Pssssst! : Wanna Buy a Hamburger in S.F.’s North Beach?

It is difficult to imagine that much of anything could ruin a neighborhood noted for strip joints, sex shows, seedy bars and hard living.

However, in cuisine-conscious San Francisco, these urban fixtures are a lot more palatable than hamburgers, french fries and soft drinks.

In a bid to preserve an architecturally significant but vacant renaissance-style bank, the city’s Planning Commission last week approved plans for Carl’s Jr., a fast-food chain, to sell hamburgers in the 77-year-old building on the seamy edge of North Beach, the city’s famous Italian quarter.

Opponents, however, howl that while hamburgers may save the building, they will surely ruin the neighborhood. They say common fast-food restaurants--Taco Bell and others also want stands in the area--will kill North Beach’s unique European atmosphere.

North Beach consists of apartment houses cuddling up to narrow streets that climb Telegraph Hill. In between are shops, restaurants and coffee houses, most founded by Italian immigrants and still run by their descendants.

The Bohemian atmosphere drew Kerouac, Ferlinghetti and other writers of the 1950s, and artists and writers still favor the area. Topless dancing debuted at a North Beach nightclub on Broadway in 1964, attracting other sex shows and giving the area a bawdy image not unlike the city’s Gold Rush-era Barbary Coast.

The Board of Supervisors heard the cry about the addition of fast food to the area and quickly blocked the commission’s decision for one year. It also opened a discussion over whether to forbid any more fast-food outlets from joining the more than 4,000 restaurants already jammed into this 45-square-mile city.

Other cities may have trouble grasping the depth of the controversy, but the mixture of neighborhood character and culinary merit is volatile here.

For example, restaurateurs are writing “truth in seafood menu guidelines” to make sure the fish at Fisherman’s Wharf are properly labeled and properly prepared. Diners are not to be served rex sole when ordering Dover sole and are not to settle for shrimp when they want scampi.

“People are attracted to San Francisco because of the exciting Italian, French, Basque and Portuguese restaurants,” said Supervisor Quentin Kopp, who proposed the fast-food freeze in North Beach. “You want to eat in a fast-food restaurant, you eat in (suburban) Walnut Creek.”

Kopp even challenged the burger palace on nutritional grounds, even though the neighborhood is already chockablock with trendy new cookie and ice cream outlets.

Supervisor Louise Renne added that North Beach is not the only one of the city’s quaint ethnic neighborhoods suffering at the hands of the homogenizing fast-food Philistines.

“If there is a move afoot to ban all fast-food restaurants, I will join immediately,” she said during a recent board meeting. “Count me aboard. They are undoing the quality of San Francisco.”

The new restaurant’s prospective owners have tried to appease opponents by offering to clean up all trash on every city street within half a mile three times a day and by promising to hire 35 workers from the immediate area.

They also said that many local residents on fixed incomes would appreciate a restaurant that could offer a meal for less than $3.

Many are unswayed, however.

“It’s too commercial,” said Patrick Roe, whose job is to hustle passers-by into the El Cid club for the long-running headline act, “He-She Love-In.”

“It would put a damper on everything,” he said. “This is a nightclub area. What do they want to see a Carl’s Jr. for?”