built between 1900 and 1916 and converted into a complex of shops and restaurants. Its structures were unaffected by the quake.
Fisherman`s Wharf is a touch of history, good food, a mixed bag of shopping and a street carnival. Old vessels sit at anchor at the Maritime Historic Park. Alioto`s, Castagnola and Tarantino`s are landmark restaurants on the Wharf. Outdoor vendors at Borruso`s Lighthouse, Sabella & La Torre`s serve up crabmeat and shrimp cocktails, sandwiches and chowder for $2.25 to $3. Shops sell everything from cookies to kitsch, from musical cable cars to T-shirts on sale, three for $9.99. Musicians and mimes vie for your time and your contributions. The Cannery, formerly a Del Monte plant, is similar to Ghirardelli.
The Wharf`s Pier 39 is a weathered, New England-looking melange of shops, where you can buy anything from a college sweatshirt to a $6,000 handcarved carousel animal. Pier 39 is where you`ll find the ”San Francisco
Experience,” a multimedia presentation that lets you ”feel” the 1906 earthquake. On Oct. 17, viewers thought the real thing was part of the show and were reluctant to vacate when ordered to do so by officials. If you choose not to take a Red & White Fleet boat out to Alcatraz, you can see some of the prison`s lore displayed in Pier 39`s Alcatraz Bar & Grill. The latest Pier 39 show is the approximately 300 seals that have taken over part of the marina for their own use, dislodging boat owners.
Foreign destination
As American as Fisherman`s Wharf is, Chinatown is totally foreign. Packed within 27 square blocks are approximately 100,000 Chinese, the largest such quarter outside Asia. Most of the shopping is along Grant Street, a few blocks from Union Square, where you can buy cameras, compact disk players, telephones, jewelry, bamboo products, kites, herbs, fresh fish, Peking duck and several dozen varieties of tea at Ten Ren Tea Co. The quarter contains scores of restaurants, from storefront plain to posh. Wander down alley-sized streets at Ross and you`ll find a fortune-cookie bakery. But, from one street or another, you see the bay, the Financial District, even the ”Juke Box Marriott” looming in the distance.
Japantown (Nihonmachi) is a much smaller, sanitized version of Chinatown. It has a modern hotel connected to a cultural trade center with stores selling Sony, Mitsubishi, Murata Pearls and folk craft. At the Ikenobo Ikebana Society of America headquarters, however, you can learn the sensitive art of flower arranging. Or at least watch it demonstrated. On April 29, more than 2,000 Californians of Japanese descent and performers from Japan will gather for a colorful Cherry Blossom Festival and parade in the area bounded by Octavia, Fillmore, California and Geary streets.
Back at Union Square, the crossroads and shopping heart of San Francisco, visitors are only steps away from such emporiums as I. Magnin, Macy`s, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, the venerable Gump`s and boutiques on Maiden Lane. Major hotels on the square are the Westin St. Francis, Hyatt Regency, Marriott and Holiday Inn. And yet a few more steps away on Powell Street, signs and banners attract shoppers into discount electronic and camera stores, where from one to another, the price of the same tape recorder can vary by $100.
At Powell and Market streets is the city`s newest shopping gem, the San Francisco Centre, a 10-level vertical shopping mall. One noon hour, while riding the curved escalators through Nordstrom`s, a classy department store, classical piano music drifted through the openness. There, dressed in tails at a shiny black grand piano near men`s clothing, sat a young musician, entertaining a scant number of shoppers.
Amid the splendid old neighborhoods of San Francisco, such as yuppified Union Street, it`s easy to settle into such establishments as Perry`s for a brew or a brunch. Or drive up to Coit Tower for splendid view of the city. Or across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. It`s times like these when you think that perhaps the next big rumble will never tumble such a lovely place. That`s what everyone hopes.
