Heyday on Hayes

A couple of weekends ago I found myself ambling along a new paved jogging trail parallel to San Francisco’s Great Highway, which runs along the coast. Since I lived here 25 years ago, I’ve returned a lot on business, but this was my first chance in a decade or more to hunt up old haunts and new. And I did run across a little-noticed gem: Hayes Valley, an older neighborhood of Victorian homes southwest of the Civic Center that is blossoming into a smart district of arcane and wonderful shops and restaurants.

At the moment though, I was headed for brunch at a favorite saloon, now upgraded. In my day, this historic two-story building, just down the highway from the better-known Cliff House, had been a biker beer bar. Now it has been spiffed up as the Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant. But its central attraction--a striking 1936 fresco of San Francisco life in that era--remains intact. Running almost the length of the building, the mural and elaborate tile work was a worthy project of the federal Works Progress Administration.

Now the ground floor is a visitors center for Golden Gate Park, which begins just out back. On the second floor is the restaurant and micro-brewery, with a wide-screen view of the Pacific. I’d recommend the breakfast steak, fried peppers and little red potatoes. And make a reservation on weekends; it’s packed with natives.

The Maxwell Hotel, where I stayed, claims to be San Francisco’s original boutique hotel--along with about every other small hotel around Union Square. Built in 1908 and recently renovated, the theater-district Art Deco lodging, with its 12-foot ceilings, is clean, comfortable and less than a block up Geary from the Powell Street cable car and the shopping around Union Square. Market Street is only four small blocks away.

Group exploration isn’t usually my thing, but on this visit I heard about the elaborate system of brief, focused, free tours offered on weekends by the San Francisco Public Library.

So Saturday morning, armed with a couple of steamed pork buns from the Eastern Bakery & Restaurant on Grant Street, I showed up with a dozen other visitors and at least one native San Franciscan for an update on Chinatown. From Portsmouth Square at Kearny and Clay where the city began, our Chinese-American guide gave an innovative, chatty cultural lesson as we spent an hour and a half meandering through the alleys. Afterward, I headed for what I’d known as South of the Slot, that is, south of Market Street--now known to San Franciscans as SOMA.

I’d heard that the Ansel Adams Center for Photography, and its Friends of Photography Bookstore, were small treasures, and they are. Ansel Adams landscapes were a good break from the expensive commercial galleries around Union Square. Most weekends, the gallery shows a lot of Adams’ work. But a special show of actor Dennis Hopper’s photo art from the 1960s was the centerpiece when I strolled through.

That night, I headed for the handsome bar--and legendary fried calamari--at Scala Bistro, just up Powell Street, in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Hungry, I piled on a saffron-seafood risotto as well, though it wasn’t as tasty as the squid. A nightcap around the corner, at a trendy little joint called Rumpus, pretty well finished me off for the night.

But the best find of the weekend was the new art, antiques and restaurant scene around Hayes Valley. Along Hayes Street from Franklin to Laguna, and from Oak to Grove, this old neighborhood was “saved” by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. To the delight of artists living in the area, the hated Central Freeway--which had dumped commuters into their neighborhood, and kept various criminal pursuits thriving in the shadows of its big concrete off-ramps--was damaged and eventually torn down.

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Today, Hayes Valley is irresistible but not yet overrun with visitors. A blossoming night life has seen three new French restaurants open in just the past year. But the locals’ hot spot right now is Suppenkuche, a German restaurant and bar that specializes in ultra-fresh, light fare allegedly favored by German monks, washed down with a dazzling collection of true German wines and beers on tap. Illuminated almost entirely by candlelight, diners eat on wooden plank tables or at a snug bar and can contemplate a scattering of religious icons with their house-cured gravelox (delicious).

“There are some great, great restaurants here,” said Aziz Bouagou, owner of the Albion House Inn, on Gough Street, a rather great little bed-and-breakfast I peeked into.

Just across Laguna from Suppenkuche is the new, airy Alabaster, a designer home-furnishings store just opened by two refugees from Santa Fe. Across Hayes Street from that is Zonal. “Many of us are redoing our shops, refining what we’re doing,” said longer-term resident Russell E. Pritchard, who owns Zonal, a shop specializing in 1930s porch gliders ($600), turn-of-the-century iron beds ($300 to $900) and other painted country-American furniture.

Next door to Zonal, and just up the street from the San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, is Stark Home Collection, stuffed with beautiful wooden furniture, much of it designed by the owner, illustrator Terry Stark. “Nancy Reagan has sat on one of my chairs,” Stark announced brightly as he looked up from an illustration he was drawing while minding the store. It turns out that he created the dining chairs and sofas for Crustacean Restaurant in Beverly Hills, where Mrs. Reagan has sat to table.

“It’s very individual here,” Stark told me. “Everyone owns their own store. It’s unique, and corporations aren’t taking over. When the Pottery Barns move in, there goes the neighborhood. Here you still have a choice.”

Parrish is a Los Angeles-based travel and business writer.

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Budget for One

Air fare: $101.00

Maxwell Hotel, 2 nights: 316.92

Steamed pork buns: 1.10

Lunch, Tadich Grill: 21.66

Dinner, Scala Bistro: 35.00

Nightcap, Rumpus: 9.00

Brunch, Beach Chalet: 20.05

Appetizer, beer, Suppenkuche: 13.00

Ansel Adams Center donation: 5.00

City Guides tour donation: 5.00

FINAL TAB: $527.73

Maxwell Hotel, 386 Geary St., San Francisco, CA 94102; tel. (888) 734-6299. San Francisco Public Library City Guides (recorded details of tours); tel. (415) 557-4266.